deacon

Kirkland

Josemi

Tanner

Pellegrino

Konchesky

Nunez

Spearing

Poulsen (his mistake for that goal by Napoli was the most embarrassing thing I've seen in a Liverpool shirt)

Jovanovic

Cole

Diouf

Long term member, infrequent poster.

Fugitive, could you change your signature? Not only does it make you look like a cunt, unless you're trying to be clever, which i doubt, but it's also rather offensive.

Cheers

A comparison to the shadow line? I'm going to check it out

Let's be honest, once we lost Lucas to injury last season, we were pretty awful. I can't remember too many matches since then when we were the better side.

funny that because I know quite a few people who support other teams & they think Lucas, Suarez & Agger are our main outstanding players (obv Gerrard too but a prior to Euro 2012 discussion brought up the notion that Gerrard's recent injuries could take their toll) I know a United ST holder who is begrudgingly really impressed with him & would have him over any United midfielder.

 

Its fucking great to see him back training. Class player & a future captain.

 

& IMO he is the best defensive midfielder in the PL. He is certainly the most complete one. Tiote is the only one that comes close to him

And its not even close. To call Lucas a defensive midfielder is unfair to him, he's more than that. Fingers crossed he comes back the same player. He's one of the best central midfielders in the league, I'd say only Modric and Toure are better than him.

I've watched the first three episodes of Oz and I'm struggling to get into it. It's just a bit dull really. And the narrator gets on my tits. Does it get better?

Yes, much better. As I recall, the first series was really weak, it then gets pretty good, but the final series was rather ridiculous.

Oz is no classic and its dated pretty badly, but its very gritty and was groundbreaking. I think David Simon said that without oz there wouldn't have been the wire.

Woods absolutely can still win. Like mickelson, he is capable of winning even when he's dreadful off the tee as his short game is so good. If he gets hot with the putter, he can put himself back into contention.

How anyone can dislike westwood is beyond me. Loyal to chandler, gracious in victory and defeat. He's just a class act with a personality. I'd love to see him or Garcia win it, they deserve to given how well they strike the ball. Difference between them and woods and mickelson is the latter have balls of steel when it comoes to those 10 feet putts.

If we are talking about cunts, look no further than Ian poulter. Absolute prick. Bubba Watson is a weasel too.

He's an absolute pussy. Can't tackle, press, pass the ball forwards, beat a man or shoot the ball.

No redeeming features and happy to hide on the pitch. A huge disappointment, he doesn't have the cojones to be a player for Liverpool.

Racist abuse is totally wrong and unacceptable but I would have thought that most black players get a bit of abuse every now and again from fuck wits in the crowd etc. Lots of players get abuse for all sorts of reasons. I was suprised by Adeyemis reaction to whatever was said - it was like he'd never been called a name or slagged off before. Professional footballers of all colours and races need to have thick skin - Adeyemi needs to toughen up and stop acting like a fuckin upset 7yr old.

This is particularly idiotic and embarrassing. No form of abuse with reference to a person's ethnicity is ever acceptable or excusable.

I must be missing something here, as, whilst accepting he's young, all I see is a player who disappears for large parts of the game, rarely moves the ball forward and completely wimps out of tackles.

I'd love to watch a game with a Henderson fan, who can point out the encouraging things he does, as I'm completely missing them.

I know he hit the post in the Fulham game, but I honestly can't recall anything else in that game where he stood out.

The Reggie Miller one is brilliant. There are so many brilliant moments in that documentary, but my two favourites are the 8 point turnaround and the constant winding up of John Starks.

I've seen a few of those documentaries and in my opinion the best is The Best That Never Was, which is about a college football player called Marcus Dupree. It's pretty moving, I'd really recommend it.

Love the NBA. Not sure about the Knicks though. When Felton's your second best player, that's a worry! The top 4 in the East will tuck up any of the rest, as much as I've love to see the Heat make a first round exit.

I'd love to see the Spurs win it again this year. Got to love Tim Duncan. When you have had Carmello, Bosh and Lebron disrespect their teams and fans, courting public attention, acting like mugs, it's great to see such an all time great act with humility and show respect.

It's Chamakh.

I just got home and watched the recording. (Thanks you Fox Soccer Channel). I will give my opinion and then go back and see what others have written.

 

First off, it was a great game. We have played some stale, rubbish football - for much of the season as it happens. However, today was not one of those days. We played quite well - not as world beaters, but we created plenty against a good Spurs side at White Hart Lane - though unfortunately for us, Spurs played a little better.

 

I would say the crucial difference in the match was our substitution. When N'gog went off we needed another attacking player to come on. Instead, Hodgson brought on Aurelio. This served to hand the initiative to Spurs and with 20 minutes to go, I suspected it would lead to our defeat. And sure enough, Spurs won.

 

Nando was through a couple of times, and with an earlier shot he might well have scored at least one of them. But he seemed to hesitate and the defender got a last ditch tackel in both time. Maxi also had a good effort that just missed, and Meireles had a superb left footed shot (he is a proper two-footed player, with great stamina) that was a whisker wide.

 

So we had chances, but so did Spurs.

 

Lennon's winner at the end was predictable. Spurs were building up a head of steam. They also came from behind to beat Arsenal, so there is more resilience in their side than in years gone by (besides the obvious increase in quality too).

 

Even so, there have been plenty of games to be frustrated by this season, where we just didn't look like a team. Today we did well, even though we lost. We pressed. We played hard. With better finishing we could have had another couple.

 

I think a score draw would have been the fairest result.

 

But the crucial mistake, the biggest tactical mistake of the whole game, to my eyes at least, was the handing of the initiative to Spurs with a defensive substitution. In a one off game I think fairness would be to give the manager a break, shrug it off, and move on.

 

But when his away record is as dire as it is, that sort of thing just does not do him any favours.

Watch the last 20 minutes again. Maxi moved to Kuyt's position and Kuyt played up front. No problem with that decision at all. I thought we played very well in patches today and don't see how Hodgson can take any criticism here. Had Torres and Maxi taken their chances, it'd have been game over. You can't blame the manager for that.

Konchesky clearly isn't good enough and whilst Ngog is going to be a good player, he's a little too lightweight. Other than those 2, and Kuyt pretty much ending every move in which he received the ball, I was pretty pleased today.

Merieles is going to be a cracking player for us, he is class on the ball, and seems to be a good character on the pitch.

Spearing's never going to make it here, he's just not good enough. His positioning last night was very poor and he gave the ball away all too frequently.

We don't know all of the facts or have seen any of the documents and it's impossible for a lawyer to rate the likeliness of success without having done so.

The fact that G&H have apparantly submitted an injunction to prevent the sale, alongside Broughton's confidence in the validity of his actions, would suggest there are merits to both sides of the argument. Broughton's happiness to now talk following months of silence would suggest he's trying to force the issue, apply pressure and strike a hammer blow before the supposed court order next week.

One thing to note however is that Broughton has been advised by Slaughter and May, who are the most respected company law firm in the City, and he seemed supremely confident in the validity of his actions.

Whilst G&H are desperate men who'll resort to any measure to protect themselves, Broughton won't have stuck his neck out like this unless he was very confident he is acting correctly, as he has a reputation to lose.

For that reason I'm pretty confident the sale will go through.

I think the final episode was a bit of a muddle and a huge disappointment. There were some great performances in there, such as those by Stephen Graham, Lol and her dad, but it just didn't seem to fit together.

I think its odd that this and the film have generated far more praise and publicity for Shane Meadows when Dead Mans Shoes and a Room for Romeo Brass are superior films.

I don't think you can say that Arsenal played with wingers. I'm not old enough to remember the Liverpool side of the late 80s, but that Arsenal side from 2002-2004 have played the best football I've ever seen, and their "wide" midfielders were Pires and Ljunjberg.

It's more about quick passing than width, which we're terrible at currently, because players like Cole and Kuyt take 5 touches on the ball when they should be taking 2 or 3, allowing defenders to get in shape to mark Torres.

Meireles appears to look to move the ball quickly, which is why I can't understand why he doesn't play deeper, allowing Gerrard to play further up the pitch, which is his best position.

Tennant ended up being better on his own, but this lad looks like he's just been dropped off from Eton.

 

Tennant would of thrived under Moffat though.

I know the lad. He's mates with my brother and I'm mates with the lads he lived with before he got this job. A drop off from Eton he most certainly isn't. He's a lovely bloke and I hope he does well in this.

As Craig Burley said last night, and Lee Dixon has said a few times on MOTD2, our failure to move the ball quickly makes it very difficult to get the ball to Torres and Gerrard in space. I don't know how much this comes from a lack of movement elsewhere, but it was very noticeable when Aquilani came on that we had a player in the middle who was confident in making a pass without taking a touch first.

Secondly, as Slaven Bilic pointed out on MOTD2 after the Man City game (very refreshing to hear a pundit talk tactics for a change), a 4-2-3-1 formation only really works if your full backs overlap and help create space for the midfielders.

With Johnson and Aurelio out and Insua generally being clearly not good enough, our paucity of full back quality has had a detrimental affect on our set up.

Um, there is a better player in the league than Kobe - Lebron.

Those who say that basketball is just a scoring contest in which one side scores, followed by the other side scoring, are ignorant fools. It's such a tactical game. In fact, I read somewhere that Rafa is a huge fan of basketball and his interest has helped him in developing football tactics.

Anyone who has watched the game will also notice that sides tend to score in streaks. Orlando's performance in game 2 is a good example of this. They were regularly down in double figures then get hot with the 3 and be back in the game in no time.

You were talking about Ben Gordon - another English player in the NBA is Pops Mensah Bonsu. I don't know if Toronto have signed him but he was on trial there at the end of the regular season and did ok.

What do you reckon to the 2 conference finals? I think they're both going to 7 games, but it's just so hard to call. Orlando is a horrible match-up for Cleveland and unless Mo Williams improves upon his woeful FG%, I think Orlando are going through.

If we're talking about wimps or weasel-like players, there's none worse than Varejao. A right snidey little cheat of a player, who I'd want to punch if I was playing against him. The basketball equivalent of Ronaldo or Carvalho.

Snoop is the most fucking annoying character in any show, ever!

You're forgetting Ziggy.

Some people like Landsman, he really annoys me.

Balenthia and by some distance.

 

I'm being tediously repetitive now, but last night is in danger of becoming some sort of albatross around our necks: Chelsea were not especially brilliant. They were just a very good side playing good football, but that is not anything special in itself. The result was so emphatic because we were so lacklustre and shite. For some reason we totally abandoned the tempo and aggression we've been playing with and consequently got twatted. If we'd just snapped into some tackles, closed down the nearest opponent and shown for the man on the ball more vigorously when we had it, there'd have been a different result.

Completely agree. It wasn't like they kept the ball for long spells or completed long passing moves. As you say, they won most of the second balls and Lucas and Xabi couldn't live with their physical and mobile central midfield.

Chelsea in 2005 shouldn't be on this thread. If I remember correctly, Drogba tore Hyypia a new one in that match, but other than that it was close. It was 1-2 for ages and pretty much the whole of the second half the ball was in their half of the pitch.

Barca were awesome in the second half in of 2001-2002 season, but the Valencia match in the 2002-2003 season was the most comprehensive performance by an away side I've seen. Valencia dominated in all aspects from the first minute to last.

Domestically, Arsenal in 2003, when Heskey scored the last minute equaliser. No idea how Arsenal didn't win that one. God they were a good side circa 2002-2004.