cuppatea

That doesn't mean they'll breeze through again, different teams bring different challengers, also the gap in football is narrowing at international level. You are always going to get one whipping boy in each group but the rest are more than capable of taking points off the so called big boys at home, look at the results some achieved during the last qualifying stages for Euro 2016. 

 

England have Slovakia, Scotland, Slovenia, Lithuania and Malta. They should qualify, but those top 3 teams are all capable of an upset, especially Scotland who will up their game by 100%. 

Those teams have much worse players than England and managers no better (probably much worse) than Allardyce.

I'm not convinced managers matter as much English football fans like to think anyway (the cult of manager certainly doesn't seem to be as strong in Spain, for example).

The Champions League has more in common with international football than domestic leagues and recent winners include:

Zidane - 6 months into his managerial career

Enrique - Whose managerial career was going nowhere until he got the Barca job off the back of his playing career and then promptly won the treble

Di Matteo - Who couldn't get a job managing my local Tesco at this point

And then you had Avram Grant being a penalty shootout from winning it as well.

If Allardyce can get the players performing to anywhere close to their ability and with any semblance of cohesion at a major tournament then he'll do fine, given how low expectations are right now.

Well not exactly, unless you think qualification is unnecessary.

They breezed through qualification with a perfect record under Hodgson, who is shitter than Allardyce.

I can't stand the cunt but his job, primarily, is to get 11 English players performing reasonably well together for a handful of games every 2 years. A cabinet full of trophies isn't a pre-requisite for that, nor is being a tactical genius.

It shows why players are so desperate to come over here if winning player of the year and captaining your side to the title in the Eredivisie gets you a £14.5m move to Newcastle and only occasionally playing well and getting relegated from the Premier League gets you a £25m move to Liverpool.

Fucking abysmal.

We hear about genuine transfer stories when the club briefs the local press.

The only chance the shite that fills up the Echo's transfer gossip column (like Medel to Liverpool or Allen to Man United) has of being right is if whichever cunt made it up got lucky on a guess.

Not going to pretend I've seen him play (because why the fuck would any Liverpool fan be watching Borussia Monchengladbach games last season?) but the impression I get from reading up on Dahoud is that he's a highly promising youngster with a lot of growing still to do, who probably isn't ready for a big move yet. That doesn't exactly line up with the views our fans put forward of this absolute world beater who will walk into our team and instantly transform the midfield.

If people on here still have reservations about Emre Can, who just started in midfield for Germany in a Euros semi final, is a regular in their squad and was captaining the U21's before that, where does all the faith in a young lad who is only just breaking into their U21 side come from?

Not that I think there's a shred of truth in the Talisca rumours but the Benfica fans seem to think he's too shit for their team, never mind ours.

The success rate of players moving from Serie A to the top 3 leagues in recent years has been  absolutely appalling. Long may it continue.

It's comforting to know that even after years of abject mediocrity, our name still carries enough weight to be used so regularly by bullshitters looking to sell their shit rag papers or get clicks on their shit rag websites.

Not arsed about pulling out of the race to sign Gotze but the "happy with his attacking options" bit doesn't fill me with confidence.

Watched it this morning before work. I'm the first to criticise when the show falls below the high standards it has set in previous seasons (as it often has in this one) but that was fantastic. I don't think any episode has progressed the plot more. Can't wait to see the ramifications next season.

It had never occurred to me that the many people I had seen with no interest in politics, no knowledge of any of the issues or ramifications and no thought beyond "getting rid of the fucking Muslims" would actually go out and vote. I went to bed last night confident we'd stay and was shocked when I saw the result in the morning.

C'mon lad, you might as well post the full article, rather than omitting the last line.

Liverpool have been linked with long-term target Martin Odegaard, whose Real Madrid signing has been described as a ‘public relations exercise’.

Norwegian Odegaard was once one of Europe’s most coveted youngsters, with Real eventually beating Liverpool, Ajax and a number of other elite clubs to the then-16-year-old’s signature.

The teenager had been pictured visiting Liverpool’s Melwood training ground before his move from Stromgodset, with Odegaard claiming he was a life-long Reds fan.

Although his eventual arrival at Real was met with much fanfare and excitement, he has endured a difficult time, making only one first-team appearance, and struggling to have an enduring impact at youth levels.

Writing in his latest autobiography, Carlo Ancelotti, who was manager of the Spanish side at the time of the signing, has described it as a ‘public relations exercise’.

‘When Florentino (Perez) buys a Norwegian footballer, you simply have to accept it,’ Ancelotti wrote in Quiet Leadership, as quoted in AS. ‘Furthermore, the president decided that he would play three games with the first team as a public relations exercise.

‘He could be the best player in the world, but I don’t care because he was not a player who I asked for. That signing was to do with PR.’

With Odegaard’s continued struggles in Madrid, Liverpool have emerged as contenders for his signature.

The Liverpool Echo report the latest rumours, which claim Jurgen Klopp is interested in the midfielder, and has made an initial enquiry for his services. The rumours come from Tribal Football who, it must be said, are hardly a reputable source.

http://www.football365.com/news/liverpool-linked-with-pr-exercise-odegaard

The battle was exciting but I thought they could have come up with a better way to resolve it than to use the exact same "oh look, they've lost... oh wait, here comes the cavalry to save the day!" method that decided the previous 2 major army battles in the show. Especially since going down that road required Jon to behave uncharacteristically like a an absolute fucking retard and jeopardise the lives of everyone he cares about, including the sister he had just vowed to protect.

Plenty, given there were reliable sources reporting his interest in managing us ever since he left Dortmund. Klopp was never a pipe dream because it was always apparent we were the correct club for him given his personality. Top players are a different story. There are about 10 other clubs who have more to offer than we do, whether it's higher wages, or a more attractive project or European football.

12 by my count. Can't see many players choosing us over a move to Barca, Real Madrid, Atletico, Man City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Man United, Spurs, Bayern, Dortmund, Juventus or PSG.

Cunt of a fixture list, that.

Information you could have gleaned from the past 3 weeks of gossip.

 

God bless ITK's

Not a fan of Melissa Reddy then? The likes of Tony Barrett, Ben Smith and Neil Jones seem to vouch for her.

The itks are saying we have agreed a fee while the reliable journos are saying we are not interested, Klopp has apparently stopped the leaks.We knew about Matip weeks before he signed, same with Grujic, known about Gotze for months and knew about Karius a few weeks before it happened.I love LFC fans logic.

Stopped what leaks? There haven't been transfer leaks coming out of Liverpool for years now. How these ITK-wannabe bullshitters on Twitter have any sort of following by this point is beyond me.

Shows what a dearth of decent number 9's there are these days when the best a club with the resources of Arsenal can do is Jamie Vardy.

At the end of season 1, Dany emerged from the flames, vowing to build a navy and lead a Dothraki army, with dragons, across the sea and to conquer Westeros. Here, 5 seasons and hours of screentime later, Dany emerges from the flames, vowing to build a navy and lead a Dothraki army, with dragons, across the sea to conquer Westeros. It's one of the slowest moving plotlines in TV history, which wouldn't be so bad if she wasn't such a spoilt, entitled, unlikeable cunt.

The Sam and Gilly storyline could, with minor dialogue and costume changes, slot straight into Emmerdale and not look at all out of place.

Arya's story has been a 30 second training montage stretched out to about an hour of screentime. Not to mention the 5-10 minutes spent showing a medieval-style play which even the characters in it think is shit.

I suppose we finally had some movement on the men in robes, with sticks, who emerged from nowhere to take over the kingdom, at least.

At this point, the show has become a mix of characters and plotlines I enjoy and those I must endure and sadly this particular episode concentrated heavily on the latter.

Thought that episode was utter wank. Wish they'd just fuck half the characters and storylines off. Starting with Sam and Gilly.

There a few managers who have won that and more in that period. We have one of them.

Klopp's "only" won 2 leagues and a domestic cup in his career. Mourinho has 2 leagues and 2 cups since leaving Inter.

We didn't win the league because of his total inability to sort out the defence. Champions do not concede 50 goals. That and his tactical naivety when it really mattered.

Slaughtering a bloke for coming just short of winning the league at a club which finished 8th in the seasons before and after he left is a bit fucking daft. It would be like calling Rafa the cunt who cost us the Champions League if we had lost the shootout in Istanbul.

Our worst players on the night were the two £30m+ Brazilian internationals, the young lad who starts regularly for Germany and the left back who already won the competition with Sevilla as one of their better players a few years ago. All of whom would breeze into the Sevilla side and in the case of Can, Coutinho and Firmino, be the most valuable, if not best player in the squad.