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*Official* English Football Season 2010-11

Nate

You'll Never Walk Alone
Konchesky's debut was very good though imo. We looked aimless, Birmingham looked good without finishing, Reina was sublime obvs. Well played BC.

EDIT: Goal.com's player ratings absolutely ludicrous once more. Will no longer be paying attention to them.
 
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chalky

International Debutant
True but you just don't get any positive vibes from this team. It's like GED's last year and Rafa's 2nd half of the season last year where we played like we didn't give a ****. Usually when a new manager comes you see players stepping up at least for a while but it's so ambivalent it disheartens you. The late subs make you really wonder what is going in Hodgson's head. After the match he said he didn't expect much more and was happy with a draw - come on. Birmingham are really hard to beat at home but that was just a poor performance all-round.

IMO it was a bad line-up and Lucas-Poulsen pairing just don't work. Gerrard and Torres had poor games but both really didn't get any quality service either. This is where the decision to loan Aquilani makes Hodgson look even more clueless.
Think Hodgson is stuck between a rock & hard place at the moment especially playing away from home. He went for it against Man City playing Ngog & Torres up front (trying a bit to shed the Benitez negative image) and Liverpool got battered. He then went back to the old tried and trusted 2 holding midfilders today and they barely created a chance. (Reckon it will definately be 2 holding midfieders next week at Old Trafford.) Doesn't help that Torres obviously still isn't fully fit also.

Is it me or does Torres look depressed? Think this could be his last season especially if Liverpool don't get in the Champions League.
 

duffer

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Cesc's ball to Vela was delicious.

Really hoping Torres international form comes through tonight, Maxi should have good impact wide getting a chance with Kuyt out. Two nill Reds.
His cross for Chamkah's goal was better imo. Had far less time and space but delivered it at a perfect height and speed. The guy is seriously still improving. He looks faster and stronger now that he's getting a few games under his belt too. Barca are going to have an incredible incredible footballer turning out for them over the next few years.

edit: welcome to cw as well.
 

Uppercut

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A draw at Birmingham's a pretty good result. United, Arsenal and Chelsea didn't win there last season either. Poor enough performance but Birmingham's style makes things very difficult, teams tend to look much worse than they are at St Andrews.

In any case, crazy to be criticising Hodgson after that.
 

duffer

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
We dominated away to Birmingham. Our profligacy and Almunia punching the ball into his own net are the reason we didn't win. More or less ended our title challenge last season. Still seething from it.

edit: My word Liverpool fans seem to be giving Hodgson a very short leash to work on. He's taken a really difficult job. High risk and high profile. Not surprised he was the biggest name up for taking it on. Very tough for him to come out a winner.
 
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vcs

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Hodgson's transfer dealings have been terrible TBF. They looked shockingly out of ideas against WBA at home and were very very lucky to get the win. It's incredible how many times Torres has saved Liverpool's bacon by getting a goal out of nowhere since he has joined the club. He can't do it every match without service though, and it only makes him more injury-prone having to do it all on his own with everybody kicking him.
 

El Nino

School Boy/Girl Captain
Gerrard's set piece delivery has been absolutely horrible has hit the 1st man on every free kick and corner.
Don't understand why Gerrard still takes corners, Jovanovic showed in preseason hes very capable and had a much better delivery from them.

Poulsen, Lucas partnership was awful, really didn't work and presented zero creativity, Meireles looked in his few minutes to give bursts of energy and look forward to him starting matches not coming on for late minutes. Cole and Kuyt give us the energy we lacked, them coming back will help, but **** me we were totally outclassed first half, only the last 20 odd minutes where we started to look somewhat of even a top half of the table side.

Drawn 7 in a row now to Birmingham :dry:
 

Scaly piscine

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Gerrard plays like a tramp and Hodgson gets blamed.
Yep.

Hodgson basically has to keep picking Torres to get him back into some form after Goateed ****wit wrecked him last season in an attempt to save his own neck.

So you've got no Mascherano, a Torres that is a complete shadow of what he was and Joe Cole suspended. The new players will of course take a few games to bed in.

Liverpool in the league have had one easy fixture which they won and 3 very tough ones, they were unlucky to draw against the CDMs, lucky to draw against Birmingham and caught Man City on a rare good day when they'd probably beat anyone.

Ikki's whining particularly after the way he deified that imbecile who's pissed off to Inter with suitcases stuffed with money is hilarious.
 

Ikki

Hall of Fame Member
Hodgson's transfer dealings have been terrible TBF. They looked shockingly out of ideas against WBA at home and were very very lucky to get the win. It's incredible how many times Torres has saved Liverpool's bacon by getting a goal out of nowhere since he has joined the club. He can't do it every match without service though, and it only makes him more injury-prone having to do it all on his own with everybody kicking him.
Yes, this. Hodgson come into a difficult situation but he's tried to change too many things too early and some of them pretty illogically. He's contradicting himself in the press also which is getting Liverpool fans upset; as the consensus is becoming that he talks a little too much. First he said Poulsen wasn't brought in to replace Mascherano, then he says he was. First he says Aquilani looks good in training and that he can't wait to play him...then he shifts him of to Juve. The fact that he says Aquilani won't get much time yet is constantly playing Poulsen - an inferior player - is grating too. He said the same thing about Insua and he's gone. His going for Konchesky at the cost of giving up Insua and Lauri Dalle Valle has also pissed off people. He's replacing potential future stars for short-term stability with players that frankly shouldn't be wearing a Liverpool shirt. He says he bought Brad Jones to fill in the home-grown quota when we already had Gulacsi.

On the tactical side, his trying 4-4-2 when we hadn't used it against City was probably the cause of us getting hammered - we were overrun in midfield. We have become a team that sits back and tries to compress space between midfield and defence rather than press constantly from the top with Rafa. His man-to-man defensive styles hasn't improved us any and will take time to get used to. This wasn't really necessary considering even with all our defensive injury woes and our bad form last year...we still were the 3rd best defensive team in the league. Many fans were OK with Hodgson as long as he was a bandaid appointment but it seems Hodgson himself has missed the memo.

The pressure is on him and I really fear for next week against United because I can smell a thrashing. Birmingham and WBA were outplaying us; United is going to bury us. The chance we have is if Pepe plays another blinder, the defence does well and we hit on the break. Under Hodgson, we will simply never hold the ball or be the equals of our top rivals anymore with this kind of set up. It's early, but the trend is not looking good at it all and excuses about last year are not going to matter an iota at this rate.
 
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Ikki

Hall of Fame Member
Hodgson basically has to keep picking Torres to get him back into some form after Goateed ****wit wrecked him last season in an attempt to save his own neck.
That kind of point is so silly it's untrue. If anything, Rafa was overly protective of him and even got hell for that. Remember the game when Rafa took Torres off, he shook his head and didn't know why, Gerrard shook his head in disappointment...and the press had a field day saying he wasn't playing Torres properly? Now he played him too much? That didn't happen. In fact, Rafa was probably notorious for being a bit too overcautious - another case in point is Aquilani. However, most of the time, Rafa was proven right. Torres came off, had an ice-pack on, played 60 minutes against Benfica then needed surgery; not playing until the WC IIRC.

There's just too much tripe going round, even after Benitez ha left, and in another way that is what is also pissing off Liverpool fans. Hodgson is getting a free pass for a lot of things Rafa would get massacred for. Hodgson can't lose in the press: if he succeeds, he'll be the coming of the new messiah; if he fails, it was the fat spanish waiter's fault. But you just have to watch us play; we're REALLY bad. Maybe that's still the effects of last year...but it just looks different. You can try to paint me as a Benitez worshipper or what have you, but that's the honest truth. I would love to be wrong about Hodgson and have him succeed. His failure is Liverpool's failure and his success is Liverpool's success.
 
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Uppercut

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We dominated away to Birmingham. Our profligacy and Almunia punching the ball into his own net are the reason we didn't win. More or less ended our title challenge last season. Still seething from it.
Yeah, but the keeper's part of the team too. That explanation could have been used to explain a lottt of Arsenal's fixtures that season. It's not inherently better to have a midfield that dominates and a keeper that lets you down than it is to have a keeper that dominates and a midfield that lets the team down. The result is the same.
 

duffer

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Hleb is going to be a really good signing for Birmingham I think. As much as I hate the guy their midfield is crying out for a guy like that who can pass,dribble and keep the ball in tight areas. He knows the league as well.
 

Scaly piscine

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
That kind of point is so silly it's untrue. If anything, Rafa was overly protective of him and even got hell for that. Remember the game when Rafa took Torres off, he shook his head and didn't know why, Gerrard shook his head in disappointment...and the press had a field day saying he wasn't playing Torres properly? Now he played him too much? That didn't happen. In fact, Rafa was probably notorious for being a bit too overcautious - another case in point is Aquilani. However, most of the time, Rafa was proven right. Torres came off, had an ice-pack on, played 60 minutes against Benfica then needed surgery; not playing until the WC IIRC.

There's just too much tripe going round, even after Benitez ha left, and in another way that is what is also pissing off Liverpool fans. Hodgson is getting a free pass for a lot of things Rafa would get massacred for. Hodgson can't lose in the press: if he succeeds, he'll be the coming of the new messiah; if he fails, it was the fat spanish waiter's fault. But you just have to watch us play; we're REALLY bad. Maybe that's still the effects of last year...but it just looks different. You can try to paint me as a Benitez worshipper or what have you, but that's the honest truth. I would love to be wrong about Hodgson and have him succeed. His failure is Liverpool's failure and his success is Liverpool's success.
Torres was repeatedly picked when he was injured and he needed surgery. It happened throughout the season. Surgery would get delayed and delayed to get one more game out of him, then one more last game. It ****ed up him for the medium term as we all saw in the World Cup and now it's carried on this season for Liverpool.
 

vcs

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I don't know but it seems to be getting to the stage where Liverpool might be better off in the future without Gerrard and Carragher despite their contributions to the club, same way as Arsenal got rid of Henry. Their squad isn't deep enough to manage them effectively into old age like Ferguson has done with Giggs and Scholes IMO and I don't think they are technically good enough to overcome the effects of age.
 

El Nino

School Boy/Girl Captain
Gerrard? no way.

Hes still a top top player of the premier league.

Can understand where your coming from on Carra but not Gerrard, hes a genuine match winner.
 

vcs

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The thing with Gerrard is when he plays badly, the team needs to carry him.. he gives the ball away too much, and goes for over-ambitious shots and passes. He can also win matches single-handedly at times, but it didn't happen much last season and he has started this one where he left off. At what point do the negatives outweigh the positives?
 

Furball

Evil Scotsman
Claiming Gerrard is a top performer is like claiming that Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey are top drawer Test batsmen. Was clearly the case in the past, but to claim it right now largely involves invoking past performances whilst ignoring the player's recent sub-par form.
 

sledger

Spanish_Vicente
The thing with Gerrard is when he plays badly, the team needs to carry him.. he gives the ball away too much, and goes for over-ambitious shots and passes. He can also win matches single-handedly at times, but it didn't happen much last season and he has started this one where he left off. At what point do the negatives outweigh the positives?
Somewhat curious point this, as usually it is Gerrard carrying the team rather than the other way around.
 

Ikki

Hall of Fame Member
VCS is right, it really hasn't been that way since last season. Which is kind of weird since Gerrard's been the go to guy for about a decade. I am not sure if the club is for him anymore or he is for the club. Ironically, he is better now for country than he is club.

Scaly, you're talking ****e. I recall one such game where Benitez said an unfit Torres is better than many fully fit players, but in general he was too over-cautious with injuries. What you're doing is called revisionism. You have a tendency to be right on the money on many points, and on others you're just so off it's not worth arguing over.
 
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vcs

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Somewhat curious point this, as usually it is Gerrard carrying the team rather than the other way around.
But IMO, his version of carrying Liverpool (late goals, long range strikes etc.) is a bit too hit and miss and I've had this argument with Ikki before. I'd rather a midfield player enable the whole team to lift their level and I haven't seen Gerrard do that enough even at his peak.
 

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