cuppatea

Dortmund were bottom of the Bundesliga at this point last season. We don't look too dissimilar from that.

It's a shame Coutinho stopped playing through balls, in favour of shooting every time he gets the ball within 25 yards of goal, because he used to be really good at them.

The entire team has to be built around either this player or that player was a point?

Two of Coutinho's five goals involved Benteke (the assist against Chelsea and the dummy against Palace), two were solo efforts from outside the box (which he attempts regularly with Benteke on the pitch) and one was a tap in after good build up without Benteke playing. There's no evidence to suggest Coutinho is a more potent goal threat without Benteke in the side. Who else is Benteke meant to be robbing of goals? Surely the myth that only he can prevent Firmino from looking like a world beater has been well and truly dispelled by now? And the best chance I can recall Lallana having this season was from the Benteke through ball against West Brom. His movement needs to improve and he looked shot of confidence yesterday but he's still our biggest goal threat outside of Sturridge and since the attack doesn't function without him, it's hard to pin all of the blame for it not functioning with him, on him.

Rodgers was getting slaughtered on here last season for missing out on top 4 with the same squad. The assumption was that only his incompetence prevented us from easily reaching that goal and that, with the same players, any half decent manager would have us cruising into the Champions League.

Wasn't Klopp getting slated last season for his continued faith in Weidenfeller in the Dortmund goal (who got fucked off out of the side as soon as Tuchel came in)?

I've hand picked players who have actually moved to top clubs in England for around the same money we paid for Lallana, since that is the discussion at hand. You've made a list of players who have never played in the Premier League, with no idea of how they'd perform here. Kondogbia was left out of the last France squad which included Schneiderlin, Cabaye and Moussa Sissoko in midfield. Draxler cost less than Firmino and was less than half the price of De Bruyne based on the performances of all three in the Bundesliga. Douglas Costa was at Shakhtar with Willian for years and considered by far the lesser of the two and Dyaba is starring in a league which has, almost without exception (Coutinho being the only one that immediately springs to mind), provided nothing but disastrous flops for English teams in the last decade or so. Just because players like Cuadrado, Javier Hernandez, Gervinho, Lamela, Kagawa, Dzeko, Salah, Firmino, old Evra, Schurrle, Baba Rahman, Darmian etc look like absolute world beaters in Serie A and the Bundesliga doesn't mean they're guaranteed to replicate those performances here. Again, if signing top class players for £25m was that easy then City, United, Chelsea and Arsenal would be doing it regularly and they're not.

I was dead against signing Lallana but £25m is "decent squad player" money at the top end of the Premier League. It typically gets you a Schneiderlin, a Fellaini, a Bony, a Soldado or a Cuadrado, none of whom are much/any better than Lallana. You're doing very well to get a top class player for that sort of money, which is why the top clubs spend two or three times that amount on such talent.

There are four and one of those are currently hovering above the relegation zone. Maybe you could make a case for Spurs being better but we essentially had to take the last two months of last season off in order for them to barely sneak above us and the manager was crucified for it. Given how rare it is for any of the current "big four" to underperform the way that Chelsea are this season, it'd be a big disappointment to miss out on top four.

It took a spectacular collapse for Spurs to barely pip us to 5th last season and that was with an (according to many on here) awful manager in charge. 4th shouldn't be beyond us when we have arguably the 5th best squad in the league (6th best at absolute worst) and one of the teams with a better one is currently hovering above the relegation zone.

Neil Atkinson's latest match review: I like him as a host but stick a keyboard in front of him and fuck me he doesn't half come out with some pretentious drivel.

Devastating fluid attack? We've looked good in attack twice this season. One of those games was played entirely on the counter and the other we were dreadful for 20 minutes until a bit of magic from Sturridge (and Allen) opened up the game. We've shown no aptitude this season for dealing with sides set up to defend, regardless of who has played up front.

Thought Allen was one of our better players yesterday. That isn't saying much, given how bad we were, and he wasn't great himself, but I thought he comfortably outperformed the likes of Lucas, Milner, Benteke and Firmino.

"He's winning 5-1, he's winning 5-1. Adam Lallana, he's winning 5-1"

"We fucking hate you"

The idea that Benteke is stifling our attack would carry more weight if it had been any good without him. Apart from the City match, in which we played almost exclusively on the counter against a team that left themselves incredibly vulnerable to it, we've been no more fluid without Benteke in the side and it would be hard to argue that the likes of Firmino, Lallana and Ibe carry anywhere near the same kind of goal threat.

We had 40% of the possession against City and killed them on the counter as they pushed forward and left their 3rd and 4th choice centre backs exposed and our front 3 with plenty of space to run into. Anyone expecting us to play the same way at home to a midtable French side (or most of the sides that are coming to Anfield looking for a draw), or blaming Benteke for us not doing so, is a clueless mong.

Grinch's nan could have scored that. And the overhead against Man United.

Amir Zaki, Kenwyne Jones, Andy Carroll, Michael Ricketts etc... Barely a season goes by without some bang average striker performing massively above his station in the Premier League. Anyone buying Vardy now for four or five times what they could have got him for a few months ago needs their head checking.

£20m+ for a 28 year old who was worth £5m four months ago and will be worth £5m again when his form normalises. Fuck that.

Coutinho Firmino Can

The irony of you telling anyone to stop chatting shit... I don't think I've ever claimed Arsenal massively outspend us. I might have said they spend more than us on wages and prior to this summer were spending more than us on transfers but that's about it.

It's not so much that we're shit at it (since none of the teams above us it are doing it any better than we are), it's that our fans expect us to consistently do what we did with Coutinho and Suarez, by signing world class £30-80m players for less than a third of that price. The players who are legitimately worth £15-20m are the ones our fans moan like fuck about not being good enough.

I'm not blaming her (except for acting like a massive cunt), I'm blaming the UFC and the media for hyping her as the greatest female athlete of all time, based on her dominating an incredibly shallow talent pool in a new sport, severely lacking in competition.