spacemonkey

Not sure that's right about Can. Could only find sources stating that he's on 8 cards for the season so he should be ok for the next couple of games at least. Could be tight until the end of the season though so he's likely to miss two at some point. Would be handy to have him for United and Chelsea.

Klopp was being rather guarded when asked about Ward a few days ago, wasn't he? Said he would be talking to the player before talking to the media but in any case that he wanted to work with Ward. Made me think he was contemplating a loan but given Mig then being dropped and making comments today about a conversation after the Burnley match, perhaps Klopp was just anticipating that Mig might leave this month with Ward then being number 2 until the summer and potentially getting some cup action. Will be interesting to see who starts against West Brom.

Thought it noticeable that Karius was trying to throw quickly when he got the ball in his hands. Put the recipient under a certain amount of pressure on a couple of occasions but managed to worm our way out each time. Give him the ball to feet though and he's just going to punt it, and not necessarily all that far. I reckon Virgil and Matip give us decent options for playing out from the back which may help us keep possession better when we're winning and needing to close out the match. Suspect Klopp is now trying to see whether Karius can distribute the balls better short than Migs who seems to have resigned himself to just kicking long more often than not because he fears mistakes (or getting it back under pressure) when playing it short. We had about 36% possession last night. Bit much to expect our front 3-4 to keep pressing with the same intensity for 90 minutes - we need to hold on to possession better once in the lead, starting from the back. Doubtful that Karius is the answer but guess that's who we'll see until the summer now.

It's "kann mir mal in die Schuhe blasen." So more blow into his boots than cause them to explode! Meaning is along the lines of "can kiss my...".

Was my thought too.

We have a habit of following wins against big teams with dropped points against the smaller ones. Can we maintain the aggression at home to Hull or will we just take that one for granted and not turn up? If we can maintain the level against the small teams, that would be the big progress compared to last year.

I think this has more to do with it than his marriage, yes.

Seems likely, yes. Haven't read it obviously but seems at odds with the various articles documenting an argument with the Croatia manager back in March after which Lovren basically said he didn't want to go unless he was going to play. Imagine they're just trying to create some sort of far-fetched link to his football career so as to justify printing it.

When Stoke countered down the right with Peters, I was somewhat surprised that Ibe wasn't busting a gut to get back and put in a challenge. Seems that he has a problem or he doesn't yet grasp the importance to do the defensive work too. Not going to help his chances of more minutes with that sort of thing.

The German thread I just read on transfermarkt has lots of people saying he's a top centre half, great positioning, heading, one of the best at playing it out from the back. Main weakness cited as concentration but that seems to have got better with age / experience. One guy has him as the third best centre half in the Bundesliga. Certainly seems to me as though the majority are sorry to be losing him and the ones who are being more positive about his departure are simply stating their belief that one or two of the younger players have the potential to be a Matip 2.0.

He's played a lot of games for a 24 year old so I'm choosing to be optimistic that he's ready to kick on to a higher level. Besides, Bild are saying we've beaten Newcastle and Sunderland to his signature so that's... encouraging?

The Schalke manager recently slated him in public for contributing absolutely nothing in the past 18 months. He said that if the player could stay free of injury then maybe he could still prove himself but it was up to Sam to show that he could get himself back in a condition to help the team. Sounds like he has about as much injury trouble as Sturridge.

Not Adler please. Also a strong shot stopper but he's good for a lot more howlers than Mignolet.

Aguero seems to like claiming handball. He did it after Mignolet saved his shot from that Milner back-pass as well. Awkward...

Hasn't Klopp said he was approached at that time but he wasn't interested in a move at that stage? Could be wrong. Either way, pretty sure there would have been better candidates than Roy who would have been up for it. Yes, our owners were a disaster at the time and that will have been a deterrent but still.

With that first name, I reckon there could be some truth in this one.

Mad Erik was most recently director of football for Aachen. Assistant Manager before that. Might be able to take the players' cantine in a new direction too.

I'm going to try to take some encouragement from him seeming to have done pretty well as U19s manager, beating the likes of Belgium and Italy, though losing to France. Hope Pepijn knows a bit about defending anyway.

If we sign Falcao we won't sign another striker this summer. Having brought in two new strikers already, I'd imagine it's now one more at the most.

Well, Origi is also coming in so at this point we've got two strikers signed and only Aspas out the door and he was on loan anyway last year = six senior strikers on the books. Could imagine them needing to sell (or at least loan) at least two more before bringing in a third this summer. Piece of cake.

No idea. Maybe because this makes him a repeat offender in terms of violent behaviour. As I say, though, don't know whether the info is reliable. We'll find out by Thursday evening I guess.

Not sure why they would know this but these Norwegians are claiming that Markovic will be suspended for four matches - 3 matches for violent conduct and a further match due to the red card he had received in last year's semi with Juve for allegedly fighting with Vucinic (even though Vucinic later claimed that he'd been arguing with a couple of Markovic's team-mates, not Markovic with whom he is good friends). So after having been banned for two games already for that incident which arguably didn't even involve him, this would now be the third, plus another three for barely brushing his fingers against a Basel player's face. If true, that's quite a lot of games to miss for not a great deal. http://www.liverpool.no/Nyheter/Fire-kamper-for-Markovic.aspx

Seems unlikely to me given that it's not worked the previous times and each time he's ended up with a massive ban and huge media attention which must be rather unpleasant for his family as well.

Those are more rational actions as you might take a strong opposition player out of the game. You don't accomplish anything at all with a bite so there's less understanding for it. Seems more irrational. Not sure why that should make it a worse offense in terms of the punishment though. Arbitrary.

Can understand that FIFA get to ban people from FIFA events and can see how that could include league and CL games too but how do they get to ban him from going to Melwood? What gives them that authority? Do we have FIFA refs at training or something? In terms of the punishment, it just seems arbitrary every time to me. Seems to be based on individual moral perspectives of a handful of people from a very dubious organisation and it's purely punitive rather than doing anything whatsoever to stop either Suarez or another player doing something similar in the future. Saying that he has mental problems seems to be taboo so that leaves beating him with a stick as the only way forward.