Liverpool Vs West Bromwich Albion

[Timão]

I cannot believe the amount of excuses I read on here for another terribly inept performance.

 

We lost at home to WBA for fuck sake, the team managed by the worst manager in our recent history which is now a couple of points behind us.

 

With the exception of Bellamy and (I would argue) Suarez and Enrique all the current manager's signings have been flops.

 

We are closer to the bottom than the top

 

We have won 5(!) home games all season

 

I hear all this shite about 'we played well', 'we had chances' blah, blah, blah.

 

We lost at home to a shit team because we a) cannot score and b) lack concentration at the back. That is not unlucky, it is incompetent, end of. The competenece or otherwise of the team is the responsibilty of the manager and, I am afraid, he has failed.

 

Cup double or no cup double, this season has been unacceptable and Kenny should carry the can for it.

[kalasoma]

What if we do the double this year? Will that be viewed as unacceptable and symptomatic of a poor premier league season? I think we've sacrificed our league form for our cup runs.

[kev g]

So he probably does have to take some responsibility ? riiiiight , thats good to know , so who takes the bulk of the responsibilty for these players then ?

 

So if i can decipher this bullshit your saying its arguable that he can take no responsibility at all for these players?

 

Whatever way you put it your talking complete shite ...

 

You dont have to be aware of the inner workings of the club to know that Kenny has said himself every player that has been signed he has wanted which was fairly obvious anyway when you look at the type of player signed.

 

For fuck sake, I'm writing in clear english, I'm not sure why its so hard for you to understand what I'm saying. I don't know who is responsible for the signings or who was most responsible, that was the point I was making! So no, I wasn't saying Dalglish can take no responsibility. Oh I'm talking complete shite am I? That's funny, I just thought I was offering MY opinion. Oh I get it, it differs from your opinion so it must be complete shite. Of course he said that every player signed was one he wanted. He would say that even if he hadn't wanted any of them. If he comes out publicly and says I didn't want this player or that player what affect would that have? It would alienate the players mentioned and maybe others and it would make it harder to sell any of those players that aren't wanted wouldn't it? Before you start going on again, I'm not saying that he didn't want any of the players, only that him saying to the press they were all players he wanted doesn't prove anything either way.

[RedRazor]

Can't believe the hysteria I'm reading on here. We battered them and just couldn't score.

 

We played really really well - excellent performances from reds all over the pitch.

 

Confidence is really low so heads went down when we shipped a goal - perfectly understandable in a fixture that has no bearing on anything and we have a cup final in two weeks.

 

The endless criticism of players is beyond my comprehension. We absolutely battered them. Had we scored first I think we would have scored a few more. IMO it is nothing more than a lack of self belief that is permeating the squad. A couple of good results with this set of payers early in the season and we would be cruising into the champions league.

 

Loads of players getting stick on here that is totally unwarranted. Sure they aren't world beaters but they are making a contribution to the team and there have been very few games in which we have been outclassed. The way some players are described on here they wouldn't get a start at Accrington Stanley.

 

I would like say to a lot of posters on here - get over your issues with individual players and get behind the team. If we are going to hound players out of the club maybe we should change our name to Everton II.

 

I thought we were better than that.

[xerxes]

What if we do the double this year? Will that be viewed as unacceptable and symptomatic of a poor premier league season? I think we've sacrificed our league form for our cup runs.

 

Some were saying that us not being in Europe this year would help us in our title push - an argument that has been cruelly exposed.

 

We do sit on the brink of an historic double, emulating Mourinho, Houllier and Graham - or simply matching McLeish.

 

Prize money for winning the League Cup is £100k - one week's wages for Joe Cole, for winning the FA Cup £1.8m.

 

The difference between 5th and 13th pace in the PL (from which we are only 3 points away at the bottom end, is £6.75m in prize money. FSG is an investment club, they notice these things.

 

I don't think that we do have a squad that has sacrificed league for cup form. I think that we have a squad of players who do not have the will or belief to mount a league campaign , preferring to rise to the set piece occasions of games against Chelsea/man City and Cup games.

[ngogswilly]

Can't believe the hysteria I'm reading on here. We battered them and just couldn't score.

 

We played really really well - excellent performances from reds all over the pitch.

 

Confidence is really low so heads went down when we shipped a goal - perfectly understandable in a fixture that has no bearing on anything and we have a cup final in two weeks.

 

The endless criticism of players is beyond my comprehension. We absolutely battered them. Had we scored first I think we would have scored a few more. IMO it is nothing more than a lack of self belief that is permeating the squad. A couple of good results with this set of payers early in the season and we would be cruising into the champions league.

 

Loads of players getting stick on here that is totally unwarranted. Sure they aren't world beaters but they are making a contribution to the team and there have been very few games in which we have been outclassed. The way some players are described on here they wouldn't get a start at Accrington Stanley.

 

I would like say to a lot of posters on here - get over your issues with individual players and get behind the team. If we are going to hound players out of the club maybe we should change our name to Everton II.

 

I thought we were better than that.

 

Don't think you'll get many arguments there fella.

 

We should have won you're right and lots of people seem to have pointless vendettas against players.

 

But we've had this said all season - 'get behind the team'

 

People who say that are kidding themselves if the argument is going to keep being made that we're somehow partly to blame for whats gone on in the league this year.

 

Its an excuse that doesn't wash. Its the fault of the players, management and executives behind the scenes. Nobody else.

[Fallen Angel]

Can't believe people, including KD, are STILL trawling out 'just a bit of bad luck' line. Whist that rationality remains dominant, LFC will remain a mid-table team making shoddy excuses for its failure to do better.

 

As someone above pointed out, we fail to score because, in spite of the possessions, the approach play is slow, ponderous, predictable and painfully easy to defend against (Suarez excepted).

 

It is not bad luck that we wasted a king's ransom on aggressively mediocre players, it is bad judgement - pure and simple. The buck stops with KD, he chose the players to buy, chooses who will play and how (no Sterling again even on the bench, in his position I would be drafting my transfer request instead of this).

 

Sadly it is not happening on the pitch so the excuse making ensues. KD is a time-warp manager, stuck in the philosophies of the 90's. Any other LFC manager with his record this season would be gone with the full support of the fans. In this case, too many fans remain in the time-warp with KD, sentimentality ruling the head. If KD remains in charge next season will be a mirror image of this...

[xerxes]

Can't believe the hysteria I'm reading on here. We battered them and just couldn't score.We played really really well - excellent performances from reds all over the pitch.

 

No points are awarded simply for battering them and excellent performances.

 

Confidence is really low so heads went down when we shipped a goal - perfectly understandable in a fixture that has no bearing on anything and we have a cup final in two weeks.

Each league place is worth £750,000, getting 5th rather than 8th is worth more to the Club than winning the FA Cup.

 

The endless criticism of players is beyond my comprehension. We absolutely battered them. Had we scored first I think we would have scored a few more. IMO it is nothing more than a lack of self belief that is permeating the squad. A couple of good results with this set of payers early in the season and we would be cruising into the champions league.

With exactly the same set of players we won three consecutive games in August, including a win at Arsenal, why will it be any different next season?

 

The psychology is simple. Kenny thinks this is bad luck and we are playing "excellent" (sic). Therefore neither he nor the players wil change, therefore the results won't change. It is only when management and players take responsibility themselves that results in the league will change.

[kev g]

The psychology is simple. Kenny thinks this is bad luck and we are playing "excellent" (sic). Therefore neither he nor the players wil change, therefore the results won't change. It is only when management and players take responsibility themselves that results in the league will change.

 

Pay no attention to what he says to the press. What he says to the press and what he thinks/says behind closed doors will be two very different things.

[Colonol]

They should literally have to stay on after training for shooting practice against Doni and Brad.Not one player leaves until every player has scored 100 goals from inside the box. Every off target shot means you start again. Disgraceful that they can't find the net.

 

I don't see why everyone is giving Johnson shit. Mistakes are made by defenders every game, the attacking players made hundreds of mistakes today and that is why we lost, not the one mistake by the defender or poor positioning by Reina.

 

The match should have been out of site at that stage and the mistake merely a consolation.

[kev g]

Apologies if this piece from The Mirror has already been posted elsewhere but I thought it was an interesting read considering the fact I've raised the question elsewhere on this thread of who was most responsible for our transfer spending under Dalglish.

 

When it comes to the departure of Damien Comolli, then there really is only one issue that bothers Liverpool fans:

 

What does it mean for Kenny Dalglish?

 

There are already plenty of conspiracy theories doing the rounds, such as: The director of football has gone to pave the way for the manager to move upstairs and make room for a brash, young coach.

 

Or how about this one: There was a huge struggle for power between the two men, which Dalglish won, meaning he takes complete control of transfer business, after insisting on the departure of his rival

As always, the truth probably lies somewhere in between those two extreme theories.

 

Though there were the inevitable tensions between the two men as they plotted the future of Liverpool Football Club, there is no suggestion of a power struggle, or even any serious disagreements.

 

Let’s get this straight, Comolli didn’t go because Dalglish forced him out.

 

He did leave though, because the American owners deemed this season’s performance not good enough, and somebody had to carry the can.

 

In that sense, Comolli is responsible.

 

He is the man who plotted Liverpool’s £120million transfer strategy , and – let us not forget this – is also the man who ultimately decided the managerial issue when Roy Hodgson was struggling so badly 15 months ago.

 

As Director of Football Strategy (as he was then), he takes ultimate responsibility for the arrival of Dalglish, for the decision to sell Fernando Torres and sign Andy Carroll, and for the planning behind Liverpool’s current salary structure which sees them with a wage bill virtually the same as Manchester City.

 

All those issues lead to his downfall, but for the time being, they will not lead to the departure of Dalglish.

 

Indeed, it seems the sacking of Comolli will give the manager some breathing space, and allow him to take sole responsibility for playing matters.

 

If that is the case, then Dalglish will live and die by his own decisions – but realistically, will be given the time to at least make some of those decisions and carry them through.

 

Logic suggests that means he starts next season as manager, with the remit of getting Liverpool into the top four, to justify their top four spending on wages.

 

When you examine the bottom line of Comolli’s departure, it is because his strategy didn’t deliver the minimum requirement of a top four finish for such a massive outlay.

 

Liverpool can not now finish in the top four, so why wait until the summer to get rid of a man who would otherwise be deeply involved in decisions affecting next season’s campaign?

 

Surely it is better to let Dalglish deal with the issues of player recruitment, and perhaps even more importantly, of player departures.

 

That is why he seems safe for the time being.

 

Yet at the same time, there are no grey areas any more at Anfield, no excuses and no division of responsibility.

 

There are no people for the fans to blame other than the manager now either, which means Kenny will have to deliver or suffer the same fate as Comolli.

 

That though, is a situation you can be 100 per cent certain the manager himself is completely comfortable with, and will in fact relish

[piscinin]

All that article shows is that maddock has no clue what's going on behind closed doors. Just like it is supposed to be.

[TheResonator]

Sick of hearing that 'we played well'. If we're not winning games, we're not playing well, simple as.

 

Andy Carroll. People are talking about him making runs, working hard, getting some good knock ons... bollocks. His job is to fucking score goals. We created how many chances yesterday, and how many did we score? Fuck all. The job of the attacking players is to be where the ball is when it's in and around the area, and to put it in the net. If they're not doing that, they're not doing a job.

 

It's the same for Downing and Henderson. Again, how many games have these two played, and how many goals have they scored? If you are a right-winger or a left-winger, you need to be creating/scoring chances. Someone pointed out that we need to make up 40 goals on Manchester United/City... where exactly are they going to come from? Skrtel on his own has scored more goals than our starting midfield of Adam, Henderson and Downing, who've played pretty much every game (barring Adam). They're absolute passengers when it comes to goalscoring, we cannot carry them all.

 

We dominate possession a lot of the time. But ultimately, when it comes down to it, we are utterly cowardly in front of goal. Nobody in our starting 11 will take responsibility for putting the ball in the net -- bar Suarez -- and nobody seems to feel they have to. Not even Andy Carroll, a striker who cost 35 million fucking pounds.

 

It's embarrassing, and it's embarrassing that it's not being addressed. Kenny's talking about luck but it's not luck -- it's not being able to score. It's been this way for pretty much the entire season and we've not fixed it.

 

Scoring goals is the most fundamentally important thing in football and in Carroll, Henderson and Downing, we have spent 71 million pounds to buy 5 league goals. Fucking five goals. They're all attackers, and that's all they've come up with. Downing has now not scored a single premiership goal in 32 appearances. Carroll is a forward and he's got 4 in 32. You can cut Henderson a little bit of slack for being played out of position on the right, but it doesn't make the transfer policy any more acceptable.

 

Kuyt has been a solid 10-15 goal a season man, and where has he found himself most games? Bench. Maxi has 4 goals in 9 league appearances and he still can't get himself on the pitch. That, for the record, is the same amount of goals as Andy Carroll - a centre forward - in almost a quarter of the amount of appearances. Yet who is more likely to be shipped out in the summer?

 

Every week people turn up and (in a lot of cases) spend a large portion of their wage to watch these players turn out. They spend it so that these players can drive a jag home and spend the afternoon shagging models. If there's nobody apart from Suarez and Stevie who is going to stand up and take responsibility for giving something back to those fans then the game is truly dead.

 

I know what Kenny's saying publicly. Privately, I hope he's showing them clips of John Barnes, Ian Rush, Robbie Fowler, Gerrard, McManaman, Souness, Owen and Torres at their best, and saying: "Look, this is the level. You can up to it, or you can leave and spend your career at a mid-table club. Your choice"

 

Most of them at the moment rattle around like they think a shot at goal or on target is good enough. It's not. They look like they think clever passing or keeping possession is good enough. It's not. We need to start scoring goals and start beating teams.

 

This is a group of players who have nothing to play for but pride, showing what they can do when the pressure's off. Frankly, that we are seeing what we are is a great concern. Can you imagine this group in a title race? Jesus Christ.

 

I've always had time for the players who put on the shirt, who carry it bravely, and who look like they know what it means to the fans. Kuyt, Lucas, Reina, Carragher, Suarez, Bellamy, Agger... you can still count them in our number. Some of the current lot need telling, though. It's not good enough, not by a long way.

[KopOut]

Can't believe the hysteria I'm reading on here. We battered them and just couldn't score.

 

We played really really well - excellent performances from reds all over the pitch.

 

Confidence is really low so heads went down when we shipped a goal - perfectly understandable in a fixture that has no bearing on anything and we have a cup final in two weeks.

 

The endless criticism of players is beyond my comprehension. We absolutely battered them. Had we scored first I think we would have scored a few more. IMO it is nothing more than a lack of self belief that is permeating the squad. A couple of good results with this set of payers early in the season and we would be cruising into the champions league.

 

Loads of players getting stick on here that is totally unwarranted. Sure they aren't world beaters but they are making a contribution to the team and there have been very few games in which we have been outclassed. The way some players are described on here they wouldn't get a start at Accrington Stanley.

 

I would like say to a lot of posters on here - get over your issues with individual players and get behind the team. If we are going to hound players out of the club maybe we should change our name to Everton II.

 

I thought we were better than that.

 

Nice.

[KopOut]

Can't believe people, including KD, are STILL trawling out 'just a bit of bad luck' line. Whist that rationality remains dominant, LFC will remain a mid-table team making shoddy excuses for its failure to do better.

 

As someone above pointed out, we fail to score because, in spite of the possessions, the approach play is slow, ponderous, predictable and painfully easy to defend against (Suarez excepted).

 

It is not bad luck that we wasted a king's ransom on aggressively mediocre players, it is bad judgement - pure and simple. The buck stops with KD, he chose the players to buy, chooses who will play and how.....

 

 

The club is coming out of massive debt, trying to make ends meet on relatively mediocre attendances (Anfield is a medium sized stadium). We can't spend shit loads (the net spend on players in Jan and in the summer was about 30 million or so) Serious business people know that you don't dig your way out of crap overnight.

 

Today's defeat wasn't about us 'being easily defended against' - we had 28 targeted shots. We battered them with a well prepared team. We failed to get the ball across the line with ANY targeted shot. End of.

 

It will take painstaking work by everybody at the club to drag us up to the top clubs who deal in big gate receipts.

 

That's the end of my post cos I've got to go-but its the beginning of the real debate.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Is Maddock anywhere near correct when he says we have a top four wage bill that's virtually the same as Man City. Withou doing any checking, that sounds like bollocks.

[KopOut]

Sick of hearing that 'we played well'. If we're not winning games, we're not playing well, simple as.

 

Andy Carroll. People are talking about him making runs, working hard, getting some good knock ons... bollocks. His job is to fucking score goals. We created how many chances yesterday, and how many did we score? Fuck all. The job of the attacking players is to be where the ball is when it's in and around the area, and to put it in the net. If they're not doing that, they're not doing a job.

 

It's the same for Downing and Henderson. Again, how many games have these two played, and how many goals have they scored? If you are a right-winger or a left-winger, you need to be creating/scoring chances. Someone pointed out that we need to make up 40 goals on Manchester United/City... where exactly are they going to come from? Skrtel on his own has scored more goals than our starting midfield of Adam, Henderson and Downing, who've played pretty much every game (barring Adam). They're absolute passengers when it comes to goalscoring, we cannot carry them all.

 

We dominate possession a lot of the time. But ultimately, when it comes down to it, we are utterly cowardly in front of goal. Nobody in our starting 11 will take responsibility for putting the ball in the net -- bar Suarez -- and nobody seems to feel they have to. Not even Andy Carroll, a striker who cost 35 million fucking pounds.

 

It's embarrassing, and it's embarrassing that it's not being addressed. Kenny's talking about luck but it's not luck -- it's not being able to score. It's been this way for pretty much the entire season and we've not fixed it.

 

Scoring goals is the most fundamentally important thing in football and in Carroll, Henderson and Downing, we have spent 71 million pounds to buy 5 league goals. Fucking five goals. They're all attackers, and that's all they've come up with. Downing has now not scored a single premiership goal in 32 appearances. Carroll is a forward and he's got 4 in 32. You can cut Henderson a little bit of slack for being played out of position on the right, but it doesn't make the transfer policy any more acceptable.

 

Kuyt has been a solid 10-15 goal a season man, and where has he found himself most games? Bench. Maxi has 4 goals in 9 league appearances and he still can't get himself on the pitch. That, for the record, is the same amount of goals as Andy Carroll - a centre forward - in almost a quarter of the amount of appearances. Yet who is more likely to be shipped out in the summer?

 

Every week people turn up and (in a lot of cases) spend a large portion of their wage to watch these players turn out. They spend it so that these players can drive a jag home and spend the afternoon shagging models. If there's nobody apart from Suarez and Stevie who is going to stand up and take responsibility for giving something back to those fans then the game is truly dead.

 

I know what Kenny's saying publicly. Privately, I hope he's showing them clips of John Barnes, Ian Rush, Robbie Fowler, Gerrard, McManaman, Souness, Owen and Torres at their best, and saying: "Look, this is the level. You can up to it, or you can leave and spend your career at a mid-table club. Your choice"

 

Most of them at the moment rattle around like they think a shot at goal or on target is good enough. It's not. They look like they think clever passing or keeping possession is good enough. It's not. We need to start scoring goals and start beating teams.

 

This is a group of players who have nothing to play for but pride, showing what they can do when the pressure's off. Frankly, that we are seeing what we are is a great concern. Can you imagine this group in a title race? Jesus Christ.

 

I've always had time for the players who put on the shirt, who carry it bravely, and who look like they know what it means to the fans. Kuyt, Lucas, Reina, Carragher, Suarez, Bellamy, Agger... you can still count them in our number. Some of the current lot need telling, though. It's not good enough, not by a long way.

 

When a club buys a striker for 35 million pounds, they cannot bench him permanently , even if he is a walking zombie. Kuyt was always going to lose out to Carroll, which is why he finds himself benched instead. You can't score goals if you don't play.

 

Bellamy has scored 9 goals (equal with Gerrard), but what gets me, is, you defend Luis Suarez, making an exception of him, when in fact he finished the 2010–11 Premier League season with four goals in 13 games, and has only scored 14 goals in all comps this season, just 5

ahead of Bellamy and Gerrard.

 

That's it, as far as out and out 'top draw' strikers go: the cupboard is empty.

 

The real underlying problem is this:-

 

Our new Owners, as well as our new manager and our coaching staff, were led to believe at the start of last season that it's greatest asset would still be donning a red shirt and continuing to break club records, with a supporting cast of which Suarez was the latest recruit.

 

The Facts:-

 

*Fernando Torres - He marked his first season at Anfield by being Liverpool's first player since Robbie Fowler in the 1995–96 season to score more than 20 league goals in a season

On 4 May 2008, Torres scored a 57th minute winner against Manchester City, which equalled the consecutive Anfield league goal record of eight games set by Roger Hunt.

 

After scoring his 24th league goal in the final game of the season,

a 2–0 win against Tottenham Hotspur, he set a new record for the most

prolific foreign goal scorer ever in a debut season in England,

eclipsing Ruud van Nistelrooy's 23 goals.

 

He ended the season in joint second place with Emmanuel Adebayor

in the race for the Premier League golden boot.

 

Torres became the fastest player in Liverpool history to score

50 league goals after scoring against Aston Villa in December 2009.*

 

Our club, in an absolute panic (read: The Dame) splurged out 35 million quid on a nobody. You can only spend the money ONCE, and at that price you can't justify spending similar amounts on star strikers the following summer. So we bought a central defender (Coates) + a left back (Enrique) + we overspent (again Comolli) on midfielders who are really squad players, but who managed to provide enough feed for 28 targeted shots on the West Brom goal yesterday. I can confidently say, that Torres would have got the match ball at full time, if he'd played.

 

I'm sorry, but Luis Suarez is no Fernando Torres, and was never bought as a replacement for the player who would have probably become the greatest striker ever to wear a Liverpool shirt, had he decided to stay. He was bought as a supplemental player, to play alongside Torres and take his place in a synergy that would have been scarily effective.

 

To say that Kenny and co are picking up the pieces of Commoli's incompetance, and Torres' stab in the back is a massive understatement, but effectively, that's where they, and us, are at.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

But Suarez is clearly a fucking ace player. He does, however, need some people around him who aren't massive spazzers at putting the ball into the net or creating opportunities and space for him.

[TheDrowningMan]

The club is coming out of massive debt, trying to make ends meet on relatively mediocre attendances (Anfield is a medium sized stadium). We can't spend shit loads (the net spend on players in Jan and in the summer was about 30 million or so) Serious business people know that you don't dig your way out of crap overnight.

 

Today's defeat wasn't about us 'being easily defended against' - we had 28 targeted shots. We battered them with a well prepared team. We failed to get the ball across the line with ANY targeted shot. End of.

 

It will take painstaking work by everybody at the club to drag us up to the top clubs who deal in big gate receipts.

 

That's the end of my post cos I've got to go-but its the beginning of the real debate.

 

We can't score. That's a fact that's been with us all season and it's a terrible failing of the management to have not addressed that. That is Kenny's fault, you can't have something that's been an issue since August and absolve the manager of blame or you might as well not have one.

 

We had plenty of money to spend last summer but by employing a 'buy British' policy that hasn't paid dividends since 1995, we've probably been set back several more years.

 

Forget about 'net spend', that's irrelevant in this situation. The fact is that Kenny's spent over £110m on players since arriving, he might not have set the fees but given how pleased he was with the players he identified being brought in, he'll have known how much was going to be needed to sign them, unless people buy into the insulting image of him as a kind of footballing simpleton, a 'special needs' manager responsible for neither results (bad luck!) or signings (someone else!).

 

He could've used genuine insight and snapped up some top quality foreign players but he either didn't have the knowledge to do so, or really thought the British policy was the way forward, despite not working for a top club since 1995.

[Barnesey]

Up to Christmas, I reckon there were only 2 games we didn't deserve to win - Spurs away and Swansea at home. The reason we didn't win was the lack of a goalscorer; if we had a Hunt, Rush, Fowler, Owen or Torres in the side CL qualification, or better, would be straightforward.

 

Since Christmas, confidence has fallen due to our failure to score when we should. There is a lot of good points made here about the pace at which we play the game but, essentially, a goalscorer is all we lack.

 

Plus, as I've said before on here, we seem to lack a plan on how to score; we get to the final third and have no idea what to do next.

 

Kenny's comments to Sky this weekend hint at him not being here next year; maybe that is in everyone's best interest.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Up to Christmas, I reckon there were only 2 games we didn't deserve to win - Spurs away and Swansea at home. The reason we didn't win was the lack of a goalscorer; if we had a Hunt, Rush, Fowler, Owen or Torres in the side CL qualification, or better, would be straightforward.

 

Since Christmas, confidence has fallen due to our failure to score when we should. There is a lot of good points made here about the pace at which we play the game but, essentially, a goalscorer is all we lack.

 

Plus, as I've said before on here, we seem to lack a plan on how to score; we get to the final third and have no idea what to do next.

 

Kenny's comments to Sky this weekend hint at him not being here next year; maybe that is in everyone's best interest.

 

It's so much more serious than a goal-scorer, mate. We can't go into next season with the same team and lack of quality in depth.

[KopOut]

We can't score. That's a fact that's been with us all season and it's a terrible failing of the management to have not addressed that. That is Kenny's fault, you can't have something that's been an issue since August and absolve the manager of blame or you might as well not have one.

 

We had plenty of money to spend last summer but by employing a 'buy British' policy that hasn't paid dividends since 1995, we've probably been set back several more years.

 

Forget about 'net spend', that's irrelevant in this situation. The fact is that Kenny's spent over £110m on players since arriving, he might not have set the fees but given how pleased he was with the players he identified being brought in, he'll have known how much was going to be needed to sign them, unless people buy into the insulting image of him as a kind of footballing simpleton, a 'special needs' manager responsible for neither results (bad luck!) or signings (someone else!).

 

He could've used genuine insight and snapped up some top quality foreign players but he either didn't have the knowledge to do so, or really thought the British policy was the way forward, despite not working for a top club since 1995.

 

Our British midfield, yesterday, were well prepared, and delivered 28 chances to strikers who missed the target. You blame the midfield?

 

I blame the four strikers who's MAIN role, is goal scoring. Suarez, Carroll, Kuyt and Bellamy.

[TheDrowningMan]

Our British midfield, yesterday, were well prepared, and delivered 28 chances to strikers who missed the target. You blame the midfield?

 

I blame the four strikers who's MAIN role, is goal scoring. Suarez, Carroll, Kuyt and Bellamy.

 

Then you have taken an extremely simplistic view of it. If the management have done the same, we're among the top five candidates for relegation next season.

[KopOut]

But Suarez is clearly a fucking ace player. He does, however, need some people around him who aren't massive spazzers at putting the ball into the net or creating opportunities and space for him.

 

Suarez is under performing, as are Kuyt, Bellamy and Carroll. UNDER PERFORMING. We've seen this team most of the season play good football, and the strikers squander chances.

[fowler9]

Can't believe the hysteria I'm reading on here. We battered them and just couldn't score.

 

We played really really well - excellent performances from reds all over the pitch.

 

Confidence is really low so heads went down when we shipped a goal - perfectly understandable in a fixture that has no bearing on anything and we have a cup final in two weeks.

 

The endless criticism of players is beyond my comprehension. We absolutely battered them. Had we scored first I think we would have scored a few more. IMO it is nothing more than a lack of self belief that is permeating the squad. A couple of good results with this set of payers early in the season and we would be cruising into the champions league.

 

Loads of players getting stick on here that is totally unwarranted. Sure they aren't world beaters but they are making a contribution to the team and there have been very few games in which we have been outclassed. The way some players are described on here they wouldn't get a start at Accrington Stanley.

 

I would like say to a lot of posters on here - get over your issues with individual players and get behind the team. If we are going to hound players out of the club maybe we should change our name to Everton II.

 

I thought we were better than that.

 

 

I agree with you about the abuse some of the players get, particularly the likes of Henderson who is still a young lad learning is fucking disgusting but the whole "battered them and got unlucky" stance just doesn't wash anymore as its happened all bloody season, its no-ones fault but our own that we haven't got the results and it isn't good enough by a long way, for fucks sake we're down in midtable when a team as shite as Arsenal are in 3rd!