Hieronymus Bosch

Observations so far: - SWP is utter cack - Lampard is once again showing how average he is - Villa is class - Motson's senility now causes him so pronounce Ramos Rarmos and Xavi Xarvi (anyone'd think it was Hicksy in the box!) - Lawro is the most unpleasant man to walk this earth

Les Ferdinand in his heyday better than Drogba, according to Jamie Redknapp. Course he was...

Absolutely. With a couple of notable exceptions (in my bitter opinion)

No, I don't expect, nor want, Sky Sports' "overkill". I just want MOTD to be better than what it is. Personally, I enjoy informed insight after the game. The fact we rarely get any or, in yesterday's case, got none, is what gets my goat. Of course I watched the match yesterday, but I don't think MOTD have a policy of concentrating on those games not broadcast. As well as detailed highlights (detailed in so far as they show the main action), I wouldn't mind a bit of intelligent analysis afterwards. We don't tend to get much of that on MOTD (or on most others shows, to be honest) these days.

Fo sho - losing it massively...

Like most of BBC's sporting coverage - cack. Again, brief Liverpool highlights immediately followed by another game's, and when it came to the panel's insightful reflection, we get completely ignored in favour of Charlton v Boro (Lawrenson impressively maintaining vow of silence). Absolutely pony TV - how they manage to make a programme covering the day's top-flight football so pap is anyone's guess. Bring back The Premiership...

Not specifically directed towards the above post, but am getting a bit hacked off by people disregarding Pennant's contribution. OK, he was disadvantaged because we paid (what seems) over the odds for him, but, after a slow start, he's been really impressive in the last few weeks and, as far as I'm concerned, looks to have the potential to be the solution to our long-running right-sided problem. People clearly don't like him for being a wide-boy, ankle-tag activist, but it's about time they gave him a chance. If he was a Scouser, he certainly would have been given more leeway...

The above only tended to take it seriously in the semi-finals/final, though... IMO, the club's attitude should depend on it's predicament at the time - having been just knocked out of the FA Cup, I think we should have, as a result, valued the CC higher and played a full-strength team. I'm sure we would've, in such an instance, been able to beat Arsenal with enough in the tank to see off a pony Watford side today...

So you think he rates the Carling Cup, despite saying "the future of Liverpool is not the semi-final of the Carling Cup, it is challenging for the Premiership"???

Yeah, but treated like that by most top managers, i.e. Rafa

He doesn't seem to be full of beans at United this season

Dunno, I think the amusement of seeing West Ham fork out £8m for Neill would outweigh my disappointment at missing out on him

From a post on RAWK: http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?acti...86E855A5100B30F

Agree with all of that

Like that

Who said Football Rumours wasn't a source of reliable transfer gossip?: "To the person who said Metin Aliu is the next big thing in Australia, what planet are you on? I live in Sydney and there is no player in Australia by that name playing football. There is a young man playing Aussie Rules by that name for Hawthorn, but I highly doubt Liverpool are scouting the aussie rules ranks!"

Thought they were singing 1-0 to the Ar-se-nal

Despite my queries with Rafa's selection policy of late, I'm glad to see his powers of observation aren't diminishing: "The problem was conceding four goals in the first half." Cheers boss!

Gerrard Alonso Warnock

Agreed, to an extent. Easier when you're losing in the Carling Cup than any other competiton. Also, I think delirium had long since set in. Still, you can't criticise fans for backing the team after they've been spanked (even though they were booed off at half-time). Difficult to summarise that game. Certainly, Arsenal got the rub of the green on occasions, but no amount of bad reffing decisions and injuries can excuse what happened tonight. Don't think it will impact on the league, to be honest (though our first team is beginning to look a bit thread-bare again), but, with Barcelona on the horizon, getting dumped out of both domestic cups within the space of a few days (and seeing our, up until now, fantastic home record shot to threads) isn't ideal. Rafa must take a great share of the blame for both defeats. Tinkering with the team when our second string isn't up to the task defeats the object of rotation. Rafa, despite all his many qualities, has his foibles, and doesn't seem to be learning from his mistakes in this particular regard. Picking Dudek after Saturday was a blunder. For all he did at Istanbul, he has long since passed his sell-by date. Guthrie and Peltier looked out of their depth today. I hope I'm wrong, but I can't see them as first-team players on the evidence I've seen. Hyypia is still a commanding centre-back, but is simply too slow against classy, quick players. Next to someone as almost equally as slow in Paletta, his frailties couldn't be disguised as they might alongside better defenders. Like Guthrie and Peltier, Paletta must improve ten-fold to be considered a class act for the future. Which is even more disappointing after we plucked him out of obscurity from Argentina. Garcia was his familiar over-flicky self before he was injured and Fowler again woefully off the pace. In terms of quality, Gerrard was head and shoulders above any other player on the pitch, I just wish he'd grab the game by the scruff of the neck like he did in the final 15 minutes more often. Getting knocked out of the Carling Cup isn't a disaster, but a strong line-up would surely have got into to the final in third gear, with enough gas in the tank to beat Watford at the weekend. Now, we're risking playing with a dip in confidence - and we've got the injuries anyway. Seeing as we're likely to only ever be challenging for a Champions League place this season and, let's face it, we've got our hands full against Barca, I think Rafa's got it seriously wrong this past week. We've still got the best man in charge, a quality spine of the team (Gerrard, Alonso, Kuyt, Sissoko, Carragher, Reina, Agger, Bellamy, Finnan, Pennant etc), but our rate of improvement is not what it should be and our off-days all too frequent.

In place of run-of-the-mill injury news - ie. Ronaldinho (hamstring), Messi (knee) - Deco (psychological nightmares) would be quite amusing!!!

My thoughts... Despite the superior possession, wasted chances and great saves by Friedel, this was a poor performance. We should've outplayed Blackburn; look at the difference in quality and of expectations of the sides - they're battling against relegation, we feel we should we challenging for the title. The fact that we outplayed them and still lost doesn't make us unlucky and justified in slagging of those who criticise the performance - better teams are bound to outplay weaker opponents; there were just too many things not right with us today. Gerrard was anonymous bar the last 15 mins, the majority of the team were well under par (Bellamy being one of the few exceptions), our defenders looked anything but assured and humped the ball aimlessly all too often, the midfield created painfully little, and our strikers (well, Crouch) finished abysmally. Our formation and substitutions also left a lot to be desired IMO. Sure, we created chances, but, as I said, we should expect a team of our stature to dominate those fighting against relegation - we still played well short of our capabilities. I guess it's something that we created so many chances without firing, but it's too late for such a consolation - we've already lost six games and are 16 points behind Man Utd. I wouldn't change Rafa for anyone, and have no doubt he'd be the best man to spend any wads of cash DIC may give us, but the fact remains that we've (so far, admittedly) spu*ked up a season in which I thought he might be challenging for the title. I'm sure we'll still win more games than we lose before the end of the season. But that gap between us and the best (Chelsea and their millions I could accept, but United!!!) is growing and is thoroughly depressing.

Bellamy Alonso Carragher

I agree that his link-up play with Bellamy is, if still a bit raw, developing nicely. However, as I said in my previous post, I think people are relishing flaming the likes of Pennant, while seeing Kuyt through rose-tinted glasses. Kuyt's a legend, but, while he showed at times a good relationship with Bellamy, there was no cutting-edge to his play today - he was very wasteful in the final third. It's probably just a confidence thing - he'll probably score a hatful in the next match...

There seems to be a growing trend of revelling in Pennant doing badly (not that I think he is doing particularly badly at the moment). He's obviously widely unpopular, but it's not fair, and doesn't really reflect well on fans, when people say he's 5hit even after he's had an OK game. He didn't do badly today, and is certainly getting better (he's still only young). To say that he was 5hit today even though he played better than Kuyt, Riise and Hyypia, is unwarranted IMHO...