yellow jumper

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fairly sure we did control that in a midfield sense. dominated ball and their counter almost non-existent. just no specialised individuals doing one thing obviously like making play or ball winning. although think lallana now the reference.

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play mascherano at centre half.

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faulty torres.

you've fallen into my trap... not really. it's fairly pointless. a pointless, hypothetical. but i shall name it the deathscar paradox in your honour. gerrard bailed them all out. if that's what you want to call it. he just did it better with the better managers.

the worst managed by benitez v. the best managed by hodgson.

the usual polarisation. managers are economical doesn't mean everything's a lie. work in progress doesn't mean either bound to progress or never will.

‘This is a crazy time where football is, for some people, the most serious thing in the world, but no-one really cares about it.’

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probably true, but also think teams talking more risks now. more managers, our own amongst them, playing more open. the more nuanced question would be if klopp had these players available to him, who and how would he use them differently, if at all. then again, leicester just won league playing not dissimilarly to a houllier side.

lot of talk about silva at the time. think barry became the story, but most of the chat from rafa subsequently points to him being seen more as a flexible, left-footed option rather than some direct replacement for alonso. plan as likely to have been to use gerrard deeper on occasions. think alonso was hampered by the injury more than anything 07/08. only played 19 league games. but perhaps benitez sensed a move might be on the cards.

yeah, badly phrased. riise the worst player obviously. but not convinced the position anything like as critical. probably unfair to think of it comparatively, when it spans such a long time with players of different eras, but i think if you were to list candidates for centre half who've played for our rivals over same period, it begins to look a bit more like the area through spine of team that we're shortest in terms of quality/flexibility.

i think weakest part of these teams is centre half.

she's obviously only dealing with the temporary lunatics rather than the permanent ones.

moreno's a better option against pace in my view. amongst his struggles, he's had good games against likes of mahrez, that you'd think milner might struggle with.

you go on any football forum and you see the same cry-arsing from the majority of modern fans. "people" with half a clue acting like seers and experts.

the talented player all the tactical coaches want to tame? rafa liked him, but also used him more in midfield.

not enough go, but of those that do, there's been as may successes or partial successes as there have been failures in the last decade or so.

optimism is a general outlook. not, anything's better than this. or, the apocalypse is nigh, but oh look a chinese billionaire, maybe.

how many fanbases are actually overwhelmingly content with their club's situation at the moment? increasingly few, is my sense. basically those who transiently have one or a combination of shiny new manager/big spend (ideally on name players) or very recent success (in relation to expectation). then the playing of 50 games of football changes it, and we start again.