The Woolster

Would spending £25m on a player like M'villa make us a better team than spending nothing on a player like Diame?

 

I think if we do have £40m it needs to go on a wide right player with pace, and a forward with pace, which will make us a better team. Although I think you can change the formation and play Gerrard of the forward and perhaps get away with not having the top class striker (I am saying this as I can't think of any that are available).

Like I say, we need 3 players, and I think everyone agrees that ideally we want a striker and a wide right forward/winger, and then there are some of us that think we also need someone else in the middle. If we do have £40mish to spend, and we need first team players over squad players, then we may only be able to get 2 of them though. The 2 positions you (as in one, not you personally) believe we should spend on (or 3 if you think that is doable) is just down to personal opinion, no one is really right or wrong as there is a valid arguement for each case. They way I am looking at it though is what I think is a bit more achievable for us.

My view though is that the top wide players, eg Hazard or Lavezzi types, are going to cost more, will have more competition for their signature and are more likely to go to a Champs League team due to the types of team after them. As much as I would like one of those types of players, I think we are more likely to get a top class CM, and for a bit less, meaning we have more to spend on player number 2. You are more likley to get some proper bargains at CM as well though, so I take your point that we could pick up a Diame or Nzoni type on the cheap, but are they really any better than what we have? I am not sure, and I don't think we need any more squad players, they will just block some of the young players we have coming up.

We have created plenty of chances, so although we do lack someone with either pace or inteligence to unlock tight defences some times, we really need someone to put the ball in the back of the net. So for me a striker is a given. But I also think we lack someone with drive in the middle who takes the game by the scruff of the neck, especially with Gerrard often injured, which is why I want a top player CM.

I would prefer us to play 4231/433, so if we get a new striker, then the 3rd attacking forward spot we have Bellamy, Downing or Sterling to be promoted to the 1st team, and I think that is sufficient coverage.

If we went for a wide player and forward, we would be left with Gerrard, Lucas and one of Henderson or Adam in the middle, and I think that is still lacking a bit.

Perhaps instead of going for a wide player and a forward with pace we could get someone who can do both? Seeing brief highlights the other night, I though Loic Remy could cover both positions quite well.

Like I say though, just my opinion and can see the arguements for the other ways of doing it.

huntelaar is the only forward we should be trying to get to play up top with Luis

 

we also need a beast of a centre mid like an M'Vila

 

We need a wide player too but we've said that numerous times in the past 20 years

In a kind of similar thread on the MF I said we need 3 players, but will probably only be able to afford 2 of sufficient quality, and they are the 2 I picked.

I reckon we might have around £40m after sales. M'vila for £23-25m, Huntelaar for £15-17m.

Which kids has he bought for us? Ibe is one

 

Did we sign Sam Magrhi?

 

These might come good in the future you just never know

Not Magri, yet (as mentioned in other thread)

Teixeira just mentioned.

Seyi Ojo and Jerome Sinclair who are currently in the under 16s, are 14 and 15 respectively, but both played in the last under 18s game last weekend (Sinclair started and Ojo as a sub).

There was the 2 Irish lads, Mclaughlin and O'Hanlon (the new Bale apparantly...)

A couple of Americans, Pelosi and Bijev, who I think should both be with the reserves next season.

Nacho who is from Spain.

A couple of Welsh youth internationals, a defender and recently Ward, who is a keeper.

We were looking at a Mexican lad called Bueno last summer, but we couldn't sign him til he turned 18 (in March), but since then he has been playing for his club's first team and scoring goals as well, so his price will have gone up, and/or he may decide to stay there here he is playing.

I dunno how much of a part Comolli has played in signing these though. Also, with a few of them still in the under 16s it could well take a while before we see any of them even near the 1st team.

Did we sign that texiera lad if so has he played in any youth/reserve games.

Yes, but he's been injured since he's been here and not played yet

What did we decide on this kid?

 

He's back at Pompey as far I can see

I dunno, but we are defo on the look out for a new CB as we had another trialist play the other week (can't remember who against now though, or whop he is, but I think he came from Wycombe).

I would not be surprised though if we told him to go back to Portsmouth and sit tight til the summer, as with them in the position they are in we might be able to get him for a bit less, or nothing even if they go into insolvency.

Also, I think the new process for signing kids on the cheap rather than the price being set by tribunal starts from next season, but I don't know if that means this summer, so perhaps that has come into play as well.

When I read that yesterday I was reminded of this article from earlier this year. It's a bit statty, but I think they are needed to prove the point. I know we have people looking at the stats internally, so perhaps they have finally found something similar.

The Question: why are Liverpool struggling to score at home? | Jonathan Wilson | Football | guardian.co.uk

The Question: why are Liverpool struggling to score at home?

Liverpool's scoring record at Anfield has been poor but those who blame bad luck and Andy Carroll may be missing the point

 

Liverpool sit a reasonably contented sixth in the table. They have conceded fewer goals than anybody else in the Premier League and, although a gap of 11 points to the leaders is probably too much to make up, there is no reason why they shouldn't mount a strong challenge to qualify for the Champions League. The one niggling doubt, and the one reason that they're not in with a chance of winning the title, is their repeated failure to kill sides off at home.

 

 

Although they ended up winning relatively comfortably against Newcastle on Friday, that was only their fourth win in 10 home games this season. A record of 14 goals from 10 matches at Anfield tells the same story as the memory of countless headers flashing just wide and opposing goalkeepers making save after save. Andy Carroll, mocked as he is, seems to have been particularly unfortunate in that regard, being denied late winners by barely credible saves from Manchester City's Joe Hart and Blackburn's Mark Bunn.

 

 

Luck, the unspoken deity that haunts football more than anyone likes to admit, has played its part, and it may be that the second half of the season will follow the model of the Newcastle game rather than the 1-1 draw with Blackburn as success breeds confidence. Much of success in sport, though, is about manipulating percentages, and it's perhaps there that Liverpool bear a level of responsibility for their failing.

 

 

The statistics are remarkable. Opta figures show that in nine home matches after Kenny Dalglish took charge last season, Liverpool scored 20 goals, compared with 14 in 10 home games this season: 2.22 goals per game compared to 1.4. Yet last season in games under Dalglish, Liverpool averaged 12.89 shots per game, compared with 15.4 this (in 2009-10 Liverpool had 14.89 shots per game at home, and the season before that 17.79).

 

 

Now, while it's clear that not all shots are equal – an open goal from two yards yields a far higher likelihood of a goal being scored than an overhead kick from 30 yards – there is obviously a high correlation between shots and goals. In an interview in The Blizzard the Norway manager Egil Olsen notes that three-quarters of games are won by the side who had more shots and explains that he abandoned his attempts to quantify how good a chance was because it yielded almost identical results.

 

 

Liverpool this season score a goal with every 11 shots they have at home. Last season they scored every 5.81 shots. In 2009-10 they scored every 6.59 shots and in 2008-09 every 8.24 (at least since statistics began to be recorded, a basic rule of thumb has remained that every nine shots will yield one goal). Away from home this season, the figure is even worse, a goal coming every 11.51 shots. It would be easy to blame that on Carroll's profligacy, but he's not the only one at fault. In terms of shooting accuracy, there's not a great deal to chose between Liverpool's four strikers. Craig Bellamy has got five of 11 shots on target, Carroll 14 of 34, Dirk Kuyt seven of 17 and Luis Suárez 28 of 69. The big difference is in chance conversion – how many of those shots go in. Bellamy has scored 36.4% of his chances (from an admittedly small sample size), Suárez 7.2%, Carroll 5.9% and Kuyt none.

 

 

Is there a reason for the comparative lack of effectiveness beyond simple profligacy or lack of confidence? Are, in other words, Liverpool creating chances that are difficult to take? The signings of Stewart Downing, Jordan Henderson and Charlie Adam were apparently motivated by the fact that all three were among the top eight chance-creators in the Premier League last season (Blackpool, Aston Villa and Sunderland were eighth, 13th and 17th in the scoring charts last season; it may be that the sort of chance Adam, Downing and Henderson create is not the most efficient sort of chance, precise as Henderson's ball to Steven Gerrard for the third goal on Friday was).

 

 

At home this season, Liverpool have played 481.8 passes per game, completing 80.34% of them. It's been suggested that they've become more direct, which would logically be reflected in fewer passes and a lower pass completion rate, but in 2009-10 at home they were averaging 492 passes per game at 80.05% completion, and in 2008-09 514.2 at 81.65%. In so far as passing stats reveal style, little seems to have changed since Rafael Benítez's time. There is a danger that pass-completion stats can give a misleading impression if a side passes the ball among its back four before launching long balls, but pass completion in the opponent's half has barely changed either: 73.10% this season, 72.61% in 2009-10 and 73.82% in 2008-09.

 

 

Last season under Dalglish at home, though, Liverpool played only 445 passes per game, with a success rate of 78.55%, and 70.81% in the opponent's half. Those figures, taken with the stats on crossing, do seem to reveal a trend. In 2008-09 Liverpool averaged 33.16 crosses per home game. In 2009-10, 30.58. This season, the figure is 33.7. Last season under Dalglish, though, Liverpool hit just 23.33 crosses per game. Cross completion this season has been markedly better this season: 24.03% at home as opposed to 15.38 under Dalglish last season and 20.27% and 19.63% in the last two seasons under Benítez.

 

 

So Liverpool were almost twice as efficient in front of goal last season when they played fewer crosses and were more direct. That may change if Carroll's efforts stopped hitting the woodwork or the outstretched fingertips of assorted goalkeepers, but Liverpool seem to have run into the theory postulated by Herbert Chapman in the 1920s. Rapid forward passes, he said, were "more deadly, if less spectacular" than the "senseless policy of running along the lines and centring just in front of the goalmouth, where the odds are nine to one on the defenders".

 

 

It's a fine balance, of course: create as many chances as possible, or create fewer chances that are easier to take? After 10 games, simple misfortune could still be playing its part, but it may be that Liverpool need to recalibrate a touch from the former to the latter.

Everyone can see it apart from the staff it seems. We need to get the ball forward quicker, have Carroll (if he is playing) further forwards so he doesn't get involved in any build up play in the midfield as he doesn't have the pace to catch up, and rather than spending time working the ball wide and have the defenders getting themselves much better set, create chances by getting in behind the defence.

Just for clarification, this was the reported tweet before he deleted it.

 

J.Shelvey.. þ @Jshelvey33 Reply Retweet Favorite · Open

 

Pick myself up and go again .. And again .. And again .. And again .. And again .. And again .. And again .. And again .. And again .

I saw that, and my take on it was (which Shelvey says himself in later tweets) that it is what he needs to do to get into the first team, basically to keep working hard every day, and not moaning about not getting into the 1st team.

We've got a very good young keeper in Peter Gulacsi. He'll be benefiting from all his loan spells over the past couple of seasons.

Currently on the subs bench at Hull unfortunately, behind Mannone who they have loaned from Arsenal

I did wonder why your name was the same as the poster on RAWK as well, now it all becomes clear :idea:

So 4 out of 92 managers are now black, which is a little over 4%, or twice as high as the proportion of black people in this country.

 

The man is a grade A moron.

As much as I dislike Holt, that isn't really a valid arguement to use against him. The vast majority of managers are ex players, and the proportion of retired professionals over the last 10-15 years or so who make up the pool of potential new managers, and who are black, is vastly higher than 4% I would have thought.

Hello, all!! Got my eMail through this morning saying I could now post on the forums... Awesome!

 

Anyway, I'm Mooki3 and I'm obsessed by LFC, specifically by the Reserve, Academy and Youth set-up. I've joined this forum as alot of Dave Usher's work has quenched my nerdy obsession throughout the years.

 

I've written this in my blog about tomorrows game, how do you lot reckon it will go??

Pah, you've just copied and pasted that from RAWK and are passing it off as your own aren't you :whistle:

Im hoping we do like Spurs did and play mainly our reserves, for the group stages at least, as it will give them some experience, make them feel like they have a future here and give them the chance to push for the first team squad if they impress.

Everton have got Jagielka, Rodwell, Osman, McFadden, Coleman and Anichebe and Barkley playing against our kiddies. Desperate bluenose wankers!

Jagielka (280ish senior club appearances, 10 England Senior caps, 6 under 21 caps), Rodwell (80 senior club appearances, 2 England Senior caps, 20 under 21 caps), Osman (270ish senior club appearances), McFadden (250ish senior club appearances, 48 Scotland Senior caps), Coleman (60ish senior club appearances, 5 Ireland Senior caps, 13 under 21 caps), Anichebe (100ish senior club appearances, 11 Nigeria Senior caps, 5 under 23 caps), Barkley (5 senior club appearances, 4 England under 21 caps).

Then you have their keeper Mucha (130ish senior club appearances, 32 Slovakia Senior caps), and Duffy (23 senior club appearances, 6 Republic of Ireland under 21 caps, 3 Northern Ireland under 21 caps).

We had Brad Jones with about 100 Senior appearances and 3 Aussie caps, and Eccleston with about 40 Senior appearances, and I think that might be it, and most of the lads still available for the under 19s, and by all accounts we battered them (Will watch it on Sky+). I know some of them are coming back from injury, but the gulf in experience was massive.

I was surprised they didn't go for him as CEO at the time they were searching, but perhaps he was doing something else at the time that he felt he had to finish. I'm pretty sure he would have dealt with the Surez situation a lot better.

He'd make a good chairman I would have thought, and it would mean that Ayre wouldn't lose face and we'd still have him for the commercial side of things. I am not sure what Werner adds as Cheirman anyway, either way as an owner he would have the same input. At least he would be at the coal face

This was mentioned on the MF

Liverpool have recruited the former Football Association chief executive, Brian Barwick, to conduct a review of the club’s media output.

 

Fenway Sports Group, the American owners of the Merseyside club, intend to invest in their website and TV channel during the summer and have asked Barwick to recommend the improvements.

 

The club’s owners hope to take greater control over the output and expand the global appeal of their media.

 

Barwick, a lifelong Liverpool fan, will report to managing director Ian Ayre with his findings, but there will be inevitable changes once his report is concluded.

 

Liverpool’s chairman, Tom Werner, would not verify Barwick’s involvement at the club, but did confirm a broad review of how their media operates was under way.

 

“I am keenly interested in anything that can improve the quality of Liverpoolfc.tv and all the companion media,” said Werner. "Therefore, we are undertaking a review of these messaging services.”

 

The media review is being seen many as part of another broad assessment of how Liverpool should be run in the future by Werner and principal owner John W. Henry.

 

The owners are determined to ensure the global perception of the football club is restored to the way it was during its heyday.

 

Recent high profile events have undoubtedly damaged Liverpool’s name beyond the sphere of its own supporter base, not least the furore regarding the Suárez affair, and the owners are anxious to learn the lessons from the whole incident.

 

Werner and Henry have taken a hands-on role recently, meeting senior figures within English football in order to establish how best to reassert Liverpool’s historic influence.

 

Barwick was the FA chief executive between 2005 and 2008, during which time he recruited both Steve McClaren and Fabio Capello to the England job.

 

However, it is his distinguished journalism career which appears to have earned him his current role at Anfield. Barwick worked for the BBC throughout the 1980s, including as editor on Match of the Day, before becoming the controller of sport on ITV in 1998.

 

He left the FA in 2008 after a breakdown in his relationship with the then FA chairman, Lord Triesman.

It's at the end of this article.

Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish insists that Luis Suárez will follow etiquette and shake Patrice Evra's hand - Telegraph

As has been mentioned he now works for the London Evening Standard, I picked it up one day on the way home, it had his second article for them and it was about how Suarez should apologise. I think he should concentrate on writing about things that affect London clubs really

Anyways it sounds like a rap song to me, maybe an underground one, maybe a line he came up with one his own.

 

He said "You're mistaken if you think I'm not going out, you used to be the only girl a "man" (insert possibly considered racist pronoun for man used predominantly in african american culture where the stars should be ) would think about, now I have a few girls on call and I'm going to bring them out (with me).

It appears to be a song by Bow Wow. No, I've never heard of him either.

I thought it was perhaps due to him and Bellamy being mates from their days at City.

the songs what I miss most of him

 

 

at least the Suarez song is boss too

Me too. My daughter (first child) is 18 months old now, and I used to sing it to her all the time, the proper version during the day with her bouncing on my knee, and a very slow version to help get her to sleep at night. It was a bit heartbreaking to suddenly stop doing that and not being able to do it anymore.

What with Gerrard fit, Suarez available, Agger not injured, and even Aurelio fit, will this be the first time Kenny has had a fully fit first team squad to chose from?

But it seems Bellamy only has 1 game per week in him. Agree them two should be the two first choices up front though.

Well, we're not in Europe, and apart from next week and the rearranged Everton game, we will only have to play mid week games if we get to the Quater final of the FA Cup or further as League games get rearranged (and possible replays). So, discounting replays, I reckon we have a possible maximum of 5 more midweeks games (8 if all cup games went to a replay), and we'd need to get to the FA Cup final for that.

I reckon we should be able to get by with Bellamy only playing 1 game a week

Especially if it was with a Uruguay flag.

That would have to be a very sharp flag

I thought each team were allowed three players under 23?

I thought it was under 19s only, but I may be wrong

Flanagan isn't playing for anyone hard to know if he has gone backwards or not.

 

I have seen him a couple of times for the reserves and he looked good going forward but rash in the tackle... the only other time I saw him this season was in the first team on the opening day of the season, where he was at fault for the goal conceeded.

 

I hope Flanagan, Shelvey - maybe even Kelly play in the Nextgen game. Is Robinson training yet? would be good to have him as well.

I think Kelly might be too old, seem to remember checking a few months back

They do bring good players through. Ours has been last for years now and we've had to chuck money at it just to try and catch up.

 

Out of the two teams today Blackburn had two players who played well against us and United the other week in the first team (Bunn and Henley) and a £1m signing in Jordan Slew who got Sheffield United to the Youth Cup final last season.

 

So their team had more pedigree than ours. Sterling cost a bit, but that's it. None of our team have any first-team experience between them either other than the odd game Eccleston played last season actaully. The difference is they dropped back the likes of Henley to the reserves whereas our younger players on the fringes of the first team don't get dropped back.

Didn't realise some of them had played for first team as well, just checked, Henley has 5 appearances in the first team including 3 starts, and 3 others who have a sub appearance each. Only Eccleston from our side today has got anywhere close to to the first team