goodrobotusses

Read the quote again - he said we've been getting worse since 2004 (Houllier's last season). He's basically saying Rafael Benitez's Liverpool were worse than Gerard Houllier's and continued to get worse - it's a dig, nothing more.

To summarise: "Myself and Rafael Benitez do not like one another, so I will use this opportunity to have a dig at him in the guise of discussing Roy Hodgson and Liverpool FC"

The biggest concern I have is the way we were set up off the ball. Whereas we used to squeeze the opposition, hunt in packs, compress the play and force other teams to play in areas of the pitch they didn't want to be in, now we seem to be set up to have everyone but the forwards behind the ball on the 18 yard line, with a ridiculous chasm between midfield and attack. It was pure latter-day Houllier, and Gerrard in the middle - with that huge gap to overcome - immediately devolved 5 years as a player, playing forward passes he shouldn't have even been thinking of attempting. On the ball we played badly many, many times under Rafa - games where we could barely string 2 passes together (Marseille at home in the CL, anyone?). But I never saw a Rafa team look that clueless off the ball. We just allowed City to play around us - we actually looked out of our depth for the first time in God knows how many years. It reminded me of those games we played against Arsenal in GH's latter years when we'd look terrified everytime Arsenal went forward. Yeah, Rafa's need to stifle the opposition - no matter how mediocre they were - could baffle and infuriate, but at least we gave teams something to overcome. That City team is nothing to write home about, but we made them look like world beaters.

Because tactically football is exactly the same now as it was then, of course.

No-one.

Live images from inside Ryan Babel's brain... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdr9k1T-rSQ

Fit and on form (and hiding behind the fact that Masch is still here meaning I don't have to pick between Lucas or Poulsen yet)... ---------------Reina Johnson Carra Agger Aurelio --Maxi Gerrard Masch Cole ------------Kuyt Torres Lack of pace on the wings is an issue, but it's not like that's a new one. We already know Babel is gash, and there's no guarantee Jovanovic will be a success (though obviously I hope and think he will be). Kuyt partnering Torres is maybe slightly controversial, but for me Maxi has to play on the right, and I'd always have a place for Dirk in the team. Besides, with Kuyt supporting Torres with Cole and Maxi either side, there's lots of scope for inter-changing.

I'd literally cry hot, sexy tears if that happened.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGg_A2pXSQI

Ignoring the absolute insanity of the first post, I think we're seriously looking at... OUT Masch Benayoun IN budget defensive-mid Jovanovic Shelvey Maybe add Riera, Babel, and one of Gerrard/Torres to the outs, and some cheaper players to replace them.

GH is just bitter that Ginola didn't try to win a corner in an El-Hadji Diouf stylee. The French were one away from having the most corners in that group. Damn you, Ginola, you murderer.

Brilliant.

We'll be like a mix of Rafa's and Houllier's Liverpool, but worse to watch and likely to win fewer games. He'll be a terrible appointment. I have nothing against the guy personally - he seems like a nice chap - but he's another coach whose prime concern is with shape and system. If the rumours about players losing patience with our sometimes robotic approach to games last season are true, he's not going to win over the squad with a fresh approach. Fulham players remarked about how all they ever work on in training is shape and system off the ball. If you watched them play at all in the past two seasons you'd have seen a team playing a sideways passing game with next-to-no movement to rival our own at times last season, albeit without our potential to occasionally string together some nice, incisive, aggressive attacking play. Our players of top-level European pedigree (Mascherano, Torres, etc) are hardly going to be inspired by his appointment - he's a mid-level journeyman, no way around it - and probably won't hang around, so our potential for those rare moments of attacking inspiration will be diminished, and we'll probably end up like the GH team's poorer spells at best. Oh, and we'll sign more Scandinavians.

Maybe we'll re-sign Buchtmann.

I know. I've been saying it's probably going to happen for months, but now it's actually about to I'm just flattened. Hopefully after an X amount of time someone will finally be able to take the club out of the Americans' hands (or more like from under their feet), and we can rebuild and re-stabilise the club and become competitive again down the line.

Soon to be on a level with Dortmund, Lazio, Deportivo, et al. Yep. We're about to see just how green the grass on the other side is. I'm so f***ing depressed.

It's not just about ability (though he's the best there is at what he does), it's about personality. Masch is the complete package. Losing any of him, Reina, Torres or Gerrard (I think we'll lose at least two) and we're pretty much f***ed as a competitive team.

"I knew this march would be no good because it looked s*** in the warm-up."

Nice of Gerrard to wake up with 2 minutes of the season to go.

If I recall from Inverting The Pyramid the 70s Dutch side played 1-3-3-3 - basically a 4-3-3 with a libero. Really cool to see their "aggressive offside trap" in action there, though it couldn't work with the modern interpretation of the law.

This content is not viewable to guests.

This content is not viewable to guests.

This content is not viewable to guests.

#ISUPPORTLUCASLEIVA