Ronnie Whelan

My dad reckons Duncan Edwards and liam Whelan would have gone on to have been two of the all time greats. rip to them all.

I rate Gary Neville as a pundit but all of the other class of 92' are fucking atrocious. In fact, most of their ex players are utterly shite at talking about anything other than the "theatre of dreams", "sir alex" "siege mentality" etc and would find a way of inserting said phrase into any conversation. I've seen Irwin, Schmeicheal, Gary Pallister and steve Bruce and they are even more fucking banal, while Yorke pisses me off the most calling Rooney "Wazza" or Van Persie "RVP". I have to say that the general standard of punditry is shockingly bad, whether it's ITV, Sky or BT. Henry is the latest in a long line of shit pundits. BT is terribly bad with Savage cosying up to the most boring man in the world himself, Michael Owen. Macca offers fuck all and Barnsey's intelligent insight on the game is lost on the lot of them. Carra, Souness, Keane and Gary Neville are the only ones that I rate in any way. The best show on the telly is the European footbal show.

I fucking love Luis. He looks like Dracula about to make love to a room full of supermodels. Lucas has the same facial expression as ever while Coates can't believe he's getting a wage for playing football and is thoroughly enjoying life!

I hate the sectarianism of both the clubs and I actually think that even though the Merseyside Derby has changed massively from the good old days when it really was a friendly derby, thank god the sectarian element never really took hold at either club, which could have happened as Liverpool is an even more Irish city than Glasgow. Yeah, you'll get knobhead EDL/British National Front types supporting both clubs and likewise you will get a scouser type from both clubs that justifies the IRA because of what the British army did to his/her grandparents etc but not really of any great significance. Having said that, on a one-to-one level, I have generally liked fans from both clubs that I've met and I respect both sets of fans for their support around the 96'.

A few weeks ago, I saw glimpses in alot of his summer signings of real quality. Now, they are beginning to really look like the players that I had hoped they would be. They are on the whole young, so they will have their off days, but I think we will go into next season with a very talented young squad with a huge lot of promise. Throw Danny Sturridge back in the mix and we are comfortably the third or fourth best team in the league. Coutinho and Sterling are only going to get better and I'm beginning to see alot to like in Sakho, even if he is very far removed from Jocky or Lawro. Brendan's next challenge is to find players with experience and ideally winning experience who have the hunger to win more trophies. A guy like Milner isn't going to be the next Galactico at Real or Barca, but at our stage of development, he would be terrific for us. Two or three others of that ilk and should we get to the business end of the league in March or the latter stages of competitions, then I'd fancy us. We also need the likes of Henderson to step up to the next level and really take on a senior role, especially with Stevie leaving. Top four and a good run in the Europa/FA cup would be a good season this year. Being within touching distance of winning the league next season with more improvement would be a good season next year. Then, I would expect Brendan to win or at least strongly challenge for the league every season from there on. The key thing is that the owners don't fuck things up by selling Sterling or Coutinho next year, or selling Markovic or Can the following year. Otherwise, we will be in a constant fight for top 4 at best.

I like Milner. In fact, I think he'd be a very good signing for us - he's been in and around a winning side for a few years, has experience which we badly need and he seems like a decent type of lad. On a free, he's an absolute no brainer.

Haha yeah me too. I was in for 70 quid, but fuck it, I truly hate them. Tonight was great viewing.

Fair point, but I just don't see us winning the league next season, unless we buy about two or three top tier players a la Vidal, Varane, Benzema etc. We don't have much experience in the team and with Stevie leaving, we will have a pretty big hole in that regard. I rate Brendan, but you could argue that he is the mirror image of the team - very talented but lacking the experience to be at the next level right now. For all our dominance against Chelsea, we didn't win. Last season, we were majestic, but ultimately a City team bouyed by experienced world class talent took the title. However, I do feel that we have a core of terrific young players that can kick on to that level. I always felt with Luis leaving and the inevitable hangover on a young team that this would be a very difficult year for us. Should we make the top 4 and win a cup, then I would classify it as a good success (I hate thinking of us getting top 4 as a success because it goes against the values of this club). Then, if in the summer, we went and bought well, maybe just maybe we can dream....personally I think if we keep progressing it will be 2016/2017 before I would fancy us to be title contenders.

That's exactly what I think. Really top and more importantly experienced players added to a squad with some of the most exciting youngsters on the continent and we really will have a team. Chelsea have that in abundance and it told for them last night - if we had been playing United, Spurs or Arsenal last night we would have won by two or three. Even a guy like Obi Mikel who is one of the poorer Chelsea players would go a long way to improving our team and give us that bit of nous that we lack. A few signings a la Kolo two years ago would also be a good thing, especially if we did find ourselves in a title race - personally I think next season might be a little too early for us and we might be two or three away from genuinely challenging. Last night, we looked like we did last season. That is the best compliment I can give the lads.

All of those teams had individuals who could play but they could mix it. We were as ruthless as any of the Italian teams of the 60s from the mid 60s to the late 80s. I remember Steve McMahon talking about how he and Ronnie Whelan used to make a note of which players they wanted the other player to sort out before each match. Both those two were better known as being the best central midfield pairing of their era in England, but they were proper snidey bastards. Obviously, they were our snidey bastards though. Shite pundits though which seems to be the hallmark of most of our legends :(

He's a good keeper from what I've seen - the kind of keeper that any top club needs as their number two. I don't think we will spend much - I think the owners are going to sit on the fence and see if Brendan can turn it around between now and the end of the season and then decide whether to stay with him or sack him. Personally, I think that if they believe in him then they need to back him and give him the funds - we are in 3 cup competitions and few points off their beloved top 4. Anyhow, despite what Ayre says, I still feel that while they aren't going to run the club into the ground, they would sell us in a heartbeat and I'm not sure they will ever invest in us massively while they are here - alot said about how much we spent in the summer which is a valid point, but 75 million of that came from the sale of Luis so the net spend wasn't too massive for a top club. Even in our worst period several weeks ago, I felt that alot of his signings would come good and now Can, Moreno and Markovic are showing me that they can be excellent players for us, even if they will continue to make errors and be raw. His problem is that Lovren who was the most important signing of the summer is a donkey and Mario has been shite and we miss Danny something awful. I have major reservations about Brendan's abilities to organise the team defensively. If you could mix Rafa with Brendan, then you would have some coach. Anyhow, Arbeloa, Lavezzi and Lacazette for me this window and assess the options in the summer.

The very type of players we can get and who would make a huge difference here. Dzeko in particular would be a great signing.

Classic Liverpool signing - a solid decent English player who has won a few caps for England. How the fuck the owners think we will compete with the likes of chelsea by signing the likes of delph I will never know.

Bob is exactly what we need - aside from being a top class player (slightly past his best), he knows the league and more importantly knows the club. Next season, we will have a serious dearth of experience and big game knowledge which is exactly what Bob brings.

United are half absolutely top class and half utter dogshit. If they had even a decent goalie this season, they would be midtable. Instead, they have De Gea. The sooner he fucks off to Real the better. I would love to see them come 5th - if they don't make the Champions League, then they are in the shit with Van Persie well into his 30s and Rooney getting out of his best years. Unfortunately, I think they will make the top 4. Arsenal should come third. Southampton might not have the squad if they pick up a few injuries, Spurs are too inconsistent and we are too unreliable to bank on - if we get Danny back and Lazar continues his excellent impression of Luis, then maybe we can.

proper bobbins that.

I'm convinced that we will be owned by rich Arabs/oligarch within the next 5 years. The current owners want to get our house in order and sell us on for a hefty profit. If they had real long-term plans with us, then they wouldn't settle for us having a 59k seater Anfield and would be saying that after the initial developments, they would be extending the Kop and the Centenary. Any expansion of the Kop and the Centenary is a very difficult operation, which suggests to me that they are leaving it for the next owners to complete.

I do think that Luis loved us, but then again I think he loved Ajax as well. He is the ultimate football mercenary and I mean that in a good way - unlike most players he gives a shit about the club and the fans he plays with and he has the ultimate desire to win. There isn't a person at LFC that would have a bad thing to say about him. The heart might rule Luis, but like most blokes and I include myself in that, his missus will probably determine where he goes next. I've a feeling she would kill him if he went back to England. This country is full of absolute knobheads and even though our city embraced him, I wouldn't blame them as a family for never wanting to set foot here again. He will go to PSG, Bayern or serie A if it doesn't work out with Barca. He's more likely to go back and play for peanuts in Uruguay for Nacioal imo than he is to come back to England.

That is the long and the short of it really. The one thing I will say about the current owners is that they are bringing some professionalism to the commercial side of the club. I have major doubts about how far they are willing to take the club on the playing side of things - my personal concern is that they are happy for us to be a top 4 club making the Champions League every year and turning over a nice profit for the next 5-7 years and then they sell us to the Arabs or an oligarch. I know a Manc (a sound one would you believe ;) ) who phoned up enquiring about getting a season ticket for United a few years ago. They had none going but he said that they literally were contacting him every few days to alert him about different deals and offers, as well as to tell him where he was on the season ticket list. He said they were buttering him up left right and centre and they had a cracking marketting team. Could it be more different to LFC throughout the past 20 years.

I think the key thing is the difference between the younger and the older fan base. The Blues that remember them being a massive club are a very different type to the 25 year old blue that thinks finishing 6th and beating "da redshite" is a wonderful season. Mind you the way our club is going we aren't too far off that mentality- shanks, ronnie, joe and Bob would hate the whole "top 4" shite. That was pointed out to me by a few blues and it's hard to disagree.

I think Henderson will never come close to being world class, but he can definitely be a very good player for us. Last year, he showed that he has great ability. I would not have a problem with him leading the club. The Stevie of up to 3-4 years ago was irreplaceable. The modern day Stevie not so. If we are out of the race for top 4 by the spring, then I'd like Can to be given as much time as possible with Henderson with a view to next season. I'd also like to see Rossiter blooded big time as well. Ideally, we sign at least two top quality players like Morgan.S and Willy Bony and we go on a fifteen game winning run with D Love releasing his inner Lawro.

I'd miss them too much - I still love the derby. I still have too much time for the older Blues to want them to go down and I come from that generation of scousers that would have being cheering them on in cup finals that we weren't in. I also miss red and blue looking out for each other in places like Mancheseter for semi finals and the old Merseyside chants at cup finals. Having said that, the younger Blues have got a real small-time mentality and a real chip on the shoulder attitude. I guess years of being irrelevant has done that. Give it a few years and it will become a more toxic derby than Sunderland-Newcastle, Arsenal-Spurs and City-United, which says a lot when you consider that it really used to be the friendly derby.

The players that we sign have to be players that can win you a title, not chase a top 4 place for you. That is part of the problem with us. The Mancs have spent a shit load and I will accept that it isn't 1990 and they have a hell of a lot more pulling power than we have now, but all of the players they have been signing are either world class, or very good players that will make a massive difference to them. I would say they are 2-3 players off being a real outstanding team. Now, they are being linked strongly with Coleman, so if they get Strootman in the next few months, then they will have some team. Money talks and they took the action of not just spending the money to make the necessary changes, but also sign proven top class talent. I belive that alot of Brendan's signings in the summer will come good (the signings of Lovren and Mario make it look so much worse than it is) - in fact I think we could have a quality team in 2-3 years with Moreno, Can and Markovic, but right now they are very raw. January gives us a chance to recognise our need for real here and now talent, not possible top talent for the 2016/2017 season. Will Schneiderlein be in a title chasing team? Probably. Will Bony? Possibly. Will Clyne? Possibly. Will Berahino? You're having a fucking laugh. etc.... The first three would greatly improve us and are the type of players that I could picture in a title chasing team. Berahino is a shot in the dark and we need to move away from that type of signing - we have done too much of that type of transfer over the past 20 years. If we don't buy big in this window, then it makes me think that Brendan is gone in the summer.

I still think Brendan will come good. I expected us to have a very tough season before a ball was kicked - a young squad dealing with the hangover of losing the title combined with a lot of new signings topped off by losing the third best player in the world. He hasn't been helped by losing his other world class striker. With Sturridge, we may be 8-10 points better off and we may not have gone into the depths of lacking confidence that we have. His summer signings have been poor thus far. However, I see glimpses in Moreno, Markovic Manquillo, Can and Lallana that they can be very good players for us. The first four have a real rawness about them, but I think they would look much better in a settled side that is playing with confidence. His major flaw is that Lovren is a fucking donkey and his gamble on Mario has gone proper belly up. He never addressed the lack of protection given from the midfield for the defence - did he buy Can for this? If so, play the lad. It's easy to look back on the summer and have a told you so attitude. For example, if we had signed Bony and Song in July, I would have gone on a one man riot through the streets of Liverpool that would have made the Toxteth riots seem tame. Now, I would view those two lads as not just a massive improvement on what we have, but very good players. Whelan/Souness and Rush/Kenny those two might not be, but fuck me, I'm pretty sure in this piss poor league, we would get third or fourth no bother, with those two. I think Brendan deserves until the end of the season and we can judge him then. If things don't improve, then we have legitimate questions about whether he should be the custodian of our future. If he does go, then I think Klopp would be an incredible manager for us.

That sounds like Neville Chamberlain's peace in our time speech