Dave D

So far we've had the pleasure of seeing links like Figueroa, then Scharner, then Beattie and now the wonderous Remy. Wonder What golden nugget of transfer gems is next on the horizon. I've never seen so many playes linked with a football club every transfer window like LFC, and 99% of them are bull shit.

 

Anyways i'm going to go for Wayne Bridge to be the next one linked with us, or maybe Jason "Pineapple Head" Lee ? Any physics out there wanna give it a shot?

 

Silly season is here and kicking into over drive.

Im thinking you meant psychics and not physics. This could backfire as I have no idea if Ive spelt psychics correctly.

For the record, some of the players we are getting linked with arent top of the market but I think people overrate some of the players we have. Id have Scharner over Lucas and Aquallani. Seems as though Roy is clearing out the dead wood and getting half decent fees for them

Quality

HE'S BIG, HE'S RED, CUNT BREAD JOVANOVIC.

 

It doesn't work?

Possibly the funniest line Ive ever seen on TLW.

For the record, why are people still suggeasting we should base our plans for next season with just Torres up front. It really didnt work last season.

He's just what we need. Another foreigner would sweep the changes with dodgy and eventually homesick staff and lots of cheap imports from their home country.

You mite not be able to sing his name to the tune of La Bamba, but we mite have to look into the Roy Orbison back catalogue

Four good/great strikers all in the same squad. At the same time I seem to remember Utd having Yorke, Cole, Solskjaer and Sherringham.

When did football suddenly change and decide you need only one injury prone world class forward eg: Drogba, Torres, Rooney, Van Persie. When either of those players is out their team struggle with the alternatives they have.

The only two teams I can think of that still subscribe to the "four decent forwards" way of thinking are Spurs and City and it still seems to work for them.

Arsenal. All day long

I found that in 2 seconds, mate.

 

I'm sure it's not the only time he's praised him.

Stop trying to be smart and state your point. You could dig up another 100 quotes and you still wouldnt convince me that Rafa has worked hard to help Gerrard fulfill enormous potential.

Liverpool's manager Rafael BenÃ*tez believes Steven Gerrard should be named PFA player of the year | Football | guardian.co.uk

 

 

 

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* Steven Gerrard

 

Benítez backs Gerrard to win PFA player of the year award

 

• 'Stevie is one of the best players in the world,' says Spaniard

• Liverpool's captain has scored 21 times already this season

 

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* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 March 2009 12.06 GMT

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steven gerrard

 

Rafael Benítez believes his captain should be named PFA player of the year Photograph: Carl Recine/Action Images

 

Liverpool's manager Rafael Benítez believes Steven Gerrard should be named PFA player of the year next month.

 

Nemanja Vidic and Ryan Giggs of Manchester United are favourites for the award but Benítez thinks his captain, who has scored 21 goals this campaign and led Liverpool to second in the league and the quarter-final of the Champions League, should take the honour.

 

"He would be my vote. If he can continue playing at this level, then why not?" Benítez said. "For me Stevie is one of the best players in the world. To say one is the best above anyone else is difficult because there are a lot of quality players about, but he is one of the best. That is clear.

So in five years, when asked a direct question, he says something positive. To the press. Once.

As he points out, its clear he' s one of the worlds best, even to the most staunch bluenose.

My point is, on a weekly basis, Rafa could have got so much more out of him. Some of the post match interviews he's tried so hard not to single out his skipper for praise. It must be disheartening

Well, yeah, if Gerrard can't be motivated then what about the rest of our players?

Its almost like, in a basic sort of way, they just need to "clear the air" between themselves.

My guess is though, each player has an agent feeding him crap everyday, full of rumours of takeovers, new mangers/players etc. From the players point of view it must be getting to the point of "same old shit".

Id imagine Gerrards agent has probably already told him that Rafas gone in the summer. It would go some way to explaining why we appear to have the most frosty captain/manager relationship in the country

He is earning a fuck load of money, he is captain of Liverpool and is highly regarded amongst football's very best, how the fuck can he not be motivated?

Couldnt agree more. Trouble is somethings got to give sooner or later in this sorry state of a team we love

Gerrard should be man enough to take control of the game. I get the impression he is feeling sorry for himself at the moment. I can understand that, he used to get the ball early from Alonso when he had found space and he had an on form and fit Torres scaring the shit out of defenders!

 

However, he is the captain he needs to lead by example and also support the players and encourage them. He needs to be bigger than his own ego or how disappointed he may be feeling. That is the lot of a captain.I liked Torres comments today as I read them like he would stay even without champions league football. It's not the holy grail of football, its just because the business people need it, which is the bullshit around football these days.

 

Gerrard needs to show what he is capable of, he was happy enough following instructions for the last few seasons, it doesn't chang over night because everyone is playing crap!

Too right. Captain of LiverpoolFC. Should be enough to motivate and overcome any crap he feels Rafas dishing out to him.

Say what you like about him, but Benitez, by calling it like it is, given them a boot up the arse when needed, or announcing they are among the worlds best when they performed, improved Carragher and Gerrard and took them up a couple of levels.

 

 

 

 

wait; what?

Im not with you there mate

Does anyone feel robbed of seeing him in what should be his prime?

The style in which we play has really taken out of him what he made his name doing. Barnstorming charges forward, plenty of shots (on target :)),

lifting those around him.

The Steven Gerrard we see now looks as though the weight of having the shackles on for so long has taken those instincts out of him.

Aside from tactics, the one thing that is glaringly obvious, despite his awesome talent, is Stevie is a confidence player. Rafas dogged refusal to shower praise upon his skipper, even when he is head and shoulders above the rest, is what I think has led to what we are seeing now.

Say what you like about him, but Mourinho, by calling it like it is, given them a boot up the arse when needed, or announcing they are among the worlds best when they performed, improved Lampard and Terry and took them up a couple of levels.

What we should have seen with Gerrard is an improvement that led him to being the undisputed worlds best midfielder.

Instead he has stopped improving completely, and on recent evidence, has actually gone backwards.

Excellently summed up. Your bang on about the training, its all looks so methodical if thats the right word. No passion or flair. Even Gerrard now seems to reign it in, the days of him grabbing games by the scruff of the neck seem to have gone. Not a critisism of him by the way. I honestly think that if he took the shackles off and put in a barnstorming match saving performance against Reading the other night it would still have put rafas nose out of joint.

Ive lost count of the amount of times where Gerrard has been our match winner and in the interview afterwards Rafa will go out of his way not to praise him and just starts waffling on about "Lucas being as important etc"

To sum up, Rafa seems to have taken all the creativity out of our best players in his attempts to "control" rather than "win"

Blanc? The worlds gone fucking mad

Amazing. What a signing. Still feels like we only just signed him. I play footy on saturdays with a load of mancs and they all rave him and apparently they had the chance to get him but ferguson said he wouldnt cut it in the premier league

Cant remember Alonso pulling any trees up in his first five games. Looked a bit lightweight at the time to me. Think I remember him hitting the bar from way out wearing our rubbish yellow/gold kit away to United that made me first think he had potential but that was it.

We need to give Aquallani time, ie: the rest of the season at least. My only concern is it does whiff a bit of the Robbie Keane saga. Clearly a decent player but you have to play to his strengths.

So, we have the luxury of buying someone and sending him away for a season.

 

Cool.

 

EDIT: I know it is most likely due to visa issues etc. but we need players NOW.

Indeed.

Urgently

how exciting.......

I like a bit of positivity.

 

Speaking of which there was a great moment of TV a couple of weeks ago when we exited the Champions League.

 

Our game had finished and we were out, if the Fiorentina/Lyon result didn't go our way. The cameras were desperate to catch a shot of a beleagured Steven Gerrard disappoiningly walking away from the monitor he was watching the Lyon/Fiorentina game.

 

They got the shot they wanted. Then they cut to a shot of the crowd - hoping to see some tearful scouse faces, angrily trudging to the exits. Instead the crowd were singing a rapturous chorus of You'll never walk alone. Then the players came out to warm-down and received a great ovation. I loved it. Totally pissed on their attempts to peddle misery.

 

Fingers crossed for things to pick up in the New Year. Things will change. Maybe not today or tomorrow. In the meantime we have to hold our heads high and ride it out.

My sentiments exactly.

Cant say its been dull. Its why we all love the game. Things arent great at the moment but only a few months ago we were making a serious effort at landing the title. We'll be back!!!!!!!! And how sweet it will be!!!! Come on Liverpool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Having been on that coach, I will try my best to never go on a Barnes' coach ever again, they are overpriced cultural cesspits on wheels. SOS run a good coach when you think about it, the coach stewards are on top of dickheads from the off because it is a membership coach and so you cannot act the dickhead because you can in effect get fucked off by Keith and the lads. Full credit to SOS and the work the lads put in. With Barnes' though, you can be any fucker, we had four tickets under one surname.

 

We had the misfortune to sit at the back with a right herd of twats, one of them stunk of shit as well, he was a fucking bio-hazard. My biggest complaint was the attitude from them and their 'we are from the Moss therefore we are dead hard' carry on. We thought it was funny watching the blag Scouse accents, completely fabricated stories to prove how hard they were and their general behaviour. The best way to describe it that was similar to watching Ross Kemp on Gangs.

 

The problem was that I seen one of them arguing with a steward at the game, then they were arguing with the police as we left and pissing the coach steward off throughout. He nearly has the lot of us all marched from the coach for not giving his ale up before he got back on. So this prick single handedly made a cunt of the rest of the coach, for all the lads who went and behaved themselves, the locals will remember this smelly spastic who struggled with basic English and hygiene.

 

The lad would have been better off just staying at home and getting bladdered all fucking day and not wiping his arse properly, the main concern was how much he drank and giving abuse out to some of the younger lads on there. I had to tell one of the younger lads I recognised from the SOS to come and sit by me if he got any shit from them. The occasional racist song and 'get the Wooly's out the Kop' being his particular favourite, apparently Yossi hates 'coons' as it kind of rhymes with his surname. This is all while he struggled to stand up throughout the day and used some terminology normally used by black people whilst the irony just went right over his head. The coach stewards did seem to speak to him a few times in fairness, but it was all a bit futile.

 

And to compound things, some people at the front thought the lads acting the twat were SOS regulars when I can confirm that they aren't. It was fucking appalling, and people will say 'why didn't you say something?', but it wasn't worth the commotion.

 

The term 'Scouse off' was something we mentioned last year, might have been coined before then; it is basically people trying to more Scouse than the next person in terms of the accent and general carry on, similar to the thread on ESD. These lads seemed to refer to people from Bootle as nearly Wools, apart from Carragher who was a proper Scouser whlist we watched 15 minutes that Shook the World. They were a fucking disgrace to the city, but at the same time fiercely proud of being Scouse as it made them better than 'fucking wools'. As you can imagine their reason for being so fiercely proud of their heritage totally neglected the things that made this city and the club what it is today.

Sounds like the coach trip from hell, but Ive got to say, I was crying with laughter reading your comments.

Dont make me laugh. Id welcome glory hunters with open arms if it meant we had some glory!

How did we end up in with the attacking options we have?

For most of this season I would say ALL of the clubs in the championship have better strikers playing week in week out than we do.

Ngog cant be criticised as he's had an enormous task, but surely we werent banking on an injury free Torres for a whole season.

To have had the players like bellamy, keane and crouch and now be going into games pinning our hopes on Ngog must have actually taken some effort to get so badly wrong.

Who's to blame? What a mess.....

Didi is already at the club earning his coaching badges. You seriously reckon if he was an option to get on the pitch he wouldn't be there? I love the bones of the man, but he never started a season at full fitness, and without pre-season training I reckon he would be well off the pace at his age.

 

As to the others ... We. Have. No. Money.

There MUST have been somebody out of contract somewhere, in the twighlight of their career that would have jumped at the opportunity to wear the red shirt.

I dont want to vilify Lucas as he is, on his day, a decnt enough squad man, but we just needed something to knit things together temporarily, a bit of composure and possibly the ability to get a goal or two. When I read that back it does sound like Im asking for an awful lot, but suurrrreeeeellllyyyy there must have been possibilities. (...for sure)