The Guest

Sorry I didn't have the time to respond properly before. This post is a complete mess. Did you not watch any of last season? Literally any of it? The defence getting pushed back against garbage opposition. Lone striker getting isolated. Shite wingers not being able to produce any chances for the lone forward (their jobs made harder because of only one player to aim at. Long ball after long ball to the lone forward who tried to bring it down and hold it up but didn't have anyone within 40 yards of him. The 4231 with two heavily defensive midfielders pretty much creates fuck all. It relies on no game plan other than hoping you have a world class player to score a world class individual goal in every game or luck. The only positive is that you restrict the opposition and have a lot more of the ball which is only in your own half. Playing 442 doesn't force the opposition to play long ball football whatsoever. If anything it gives them more time on the ball in the middle of the pitch to pass it. You even say this yourself. The reason we are conceding so much at the moment is because neither Skrtel or Carragher are very good in the air and this has been massively exploited because our full backs just haven't coped this season at all whoever they have been. You could play 6 defensive midfielders and this would still happen. The formation this season has not been the problem at the back. The problem at the other end is creativity. Kuyt has been absolutely dreadful and Jova hasn't settled yet. Along with that Hodgson has largely stuck with Rafa's formation. The one time he was forced to drop it was against City which was the exact game he couldn't start playing with it. He needs to fuck Kuyt off now. He needs to move Johnson to the wing and play Kelly at full back. Put Gerrard and Meireles in centre mid with Ngog and Torres up front and stick with it. The defence will push up naturally. We need to start to remember how to create chances again and get the wingers getting to the byline regularly.

Strange I thought he did

No 442 doesnt have to be a more attacking formation but generally it is as you have two players by their goal rather than one. When you are comparing to 451 with two players being permanently positioned 10 yards away from the centre havlves it becomes even more laughable. I am not saying Hodgson is Wenger. I am saying he was seen as more offensive than Rafa when he was at Fulham. Time after time last season when Benitez was playing Lucas and Masch even playing Fabio Aurelio in centre mid away from home to Fiorentina we were crying out for Gerrard to play there and Rafa chose the negative option even when we were desperate for victories. He needed to go because he was flawed as the Liverpool manager. Yes he has proved he can be a very good manager, one of the best. Tactically brilliant sometimes. We all witnessed it. But in the end he was massively flawed and it was damaging the team. He was making absurd decisions game in game out. Decisions which the same people ignored are now demanding that Hodgson be sacked for. I am not happy with Hodgson he's made some terrible errors and his substitutions/tactics have been shocking. If things carry on then he should be shown the door. But that doesn't mean we should never have sacked Benitez either.

I was fucking stupidly lucky. I was up at about quarter to 9 and just loaded five tabs on the queue link and hammered f5 for an hour. Next minute it loaded and I got mine then the other four tabs loaded. I must have got about 25 tickets in the end throughout the day as that happened about 6 times.

So Fulham were never positive at all ever? Seems like a pretty ridiculous view to me. I wonder if you have ever watched them. Duff is quite a good winger and they have quite a few other offensive midfielders as well. He generally played two up front which whether you like it or not is more of attacking formation than we played in any game last season. What the fuck has how many games Atletico won got to do with with the sort of football Hodgson plays?

It's a "high pitched whine" about Lucas Kuyt and Insua but fair game when it's Poulsen? I didn't suggest anything other than Benitez deserved to be sacked because over the course of last season he was diabolical as a manager. You seem to read what you want to read and not actually what is there. We needed to sack Benitez to move forward. Nothing that has happened this season would have surprised me if it had happened if Benitez was still in charge. We had some pretty shocking defeats 5 years into his reign never mind the ones in his first season. Hodgson got to the final of the UEFA cup with a very inferior side to what Benitez had only last season.

You do realise that Glasto is basically a charity.

I find it strange that Benitez could make a lot more of a horrendous decision than playing Meireles on the right yet it would be completely ignored. He could play Lucas in nearly every game last season when it wasn't working just like Hodgson appears to be doing with Poulsen. He is getting slaughtered for playing Johnson (rightly slaughtered) at right back after he has made mistake after mistake. Yet the same people ignore that it was Benitez who paid £18m fo him. In my opinion Rafa Benitez was sacked correctly for footballing reasons. We were fucking shocking last season and it was down to him. Poor signings and even worse team selections, substitutions and tactics were at fault. He needed to be sacked to move forward and we needed someone who wasn't negative to come in. Hodgson seemed like the man. Fulham had played some good football under him and he had signed some good players and got the best out of them. Yet for some reason he is doing a Benitez. Being overly cautious not making the obvious decisions that just take a bit of balls to do. He is making all the mistakes Benitez made but going even further. This doesn't suddenly mean Benitez shouldn't have gone. Just that Roy needs to pull his head out of his arse and make the right decisions. It's like the current government. The economy is fucked because the country has gone too far to the right and big business and banks gained too much power with little risk. So to fix it the country votes in a party even more right than the last one thinking it will fix it. I just hope Roy is a socialist at heart and sees this before it's too late, if you catch my drift,

Are we playing 343 here?

Jamie Pollock

Complete and utter eye aids.

I honestly thought Rafa was the only man who could sit there and watch his bad team selection for 70 mins without contemplating bringing an attacking player on. Now Roy has proved he is willing to do the same and it's massively depressing. How can he sit there and watch 60 yard punt after 60 yard punt, most hitting the centre halves and not try to change it. Gerrard and Torres again struggling to get in the game throughout the first 60-70 minutes. How many times do we have to play them there before someone realises it just doesn't work anymore. Someone tell me the last game the two played well together in them roles? Unfortunately the one game we pulled Gerrard back into midfield and played 442 was away to city. We hadn't started that way for ages and it showed. It doesn't mean it won't work against average teams like this. We need to change the whole system and stick to it. It's the only we are going to dig ourselves out of this shocking rut we are in. We haven't put a good attacking performance in for so long.

Yes I understand that. It's just that he said a draw would be an excellent result which it isn't.

Touche

We've got Torres and Gerrard both fit. A draw to Birmingham is never a good result never mind an excellent one. The results we got against average sides like this last season seems to make people think it is now acceptable.

No, I heard Lucas Poulsen midfield as well. And the rest reads how you expect Kuyt, Jovanovic, Torres, Gerrard etc. Konchesky to start also.

What a load of nonsense. You have been ripped apart by the lads posting quotes above anyway but playing Gareth Barry on the left of midfield would have almost been as bad as selling Alonso to play him in the middle. Where are all of your quotes anyway? As far I was aware Gareth Barry put in a transfer request to move here, had murder with O'Neill which got him banned from training.and was in the press at the time saying he wanted to leave Villa to go to Liverpool. You seem to be basing your opinion on myths doing the rounds on websites not quotes as you put it. Rafa didn't do as bad as some people make out in the transfer market. It was his horrendous misuse of his transfers that was his downfall. The Alonso saga though, was completely of Rafa's own making and people shouldn't try and cover it up with the same bollocks you have just tried to with.

What a load of garbage. In the Benitez era too many people have been brainwashed into thinking a centre mids job is to stand 10 metres in front of the centre halves and if you go for further forward than this you are tactically shite. Gerrard must play centre mid because that's where he most influences games. It's where he has the ball at his feet with various players in front of him, wide and through the middle. He has the best passing range in the team, he is one the best tacklers and he easily has the best vision. In centre midfield he is a lot more involved in games. This is my opinion. I have developed this watching Gerrard and Liverpool for all the time he has played. From my view this has not been disproven to me once. Countless times last season we lacked anything from centre midfield because we had two defensively minded players playing there. It was only when Gerrard was started there or moved back there during the game did we actually play better. The odd time we were already down and chasing the game which we didn't get back into and win. This hardly disproves anything other than the formation and team selection we started with wasn't good enough. Gerrard is the type of player you can play anywhere and he will do a better job than most. In his first in the hole defenders didn't know what to expect and he did well. A season on and the tactic had been found out. Stubbornly he was still played there and to the detriment of the team. Gerrard was stuck with his back to goal unable to dictate play and unable to galvanise the team as he normally would from the middle of the pitch. Get your head out of your arse and start actually watching the game. Gerrard is a box to box midfielder with everything in his locker. Let's play him there and reap the benefits, defensively and offensively.

I don't reckon it was a volley. If it has bounced then it is a half volley. It's why you get the phrase he caught it on the half volley. Meaning the ball had bounced and that a half volley can come after catching right on the bounce. Heads and Volleys when your kids as well, you couldn't just hit a random shot that was off the ground and that would be a point.

I like Johnson but he's talking out of his arse a bit there. Some kids are lazy but there have always been lazy fat bastards who don't play sport. I am 24 and I was out with my mates most nights playing two on two or three on three across the road on each others gates. It still goes on now. It's a myth that kids still don't do this. The main problem in Liverpool is that you either have to be picked up very early or you have to be hard to make it as a footballer. All the smaller skilful players don't really stand a chance. In Spain that doesn't seem to be the case Everyone sees lads in their year who are class and should at least get a chance but don't. There are a few reasons for this I reckon. A lot of the time it's a about who you know. Other times it's about the pricks who are put in charge of making or breaking kids. I have got a few mates who went to Merseyside boys trials and they spoke about about how Howard Gale was in charge and he was a complete knob head. There was a lad there that none of them knew but they all said was class and he ran the show. He was a bit of a scall but wasn't a prick and Gale just took a dislike to him and berated him between every break. In the end the lad just left. I was in the same year as Rooney and he wasn't even seen as the best player of our age at about 14. It was Chris Dagnall who was at Tranmere. He was lightning and scored for fun but again just never got the opportunity early on and it looks like it's cost him. The effect of foreigners being brought in at 15/16 is also what's partly killing the youth system and English players coming through.

So much bollocks written about Gerrard over the past couple of seasons. Mostly due to people wanting to back Benitez in some way or another. Gerrard is one of the most gifted players in the world. He's got everything. He can literally do anything as well if not better than most top players. It's what got him to the side in the first place playing at right back and standing out straight away as a hard tackler with something about him. Then moving into midfield as defensive minded centre mid. Having all the attributes of top class centre mid with no apparent weaknesses he flourished in a pretty mediocre Liverpool team. Noted for being an old school box to box midfielder who was literaly all over the pitch game after game putting out fires for other players, Gerrard carried the side for quite a few years. It is at this point that in my eyes he became the best centre mid in world football. In the position where he could have most influence on the pitch. Benitez arrived and signed Alonso, another world class centre mid. He curbed Gerrards all over the place approach and it worked to Gerrards benefit. It made him a better player and taught him how to let other parts of the team to do their job without having to be the saviour all the time. Gerrard has since played all manner of positions to a world class standard. The only problem being that as Benitez slowly moulded the team into his own image Gerrard on the pitch became a lot more static. He eventually reduced the most exciting box to box midfielder to standing still in front of one centre forward waiting for a pass from defensive midfielder 50 yards away. People got far to carried away with the Gerrard Torres up front partnership. The team set up to stifle other teams regardless of whether they needed stifling or not and then relied on luck in Gerrard or Torres coming up with magic to win the game. Against big teams it worked well as it made it a level playing field. Restricting chances to 1 or 2 a game for either side and hoping it was Torres or Gerrard that took it. Gerrard scored quite a few goals there but he's world class that's what he does. Put him in any position and he will do as well as nearly anyone. It doesn't mean it's the best for the team. We need him back in centre mid where he can dictate things once again. It might take a few games before he's back used to it and firing on all cylinders but it will be worth it. It's not as if he's not going to link up with Torres 20 yards further away. He would arguably link up better having two forwards to aim at, giving Torres more space and time on the ball and with Gerrard facing the opposition goal. People need to snap out of this Benitez mindset and remember Gerrards best days and how good those best days would have been with a Torres in front of him.

John Terry, in a press conference at the world cup, basically said that he and some other players were going to say some stuff to Capello about why things haven't gone well and if Capello didn't like it then so what. Insinuating that he is at fault or at least partly at fault for what's happened. When have Gerrard or Carragher ever said anything not positive about Benitez, ever. They never insinuated or said anything to say Benitez was at fault for anything at all. When Riera had a go at Benitez even most anti Benitez supporters said he was out of order. Get your head out of his arse.

The bloody bbc generation eh. Football didn't start in the 1970's you know.

More of this please.

Brilliant