Elm0

Fantastic first half there. Meireles Johnson Spearing Torres Lucas All great. KEEP IT UP

biggest concern here is GJ at left back. Shambolic decision after wednesday.

Had a strange dream about me and a toilet a few nights back. Empty bowl, sat down, but when I stood up it was full of chicken balls and they started popping out of the toilet and rolling onto the floor. Was mortified when somebody came along and put them on their plate. Anyway, good feeling about today. Home form is generally good, so I would say draw/ slight win.

BUT OH!/NO!, IT CANT BE TRUE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy-1xI1nbao

All this talk of him being the only player with pace. All well and good, but wheres the benefit if he constantly loses posession?

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a masch type player as in someone whos number one priority is to protect the back four and cover gaps. we've nothing like that at the club now. Lucas last season was still restricted by Rafa's tactics. There were glimpses of his true self towards the end of last season and given his improvements this season I do think hed work fine if he was allowed to play further forward. Meireles is good enough as well, hes just hit a run of poor form - lest we forget roy didnt really know what he was doing with him either. he'llhave best yet to come.

which part would that be? did alonso and mascherano not leave the club as better players? would one of lucas and meireles not be fine in CM with a masch type player alongside? are they really terrible? are they not just a different style of player to those who left? please. do share,

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the error being the sun reference?

A lot of the problems that people think are present are due to lack of memory on certain issues. Neither Mascherano or Alonso arrived at Liverpool as the players they left. If anything Alonso was a slight gamble given his largely unproven nature despite his good performances for Real Sociedad. Of course, the signs pointed to him turning into a quality player, as was proved true,but at the time that was speculation and it could have gone wrong. Mascherano was obviously a slightly different position. The two listed by the OP arent terrible, even in comparision. The problem is theyre completely different styles of players. Alonso and Mascherano both were more defensive minded whereas the current two are less defensive (dont want to say theyre more attacking as theyre both more box to box than anything). This obviously creates issues as it impedes the ability to play a similar system to the previous because Lucas and Meireles simply arent up to the defensive standard of those two, particularly mascherano. Either one of Lucas or Meireles in the team would be fine, just need someone to come in and boss the defensive side of it like Mascherano did. Alonso was pretty much a one off and I really dont see us getting anyone close to his quality on the ball, so a small adjustment in playing style is preferable.

Really hope this doesnt happen. He's not good enough as a midfielder to contribute enough. His best attribute is running at people with the ball. If hes playing as a right winger hes going to find those chances limited as hes going to be pushed further up the field with his back to goal. Add to that he simply isnt good enough at passing he ball and im just not sure if it will work happy to be proved wrong by his performance though.

Thats a good thing though. If he thinks about punditry then he might just stay away from our coaching positions

He reminds me of the guy who used to be in Primeval.

People predicting Johnson on the wing again?! I will eat my hat if that happens, I just cannot see it.

Thats not strictly true is it? As much as I dislike the idea of labelling players, its hard to think of more than a handful of good performances from Babel. Thats simply not acceptable when theyve had 3.5 seasons already. On the flip side of that he still made the dutch WC squad, so you do have to consider whether its something at Liverpools end that is the real problem. Overall though, as I said earlier - big fee, snatch it. Reasonable fee, id be tempted to keep until the end of the season and flog him then if hes still rubbish. Take flog to mean whatever you like.

Any suggestion as to the fee? Whilst I'd be happy enough for Babel to stay until the end of the season for him to try his under Kenny, if we sell him for a decent fee it will be the start of the summers kitty.

@Davvo. That wide left player doesnt even need to be pacy. He just needs to stay wide. We dominated teams when Riera played and was willing to stay on the line and hit decent crosses in. Thats another element of balance we had that was lost and is often overlooked.

*cough* Feel free to have a read, and twitter my link/link to me if you like what you see *cough* Anyway back on topic! We need some players to fix some flawed areas yes,but this squad is still capable of a UEFA cup spot this. It needs time and patience. Thats obviously not acceptable long term, but we are at the point where we need to think about one step at a time, rather than consider what we do now can affect whatever is a few years down the line.

I felt a bit creepy writing that bit tbh

I do tend to get a little carried away at times. Once I get started things just keep popping into my head, but at the very least its therapeutic to get things written down. Unfortunately I dont attend matches. Geography is a bit of an issue with a sizable quantity of water in the way. If I ever do, Ill maybe do a piece just for you though.

In Dalglish's defence I guess his thinking was to get a look at everyone on the pitch. Thats not to say it was a nice team to see - it was abhorrent. At the very least Konchesky wasnt there? Anyway, give it a few weeks until we see the real fruits of the new training regimes. Thats when we should be judging both players and the team as a collective.

Depends if youre going to shoot it down or be pleasant

Haha what a thread. Talk about looking through some sort of tinted glasses.