Billy Talbot

Yup. He's done. It's over. If we (that's us and him) can't find a buyer next season will be ugly.

unlucky.... AGAIN

Yeah, that's pretty much what I thought would be going on. With all the best will in the world, it's not like the players can just put it to one side on match days. Cumulatively it'll effect them every day in different ways and not positively. Fitness and mental sharpness being the most obvious things to suffer. It would be great to win something to dedicate to him and to turn over a new leaf. Not winning anything and finishing outside the CL places will make this worse.

Heartbreak Ridge

I think he got his head turned by Madrid and his agent has probably told him he can get him 300k a week… probably about right if he includes a whopping signing on fee that he’d get from any number of clubs.

Yeah, I'm nowhere near as far down the road of wanting him sacked as some people are. Nowhere near. I'm still on the bit where I hope he turns it around cos, then, ya know, he's turned it around. I don't think wanting him sacked is a good place to be considering how phenomenally bad it would be have to be for him to be replaced before the end of the season. End of the season, all bets are off as far as I'm concerned, but I think top-four is unlikely to be enough for me to not want him to be replaced. A European Cup on the other hand... but as you say, it's all ifs, buts and maybes and I can't be arsed with anything other than watching each game as it comes. I thought we were actually good yesterday though, which is the first time I've thought that in ages.

Yeah Emery has a lot of control over what goes on at Villa, it's not like someone there foisted Elliot on him. He's sanctioned the move, gone cold on it and decided to not play him so he could get the money back not caring about wasting everyone's time. Proper dick move. That said I thought it was a bit weird at the time. I mean 10 appearances. Wtf even is that? It either means it's largely irrelevant as 10 apps is nothing for a player they were gonna pay £35m for or, like has happened, we and Elliot get messed about like we have been. I had just assumed it was an accounting trick so they could just shift the fee into next years accounts for PSR.

Yeah, it does does seem a bit odd that Sunderland would let him go. Maybe there's someone else they want from Leipzig. Just seen a piece on SSN with them saying Sunderland "would be unlikely to stand in his way". He has made 17 appearances for them. Mainly at CB and DMC but has also played a game at RB according to transfermarkt. https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/lutsharel-geertruida/leistungsdaten/spieler/420210

Could have given it to Ibou and should have given the chance. But didn't. What a ****. I would have given it to Hugo by a mile given most other circumstance.

Well played Ibou. Was certainly in the running for MOTM. I dunno if the TV gave him it but they should have.

I'm home alone. That could go either way. Either I'll be watching it sated after eating a nice steak whilst enjoying a nice bottle of red, or I'll end up slowly drinking myself into oblivion watching the football all day. 5:30 KO would have suited both better and would have been kinder on my liver.

Yeah deffo looked more like a groin problem than a hamstring.

Hugo is Boss

Buy us a defender you sh!ts

It did though. It felt really ****ing desperate and it only doesn't feel as desperate in hindsight cos of THAT goal that Ali scored. And we did win a cup final with a bunch of kids but a load of them have gone now and the ones we have now don't look as good yet and the better ones like Danns are injured. There's only Rio and Nyoni that would have got anywhere near that cup final team IMO. We have a really bad habit of having paper thin squads and hoping for the best.

Yeah, I think we'd benefit from squad players coming on for the last 20, but we've not really had that many games where we've been home and hosed enough to do that have we?

That's the only kid who I think should be in and around the squads. Nyoni for the cup games maybe. Neither should be considered as first team squad members though.

Cos they haven't. We ran on fumes for the first few games of the season cos pre-season was disrupted. We then hit a wall and have struggled ever since with players being able to play at 100% for 90 mins and/or 3 times a week. Then there's the psychological issues they're all working through. We've then had unfortunate impact injuries on top. We had to hope we didn't get these but we have. One each at CB and RB where we look weak anyway and one to our record signing. Anyone saying our squad is big enough isn't really being fair. It's not as big as last season and it looked a bit thin in parts then too, especially looking forwards to this season with Trent leaving and VvD and Mo being another year older. We tried to address some of that in the summer but we were not entirely successful, I think that's plain as day. Which academy kids do you think should be playing regularly?

It's not big, and it's not clever either.

I've just counted the players I consider senior on here and I've counted 20. https://www.liverpoolfc.com/team/mens In fact, heres 19... who else are you counting? Alli Mamardashvilli VvD Konate kerkez bradley Robertson Frimpong Wirtz Szobo Endo Mc A Jones Grav Salah Chiesa Gakpo Ekitike ISAK missed ISAK too soz - missed endo

really? It looks pretty small to me.

Squad rotation is a double edged sword though. Bringing players in who aren't fully match fit into matches makes them more likely to get injured and also makes team performance less consistent and therefore makes fit players more likely to get injured. Obviously if you don't do it, then match fit players eventually red zone and then get injured. Having a small squad, like we have, with a load of players who aren't fit and a few that are consistently injury prone isn't a good place to start from and I don't think it's fair to criticise Slot for not rotating enough, especially given how one of the reasons he was hired and he got so much praise last season was how good he and his team are and were keeping players on the pitch. This season hasn't been the same, but that's largely down to the disruption of preseason and an unlucky amount of impact injuries.

I think he's been totally exposed by our recruitment and circumstances. However, I think every manager would have been to an lesser or greater extent. He's done well in parts, just not so well in others.

Endo was ready to come On quite quick. He was in shot warming up just after Gomez walked down the side of the pitch