The Liverpool FC Thread XII

villa have been embarrassing and don't deserve this level right now.
hull have been disappointing although i feel like they have the quality to stay up.
QPR are just awful; they have a decent manager (always liked harry) but they simply don't have the players.
Burnley have one of two stars, but overall i doubt they can keep up with the rest of the league.
Leicester have potential to win matches; they have enough quality and chemistry to stay up but need to show it.

i feel like villa will pull their finger out though; i'm gonna go with Leicester (18th), Burnley (19th), QPR (20th).

As long as we win I don't mind who's playing. Won't be easy. Rather Gerrard played in this game than against Everton tbh..

Well he's a great player obviously, so idk what point you're making? lol. He wasn't 'responsible' for our form (10 points out of 15 anyway which isn't exactly earth-shattering).

And no, 'player development' in the second half of the season was not the reason for our run of form. Our second half of the season run was down to Brendan Rodgers, and if there was any 'player development', it was primarily from Sterling and Coutinho, aka players for whose development (both long term development and short term deployment) the credit goes to Rodgers. But the main reason was Rodgers' methods of player conditioning leaving us fitter/faster than other teams, Rodgers' set up getting the best out of our limited resources, especially Gerrard (whose dead ball goals and assists were key), and Rodgers' game to game flexibility (Sturridge wide against Everton, Sterling vs United etc).

Gerrard is pretty close to nostalgia, but not quite. I don't think he offers a cutting edge as a number 10 anymore so he doesn't deserve to stay in the team really, and he just hasn't produced the dead ball quality that we saw last season to make up for that. But the squad is better with him in it than without it, for sure.

Yeah I agree. He offers something, his experience, his range of passing and his freekicks/corners is quite valuable. Gerrard simply is unable to cope with the physical demands, but I think if he had hardworking players with good technical ability next to him(like Pirlo has with Vidal+Pogba+Marchisio) then he'd do better than he currently is doing now. Although that's just stating the obvious.

Wonder how things will shape up when Toure returns.
He was our best defender before he left for ACoN - will Rodgers sideline him or move Can in to midfield?
He'll never drop Sakho or Skrtel.
Lucas is excelling in DM at the moment and Rodgers likely wants Can to have more CB experience, so personally i don't see how Toure fits in other than replacing Lovren on the bench.

Ivory Coast are in the semi-finals so it'll be a little while longer before he returns anyway - he would "theoretically" be back in time for the Spurs game, so it's nice to have that option if we have any fitness problems with our next few congested games.

The issue is that our defence has been decent recently so nobody warrants being dropped, but Toure has been great for us this season and he arguably doesn't deserve to be benched either.
Tough call.

You don't change a winning team. Toure has to fight for it. Can doesn't deserve to be dropped, nor does Lucas or Henderson who would make way in midfield.

Will be good to have Toure back as he's useful backup though.

We're talking about different seasons here. I mean 12/13 in terms of Sturridge+Coutinho reinvigorating the side mid season, not 13/14. Think you've got the wrong end of the stick. I was talking about 13/14 with regards to Sturridge winning points and making pivotal goals to your title challenge.

Also wrt player development transpiring to the next season. I credit that to Brendan Rodgers. Rodgers was the man who made Suarez a world class player, prior to that he was a very talented player who missed sitters and wasn't clinical enough.

I'm not trying to dig Rodgers with the Sturridge Coutinho comments, but were it not for those two coming in, you lot would have been a much weaker side than you are now, simply because Suarez couldn't do everything and Sterling was a 17-18 year old kid who was never going to be playing week in week out in his first full season in English Football.

Yeah I agree. He offers something, his experience, his range of passing and his freekicks/corners is quite valuable. Gerrard simply is unable to cope with the physical demands, but I think if he had hardworking players with good technical ability next to him(like Pirlo has with Vidal+Pogba+Marchisio) then he'd do better than he currently is doing now. Although that's just stating the obvious.

I agree, it's just a harsh dilemma because he hasn't done anything wrong except play for his country.

Definitely; having Toure as sub instead of Lovren makes a world of difference.
I hope Rodgers doesn't give Lovren much more of a chance tbh, he just hasn't worked.
Toure may be old but he can put in a performance and I'd be happy to keep him for another year as back-up.

It's really weird how our worst defender last season suddenly became our best performer at one point.

Rodgers seems to be very fair to players if they work hard in training. He's had a lot of players he's thought about selling or they get dropped for a while and we've had quite a few fight back and win their spots. No reason Lovren can't do that if he remembers how to be a good defender?

Yes, definitely. Henderson, Skrtel, Sterling, Lucas, Mignolet have all come back in and improved after a spell out in the cold.

The issue is that there's a sneaking suspicion that Lovren was never a good enough defender in the first place.

I do think he'll eventually come back into the plans, but I think he'll never live upto his price tag, because he was bought at an inflated price so that he could be an instant fix, and yet his poor partnership with Skrtel has set us back half a season.

Well Rodgers turned Sturridge from a media hate figure, peripheral Chelsea youth into a proven, near world class goalscorer. And Rodgers turned Coutinho from an unknown Inter outcast into one of the better young talents in Europe. If he gets the slack for signing Balotelli and Lovren then he also gets the credit for Sturridge and Coutinho (tbf, he can get the credit for those two, and not the slack for the other two, because obviously it's widely speculated that Balo wasn't his signing).

Henderson/Allen are pretty hardworking (and outstanding defensively by the numbers) and only just short of Vidal/Marchisio, so Gerrard has had the protection (and excelled in our diamond last year). I just think his own performance levels have dipped and he's mentally struggling. His dead ball isn't as good as last year (13 goals and 13 assists from DM? fuark) and he looks much more laboured.

I think there's no way you can underestimate the difficulty in recovering after seeing your team, who you've carried on your shoulders for 15 years, lose out on the one trophy you've never won and wanted the most, because of your bad luck. Mentally I think he's just not the same anymore and the reality that he'll probably never win a title with us will have hurt him just too much, even if he doesn't want to admit it.

"Hearing Burnley striker Danny Ings signed pre contract terms last week with Real Sociedad. Yet to be confirmed but source is reliable."
Potentially big news for Burnley fans...

Never going to be easy to live up to a £20mil transfer fee as a CB since we expect him to be one of the best CBs in the league for that price. He was statistically a beast for Southampton but I think they played a very different style to what Rodgers wants? I imagine he'll get another season to try and establish himself.

Never going to be easy to live up to a £20mil transfer fee as a CB since we expect him to be one of the best CBs in the league for that price. He was statistically a beast for Southampton but I think they played a very different style to what Rodgers wants? I imagine he'll get another season to try and establish himself.

They don't really play that much of a different style to Liverpool, the high pressure football played by Pochettino with good ball players at the back is something Rodgers loves. I think he's just been underperforming with the rest of the team. Also there was little protection of the midfield earlier on with Gerrard, and he wasn't putting up the numbers offensively to make up for it.

They don't really play that much of a different style to Liverpool, the high pressure football played by Pochettino with good ball players at the back is something Rodgers loves. I think he's just been underperforming with the rest of the team. Also there was little protection of the midfield earlier on with Gerrard, and he wasn't putting up the numbers offensively to make up for it.

Was he?

And yeah, he'll get another season, but I don't see where he's establishing himself. Sakho is miles ahead of him in every single facet of the game, so there's no chance he's getting a place at LCB, which is the position he was bought to play.

Just reeks of a ****e signing really, the only reason I supported it was because I thought he was our upgrade to Skrtel ffs. Spent all summer jizzing about Sakho-Lovren only to see Skrtel in the team against Dortmund as usual.