crazy_pool_fan

Do you know any of the Barcelona players personally from your time in Spain?

 

Rafa: They have some foreign players and I know Messi. I also know Eto'o as he was in the Academy at Real Madrid when I was there, so I have good relations with them.

:thumbsup:

http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/news/drilldown/N154985070214-1351.htm

Isn't there a "conflict of interest" kind of scenario back in NHL now that they own a different business together while they are owning clubs which are competitors? Anyone? :dunno:

I think we have better options. The best midfield we could put out now is probably:

 

Riise Alonso Gerrard Pennant

 

away from home or

 

Garcia Alonso Gerrard Pennant

 

at home.

 

Neither is ideal, but with our current squad it's the best we have.

 

The first is what I would choose because Warnock and Riise would make the left side strong and Pennant is probably the best winger we have with Gerrard in the centre.

 

The second would work well at home and allow Riise to overlap as Garcia cuts inside. Either way, Gerrard would have to play with more discipline than he has shown so far.

 

We could use Zenden, Gonzalez and Aurelio for rotation purposes against weaker teams if needed, sometimes shifting Garcia to the right.

 

A run in the side in his natural position wouldn't do Jermaine any harm in my opinion. If he can't raise his game we could try Garcia more, or Bellamy perhaps.

 

Again, not ideal, but with Sissoko out I still think this would be better than 3-5-2 for the reasons I have given above.

Very well said there and overall as well.

Pennant has looked pretty weak amongst all of the new faces, maybe confidence or form or both. Either playing him exposes him completely which makes him go to the ressies to improve (he is young, maybe he might). Or better still he improves and shows he is atleast worth what we bought him for.

Bellamy/Garcia on the right otherwise. Zenden on the left can do a pretty good job as well then the back four stays as it is.

First of firsts we have only 3 proper center halves. To expose all of them at once - I am not sure thats a wise thing to do. If one picks up an injury and a long term one you are back to what? 442; but after a second injury you are back to 3-5-2 with full backs playing center halves.

It could all happen in two consecutive matches. Too much risk if perceived from a sensible forward thinking manager.

Tactics quite evidently. The blame has to be taken by Rafa and/or the board.

I start with selling players in the summer or sending them out on loan - getting them off your wage bill - either pressure from the board or Rafa wanted to look very good.

As a manager you must anticipate that all signings won't work immediately or your key players might go off form. So you put together a squad. But if in the squad you have substitute for key players (when off-form) are new signings - not sure what else it indicates.

If "quality" is the problem then unfortunately here is the case of - "I went to buy lampshade got some cushions instead". Manager's tactics should be such that players look much better when playing the system. If players are looking bad and they are new we have either bought wrong players or they have not gelled in properly.

The very fact that one can list that many possible reasons for such a start to the season says there is something definitely wrong at the top.

Crouch, Agger and Kuyt.

Interesting to see the best player (which everyone thinks has been) has just featured in just 1 or 2 matches.

Dont quite get this Momo glorification. He came to terms with passing in the last few games last season and was quite glad that he was doing pretty well (some intelligent ones), but this season he is back to old days, either lack of confidence or form.

He is far from being among the best players, definitely not the best of him that people have already seen. Best "potential" - definitely.

What a poor second half performance. Absolutely no heart or desire to fight it out.

Paul Jewell for me. Very under-rated.

If he gets some genuinely quality players he is capable of doing lot more.

Maybe this might help. :dunno:

.tv Link

ARCHIVE NEWS STORY

PENNANT LIVING HIS DREAM

Steve Hunter

 

Jermaine Pennant says he is loving life at Liverpool and feels he can achieve his dreams at Anfield working for Rafael Benitez - the man he calls a tactical genius.

 

Pennant has a lot of admiration for the Liverpool manager and believes he will continue to improve as a player working for him.

 

"I've really taken to the manager," enthused Pennant. "He's a tactical genius - he knows so much about the game and the tactics he's going to use.

 

"I'll definitely score more goals playing under him. Every training session, every game, he's always telling me to get in the box, to track inside. He's telling me to do things that other managers have told me not to do.

 

"He has set me a target of 10 goals his year which I've got to try to achieve."

 

The Reds number 16 also added he fully intends to make the most of this chance with the club he supported as a boy and make a big impression at Anfield.

 

"Once I'd signed I did get a chance to think about what was happening," added Pennant.

 

"That's when I told myself, 'Let's look forward to this, let's knuckle down and, hopefully, you can do the Liverpool fans, the manager and yourself proud.'

 

"It's on my shoulders now, really. The manager's given me the opportunity to play on a big stage. There's a lot of publicity surrounding this team and the England manager might even be watching regularly.

 

"I'm enjoying it thoroughly. I couldn't have asked for much more. I'm playing with great players and enjoying the football, the training sessions and being at Liverpool."

Must be some reason for him not doing things which he can do with ease.

(1) Another class defender (backup when the current one's are off-form/injured)

(2) A holding midfielder with better distribution capabilities

(3) 6 months of league action as experience for all new players.

Oh the rate chelski are going (4) definitely a good start to the season.

Was thinking the same when he started on about the Charity Shield.

 

Cant be classed as a knee jerk reaction cos its been a few days now but i honestly cant see where our next good display is coming from.

 

We really need to get back to basics and start by getting the ball and passing it to someone else in the same team then getting yourself in a good position to recieve the ball.

 

The biggest laugh i had this month was when i read on here about us going unbeaten until Christmas then taking it from there. Behave yourself, not going to happen. You cant go from been complete shite to suddenly title challengers within 2 months.

While agree to that (a bit) but things are not that bad either (other than losing to the worst two or three rivals away so early in the season). Fact is we have lost 4 away games to the teams now positioned in the top 6 other than Arsenal and Portsmouth.

While no justification to how our team has been performing (which found its lowest at OT) those who got good starts are at the top of the table and are still playing well, those who had the hiccups or having a problem or two are languishing lower.

The big question really will be whether we can put these behind and get wins against these lower teams away from home and try to keep an unbeaten record at home. While on paper away wins seems feasible (win at Reading/Watford/Charlton/Mancity/Boro or draws worst case in Spurs/Blackburn for eg) but then who knows performances like at OT we could lose at Watford or Charlton too.

The team was crying out for Crouch and Kewell both great at not losing possession and we could have built our attacks from there. Wonder why Rafa has stopped playing Crouch especially at away games.

EDIT: Starting with Crouch.

How is it not true? 1goal from 5 away games and that from a fortunate penalty.

Sadly it is not. While 1 goal from 5 away games is a fact but the 9 we conceded everytime we conceded first (which is a fact as well).

Said before when you have new players trying to gel in mostly attacking positions there's hardly any confidence in them to string together passes to score goals. Just see today after we conceded how were we attacking? We were being played all over.

I am not going by just this season. I am going by Rafa's 2 years here - he cannot get the best out of the strikers and has had serious problems in his attacking fluidity and goals.

He got the best out of Crouch (who you never used to rate), Cisse (enough said about him), Nando (who everyone knows found it difficult to adapt to premiership), Fowler (still struggling to find his fitness and first team) last season.

Attacking fluidity well explained in my previous post.

Our problems are in ATTACK and they have been in attack ever since Rafa has got here... Rafa's teams rarely score lots of goals... unfortunately that shite won't work in the Premiership.

Saw you repeat this over and over again.

Unfortunately not true - our problem is defence not attack - look at arsenal scored 3 conceded 2 away from home, sitting pretty with 7 points out of 3. Lets not take the opposition and their quality into consideration.

We concede first the whole team just loses the plot of attack, midfield loses confidence on the back four, quality of service to the strikers degenerates - all this especially away from home. We need to stop conceding, especially first because that does the confidence of the team.

Damn we could do with Hamman at the moment. I personally would save Momo for the Manc game. If hes only 80 per cent chance then leave for the weekend where he likely to be nearer the 100%.

Words. Lets hope Alonso and Zenden does it - again a new midfield combination.

Having an argument about an undefined term such as "Squad player" is pointless. Especially with a goalpost-moving specialist like Hermes.

:D :D

tbh the discussion did confuse me on how well to define a "squad player" and Garcia's situation.

But fairplay to Hermes for not moving goalposts for one particular viewpoint - don't expect the manager to win the league with our current resources as compared to the other three teams. Find that a admirable to a certain extent respectable perspective/point-of-view.

Its all about defence really. As far as i can recall where we conceded first things became difficult. We have the quality in the attack to beat any team but at the moment they are trying to gel in and if the team concedes first it becomes uphill task especially if there's inspired defending on the other side.

We really need defence sorted out, lots of goals conceded this season were well defended last season. Hyppia usually has/had his off moments, but Carra was superhuman last season. Don't really see clean sheets happening with the current defence form.

The fasting month does have effect on him, clearly visible last season as well - once the fasting month got over his performances improved greatly.

Although dont like him playing for some matches where we can go conventional all around attack with proper wide players.

The fact some people mentioned that we are using two (Alonso and Momo) because both have some weaknesses is not really that correct. Both together would have produced someone like Roy Keane or Makelele but you would still require the Essien/Tiago or Scholes to play against really tough attacking midfield squads. Playing one - even West Ham in their day and with their style of play would outplay us easily in the center.

Just feel Momo should contain his runs to the opposition's penalty and concentrate on defence and breaking up attacks that what he does best. At times he is up there with the ball in opposition's penalty without the attacker's acumen to create something. Will like him sit behind and get Alonso and Gerrard run the attacking show.

Posshibilities...

Think Crouch got a lot of part to play in the club.

Anyone thinking Bellamy or Kuyt being pushed to the right or left to accomodate Crouch in few games?

Think the section on Pennant especially his drifting inside is slight harsh from our point of view. We read from his interview he has been asked to do that.

Wonder why (he has been asked to do that) and is a worrying thought, wonder what is running in Rafa's mind and his strategies. Maybe if the whole team starts playing the way Rafa wants we can understand his ideas.

Learn to read please. I didn't say we will be 38 points behind at the end of the season. I'm damn certain we won't be, in fact.

 

What I said was that 5 points is quite a deficit to make up, because it's the equivalent at this stage of the season to 38 points at the end of it.

 

There's absolutely nothing wrong with the mathematics.

You dont get it do you?

Simple mathematics can prove the baby in one month is a possibility, but are we talking about that possibility or even the proof to that?

Even assuming we win our game in hand (which is far from guaranteed), 5 points is a lot at this stage of the season. 5 points behind from 5 games = 38 points behind over a full season.

Your logic is similar to the saying "put in 9 men and nine women and they will reproduce a baby in 1 month".

Seriously mate carry on!! You will do people proud.

Absolutely correct thread title!

Disappointing threads all around after a game where they took two shots at our goal one was a goal (hate to say this for the player but a genuis effort) another a lame free kick effort.

We dominated all around the park against a team comprising quality at their home ground.

People coming here and saying the best midfielder in the world (playing out of position) be sold IS ABSOLUTE KNEE JERK of the highest order.

Very Very disappointing threads and comments!! :no