Saintslfc13

I agree with the overall assessment and those two players. That said I really want us to put in a competitive bid for Lucas Moura. If we got Moura, Hazard, and Cavani I think we'll be looking amazing this time next season. A DM as cover would be nice but I'm not so sure it's a priority. We'll have to see how Lucas looks when he recovers.

Oh I do agree it's entirely possible but City seem to have even more resources than Chelsea, and have got that airways deal that basically circumvents the fair play laws (has anything been brought out about if that's going to be allowed to happen or not? Haven't seen anything myself). That coupled with the fact that their current squad is more talented while still younger than Chelsea's has me feeling Mourinho would go there first if both jobs were on the table. I actually think they would pay him more too. In short, why go somewhere where you might be fucked by the owner when you can go somewhere else offering similar if not larger amounts of a money and an owner that really doesn't give a shit as long as you have the team performing well?

I think he's nailed on for City if Mancini can't get them to the title. I doubt United sack slur, and they're not exactly huge spenders anyway I'd say, certainly not up there with the likes of the other two. I also think he'd rather deal with just about any other rich person besides Abramovich again. It's all well and good to say there isn't a problem between but it's not the same as suggesting you'd like to work for man again. Arry for england and roy for tottenham is what I'd like to see, although moyes is probably the more likely for the latter.

Has he done that before? Never seen the problem with that to be honest though, if you don't believe the governments account and think you have evidence to the contrary why not speak up about it? It's not like governments in the past have proven incapable of being lying and/or corrupt bastards is it? Not saying that's the case with 9/11 but still the way some people act like it's blasphemy to consider it is a bit over the top for me. 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).

I understand your concern but if he's going to go on to be the player we all want him to for us then he's going to have to get used to this sort of treatment from the Mancs. Rooney's comment shows they're shit scared of him, and Suarez tore Evra a new one in the reverse fixture where this whole nonsense started. It's up to Kenny to decide the ultimate course of action but for me he needs to just have a word with, explain to him what's going to happen, and tell him to think before he reacts in terms of fouls and words said to him by players or the crowd.

I'd go with a 4-3-3, Back 5 of the usual suspects with Enrique back in for Kelly if possible. Midfield with Spearing Holding, Gerrard and Henderson in front of him. Then a front 3 of Suarez right, Carroll middle, and Bellamy left. Alternative we could start Suarez on the left with Kuyt in on the right and then if we need a goal when Kenny is ready to use a sub change either one with Bellamy. If it's Kuyt then switch Suarez to the right and if it's Suarez then Bellamy slots in rather perfectly. We really need to be attacking these from the off, their defense and their keeper are very suspect. I can see us dominating the game fully if we go for it. Focus on possession and creating chances and we essentially defend by attacking. Our back 5 would be solid and fast enough to stop their odd counter attack. Whoever we have hold needs to keep Rooney from creating havoc and we pretty much nullify their attack anyway. Also to answer the OP, yes he should go. Whether he should start or not is up to Kenny but I gave my opinion above, he should definitely travel though. Especially if we're going to continue to insist (rightly so in my opinion) that the ban was on false pretenses anyway.

Agreed on the last sentence. Though I think the first one is blaming Andy for Downing not being up to scratch. One is a winger, expected to be able to dribble the ball well, pass the ball, put in good crosses, and occasionally provide a goal threat. The other is a target man striker, the sort of striker who relies on good service from someone like Downing. In short he isn't Suarez who can take the ball and beat 3-4 people, nor is he Torres who was capable of taking a good pass and running at pace through the defense, with the occasional brilliant turn for a shot. Andy is the type of striker who relies mostly on those around him, he can help that with his positioning, movement, and work rate at the moment, and over time he can become a player that can power past others and outpace them over short distances but that requires more work and dedication on his own part. Even if he develops into that he'll still need good service to be effective. For me, that service has been lacking for the most part this season. In the few games we've seen it, Andy has been pretty good, though in the two in recent ones Downing wasn't really one of the people providing that service. That said, I think it's a mental thing, in a sense he's trying to hard and needs to just relax and let himself play his game rather than trying to beat people in ways that he seemingly can't beat them. I hope Downing comes good but I think by the summer, especially if we make 4th or better, he'll find himself a squad player more so than a regular starter and we'll be better off for it.

So is the "season ticket" what is being talked about here? Also do you take USD?

He apparently bought in to his own hype and didn't realize that for all his talent, if his confidence is shot, he's fucked. Chelsea don't play to his strengths, and he doesn't have the standing there that he had here at one point. He's been turned on by their plastic support and has taken a nosedive. The proverbial "arm around the shoulder" that Rafa was always criticized for not having, isn't there. To be fair I'm not sure that "arm" even came from Rafa, but it did come from his fellow Liverpool players and our support. Rafa simply built a team centered on getting Him and Gerrard into the best positions to link up and create a goal or chances at goal. When I think about it that's probably why we often had poor results against teams who would park the bus against us, the space wouldn't be there for Torres to exploit like he could against the teams who had a go, so we needed more trickery. Kenny and Comolli seemed to have identified that when taking over so we went out and got Suarez who can beat players and either score himself or had he stayed lay the ball off to Torres. Then he acted like a spoiled cunt of child turning on the very people who made him what he was. Had he stayed here til at least the summer, the players, fans, and manager would've backed him. In short, he left a club who had just exited a period of turmoil for a club that's in a constant state of turmoil do to their owners quick trigger in firing managers and replacing players. It was a rash decision, and it has so far ended up costing him his standing as one of if not the best striker in the world. Rash decisions tend to do that, to make an analogy it's why the best warrior is not always the best general.

Interesting stat that, although it was pretty clear Rafa built the team around him and Gerrard. Oh well, unless he comes back here I could give a fuck about him to be honest, and since the chances of that happening are unlikely to say the least, that's the end of it for me.

I think Lucas does exactly what you described. He breaks up the play and then quickly and efficiently passes the ball to the best option provided by a teammate and then makes him himself available for a return ball. Lucas also makes a lot of well-timed intelligent runs though they do tend to be ignored. I think eventually he'll start scoring himself a few goals. I guess to say it simple, I'm not sure who is out there and available that would be a significant enough upgrade on what Lucas is now for us. Theoretically they'd also need to match his potential for further improvement, whilst not being overpriced. That's why, for me, I think the priorities are out wide. Hopefully we can find at least one winger that is pacy, tricky and relatively unselfish but capable of scoring as well, preferably we'd upgrade on both sides of midfield. A striker is also needed, especially if we let Dirk go in the summer as seems to be expected. Only after that would I want us to look at adding another defensive midfielder as cover for or to potentially partner Lucas in games where two DM's might be deemed necessary.

I don't think Lucas needs to be improved upon. He's not the flashiest player granted but he does his job and is actually pretty versatile. He has the potential to develop into a world class player and I think as long as he recovers well from his injury we need to keep giving him games. Honestly I think he's at least as good as Masch was for us. Not as fast and doesn't make the epic sliding tackles as often but that's usually because he doesn't have to and can just win the ball outright without going to ground do to positioning and game intelligence. Think our targets in the summer should be mainly attacking. I wouldn't be surprised to see another DM brought in but I don't think it's as high up on the priority list as better attackers (particularly wide attackers) are.

Have to say, after the first half I was a bit nervous. We could have killed the game early but we didn't. Then I went to work. Busy as fuck today it was, so I couldn't keep up with the game via the internet (As far as I know there isn't an app to listen to Premiership games on my iPhone, any help would be appreciated but I'm not sure it exists) Got home, watched the second half and was thoroughly pleased. Adam stepped it up, Spearing was exactly what we needed out of him, and the forwards/strikers each did there jobs. Glad Carroll got on the scoresheet and it's just as well nice to see Bellamy and Dirk continue their form. Personally I'm hoping for a midfield consisting of Spearing at DM and Adam and Gerrard at the two forward CM positions on monday. Wouldn't be too displeased with Henderson in place of Gerrard (in the even he can't play) or Adam but I'd prefer Adam so long as spearing is there to be the DM. Front three for me would be (left to right) Bellamy, Carroll, Suarez. I could see Suarez feature as a sub however given the long layoff in which case it would have to be Drik for me but if anyone should make way from the off it's probably Carroll. Thing is though with his goal I'd rather him start and see if he can push on from this.

It's not so much that it's fucked but it is a "seller's market" in January really. Clubs have to blow others away with an offer for one of their players in the middle of the season. Then you have a few clubs like Man City who are more than capable and willing to pay their outcast players not to play for other teams at this time rather than sell them and see them potentially come back and bite them in the ass. The usual mid-table to bottom-level clubs want to keep their better players to either fight off relegation or ensure they don't end up in a relegation battle. With a few of those aspiring for a Europa League spot. It also seems most players prefer to move in the summer probably because they have a full pre-season that way to get settled in with their new club, even the ones who's off-season is now, and the clubs are happy to oblige that idea generally for whatever reason.

Yea her show went off air so she started her own network called OWN which stands for... Oprah Winfrey Network. A few Liverbirds on that with a shot or two of Gerrard and Lebron volunteering at a soup kitchen and the vast majority of America will be well on their way to being Liverpool consumers. I say consumers because I doubt the majority of those they entice to purchase thing would actually take the time to learn anything about Liverpool FC or follow us on TV, but they will tune in when we're on their local fox affiliate on tape delay.

I could see them spending big, especially if we offload Carroll like people seem to be suggesting. I'd like to see us keep Carroll and sign a striker but if it's Carroll out and that money helped us get someone like Cavani then how can't you be happy about that? Of course until someone actually links to this supposed photo and the deal goes through it's all bullshit speculation.

Very good player when he wants to be, I could see him wanting to stick it the mancs so I could see him coming here and putting himself in the shop window. Thing is he's a cunt 24/7, and I don't know that I like the idea of someone with his attitude around any of our squad really. It's a massive gamble really, it could pay off but then with Suarez coming back, Bellamy on current form and both Andy and Kuyt having more than decent performances we could keep the money and gamble with our own lot.

lol fair enough and I'm still working on it don't worry. It's Jack Daniels though, not a fan of the sour mash myself but it'll have to do, I much prefer Jameson.

My friend I'm about a 3rd of the way through a bottle of whiskey, so forgive if I'm wrong, but the intention wasn't to bring Rafa into it and I figured someone would have a problem with that part of it. I liked Rafa but I love Kenny, and I'd like to see Kenny take this club as far as is possible. The point was that the Media called for Rafa the foreigner's head, whilst championing an inferior englishman in roy fucking hodgson to take the reins at Liverpool. I think we can all agree that Rafa was a far more qualified and better manager than Roy Hodgson, yet because he was foreign was treated like shit by the media. It fits in nicely with the current situation, because Suarez is in fact foreign and being shit upon, whilst the englishman Terry isn't really commented upon. At the end of the day though if that one comment really takes away from the point of my post for you then oh well.

I thought the PC crowd had gone overboard here in the states but England have apparently taken it to a whole new level. The bottom line is this: Is racism bad? of course. Should we encourage racism? Of course not. Should acts of violence directed at another individual do to race (or any reason other than self-defense for that matter) be prosecuted to the full extent of the law? Yes, and swiftly. Should verbal insults or expressional gestures be a crime? No, not in a million years. Some people are cunts, that's just how it works on this planet and others still are racist cunts, as long as said cunts don't try to cause physical harm to the life and well-being of another human well then they're entitled to their bigoted (in terms of the racist cunts) or otherwise cuntish opinion. The sheer hypocrisy of the english media is blatantly racist or perhaps I should say xenophobic. Here is Luis Suarez, uruguayan international and newcomer to England saying "negro" (that's pronounced neh-grow in case anyone didn't know)or "negrito", a word that means literally black or little black man (negrito also has other more affectionate connotations and both words can also be taken as dark rather than black in terms of coloration of the skin). Neither of those two words are ever taken offensively unless preceded by an offensive word in the context of "latin american" culture. He's spoke to Evra in a language Evra claims to be fluent in, yet Evra fails to acknowledge the differences between the spanish word for black and the english word negro, which in and of itself used to be a normal everyday word that wasn't considered offensive like the word n****r which means, at least in the american context, ignorant. Now I'm not uruguayan but I am an American-Mexican (American comes first because I was born in America, the heritages are equal as far as I'm concerned) that is my father is Mexican and my mother is a white American. In Mexican spanish the word for "n****r" is a completely different word than "negro or negrito", it also starts with a "M" and ends with a "té". I would suspect it's the same in Uruguayan spanish, the word itself might be different but it certainly isn't "negro" or "negrito" Yet the FA found him guilty so he's racist and because we support Suarez all of us Liverpool supporters are racist too. Then we have the case of John Terry, england international and former captain, accused of calling Anton Ferdinand a "black cunt". Now whether Anton Ferdinand is a cunt or not is debatable but seeing as he's Rio's brother, I'd say that's probably a fair assessment because generally brothers have more similarities than they'd like and Rio can be described as a cunt. However by adding "black" before "cunt", John Terry made that a racial statement, it implies (whether intentional or through stupidity) that him being black has something to do with him being a cunt. Yet Chelsea and their supporters have not been taken to task over this, certainly not to the extent that Liverpool and our own supporters have been. Nor has John Terry been ridiculed anywhere near the amount Suarez has. This is supposedly because it's all a "police investigation" and the media and FA wouldn't want to interfere with one of them. With all that being said and pointed out it is quite clear that making an example was the FA and the media's primary goal and they chose to do that with "dirty foreigner" Suarez and Liverpool rather than the "noble Englishman" John Terry, you know that same guy that fucked his teammates wife and then was pictured holding his teammates kid. The conclusion is simple: Evra, Ferguson, and the rest of that horrid club are all cunts who saw an opportunity to take a shot at Liverpool and did it, that's fair enough really, well played and it's not even their fault it worked. The real racists in this equation however are the FA and the English media, singling out the foreigner and those who back him whilst quietly refusing to comment on one of their own in the case of Terry. If the FA actually gave a fuck about racism they would have banned Terry too, and the media would at least cover both stories equally and without bias. From what I know, I can't say they've done that. As far as the man in the photo goes, if the club investigate properly, without influence from the FA or the english media (after all the english media is, according to broughton, why we fired Rafa and hired Hodgson), and decide it was indeed a racist gesture and to subsequently ban the man for life than I'm okay with that. A private club has all the right to ban someone from their establishment as far as I'm concerned. If upon investigation they find the gesture to be of the non-racist variety then that's fine too. The only thing I wouldn't be okay with is the club pandering to the same people who try to fuck us over every chance they get.

It's pretty obvious that you can't stay stagnant as a club these days. Even Barcelona buy players when they win things. Won their league, albeit failed to win the champs league so they bought masch for their bench. Won their league and the champs league so they bought fabregas for their bench. Moratti promised things to Rafa and then went back on his promise, so he spoke out about it. Is speaking out the best thing? Probably not, but considering the shit he was just put through by our cunt owners prior him leaving it's hardly surprising. It was clearly a mistake to let him go in favor of Roy fucking Hodgson, If we had gotten a Pellegrini or someone even remotely comparable to Rafa in terms of results or potential for results then fine, as it was we took Hodgson because the media pushed the idea that an Englishman would right the ship at England's #1 club, and a bunch of moron's including the cunts making the decisions bought into that full stop.

If Cavani is available and we're not doing whatever we can to get him, including having Suarez phone him up every chance he can get then I really don't know what's going on...

I don't care who we sign as long as they're intelligent footballers. I don't mean smart with money or smart as in capable of doing something arguably more important than playing football. I mean people who are smart when playing football. We need at least one of those and a player capable of finishing off any chances we create. That will take the pressure of Andy should we choose to keep him and would drastically improve our chances of moving up in the league.

Think the things at the end are the most important part of the problem. There's a saying that I'm sure you've heard before that a lot of coaches use here: "Hard work beats talent when talent don't work hard". Now, his talent appears to be questionable but he was doing quite well at Newcastle so we can probably assume that some form of talent is there. However, his desire and attitude, albeit improved lately seem to be the main faults in his game. He needs to put in the time and effort to get into better shape, learn the tactics and apply himself to fitting in to those tactics. He can be a big asset if he does that, but it isn't going to happen when he's the "worst trainer" as Pepe said. I also think his lack of heading prowess is more to do with the service he is getting than him not being able to head the ball. When he gets a good cross whether from open play or a set piece his headers are always dangerous and he would have scored a fair few barring some excellent goalkeeping displays. Case in point is Enrique and someone else highlighted it on the match thread the yesterday, when it looks like he should put a cross in he sits on the ball and takes one or two too many touches. When it looks like he shouldn't put the cross in because no one is really in there save a double marked Andy or Kuyt he fires one in. They also tend to be too high for either of them to get to anyway. Downing was bought to provide service but he's another one who is always trying to do too much from out wide rather than put a cross in when the time is right. Seems to me we've bought quite a few slow thinkers when we really need someone who is a quick thinker and if there's nothing on will take the simple option rather than trying to beat someone and getting himself trapped and losing possession. At the moment our played capable of beating people at will is suspended. One of our quick thinking midfielders has a busted knee and won't be done til the end, he's also one of the few who seem capable of making an intelligent run from midfield without the ball, and the other one is Gerrard who is being deployed next to someone he has to cover rather than someone who will cover for him. It's getting to the point where we might need to draw up a footballing test to see if the players we might sign have the logical reasoning required to play the system we want to play.

I know this isn't a politics board but the reason SOPA is such a problem is because it doesn't accurately define who or what sites are constituted as piracy sites. It also allows the US Government to shut down any rogue website. This means that any site to which a copyrighted link is posted on could be shut down indefinitely. Rogue websites could also include sites that speak out against the government and their actions. In a sense it's a direct insult to their free-speech and it doesn't say they'll only prosecute US hosted sites but all sites across the internet. Theoretically they could shut down a website based in England or Germany do to SOPA and the way it's worded. I do agree with just about everything else you've said.