beejay

Rafa : "Keep it on the f*****g floor!" Fathead : "Hoof it in the f******g air!"

The real problem with Lucas' passing is that it is nearly always in the direction he is facing. He very rarely turns and changes the direction of the play. Alonso was supreme at that aspect of the game. If there was no angle to play the ball to the left, he would put his foot on the ball drag it back away from his marker and release the ball into space on the right. All the top class midfielders have this quality in possession and it's so much harder for teams to defend against if they are constantly having to shift position. I saw Xabi play for Madrid the other day and on one occasion, deep into the opposing half and with a player on him, he pirouetted three or four times turning left & right before seeing a pass to an unmarked teammate. Lucas hasn't the skill or vision to do that but there again, very few players can. It's an art but it can be developed to an extent with coaching. Lucas is possibly the best passer in our team at the moment in terms of accuracy, crispness and the pace he puts on the ball but it doesn't hurt the opposition if they know where the pass is going. We keep possession but don't stretch the defence. We've all been saying it the whole season : the Lucas-Mascherano axis is not varied enough and has to be broken up next season, at least as a go-to first choice partnership.

We bought him at a discount because he was injured and we're paying for him on the drip. So after nursing him back to full fitness with few appearances we can sell him in the summer and make a big fat profit to pay off some more debt. The Purslow Plan

I like Maxi. And Kuyt. And Yossi. But they all play the same type of game and with any 2 of those 3 on the wings we are seriously lacking in width & penetration. We need a genuine wide player on one side and the industrious, worker bee coming inside and mixing up play on the other. Our shape was far too narrow yet again yesterday. If there is a threat of our wide players taking them on they are forced to double up and leave us space but they can just jockey Maxi, Kuyt & Yossi, knowing that they will not be beaten on the outside. Riera or Babel (or preferably someone better in the summer) should always play in home games against average opposition.

It seems that we are fair game nowadays. We are not challenging for the league so won't get decisions that could affect the title race like Arsenal, Chelsea & Mancs get. And the coverage of Ngog's penalty v Birmingham has had an impact too, we have barely had a decision since. Seeing the Defoe opening goal v Wigan last week (at least 3 yards offside in the middle of the goal) and the penalties Villa & Man C keep getting are fanning my paranoia that the FA have decided it would be a good thing if someone else breaks into the champions league this year. Wiley was shocking yesterday, unbelievably bad

Rafa was trying very hard to sign Chamakh on a Bosman in the summer and we were also strongly linked to Kenwyne Jones. Neither would be bought as back-up subs so it can be deduced that Rafa wants to change the formation (at least in some games) to two up front.

If Purslow is to be believed, we will have new investors in a month's time. The campaign to get rid of G&H has been fairly successful, but if they do go, it will have more to do with the recession than fan power. SOS have fought an attritional war and the message has got across but the main factor has been they have run out of money and RBS are under a remit to reduce loan-to-value to acceptable levels meaning new investment. I think we will hear something positive pretty soon now

Gerrard has this in his locker though. He is the best centre midfielder on our books, it's just that he also happens to be the best 2nd striker as well. To my mind, he would have been more valuable to the team this season in centre midfield. There are several combinations up front we could have deployed while the Lucas-Mascherano axis has left us short of purpose, tempo & creativity.

It should be the 1st item on the manager's to-do list for the summer - sign a new centre midfielder who can get us playing forward. Lucas & Mascherano can compete for the defensive midfielder and on some occasions can play together but they should not be 1st choice week in week out. Aquilani is never going to be the man to build the play although he may still have a future as a pure attack-minded forward. In my opinion, our problems all season have stemmed from a mis-firing centre midfield combination. It was clear very early on that we were weak and not creating enough in this department and from the squad available to the manager, he should have moved Gerrard back. There were plenty of other good options open as a 2nd striker but we needed a player to drive us forward and in the absence of anyone else capable of this role, Stevie would have been the man.

Dunno, Torres for £20m (now worth £80-100m) and Alonso for £10m (sold for £30 rising to £35m) weren't bad either.

Maxi is the wrong one to pick out for criticism. He's slotted in really well and has done exactly what his manager has asked him to do for the team. I'll bet Rafa looked at the fixture list and our injuries and decided to give nothing away, play compact and grind out some points from the 3 tough games - Everton, Arsenal, Man City. It's boring, negative & frustrating but it's also pragmatic. With Torres & Benayoun back & Johnson close, Rafa can now look to the next few games to be more adventurous and go all out for wins. The game plan for this season is to scrape our way into 4th and we are in a real dogfight. It's pathetic but that's the position we are in. Maxi is a top player and is showing a great attitude. I expect him to be a lot more effective next year if we throw off some of these shackles and start to play more expansively (like last year).

Some of them are saying they don't mind if the Mancs bum them tomorrow because that might lead to them overtaking our number of titles and shut us up.

I had to restore the balance following my ludicrously over-optimistic post in the Pacheco thread. And Riera was that bad I don't see how he has the neck to make those comments.

Albert's turn http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/l/liverpool/8524521.stm This, after a horror show last night full of incompetence & insousiance right up there in the Voronin League of who-gives-a-sh*t-ness

Benitez's Babes eh? The goal last night - Babel (23) crosses for Pacheco (19) to head back to Ngog (20) to finish. Sweet. Kelly will make the grade IMO and is 19, Dalla Valle is a poacher and has the physical attributes to break through at 18. Coady is captain of Eng U-17s and has Wisdom & Robinson alongside him. Lucas was 23 & Insua 21 last month. It's not all bleak even though this season has been so crap. If we can salvage a top 4 finish, a decent run in the Europa and most of all, new investment in the shape of a decent owner, we can still look ahead with some confidence and perhaps think that the season wasn't all bad. After all, we did dump Voronin & Dossena for a combined £6m. A new medical team that keeps our best players fit ; a chastened Rafa to learn from his errors ; 2 or 3 top new players with the additional funds available from our new owner ; and a start to construction of the new stadium and whoopee do everyone's happy again

Explains Purslow's remarks to SOS then. He & RBS are put out that G&H are still playing silly buggers on price, so his language was less than complimentary. RBS could force this through if they want, they still hold all the cards

One of the options the Council have for Everton is....Anfield. We keep being told that we can't redevelop Anfield because of the loss of revenue during the 2 years it would take to rebuild the Main & Anfield Road stands. So the idea is that we build our shiny new stadium then move to Stanley Park leaving an empty Anfield. Anfield is then redeveloped & "re-branded" to create a new 55,000 seat stadium for the blues****. No problems over loss of revenue because Everton carry on playing at Goodison until their new ground is ready. Goodison is sold for housing and the net costs to Everton are way below the cost of constructing a new stadium elsewhere in the City. They would share the same facilities as us - parking, transport, Anfield Plaza etc - and it's as close to a shared ground as the Council could hope for meaning there would be some grant-aid funds available to assist both clubs. We would also have some spare cash from selling the freehold. Everton would sell it to their fans that they are "going home" ie to their original ground before the f****s were evicted and our Anfield would be all decked out in blue & white. Break my f**** heart but it's business

The only activity we can expect is the decisions on pre-contract Bosmans in the summer from Chamakh & Jovanovic. Both have said they will make announcements before the window closes on which clubs they will be joining .

The only justification I can possibly see for selling Yossi now is if we can't sell Babel and the money is going towards buying Kenwyne Jones. Would still make no sense to me but the view may have been taken that the top priority is a new striker now and that Maxi can replace Yossi.

That's the bit that's worrying me. I would much rather have a fully fit Stevie G capable of performing at the top of his game than half-fit, playing through injuries with the aid of injections etc and as a result, never fully recovering. Even if it meant he was out of the side for a month or two, for rest or surgery that would be better than seeing him struggle along at 75% of his game and risking long term damage. Same goes for Torres but at least he has had time off to rest his injuries.

Im seeing a lot of we battled well and that much is to be thankful for after the Reading game, but here it is in a nutshell, our defenders arent defending.... what are we averaging, two goals conceded each game, our midfield cannot control a game, our strikers cannot hold a ball up, our wide midfielders (we dont have wingers) cannot beat their men. How can we hope to win games with all those factors.

Our club has no backbone!

Sick of this now. The plan is to play Stoke at their own game so we have a team of hoofers. It's starting to look like Rafa wants the sack. He;s giving the critics plenty of ammo cos if this goes wrong today the atmosphere on Wednesday will be f******g poisonous

1. Pacheco 2. Gulacsi 3. Spearing

well, that was gutless!