matty

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matty No.9

Depends which Liverpool you mean. The one before Christmas which was utter s***e, or the one from Christmas to 3 weeks ago which was really good? We were away at Palace in the league this season, as well as various other games. I don't agree with this. There might be a few that do, but most people want the team to be either clearly very good, or clearly on the way to becoming very good. The difficult with managers of Liverpool is the level of expectation. Those of a certain age and older remember when we were undisputedly the best in England, and in Europe too. For some people, there is an (unrealistic) expectation that we should always be at that level. Others, like me, just want to see the team compete at the level of the best. That doesn't mean winning the league every year, it means winning the league sometimes, and putting up a good challenge most of the time. Yeah, football has changed since the 70s/80s, but not that much. We may not have the resources of Chelsea and City, but we far too often waste the resources we have. That's not only a problem associated with the manager, it is obviously related to the ownership and administration of the club too. Back to the managers. A manager who does something brilliant (Houllier's treble, Rafa's Istanbul, Rodgers's near title last year) deserves respect, and support. Does that support last forever? Not for me. Personally I make a judgement on whether I think the club is still going in the right direction. Are we definitely moving forward? At the moment I'd say we aren't. Rodgers did brilliantly last season, and it wasn't only down to Suarez. The problem for me is that there was a huge failure last summer to get the players we needed to keep moving forward. I don't think a title challenge this season was unrealistic. And the way other teams have played tends to make me think I'm right in that. None of them have been outstanding, not even Chelsea. Top 4 certainly wasn't unrealistic either. But now it's gone, we all think. The wrong players were signed, it's as simple as that. We needed some top players to come in and keep up the momentum. The transfer market isn't easy to get right, but by God we don't half prove that point. With a young squad, the focus should have been on balancing that with some established talent who wouldn't take so long to bed in. Instead we got a hotch potch of signings who've been good, bad and indifferent. The strikers we signed are a joke. We're looking like going into close season with the same problems we went into the last one - strikers (plural); centre mid, full backs, and arguably centre backs. Plus Sterling halfway through the exit. I'm not blaming Rodgers entirely - we have a Quartet of actors to look at: FSG; Ayre; the Transfer Committee; the Manager. If you wanted to design a system to allocate responsibility to in the most opaque way possible, you couldn't have designed it better if you were trying (were they trying?). But despite the good things he's done, I'm still left looking at the club and not thinking, 'Yes, next season we'll push for the title.' Instead I'm thinking, who's going to leave, which players won't we sign, who will we be stuck with again (Hello Fabio!). It's not where I thought we'd be, that's for sure. Yes.

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Six transfer windows and we don't seem to be much further on than when he took over, in many respects. Under Kenny we finished 8th, won League Cup, FA Cup Final. Wonder what will be the record by the end of this season.

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