mike23

Just not buying this whole massive improvement theory at all. A few games where he's not been utter shite doesn't mean he's turned around his liverpool career and deserves to stay. Looks quite good sometimes when the team is playing well and winning comfortably but not one single time has he done something to turn a tight league game in our favour. It's insulting to Henderson and Enrique and the amount they have improved in the last couple of months to talk about Downing in the same way. Really hope we get rid at the end of the season. Some midtable team somewhere will surely be daft enough to want him and that's very much his level.

What a shitty week. 1-0 would have been disappointing but still very retrievable but yet again we couldn't hold out for even a few minutes when the opposition really went for it. We seem to concede a goal every time we come under the remotest bit of pressure. It reminded me of a lot of our European away trips in the nineties when we always seemed very tactically naive and always gave ourselves too much to do in the second leg at Anfield. An early goal next week and the crowd behind the team and you never know but Zenit look like a team suited to getting men behind the ball and hitting us on the break. Hard to imagine us keeping a clean sheet with the way we're defending at the moment. Missing good chances at one end and constantly conceding goals because we can't just get the basics right at the other. There can't be a more infuriating team to watch in the whole of Europe at the moment.

We've fucked up any chance of doing anything in the league now and we're out of both domestic cups so I really hope we start taking this competition seriously now. Strongest possible team please. I'm not sure we've got much chance against some of the other teams left in this competition but I'd be pretty disappointed if we couldn't beat Zenit over 2 legs. Shame that Sturridge can't play. He probably barely even featured for Chelsea in their champions league games.

Always thought United would score but I thought Madrid would get at least two. Bit underwhelmed by them really, few decent saves from De Gea but not really that many clearcut chances and Van Persie should really have won it for United. I still think they're capable of winning at Old Trafford though. If they go out then that's surely it for Mourinho there. They've sacked managers who have had much better seasons than he's having this year. It's just depressing watching games like this these days though. A few years ago we were involved in ties like this every year and at the moment I'm wondering if we ever will be again.

I don't actually remember the part of my post where I stuck up for Rodgers or made out he was doing a great job here. But he can't be entirely blamed for the current state of this club. We were pathetic in the league from January onwards last season too. There's a limit to how much a manager can do to motivate players. They have to want to really win themselves and too many of our current players really don't seem arsed either way.

Going to have a long rant just to get it off my chest after that shite. Apologies for the length but feel free not to bother reading it. It's mainly just to make me feel better. Daft team selection but there's only so much you can blame the manager for. I really couldn't believe how many times our players gave the ball away under absolutely no pressure or miscontrolled it when they did receive it. Sloppy as fuck right from the start. West Brom looked absolutely fucking dire and you could see why they've been on such a shit run lately but as usual we just completely let them off the hook and let them grow in confidence. Some laughable decisions in the final third and some woeful finishing yet again with Borini's the pick of the bunch and the latest to be added to a very long list in the past 2 seasons where you just think how the hell did you manage to miss that. Foster made some good saves and as usual the rebounds always seemed to fall in just the wrong place (although maybe if we got more than 1 or 2 players in the box occasionally they might actually fall in the right place). Penalty looked very generous and if Gerrard had put it away it would have been an unconvincing win but a win all the same and this game could have been quickly forgotten. But I had a bad feeling before he took it - it just seemed like one of those nights. Their goal just rounded off the night. Only we could lose a game where the opposition didn't even have a shot on goal until the 80th minute. Guess it was too much to ask for our defenders to actually concentrate for a moment and do what they're paid to do - they haven't done it all season so why start now? I don't like to give up on the team but I'm afraid I just couldn't watch any more after that goal. We could have played another 6 hours and not scored and my blood pressure couldn't take any more of that crap. Most teams probably get one or two games a season like that but we must have had about 2 dozen in the last couple of seasons. Comedy finishing and the opposition scoring with their first chance after doing nothing all game - seems like I'm just watching repeats of the same ridiculous game time after time. Not really surprised to see they added a second. Doesn't really matter all that much - a defeat at home to West Brom is pathetic whether it's by one goal or two. I can accept we're not going to win the title or challenge for it. I can accept us even missing out on qualifying for the champions league but I'm struggling to accept that in February we're 9th in the table, below West Brom and Swansea and haven't beaten a single team in the top half of the table. Not sure Rodgers is the man for the job. He's made a lot of fuck ups this season. But it's not his fault we've got the most gutless bunch of players to have ever played for this club. They can play some pretty football at times and look good when they're a few goals up against some shit team and all the pressure's off but whenever they have to dig in and find a way of winning a tight game or hang onto a narrow lead they fuck it up every time. It got Kenny the sack and it will eventually probably also get Rodgers the sack but it probably won't change if someone else is brought in. Add this to the long list of times where just as it was starting to look like things were on the up this club has completely fucked up a great opportunity to keep the momentum going. Champions league is just a pipe dream and we'll be lucky at this rate to avoid an even more embarrassing league position than last season. Enrique and Johnson were particularly bad tonight but I don't think anyone can take any credit from that performance. Hope the players are suitably ashamed of themselves but they probably won't be.

We're in great form and seem to have discovered how to beat shit and average teams comfortably at Anfield. West Brom are in really poor form and look nothing like the team that took so many teams by surprise at the start of the season. All logic points to a comfortable and enjoyable home win which makes me feel very nervous.

There should be a middle option really as I don't think he's particularly great but to call him useless is a bit harsh. Winning the title last season should really have been the start of a period of domination in English football for them but for some reason they've not looked right all season. It all started with a terrible summer transfer window and he's got to take the blame for that. Not one of the signings they made improved them at all and to be honest I'd have been pretty disappointed if we'd signed any of those players even with our current rather limited expectations so it was rather strange that the league champions signed them. He also started messing about with their defensive formation for some reason despite their defence being the best in the league last season. Add that to the fact he's still too cautious and still seems more worried about not losing games than winning them at times even against shit teams near the bottom of the league and he certainly has to take a lot of the blame for them being 12 points adrift at the moment. But the players do have to take a share of the blame. There's not much a manager can do when a goalkeeper fumbles an easy save straight into the path of an attacking player or a midfielder puts through his own goal under absolutely no pressure like at Southampton yesterday or a player moves out of the way of a freekick in the last minute of one of your biggest games of the season like Nasri did against United earlier in the season. Their strikers have generally been missing the sorts of chances they were putting away last season and you can't blame the manager or tactics for that. The most frustrating thing about that great finish from Aguero last week against us was that he's spent most of the season failing to put away much easier chances. They could maybe have got away with a couple of their top players having average seasons but not all of them. Hart, Kompany, Silva and Aguero have been nowhere near as good as last year. Not terrible exactly but none of them are going to even be considered for the player of the season award when last season they all would have been in contention. Unless things dramatically change before the end of the season then I can see there being a major overhaul of their squad in the summer. They'll probably get rid of quite a few and I think there will be a couple of really big signings. Certainly at least one big name striker (just hope they go for Cavani or Falcao rather than Suarez as I wouldn't trust our owners to turn it down if a huge offer was put in). Whether or not Mancini remains to oversee that overhaul remains to be seen. Most City fans do seem to rate him and it will depend how much goodwill last season's title win bought him with the owners. It might also depend on who's available. Mourinho probably will be as Madrid are having an awful season by their standards so City might want to get him in while there's the opportunity.

I'm fairly optimistic about where we're heading but a little cautious as no club seems to do false dawns quite like liverpool. The few genuine league challenges in the last 20 years have all been followed by absolutely disasterous seasons that seem to have knocked us back years and I still can't belive how badly we did in the league last season after the way we had performed in the second half of the previous season when Kenny first took over. There have been a lot of positives from the last 2 league games but they haven't helped our league position at all and champions league looks like a long shot. Unfortunately the way football is these days there's not much room for gradual progress. It seems to be all or nothing these days. The moment you're not challenging the top players start questioning whether they should move on to some club who are in the champions league and if we go much longer without it we can't possibly hope to hang on to the likes of Suarez and then we're just back to square one and having to rebuild all over again.

Shame we didn't get Friedel when we were in for him last summer as the lack of competition for his place probably hasn't helped much. Doni was surely supposed to supply that going off the wages he was reportedly on but never really did and I don't think anyone would want to see Jones in the first team for any length of time.

I said in his transfer thread can we please just once sign a player who comes in and makes an immediate impact rather than taking months to settle and he's definitely done that. I think he was excellent today. The ball seemed to stick to him every time and I can't remember him making a single bad pass. As others have said the injury probably restricted the amount of running he could do.

Think the comment about a change might suit both parties is very true. Same thing seemed to happen to David James. Lost his form and never seemed to find it again here then looked a lot better when he went to Villa. Shame as when Reina arrived here and looked so impressive early on and with his age I thought we had our goalkeeping position sorted for years to come. Sad how I've gone from hoping he sticks with us to no longer caring either way to actually wanting a new keeper, but he's definitely cost us some points this season and I'm really struggling to recall the last time he had a really impressive game for us.

Sturridge Gerrard Henderson Carragher and Johnson were very good too. In fact I can't really fault anyone other than Reina.

Similar to the home game with City. Great performance. Should have won. Would have won but for a ridiculous individual error. Seriously, Reina, what were you thinking of? Having said that it was a great finish from Aguero. Nine times out of ten he loses his bearings and prods it aimlessly wide or somewhere a defender can clear it but it's us and everything that can possibly goes wrong always does. Would have been happy to be offered 2 draws from these fixtures at the start of the week but really gutted we didn't manage to win at least one of them. Lack of confidence rather than ability seems to be the main problem with this team and the boost a win in one of these games and the momentum it would have given us for the rest of the season would have been huge. But plenty of positives to take from that game. Sturridge was outstanding. Thought Gerrard was maybe finished at the start of the season but it looks like it was just a bad patch as he's been brilliant recently. Thought Henderson was very good again too.

Could do with them staying out. Need 3 or more goals in this game to complete an accumulator and typically it's still 0-0 just before half time despite both defences being utter shite all season.

QPR are really playing with fire signing players on that sort of money. They could well be risking the future of the club on the gamble of staying in the premier league. Is there a wage drop built in for if they're relegated? If not no one else would be willing to pay him wages like that so they're stuck in the championship with a player on wages all but the elite teams in Europe would consider excessive.

Sky must absolutely love him. Without him half their transfer deadline day specials would involve nothing but things like Rochdale signing Leyton Orient's reserve keeper on loan. I think some people go a bit overboard blaming him for all the financial problems previous clubs have got into as the clubs' owners and people involved in the financial side could just tell him no they can't afford the deals, but it has to be said some of his transfer dealings really are just odd. Jenas is just about the last player you'd turn to when you're looking for someone to help out in a relegation scrap. I remember wanting us to sign David Bentley from Blackburn. Can't be many footballers whose careers have collapsed so completely.

I'd be surprised if we signed anyone else today and wouldn't be too bothered if we didn't. Happy with the signing of Sturridge. Coutinho I know nothing about but he gives us another attacking option and suddenly we seem to have plenty of those when it seemed like we had none at the end of the August transfer window. We'll probably remain miles apart with Blackpool regarding valuation on Ince and that will wait until the summer. Wonder if there will be any major signings eleswhere.

At the time I did think that bringing Enrique on to shore things up once we'd already thrown away the 2 goal lead was pretty much a case of closing the stable door once the horse had bolted but I've just read in a report of the game on ESPN's website that Rodgers wanted to put him on much earlier but the substitution got delayed because Enrique had trouble putting on his boots? How difficult is it to put a pair of football boots on or more to the point why wasn't he just already wearing them in case he was needed anyway?

To be fair to him he's certainly not the only manager like that. Most of the managers at the big clubs in recent years seem to have overcomplicated things against the lesser teams and given them far more respect than they've deserved. Mancini definitely seems to fall into that category. United never seem to have any great tactical plan against the shite teams other than to go out and outscore them and that's why they win the league more often than not despite not having the best squad of players in a lot of those seasons.

It would be less frustrating if all the other teams challenging for the top 4 didn't look so flawed. Arsenal, Spurs and Everton will likely drop plenty of points before the end of the season but we've thrown away a serious number of points this season and sadly I think we'll do it quite a few more times before the end of the season. Even Chelsea are no longer looking a certainty for the top 4 the way they keep collapsing against rubbish teams at the moment. At least my both teams to score accumulator came in tonight to cheer me up a little bit. About time one came off. Even I couldn't mess it up when every team scored in the premier league. Fortunately I avoided the temptation to include Huddersfield and Palace from the championship.

Henderson Suarez Reina Gerrard and Carragher did well too. Bit of a strange one really as a lot of players did some very good things at times and some very poor things at others. Downing worked hard and it would be harsh to call his performance poor but is it too much to ask for him to just once produce something special to make the difference in a tight league game?

Not sure Reina can really be blamed for the Walcott goal. It was so fiercely struck it was pretty much past him by the time he had chance to react. The first goal disappointed me a lot more. The one way you don't expect to concede against Arsenal is from a set piece crossed into the box. Shame Giroud seems to have come into a bit of form recently. He looked absolutely dire at the start of the season and was missing chances easier than that.

Very good for an hour then we fell apart and it's happened too many times this season. Would have been happy enough with a draw beforehand and at 2-2 there was a spell where I was convinced they'd get a third but it's still disappointing not to win. Seemed to sort ourselves out near the end at least and looked the team most likely to win it. I was sure that shot from Suarez was going in at the end but we never seem to get great last minute moments like that any more. There's plenty of ability in this team but not enough balls and we've no chance of getting back into the top 4 until that changes. Christ Arsenal were shocking at the back for most of that match, they were virtually begging us to score at times.