The Liverpool FC Thread XII

Well he is the quality of player that midtable teams such as Liverpool can hope to attract these days.

Arsenal have made Sanogo available for loan as well.

Part of me still thinks we'll finish above Utd this season.

Merry Christmas to all my fellow Liverpool fans, and to anyone reading this for that matter.

Here's hoping we get the Christmas presents we all want: Sturridge to finally heal, Petr Cech and Marco Reus hey, I can dream, can't I?

If Santa brings us Torres, I'll be livid.

If santa brings that I'll eat my sock, record it, and upload it to youtube.

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You can't record it after eating it

Please can you take parasite off us.

Drogba and Villa > Torres. He was quality though.

Agree with this post.

Shame what happened to him. Hopefully he does well at Atlético.

Jam wishing Torres well? The Christmas spirit never ceases to amaze me.


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Torres didn't ask to be terrible at Chelsea. I think Simeone can get the best out of him though. by about november 2012 I could see he was done no excuses but after that e.g. in the europa league and the big games(supercup, City at the bridge etc.) he showed his worth to the team. He just wasn't good enough to be our main striker or one of 3 rotational strikers like last season.

Lmao no. Henderson has a restrictive passing range, and on the whole not great technical ability tbh. Guy is **** in the final third the same as Ramires, sorry James but they're both **** in the box. Henderson is a decent box-to-box player, nothing more really. His ball retention isn't bad to give him credit, as someone said he's not that great a utility man. Works well in a diamond though, think he'd do well in 4-3-3 as well.

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You've misread the point I said that in a 4-3-3 you have more attacking freedom than the 4-2-3-1 as a box to box midfielder as you have a guy behind to protect. Ramires barely had that so his stats look bad. Add to that he's not a starter like Henderson was as we played Luiz and Matic together second half of the season and Ramires got dropped.

That's not the point I'm trying to make the point is tactically Henderson was allowed to push forward more and he looked better because of it while Ramires rarely gets those same instructions so it's unfair to compare. In 10/11 and 11/12 he had his best seasons because Chelsea played 4-3-3 for majority of those seasons.

Sterling honestly is just a slightly better version of Willian but playing in less conservative tactics. Of course he will surpass him though.

Yeah, revel in having an opinion.
Rodgers has been playing Sterling off right wing for a lot of this season where it's proven that he's dire, and in general he played Sterling at the tip of the diamond whenever he could - Raheem is being shunted around and currently playing LW because that's the best fit for our squad. As for why have none of those three made the position theirs so far? Coutinho has been somewhat mistreated by Brendan and is still inconsistent no doubt, Raheem I've just discussed, and Markovic is being eased into English football.

From his midfield role for us he already did/does press high up the pitch. From CM he pressed forward into where the opposition DM would normally be - if he was playing at AM then he'd be pressing at RB, CB and LB - not the positions where you want Henderson to be because a) he's nowhere near good enough in an attacking sense even if he does contribute to us retrieving the ball high up the pitch, b) he's too far from most of the action to make his ball winning abilities any useful, c) we have other players like Sterling more than capable of doing the pressing from that position (btw despite his undoubted tireless nature he doesn't really have the pace to make up the ground quickly between the opposition's defense and midfield lines) and d) the value of his pressing compared to someone like Coutinho is just nowhere near a great enough reward for losing his midfield abilities. The idea that we put Henderson as number 10 in order to change the way our team is set up, to get us all pressing high up the pitch, is an optimal solution and that we'd be able to successfully replicate one of those teams, is silly.

Look, you can say all you like about his passing and technique etc (and I can go back and forth saying his passing is more circulation than incision, that his set pieces are mediocre), fact of the matter is, he's not a goalscorer. He's just not statistically proven. He doesn't have the technique or composure to score large numbers of goals consistently. He leans back too much, his placement is poor, he doesn't have a good enough laces-shot, his side foots are weak. He's not proved it at any level yet. So on the one hand 'Rodgers plays Sterling LW therefore it is definitely Sterling's best position' and on the other hand 'Rodgers plays Henderson at CM but he doesn't know best and it should be at AM'.

Rafa didn't turn Gerrard from into an AM straight away. He did his time at CM, winning us the CL. Then at RM, winning us the FA Cup single handedly and scoring 23 goals. Then he did a job in a few positions/combinations for 18 months before being made the AM in the 4-2-3-1 at the end of Torres' first season. The difference is that all the way through before becoming an AM (for all of 18 months, mind you), he was scoring goals. Padded by penalties, but he was a lethal finisher from 12-25 yards. Truly excellent. He always was, even in the years under Houllier who tried his hardest to suppress him. He was scoring wonder-goals and edge of the box finishes for us from day one. Henderson has never shown that kind of goalscoring (or ability level in general).

Finally, comparing anyone to Steven Gerrard is ridiculous.