The rest of the season

[Bootle Buck]

Quite frankly if I were an opposing manager I would do exactly what Everton did the past few games and I think we would struggle to break most teams down. We could end up with 6 or 7 draws easily before the season is over unless Rafa reads those pages of notes he makes and actually changes something. We are so predictable and yet Rafa never seems to change anything. How many times are we going to have 70% of possession without winning games?

Edited January 26, 2009 by Bootle Buck

[Stevie H]

i think we're seeing how think our squad is now. our options out wide are still not really top class and aren't creative enough. gerrard, torres and alonso isn't going to be enough to force our way to the title.

[Roscoe]

Riera will be good enough to make a difference in some games and we will remain solid at the back. with mascherano finding some form and skrtel and agger coming back to fitness I can even see us not losing again this season in the league. but as said we will draw too many games because of the fact that we are, like has been said, relying on 3 players for all our threat. our best chance has to be sticking with the formation played today, but we are left clinging to the hope that babel or kuyt can find some form of threat to their game. if they don't it's a simple formula to almost totally negate our attacking options.

 

we created nothing yesterday and whilst Torres' magic deserved a goal gerrard's shot should have been saved. we 'controlled' the game right enough, but in the final 3rd that control starts to look like a straitjacket.

[Chili Palmer]

gerrard, torres and alonso isn't going to be enough to force our way to the title.

 

I think thats it in a nutshell, we need better options than we currently have, we can still win it if we get a good run out of those three but as someone said on here a few weeks ago, the first time we win it in years is going to be a combination of luck and others teams f*** ups.

[Leo No.8]

Everton hung in yesterday but we were far better than in the league game.

 

My 'For the rest of the season' would be to play the same set up as yesterday with Gerrard off Torres and Alonso and Mascherano sitting, rotating those four as rarely as humanly possible.

 

Obviously Riera would start more often on the left but I'd give Babel a shot on the right here and there seeing as Dirk has been looking a little blunt on the right side for a month of so now after a great start to the season.

 

Babel needs a confidence boost; its horrible to watch a player with such potential struggle so badly but I still believe he's got it in him. I think he needs an arm round the shoulder more than a kick up the backside.

 

It feels a bit down at the moment but if we beat Wigan then Chelsea next week which we're well capable of doing then everything changes again. I would bring in Riera but keep the same team otherwise.

Edited January 26, 2009 by Leo No.8

[Chili Palmer]

I think he needs an arm round the shoulder more than a kick up the backside.

 

 

Something Rafa struggles with I think.

[beejay]

Something Rafa struggles with I think.

 

Sammy Lee should be (& probably is) doing this job

[Knox_Harrington]

Everton hung in yesterday but we were far better than in the league game.

 

My 'For the rest of the season' would be to play the same set up as yesterday with Gerrard off Torres and Alonso and Mascherano sitting, rotating those four as rarely as humanly possible.

 

Obviously Riera would start more often on the left but I'd give Babel a shot on the right here and there seeing as Dirk has been looking a little blunt on the right side for a month of so now after a great start to the season.

 

Babel needs a confidence boost; its horrible to watch a player with such potential struggle so badly but I still believe he's got it in him. I think he needs an arm round the shoulder more than a kick up the backside.

 

It feels a bit down at the moment but if we beat Wigan then Chelsea next week which we're well capable of doing then everything changes again. I would bring in Riera but keep the same team otherwise.

Spot on this. We did well yesterday and we created a fair few chances. We need to kick on. We know we are limited but this is why we need to concede as few as possible and close games out. We aren't going to t*** teams but we can win the number of games required from here on in.

 

Our rivals and supposedly the "flair" side have gone top by not conceding and getting a solitary goal. We can do that.

 

The negativity here today is f***ing daft. Second half we looked good enough for the first time since Newcastle. Needs building on on Wednesday but we are top of the table in January and have the best front two in world football in harness for the first time this season. We've done the hard part. We've gritted our teeth and battled through injury worries and made ourselves contenders through force of will as much as anything else.

[alias75]

Its the players like Babel, Riera, Benayoun, Kuyt and Keane that need to step up and offer us something offensively. The Torres / Gerrard combination is great but you can't rely on 2 players to produce your attacking threat every game, our other attacking players are far too inconsistent and that needs to change.

 

Teams are going to get men behind the ball against us and we need to find a way of breaking that down, personally im still pretty confident that Gerrard and Torres are both good enough to create at least 1 goal against most teams that are just looking to defend but we need more of a contribution from the other attacking players in the team too.

 

It doesn't take much to turn a lot of these 0-0's into 1-0's

[JRC]

mispost

Edited January 26, 2009 by JRC

[Tobes Rafa]

We've done the hard part.

 

No we haven't. THIS is the hard part.

[beejay]

We have lost 2 games in all competitions all season. Before we start the blame game, just put that on record.

 

Rafa's team building has got us to the stage where we are rarely outplayed, in fact we are dominant in most games home & away. This means that more & more teams have started to park the bus and play for a draw and we have yet to master this tactic.

 

It's a damn sight better than seeing us hoofing the ball and playing on the break (even at home) which for a long while was the Liverpool way.

 

The one area where we are still woeful in comparison with all our rivals (& even the likes of Villa & Everton) is set pieces. With all the pressure we put on teams playing most of the game in the opposition half we should be breaking sides down far more with a return from our numerous corners & free kicks. If the squad is missing anything it is having a threat from set pieces and personally, I don't see too much wrong with the delivery (usually from Gerrard) it is failing to attack the ball and with the exception of Sami, who can't play every week, a few players who can actually head the ball.

[yellow jumper]

Spot on this. We did well yesterday and we created a fair few chances. We need to kick on. We know we are limited but this is why we need to concede as few as possible and close games out. We aren't going to t*** teams but we can win the number of games required from here on in.

 

Our rivals and supposedly the "flair" side have gone top by not conceding and getting a solitary goal. We can do that.

 

The negativity here today is f***ing daft. Second half we looked good enough for the first time since Newcastle. Needs building on on Wednesday but we are top of the table in January and have the best front two in world football in harness for the first time this season. We've done the hard part. We've gritted our teeth and battled through injury worries and made ourselves contenders through force of will as much as anything else.

 

agree with much of that. started brightly and played well second half.

 

do think we can improve offensively regardless of the personnel though. and i think we're relying far more heavily on our desire and intensity than any of our rivals. we're capable of bludgeoning tough opponents into submission for periods of a game, but not entire 90 minutes. you're often left feeling why didn't we just play like that for the full 90, but i think that's a symptom of relying on huge levels of mental and physical energy to win or get back into matches rather than (particularly) huge levels of skill.

 

i think we look for torres and gerrard far too quickly when it should be obvious that against a better organised defence than say newcastle we should be allowing the quick movement of ball and men to do the work. i think it's possible to expect our players to have the ability to do that against sides they're better than man for man. the policy of crossing the ball repeatedly into a box with only torres and at a strech kuyt threatening a 10 man defence is mind-numbing, again it can work during those periods when we're playing with great intensity, but during the run of things it rarely does. at home gerrard needs to hit the box more, but he wants to cross it, alonso needs to hit the box more (but i've never seen evidence of it), kuyt needs to be there as much as possible. riera's good in the air, attack the far post. the full backs were okay yesterday, put some decent balls in, but every f***** bar torres was on the edge of the area. either f*** the crossing off or get some bodies in there regularly.

Edited January 26, 2009 by george lees

[Knox_Harrington]

Agree with that George.

[Flasher]

We've done the hard part.

 

 

For the most part I agree with your post.

 

Not his bit though. The hard part is now, and playing at home against Fulham, Hull, Stoke etc certainly was not the hard part, though we may have made it look so.

 

We're still in 3 comps by the skin of our nethers, but we're only just hanging on right now. One win, one loss is better than 2 draws. We need some courage now; spades of it in fact. (no pun intended)

[Jarg Armani]

he's right. we've done the hard part.

we're not bottlers (the team that is. the fans certainly are), we've had our form and injury problems, but we're there, level top, in good shape, all the lads back, played well yesterday, looked confident...

 

i'm surprised at the negativity today.

[Knox_Harrington]

he's right. we've done the hard part.

we're not bottlers (the team that is. the fans certainly are), we've had our form and injury problems, but we're there, level top, in good shape, all the lads back, played well yesterday, looked confident...

 

i'm surprised at the negativity today.

Sense from the man here.

[Chili Palmer]

he's right. we've done the hard part.

we're not bottlers (the team that is. the fans certainly are), we've had our form and injury problems, but we're there, level top, in good shape, all the lads back, played well yesterday, looked confident...

 

i'm surprised at the negativity today.

 

 

its just the 3 draws in a row, results business and all that, a win against wigan and we are good to go.

[chiliking]

The main reasons for my worries is that we seem unable to change th egame plan during games. Sometimes I miss Hyypia or Agger as a tower up front when we struggle. Instead of changing a defender or a midfielder with an extra frontman in games we totally dominate, we tend to change a wingman with another wingman, or a forward with a forward. Sometimes we need to do it ugly.

[pipnasty]

I'd like to think that this is our bad spell for the season and that, as others have pointed out, we kick on soon. There is a hell of a lot more from us to come yet.

[D.Boon]

What surprised me the other day was how easily bullied we are. We have a lot of supposed hard men in the team in Skrtel, Masch, Carra and yet we are so easily bullied by the s*** teams.

 

I cant work it out. Houlliers team was a big, powerful outfit that looked after itself physically. This team looks very lightweight all over the park. Id like to think we have some players who could scare the life out of c**** like Cahill, sadly we dont.

Edited January 26, 2009 by gackwilliams

[Maldini]

I'm not worried about the last two games, I thought we played quite well. We controlled both games and created a decent amount of chances (although obviously we should have created more given the amount of possession we had) I was actually encouraged by how easily we controlled both games, a bit more ruthlessness in the final third and we could kick on. There were a few times in the last twenty minutes when we had a chance to play the final pass or get the cross in and we overplayed it. Minor tweaks are all that's necessary.