The Guest

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

Literally though. It is one of the best bits of telly ever. My favourite two quotes from French are "Every ounce of my warrior being" and "The people that come for me aren't coming with Ludo and tiddly winks, yeah, 38 to 45 pump action shotguns is what's going to be the resssipe for me" He spends the whole show trying to come across as articulate and makes a complete twat out of himself. Dyer taking him completely seriously though adds to the ridiculousness of it. If you haven't seen it, it's on youtube, give it a watch it's gold.

The only problem would be that they would start looking for other places to spout their shite. It's probably best they are kept in one place.

They seem to have some "watched" thing on there as well. I may be wrong but I am assuming that it is a way of showing the other posters who has had a warning etc. Every person who I have seen who has this by their name is someone who has expressed a negative opinion of Benitez. It's their website so fair enough they can do what they want but banning anyone who has the slightest sniff of a negative opinion of Benitez, and subsequently claiming their polls to be a good view of the fanbase is a bit rich.

It's Reina all day but if people are voting for Lucas then I am voting for Gerrard. He has been well below par for his standards but that's still above nearly all the players in that list. Playing Kuyt as a right winger and pairing Lucas with Mascherano nearly every single game has been the biggest problem on the pitch this season, so how they can be both joint second is astonishing.

I just went on RAWK to see if this had been noticed by them and spotted a thread about Aldridge. They are going mental because he has said only 30% of the fans want Benitez to stay as manager. Some idiot on there has said the 30% is plucked out of the air, a sentence after making his own statistic up about "most polls only take the view of 1000-1500 people." He goes on to say if you back up your opinions with bullshit statistics you deserve to be called a cunt. If only someone had took the pleasure with him.

I don't usually like Barrett's articles. He's seems to have his own agenda and doesn't review the actual football but this is a fairly decent article. There is lots of doom and gloom around at the moment and rightfully so. This season has surely got to be up there with the worst in my lifetime and that's not just to do with the total losses and no trophies. It's to do with the manner in which everything has happened. The hot air spoken by Rafa before every game about urging us to attack then playing negative restraining football no matter who the opposition has become unbearable. In footballing terms there has been no fight from the manager and that has bred into the players. Without wanting to turn this into another Rafa thread my point is that actually we have got a pretty decent team with quite a few world class players and some pretty good ones to add to that. Rafa has signed most of these and credit to him for that. That's why for me all the talk of net spend and lack of funds doesn't arse me. He has signed some howlers but every manager does. It's his serial misuse of the players at his disposal with bad tactics and bad team selection which have led us down this path. This is why next season whilst I want a new manager we will probably finish in the top four anyway because of the class players we have. They got us to second with with dire tactics last season and I am confident this is the worst season we could possibly have with them.

My boss is from Wigan. He hates Whelan and said all his mates don't like him either. I'm sure he told me Whelan is supposed to be a Liverpool fan though so I don't know about the above.

Great article that. I do feel like I have grown up in the wrong era to be a football fan. Competition wise everything is bland. It's going to take something big for football to change it's course now though. It's grown fat and lazy under Sky and people have lapped it up.

Very well written piece again. I'd go as far as saying the biggest highlight of the season for me is finding these articles. A lot of my mates slaughter Ngog but I don't think he's that bad. It's not his fault he's the understudy to the best centre forward in world football. Benitez put a lot of pressure on him last week by taking Torres off for him. That could have crippled some players but he didn't go hiding and he was unlucky with his chances. Yesterday again the onus was on him as you said (and Gerrard). The thing that pisses me off though is that onus isn't on him to get on the end of a chance and score it's to basically make a goal out of nothing like Torres at Sunderland. There are only a small percentage of players in the world that can do that at this standard. Another thing I thought might have been worth a mention on yesterdays game were some more quite typical Benitez decisions. I am no fan of Lucas but he put himself about against Benfica and probably had his best game of the season. Same goes for Kuyt. What happens to both of them? Out of the side. There is no competition for places at the club because there is basically no positive reinforcement. Ryan Babel didn't do that badly yesterday and Maxi became more anonymous as the second half went on so why not actually leave the one winger we have on the pitch. Surprisingly there were a lot of players huddled in the middle of the final third with nobody to actually play a ball into the box or get to the byline just a lot of chipped balls into there pretty sturdy defence.