ScottyT

The only issue I have with using the Gerrard/Torres for every game is we rely on them too much to get the goals, and if one or both are not at their best we struggle to create anything, mainly because of the lack of drive and pace from midfield. It's not the system that's stopping us winning the games we should, it's the approach, and there's no reason why Gerrard can't slot back into midfield for home games when we're doing most of the attacking, allowing us to add more firepower upfront. This 'caution' is killing us.

The 17 million we spent on Kuyt and Bellamy that summer could have paid for Alves, especially as Crouch had done so well the previous season. But it's easier to blame Parry than Benitez's transfer acumen.

It's hard enough recovering from just one of those injuries. He was just starting to look the part too.

Not read any quotes yet, but in the press conference he was asked directly if he'd welcome offers for Keane and he responded with "He's in the squad tomorrow".

Even by internet standards, that's bad.

Benitez was asked in today's press conference whether he wanted to sell Keane and he just swerved it and give the usual line about him training hard, etc. No straight answer, which will no doubt disillusion the player even more. He wants rid, and if he got a genuine offer would sell him in a flash. Although whether the board would is a different matter. If he does it's another huge black mark against his transfer policy and ability to get the best out of attacking players. Cisse, Baros, Crouch, Bellamy, Gonzalez, Morientes, Babel and now Keane have all struggled with his methods and philosophy and been frozen out.

I don't think Keane has been that bad, especially early on, nor is he out of his depth. He was working hard but just struggling for goals, and was under pressure, which was compounded by the poor treatment from the manager. When you're searching for form and score two goals in a game, the last thing you need is to be brought off on 65 minutes for 'tactical' reasons, while other players are seemingly untouchable, regardless of performance. It's sad that we have a manager who will make decisions like that, not to win the game, but to send a message to the powers that be.

To be honest, I doubt Young would have flourished under Benitez like he has under O'Neil.

He was exactly the type of player we needed in the summer, and still do. He's perfect for the system we use and can play in a number of positions behind the main striker. Instead we're stuck trying to shoe-horn 3 main strikers into the team.

It's his cold scientific approach. He views players as nothing more than robots to fit whatever systematic vision is on his mind that particular week/month/year, and when he feels it's not working he just blanks them...unless your name is Kuyt.

He was poor on Sunday. He looked a bit jaded and was constantly squandering cheap possession. To be fair to him, our movment is generally non existant, and he wasn't getting much protection from Mascherano, who looks clearly out of sorts.

Parry is a gobshite. His ilk have held the club back for years, using our loyality and traditions to justify their incompetence. I'd love to get owners in with enough cash to recognise the need, and potential, to stay at our spiritual home. Imagine 60,000 on a big European night.

It's not 'our club', it's the manager. He's a petty vindictive man. That smug response he gave when asked why Keane wasn't in the squad really disgusted me. I really think he's going down the same road as Houllier.

We are so easy to defend against. All Everton did on Sunday was double up on Kuyt and Babel, as neither will run at players and take them on, and we just run out of ideas and started trying to force impossible passes. Look at Ronaldo and Young, etc, very direct players who put fear into defenders and open up space.

Benitez's treatment of Keane has become close to a gruesome joke Tuesday, 27 January 2009 James Lawton Whatever private uncertainties crowd the mind of Steven Gerrard they are clearly not so great that they prevent him from confirming – as thunderously as anyone in the history of the game – the truth of one of the more poignant assertions of the old pros. It is that a football field can sometimes be not an arena but an island – a place where all the troubles and the confusions of the real world can be set aside, for a glorious interlude of 90 minutes. Diego Maradona, George Best and Paul Gascoigne proclaimed this even as they rummaged in the remnants of their talent. When the brilliant coach Malcolm Allison, whose life as a player was both complicated and tumultuous, was told that his career was over because of tuberculosis he immediately reflected, "I'll never go out there to play again, knowing that I'm safe between the touchlines, that nothing can touch me as I do the thing I love most." In Gerrard's case the requirement is to do rather more than hold back a worrying distraction that will not be resolved until his court appearance in March. It is to prop up, with amazing diligence and force, a football club at times so dysfunctional its close proximity to the Premier League champions and leaders Manchester United, and continued presence in the Champions League and the FA Cup, is beginning to stand logic on its head. Or, at least, that would be so if it were not for Gerrard's extraordinary ability to rise so far above both his own crisis and his club's disarray. Gerrard, with the conspicuous help of the re-emerging Fernando Torres, has become Liverpool these last few weeks, far more, certainly, than the tetchy and eternally self-justifying manager Rafa Benitez and American owners whose attempts to turn a profit on the most successful club in the history of English football are beginning to sound as plaintive as the sales technique of Molly Malone. A harsh verdict on Liverpool's operating technique? This is only, surely, if you can ignore the £20m scandal at the heart of Anfield – one that at the weekend became something close to a gruesome joke. Robbie Keane's plight is, at the level of professional ambition, nothing less than a personal tragedy. It reached its nadir when he was told he could no longer claim a place on the bench. Here we had a harsh spotlight indeed on Benitez's fight for a contract that would put him in charge of all transfer dealing. Of course the manager's position is correct, in both theory and practice, as long as the best tradition of English football is maintained in the working arrangements of men like Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsène Wenger and Martin O'Neill. However, Benitez's campaign needs a lot more illumination if it is to gain any credence in the middle of the Keane affair. One strong theory on Merseyside is that the summer preoccupation of Benitez was Gareth Barry and the push to sign Keane was stronger elsewhere – and not least in the office of the chief executive, Rick Parry. Could this really be so, and if it is, could it possibly condition the appalling treatment of Keane, a player of accomplishment, even overachievement at Tottenham, who came to Anfield wearing his devotion to the Liverpool cause on his much-travelled sleeve? His short Liverpool history is more than anything a study in humiliation. It's true his early performances, his failure to relate to the game of Torres, sent out an almost instant warning that £20m had been misspent. But who was the author of the mistake, and what serious efforts were made to rectify it? Did Keane receive any of the ego massaging that produced superior performance at Tottenham for Martin Jol and Juande Ramos, neither exactly kid-glove specialists? The evidence is to the contrary. Keane has indeed played poorly at times, but not with a consistency that would make his relentless fate of substitution seem any less a kind of open-ended grinding down of his spirit. Typically, the Dubliner threw him himself into training yesterday and if sometimes his body language this season has touched, perhaps understandably, a degree of despair – especially on the loneliest trek in football after your number has been called – he is at pains to stress that his non-appearance at Anfield on Sunday for the Cup tie against Everton was at the suggestion of the club. The inference has to be that the Keane situation has become so embarrassing that Liverpool were in no mood to provide gratuitous picture opportunities. A huge part of the problem, no doubt, is that just as Keane and Torres failed to establish a natural rapport, the one struck up between the Spaniard and Gerrard is at times nothing less than sublime. We saw that in Gerrard's equaliser against Everton, a move that carried a beauty and a purpose which were scarcely nullified by the fact that the goalkeeper Tim Howard should have got down to smother the shot. Keane's agony is Gerrard's glory – and perhaps, it needs to be said, Benitez's point of redemption in a season so littered with confusion. The Spaniard has never accepted the myth that Gerrard is a great, controlling midfielder, but rather a superbly equipped attacker, almost a force of nature when his power wells up so inexorably as he goes forward, with, for example, the irresistible timing which inspired the breathtaking service from Torres on Sunday. This is part of the football landscape Keane is never likely to tread, a point made scornfully by Sir Alex Ferguson when he questioned his £6m move from Wolves to Coventry. Such a judgement, however, was no deterrent to a career which boasts the distinguished landmarks of Elland Road, San Siro, White Hart Lane and Anfield. It is a journey which deserves a more satisfactory climax than his desperate experience. Of all the victims of Liverpool's bizarre season of politics and corporate doubt and off-field controversy, Keane is surely No 1. Gerrard? For a little while at least, he has created his own world – one he rules absolutely.

Re route Anfield road through the top end of the park, redevelop the Anny Road stand, and then start on the Main Stand, with all the corporate facilities they need. Although, the way the game is going those corporate boxes are going to be empty. 55/60,000 is more than enough.

Simply put; cautious approach, slow tempo, poor movement and lack of flair. Without inspiration from Gerrard or Torres, we're an average, functioning system. 5 years in the job, a shedload spent, and still no genuine class wide or creative players.

I wouldn't criticise any forward player under Benitez too harshly. We just don't play to their strengths and the emphasis is on control not creating. At Spurs Keane played in a more aggressive team, who created chance after chance, so he didn't have to be be so precise.

It's cult hero syndrome. See also Meijer, Biscan, etc. Players who are popular for anything but their talent. Sign of just how low our standards are these days. You certainly wouldn't find anyone like that in the mancs' team.

Only Benitez could ruin a top player like Keane.

He's awful.

Can't we just get back whatever we've paid upfront and cancel the remaining installments? Might aswell sell him if he's going to be frozen out. Babel and Kuyt can cover for Torres.