Trent Alexander-Arnold

[etho]

I'm not saying he can't do it, and I know it might be because Gerrard started out at full back, but where is the evidence that he's destined to end up in midfield? I know he played there at youth level, but that means fuck all, Carra played up front at youth level.

 

He looks like a potential world class right back to me

 

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

[Guest Pistonbroke]

Thought he was good today, Clyne will have to go some to get his place back with both TAA and Gomez doing a decent job. 

[Lee909]

Think he should start friday myself. Two out the last three games Gomez has been caught ball watching at the back post fkr goals

[No2]

Think he should start friday myself. Two out the last three games Gomez has been caught ball watching at the back post fkr goals

Trent was badly caught our yesterday too, he got away with though because Ashley Barnes is shit. His was worse in many ways because he could see the player and there was no flick on involved.

 

Both of them are struggling at the back post in a way Clyne never does. It will happen plenty more times too, nothing we can do but grin and bare it while they learn on the job.

[Carvalho Diablo]

Trent was badly caught our yesterday too, he got away with though because Ashley Barnes is shit. His was worse in many ways because he could see the player and there was no flick on involved.

 

Both of them are struggling at the back post in a way Clyne never does. It will happen plenty more times too, nothing we can do but grin and bare it while they learn on the job.

 

I disagree with you iro Clyne there mate, it's his one defensive weakness imo, because I've seen him get caught napping and beaten at the back post several times.

 

I did notice that about Trent though, seems to be a bad habit for all our right backs, but TAA and Gomez are young enough to learn and become more aware, so I wouldn't be too hard on them.

 

Incidentally, I also noticed Robertson win a great backpost header against a marauding wide man the other day (can't remember which game it was though, sorry). I think he's been excellent in his limited game time so far this season, both offensively and defending, and with Moreno's undoubted improvement I think both full back positions are becoming a strength of the team.

[The Guest]

Gomez defensively is ahead of TAA. Even including the switching off he had a better game than Trent yesterday. I do think that the odd defensive lapse which has been happening though shows why Klopp is keeping Gomez at full back.

 

Trent will go on to be a better full back/player though in my opinion. Even though there’s only a year difference between the two you can clearly see the difference those extra minutes and games have had on Gomez.

[No2]

I disagree with you iro Clyne there mate, it's his one defensive weakness imo, because I've seen him get caught napping and beaten at the back post several times.

 

I did notice that about Trent though, seems to be a bad habit for all our right backs, but TAA and Gomez are young enough to learn and become more aware, so I wouldn't be too hard on them.

 

Incidentally, I also noticed Robertson win a great backpost header against a marauding wide man the other day (can't remember which game it was though, sorry). I think he's been excellent in his limited game time so far this season, both offensively and defending, and with Moreno's undoubted improvement I think both full back positions are becoming a strength of the team.

Clyne loses his fair share of headers but not due to concentration, more down to size and ale house cunts sticking a Fellani or Carroll on the back post. He seems to gone an eternity so maybe the mind is playing tricks on me but I always had him down as properly switched on in defensive situations. As you say Robertson appears to have this ticked off too, I think it's natural to some and not others. I don't think Moreno will ever master it, the 2 kids at right back will.

[Jay86]

Didn’t realise there was only a year between Trent and Gomez, Gomez at the moment is quite far ahead in terms of development but Trent has that something else that makes him stand out. He’s broken through slightly later (probably because Gomez is physically bigger and we bought him) but will more than likely end up the better all round player.

 

Kind of like when Owen came through before Gerrard but Gerrard was the superior footballer, god knows where Trent will end up but at the moment he’s a very good young Full back and at times is slightly reminiscent of a young Stevie G.

 

He needs to fill out a bit to be a top Centre Mid in this era because Centre Mids are getting back to the powerful runners like they was when Arsenal dominated teams with Vieira, that should naturally come along with age though so he could end up a Centre Midfielder.

[aRdja]

Gomez defensively is ahead of TAA. Even including the switching off he had a better game than Trent yesterday. I do think that the odd defensive lapse which has been happening though shows why Klopp is keeping Gomez at full back.

Trent will go on to be a better full back/player though in my opinion. Even though there’s only a year difference between the two you can clearly see the difference those extra minutes and games have had on Gomez.

Yeah I like that Trent is a footballer. Even his short passing is quite perceptive. He still needs to improve defensively, but in a couple of years his ability on the ball be a proper weapon for us.

 

Klopp seemed to put more of the blame for their equaliser on Klavan in his post match. Something along the lines of “anything can happen if you lose the first header”.

[The Guest]

Yeah I like that Trent is a footballer. Even his short passing is quite perceptive. He still needs to improve defensively, but in a couple of years his ability on the ball be a proper weapon for us.

 

Klopp seemed to put more of the blame for their equaliser on Klavan in his post match. Something along the lines of “anything can happen if you lose the first header”.

Because Klavan can take it, because he’s not a hero. He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector.

[Jose Jones]

I don’t think Gomez could have done too much about the goal really. Sure he was caught out a bit, but the lad gambled and made a run right into the back post even before the first header was flicked on.

You wouldn’t have actually wanted Gomez to follow that run 9 times out of 10 because he would have been miles out of position loads deeper than our other defenders.

 

I’m not saying he couldn’t have been quicker to react and a bit closer, but even if he’d played it entirely properly it wouldn’t have prevented the goal.

[Pureblood]

Yeah it wasn't as glaring as the one with Sanchez. 

[aws]

He could have been closer to his man but a well-timed run to meet a ball like that is almost impossible to stop.

[VladimirIlyich]

I disagree with you iro Clyne there mate, it's his one defensive weakness imo, because I've seen him get caught napping and beaten at the back post several times.

 

I did notice that about Trent though, seems to be a bad habit for all our right backs, but TAA and Gomez are young enough to learn and become more aware, so I wouldn't be too hard on them.

 

Incidentally, I also noticed Robertson win a great backpost header against a marauding wide man the other day (can't remember which game it was though, sorry). I think he's been excellent in his limited game time so far this season, both offensively and defending, and with Moreno's undoubted improvement I think both full back positions are becoming a strength of the team.

Our fans seem to expect our full backs to be world beaters too,but that just isnt necessary. Robertson looks much more of a natural full back to me and is a much better defender than attacking full back,I like that. TAA seems to be the opposite. Gomez is a CB and looks like one when playing full back. I think having a top class DM would help this problem as we ask a lot from our full backs.

[The Woolster]

Good lad

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/sports/soccer/liverpool-alexander-arnold.html

 

At Global Clubs, Local Players Serve as Connective Tissue

On Soccer

By RORY SMITH FEB. 6, 2018

 

 

LIVERPOOL, England — Trent Alexander-Arnold shuffles uneasily on his feet. He is standing in the assembly hall at St. Cuthbert’s, a Catholic primary school in Liverpool, a few minutes’ drive from the part of the city where he grew up. About 50 or so children sit on benches in front of him. Some beam with pleasure. Some whisper excitedly. Most just stare at him, as if he has descended from another planet.

 

This, certainly, is a new world for Alexander-Arnold. It is barely more than a year since he made his Premier League debut for Liverpool, his hometown team, and a few months since he scored his first goal. He is 19. He remembers what it was like to be one of those children, eagerly hoping for a visit from Steven Gerrard or Jamie Carragher, and he still finds the idea that he might now be anyone’s hero a little strange. “It still hasn’t caught on for me, really,” he said.

 

On a cold Friday morning in December, he is here on behalf of a local charity called An Hour for Others. The organization has prepared hampers, packed with food, to be handed out to some of the most underprivileged children at the school.

 

It is the sort of initiative most Premier League teams — most sports teams across the planet, in fact — run every Christmas. Players visit fans in the hospital, or arrive unannounced at schools.

 

Alexander-Arnold’s visit to St. Cuthbert’s is different. He is here with the blessing of his club, but not at its behest. He has not been sent here as part of Liverpool’s community program. This is his morning off — he is due in for training at 2:30 p.m. — and this is how he has chosen to spend it.

 

The concept behind the program that connected him with St. Cuthbert’s, An Hour for Others, is simple, self-explanatory. One of the group’s founders, Kevin Morland, a painter and decorator, decided that his time and skills could help those in need more than his money. He started off redecorating children’s bedrooms in some of Liverpool’s most deprived areas at no cost to residents, and slowly the concept spread.
 

Now, An Hour for Others offers everything from cooking classes taught by professional chefs to dance, yoga and science sessions. Some people volunteer their time, others their equipment or access to their property.

 

Alexander-Arnold was still just a hopeful at Liverpool’s academy when he became involved. His mother, Diane, recommended one of the charity’s first beneficiaries to Morland and his partner, Gill Watkins. Alexander-Arnold, in his midteens at the time, was summoned early one morning to help load boxes of donated toys into Morland’s van.

From that point, he said, he was determined that if he ever had a career as a professional he would use his success to promote the charity’s work. Together with Kris Owens, whom he called his best friend at Liverpool’s academy, Alexander-Arnold sketched out a plan years ago. “We said that if either of us made it, we would help out the charity,” he said.

Over the last decade or more, the academies of Premier League teams have morphed into factory farms, designed either to generate talent or create revenue.

 

Clubs invest millions every year into scouting, recruiting and training the brightest young prospects, with the aim either of unearthing future first-team stars or mass-producing players to be sold, preferably at a healthy profit. Clubs have built state-of-the-art facilities that resemble, more than anything, vast industrial complexes. It is fitting: Youth development has become an exercise not in education, but heavy industry.

 

Accordingly, the conversation around which academies are succeeding and which are failing is based solely around their output of professional players. At best, academies are seen as existing solely to bring talents into the first team. At worst, they are seen as an additional source of income, a way of bringing in money that can then be invested in the transfer market.
 

To maximize their usefulness, clubs have long signed players not just from around Britain, but from across Europe (and sometimes farther afield). All clubs cherish homegrown players — not least because, in the Premier League and the Champions League, a squad must contain a set number of them — but few care anymore where home actually is. Cesc Fàbregas was born and raised in Barcelona, but counted as a homegrown player at Arsenal. Andreas Christensen, a Dane, is the apogee of Chelsea’s youth system.

 

That unapologetically internationalist, industrial approach is understandable, given the intensely competitive environment in which clubs exist, but it means one significant element has been lost. Local players are not desirable because they are cheap, or plentiful, but because they bond a club to its community. They give it a sense of place.

 

“My house is just over there, the one with the purple bins,” Alexander-Arnold said as he drove to another appointment with An Hour for Others, at a community center not far from Liverpool’s Melwood training facility.

 

Liverpool, the city, is not simply a place where Alexander-Arnold works; it is his home. He has a curious family connection to Manchester United: His maternal grandmother, Doreen Carling, is mentioned in Alex Ferguson’s autobiography as the great manager’s “first steady girlfriend.”

 

They dated for 18 months or so as teenagers in Glasgow “before it suffered the fate of most first romances and petered out,” Ferguson wrote, and ended completely when Carling moved to New York and married. (Because of this, Alexander-Arnold, technically, is eligible to play for the United States national team.) More remarkably, one of his mother’s cousins, John Alexander, was for a long time Manchester United’s club secretary.

 

Ferguson once asked Alexander-Arnold, not long after he had first signed to join Liverpool, why he had not tried to join United instead. “My mum doesn’t drive on motorways,” was the immediate response. In reality, though, Alexander-Arnold wanted to be a homegrown player, in the truest sense of the term. He is from this city and he is of it, too.

 

He points to the park where he used to play soccer after school, where there were “always a few people looking for trouble.” He has friends who found it, and whose lives have diverged drastically from his as a result. He still lives with his mother, albeit in a slightly more upmarket suburb, but still feels the pulse of the city.

 

That is part of the reason he wanted to help Morland and Watkins. Even while leading the relatively sheltered life of a professional soccer player, he “sees the challenges people face, hears about things people are going through.” He is aware that if he were not giving back, his friends “would ask me, ‘Why not?’”

 

Though he is not yet used to the smiles and the stares, he feels the responsibility, “as a local lad, to get involved,” just as the likes of Carragher and Gerrard did before him. “I can relate to the kids,” he said. “I know what impact it can have just to show that it is possible.”

In the ruthless, globalist Premier League, such considerations seem quaint. What fans, owners, managers and players want is success — this weekend, this season. A team having a local heart is no more than a sweet anachronism. What matters more is that clubs have top-class players, not where those players are from.

 

Yet the enthusiasm with which Liverpool has embraced Alexander-Arnold suggests that something, in the rush to industrialize youth systems, has been lost, and is being missed. Clubs are now international brands, with worldwide appeal and distant horizons. At heart, though, they are still local institutions. They do not exist on a different planet. They represent a place, and sometimes, still, they reflect one, too.

[sir roger]

Sounds like a good lad & a West Derby lad to boot.

[littletedwest]

Mad coincidence that his nan used go out with Alex Ferguson.

[rubble-rouser]

https://media1.tenor.com/images/004885b1a280aa8aa6dcee2c435e2344/tenor.gif?itemid=4971712

[rubble-rouser]

Mad coincidence that his nan used go out with Alex Ferguson.

https://media1.tenor.com/images/004885b1a280aa8aa6dcee2c435e2344/tenor.gif?itemid=4971712

[Guest]

Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea all wanted to sign Liverpool full-back Trent Alexander-Arnold.

 

Former United academy boss Brian McClair says United, along with the Premier League’s other big guns were all pursuing the Liverpool defender in recent years.

 

The 19-year-old has made 22 first-team appearances for Liverpool this term and McClair says United were tracking the player five years ago.

 

United were hopeful they could lure Alexander-Arnold away from Anfield because his uncle is former club secretary John Alexander, but McClair says those ideas were quickly knocked back.

 

As quoted in the Manchester Evening News, McClair said: “We saw him when he was playing outside right in an under 14 game at Carrington for Liverpool.

 

“I thought, he’s a good player, who’s he?

 

“Even though his uncle was the secretary, you knew you weren’t going to get him. So we were never going to get him.

 

“His sister is a Liverpool fan, the family were all Liverpool fans, he wasn’t going to leave Liverpool. It was a simple message.

 

“You can’t say to John Alexander ‘Get into your sister’ because she only knows the answer.

 

“It’s great for him that he’s got a nephew who is playing for Liverpool.

 

“Chelsea tried to get him, City tried to get him, but it was ‘We’re Liverpool, he’s going to play for Liverpool,’” he said. “That’s it.

 

“That’s encouraging to hear because far too often parents, guardians or their advisors are going looking for the money. But he wants to play for Liverpool and he’s doing really well.

 

“You can’t argue with that.”

[LFC 6 Times]

He’s boss already but he’s gonna be really really boss in a few years time. Mad to think he’s notched 3 this season his defending has come on leaps and bounds too. Best player from the academy in donkeys, if we’re discounting cunt sterling who we nicked off QPR.

[Bobby Hundreds]

"Get into your sister" typical Manc.

[VladimirIlyich]

"Get into your sister" typical Manc.

My thoughts exactly. You'd need a far better reason to have sex with your sister than that.

[lifetime fan]

My thoughts exactly. You'd need a far better reason to have sex with your sister than that.

 

You need a reason?

[Numero Veinticinco]

I think he has done really, really well lately. Let the lad have a dip in his sister, FFS.