DonaldDonaldson

Playing Carragher is basically crippling the team, so why should he have any say? And on a wider note, no player should have any influence on who the next Manager should be.

:lol::lol: It's always handy to be fluid about your word definitions so you can easily avoid having to explain your viewpoint. Does this shit-football-is-ok-if-you-get-the-results approach fit in with 'The Liverpool Way' ?

1. Aquilani 2. Benayoun 3. Mascherano

Front line starters that have to go: 1. Kuyt. 2. Carragher. Has to be accompanied by a change in strategy: Maintain a much higher defensive line and press the ball when not in possession, pressure opponents into mistakes and see what happens.

"why do you think Carragher is regarded as one of the best defenders in the country?" I've already said that I'm not aware of this. I don't agree that he is one of the best defenders in the country. If it was the prevailing view then my answer would be: "Carragher is regarded as one of the best defenders in the country because most people are clueless", or something similar. "....and is a mainstay in our team?". As I've already said, we play in an ultra defensive formation, and he does a good job of shot-blocking in and around the penalty area, and general mopping up. Yet, how many credible title challanges has this (including the Houllier years at full back) yielded? Plus, he can always go running to his media stooge to have a sly moan if things are not going his way and get the carrapologists fired up. "If Jamie Carragher is not particularly strong, poor in the air and slow, then why has he been our first choice CB for six years now? Why have there been no attempts to drop and replace him? Why do you think he gets his game?" Again, suited to the ultra-defensive formation. Rafa tried to ease him out the frame into full back - remember Bascombe doing the hatchet job on Skrtl, histrionics on the pitch? Also, playing alongside a dominant player such as Sami Hypia masked Carragher's shortcomings to some extent. At the start of the season we played a more attacking game and the defence, with Carragher in particular, were all over the place. We were shipping far too many goals, Rafa bottled it and went back to the pack-the-defence method - happy days for Carragher.

Well why then did you even make an initial reply to a 'manic obsessive' in the first place, instead of just serenely sailing by? Cretin!

I was actually answering a specific point about a full-back vacating his defensive position. No matter how good a full-back is defensively, all that defensive skill will have no impact if said full-back is at the opponent's 18-yard box when the move breaks down and we get exposed at the back by a quick ball forward. It's just something that we will have to live with if we want to play a more attacking game.

There are two way to address this: 1. Ban Johnson (or any other full-back) from attacking. 2. Play defenders in the other defensive positions that are better suited to covering space when the full-back goes forward and the move breaks down leading to a loss of possession.

I'm not aware that Carragher is regarded as one of the best defenders in the country, but if he is I'd like his supporters to list exactly those attributes they admire so much. As I've said in previous posts, I concede that he is a good shot-blocker with courage, but's he's not particularly strong, so can't out-muscle opponents, he's well below average in the air for a centre-back so can't dominate aerially, and he's painfully slow so will be exposed by players with only moderate pace. We play in a ultra-defensive system (and did under Houllier), so he gets a lot of help from the team, to the detriment of our attacking ambitions because we are so deep. If we consistently played a more attacking game, which would inevitably lead to the defence being exposed further up the field on more occassions then Carragher's numerous shortcomings would be brought into sharper focus.

Translation: "I can't think of any points of substance to provide a counter-argument, so I'll just settle on a useless comment and wait for the rest of the carrapologists to swing by".

Seeing as you're a self-confessed carrapologists, how does continually hoofing the ball and having minimal footballing ability square with "The Liverpool Way"?

We can’t maintain a higher defensive line when Carragher is in the team, because he’d be liable to get sent off every game as he is so fucking slow. He got caught out in the first leg in the move that led to the goal, and he got a booking in the second leg for deliberately impeding Aguero when he (Aguero) would have been clean through on goal. If we play a high defensive line, squeezing the opposition, then it’s up to the defenders to be more independent. We were more attacking at the start of the season yet were shipping goals so the carrapologists started pointing their fingers at everybody else and screaming (just like Carragher) to be more ‘compact’ - a euphemism for “pack the defence around King Carra and just let him hoof away any loose balls in the box while showcasing those out-of-this-world ‘organisation skills’, i.e. let him shout and wave his arms about.

If Rafa doesn't get rid of Kuyt in the summer then he should be sacked. A truly terrible player; we're starting most games with fewer than eleven players when this abomination starts.

That's pretty much par for the course on City, especially with Aldridge, though he (Aldridge) has a tendency to only have pre-selected Gerrard and Carragher before the match has kicked off while regularly omitting Reina altogether. On the wider point of St John, like a lot of ex-players that missed out on the football gravy train, he's just bitter.

At least Ayala didn’t allow two clear cut heading opportunities to journeymen strikers, or laughably appeal for handball in the area which allowed an opponent to get in a post-hitting shot. :whistle: