Liverpool FC Forum

[Bad Bob]

I Dont think we have won a game with that Mariner, he didnt even go to the linesman and ask him why the goal was disaloud.

Ive never seen a team play at Anfield with 8 fuckin over 6 foot centre halves, we could still be playing now and we wouldnt still have scored.

I was gutted after the game its what it could have been if the goal stood it would have been a rout because their Plan A, B & C would have gone out the window.

I was angry and upset like everyone else after the game but get called a happy clapper Im not happy that we dropped 2 points no one is.

But to blame Rafa after he played a really strong attacking team is wrong, he can't win can he?
And then people spout rubbish like he sold Crouch, Crouch wanted to leave Rafa didnt want him to go he got offered more money to stay infact.

It was just one of them days every team has one, but our squad is a lot stronger now we do have better players and its only a matter of time before Keane starts scoring.

We had 13 draws last season so far we have had 2, last season if we would have won 4 of them games we would have won the league.
So all is not lost we didnt win the league last week yer no.

We wont draw 13 games this season and the mancs had less points this time last season and won the league.

Its going to be a good season for us give the new players time and for Torres to get fit again and we will be on a roll.

Ciggy you just made the point that i was trying to make to you the other day.
its the o-o ans 1-1 that cost us, this IS due to Rafa not taking games like Stoke as hard games.
do you think he spent as much time looking at the way Stoke play compared to how much time he spent looking at how Man u play .......no

Its also why we got knocked out the FA cup the first year he was our manager, "oh they are a small team and we will win anyway so i dont need to look into to them".

i have hoped wth sammy there things would chage, i can see sammy looking hard into how all the teams play but not sure how much Rafa will take on board what Sammy tells him.......as he is not from Spain.

So, Lakes, did Rafa's lack of preparation for Stoke--as you see it--cause Torres to miss that free header or that left-footer he usually would have buried?  Maybe you think he forgot to remind Alonso and Gerrard how to hit the target from distance when midfielders drop off them near their own box?  Perhaps he was too busy putting his feet up this week to explain to Keane that he should really try and get more power and placement on his shots rather than hitting soft ones straight at the keeper?

You know, it's just so easy to blame the manager isn't it?  It just doesn't require any thought any more because it's become so ingrained.  We've had a disappointing result?  It must be down to Rafa.  What, he played virtually his strongest players in virtually their strongest positions and they still couldn't score despite several golden chances?  He must not have prepared them well enough, then.  Unreal.

FFS, mate, you make such hard work of pinning everything on the manager all the time that you forget to look at things logically.  Rafa, the uber-anal, detail-fetishist who many accuse of over-thinking things instead of just putting his best team ont he pitch and telling them to attack somehow under-prepared the team to face Stoke?  Sure. 

[rafa09]

At the end of the day,we dropped 2 pts because we could,nt put the ball in the net.FACT hardly rafas fault

[Spaniard]

I AM POSITIVE. This time next week all the posts will be were great fantastic etc etc When we beat the BITTERS.And tell me when have i been negative? ? ? ? ?

Yeah, I am positive too. It is only the start ot the season and we are in the right way. Maybe we are no playing the best football of the history, but I am sure we are going to make history this year. We need only patience and mantain the believe. Why dont be positive? We drew with Stoke,,,, but I dont care... We are winning in Marseille, we beaten the hateful United. I feel happy anyway. Relax and enjoy, buddies.

[aCe']

I Dont think we have won a game with that Mariner, he didnt even go to the linesman and ask him why the goal was disaloud.

Ive never seen a team play at Anfield with 8 fuckin over 6 foot centre halves, we could still be playing now and we wouldnt still have scored.

I was gutted after the game its what it could have been if the goal stood it would have been a rout because their Plan A, B & C would have gone out the window.

I was angry and upset like everyone else after the game but get called a happy clapper Im not happy that we dropped 2 points no one is.

But to blame Rafa after he played a really strong attacking team is wrong, he can't win can he?
And then people spout rubbish like he sold Crouch, Crouch wanted to leave Rafa didnt want him to go he got offered more money to stay infact.

It was just one of them days every team has one, but our squad is a lot stronger now we do have better players and its only a matter of time before Keane starts scoring.

We had 13 draws last season so far we have had 2, last season if we would have won 4 of them games we would have won the league.
So all is not lost we didnt win the league last week yer no.

We wont draw 13 games this season and the mancs had less points this time last season and won the league.

Its going to be a good season for us give the new players time and for Torres to get fit again and we will be on a roll.

Ciggy you just made the point that i was trying to make to you the other day.
its the o-o ans 1-1 that cost us, this IS due to Rafa not taking games like Stoke as hard games.
do you think he spent as much time looking at the way Stoke play compared to how much time he spent looking at how Man u play .......no

Its also why we got knocked out the FA cup the first year he was our manager, "oh they are a small team and we will win anyway so i dont need to look into to them".

i have hoped wth sammy there things would chage, i can see sammy looking hard into how all the teams play but not sure how much Rafa will take on board what Sammy tells him.......as he is not from Spain.

So, Lakes, did Rafa's lack of preparation for Stoke--as you see it--cause Torres to miss that free header or that left-footer he usually would have buried?  Maybe you think he forgot to remind Alonso and Gerrard how to hit the target from distance when midfielders drop off them near their own box?  Perhaps he was too busy putting his feet up this week to explain to Keane that he should really try and get more power and placement on his shots rather than hitting soft ones straight at the keeper?

You know, it's just so easy to blame the manager isn't it?  It just doesn't require any thought any more because it's become so ingrained.  We've had a disappointing result?  It must be down to Rafa.  What, he played virtually his strongest players in virtually their strongest positions and they still couldn't score despite several golden chances?  He must not have prepared them well enough, then.  Unreal.

FFS, mate, you make such hard work of pinning everything on the manager all the time that you forget to look at things logically.  Rafa, the uber-anal, detail-fetishist who many accuse of over-thinking things instead of just putting his best team ont he pitch and telling them to attack somehow under-prepared the team to face Stoke?  Sure. 

i think rafa does deserve some of the stick he gets after results like those..
Given the fact that we did not win the game i think we'r entitled to question his tactics and substitutions..etc etc
On the one hand whos to say we would have won it had we started Babel and Benny instead of Keane and Kuyt... On the other whos to say we wouldnt have ?! fact that we didnt win the game just makes you wonder what if ?!
From all the aimless crosses and poor attempts from wide areas and corners i cant help but agree with Lakes.. surely the manager should have had a word with atleast kuyt and Riera.. tell them to try to get behind the fullbacks.. maybe crooss from the byline or vut it back instead of all the crosses from deep that they had absolutely no trouble defending..
The changes he made in the game were pretty pointless too imo... 0-0 at home to stoke with 15-20 mins to go or so i was expecting Dossena to come off and be replaced by Benny.. Kiuyt off Babel on.. take it to them... chances of us scoring if we gamble are alot higher than the chances of them catching us on the break ... anyways its 2 points lost and with the difference in quality between our players and theirs... cant help but think that the manager has to take most of the blame...

[Number 9]

Agreed the high ball should have been stopped and we should have approached the game differently.I said in the second half we should get to the by line and cut the ball back,Kuyt done it twice and the strikers failed to bury the ball!
The manager should have addressed this at half time,but we still played high crosses in the second half,which was hard to watch and frustrated the life outta me!

Saying that we still had enough chances to win the game,had Keane and Torres been on form or in any way sharp we would have comfortably...the manager cant be blamed for the strikers shooting!
The line up was fine,there is no point talking about if Babel started or Yossi or anyone else because we will never know now if anything would have changed!

People are saying we need a right back and right winger,true,but i'd much rather see a striker in January that can head the ball and take on defenders in the air!I still think Keane will come good and score plenty but I cant help feeling we should have signed someone better in the air.......someone like Shearer in his prime would be nice!

[lakes10]

I Dont think we have won a game with that Mariner, he didnt even go to the linesman and ask him why the goal was disaloud.

Ive never seen a team play at Anfield with 8 fuckin over 6 foot centre halves, we could still be playing now and we wouldnt still have scored.

I was gutted after the game its what it could have been if the goal stood it would have been a rout because their Plan A, B & C would have gone out the window.

I was angry and upset like everyone else after the game but get called a happy clapper Im not happy that we dropped 2 points no one is.

But to blame Rafa after he played a really strong attacking team is wrong, he can't win can he?
And then people spout rubbish like he sold Crouch, Crouch wanted to leave Rafa didnt want him to go he got offered more money to stay infact.

It was just one of them days every team has one, but our squad is a lot stronger now we do have better players and its only a matter of time before Keane starts scoring.

We had 13 draws last season so far we have had 2, last season if we would have won 4 of them games we would have won the league.
So all is not lost we didnt win the league last week yer no.

We wont draw 13 games this season and the mancs had less points this time last season and won the league.

Its going to be a good season for us give the new players time and for Torres to get fit again and we will be on a roll.

Ciggy you just made the point that i was trying to make to you the other day.
its the o-o ans 1-1 that cost us, this IS due to Rafa not taking games like Stoke as hard games.
do you think he spent as much time looking at the way Stoke play compared to how much time he spent looking at how Man u play .......no

Its also why we got knocked out the FA cup the first year he was our manager, "oh they are a small team and we will win anyway so i dont need to look into to them".

i have hoped wth sammy there things would chage, i can see sammy looking hard into how all the teams play but not sure how much Rafa will take on board what Sammy tells him.......as he is not from Spain.

So, Lakes, did Rafa's lack of preparation for Stoke--as you see it--cause Torres to miss that free header or that left-footer he usually would have buried?  Maybe you think he forgot to remind Alonso and Gerrard how to hit the target from distance when midfielders drop off them near their own box?  Perhaps he was too busy putting his feet up this week to explain to Keane that he should really try and get more power and placement on his shots rather than hitting soft ones straight at the keeper?

You know, it's just so easy to blame the manager isn't it?  It just doesn't require any thought any more because it's become so ingrained.  We've had a disappointing result?  It must be down to Rafa.  What, he played virtually his strongest players in virtually their strongest positions and they still couldn't score despite several golden chances?  He must not have prepared them well enough, then.  Unreal.

FFS, mate, you make such hard work of pinning everything on the manager all the time that you forget to look at things logically.  Rafa, the uber-anal, detail-fetishist who many accuse of over-thinking things instead of just putting his best team ont he pitch and telling them to attack somehow under-prepared the team to face Stoke?  Sure. 

if Rafa had done his work he would have found a way to break them down so there would be no need for taking shots from 50 yards.

other teams seem to find a way to breal teams like this down when they sit in their own box.


sorry i forgot that Rafa is a god and never gets anything wrong.

if it was all done to the players hpow we play we do we even need a manager for??? oh thats right to sell our top players and to make strange sub and to play players when they are out of form, thats what managers do, well our one anyway.

[Bad Bob]

anyways its 2 points lost and with the difference in quality between our players and theirs... cant help but think that the manager has to take most of the blame...

Ah, see that's where I fundamentally disagree with you Ace'.  With the difference in quality between our players and theirs I can't help but think that the players have to take most of the blame.  Did they execute on the day?  No they did not and that's the bottom line for me.

[aCe']

anyways its 2 points lost and with the difference in quality between our players and theirs... cant help but think that the manager has to take most of the blame...

Ah, see that's where I fundamentally disagree with you Ace'.  With the difference in quality between our players and theirs I can't help but think that the players have to take most of the blame.  Did they execute on the day?  No they did not and that's the bottom line for me.

so basically we dont need a manager for most of the games in the season since our players are better than theirs ?!
doesnt work like that mate.. newcastle being the prime example ..

our players better than theirs... need motivation..tactics.. good subs... you win the game... players fail to perform..take them off.. thats what ur paid to do as manager... we cant go around blaming the players whenever we dont perform but when we do get results the manager takes credit as well ?!

[Sabre]

anyways its 2 points lost and with the difference in quality between our players and theirs... cant help but think that the manager has to take most of the blame...

Ah, see that's where I fundamentally disagree with you Ace'.  With the difference in quality between our players and theirs I can't help but think that the players have to take most of the blame.  Did they execute on the day?  No they did not and that's the bottom line for me.

Now it seems our players are not intelligent enough.  As if not winning yesterday depended on sheer footballing intelligence.

Perhaps "We've got the best midfield of the world" was a bit too much, but the reality is closer to that than to "Our players lack intelligence".

Yesterdays' game didn't require Barcelona-esque passing, nor our best football. It didn't even require a top class team like Liverpool to beat Stoke, you could expect a win even from Villa, Tottenham and many teams with midfielders much worse than ours.

We simply didn't score our chances. Our plan of the game wasn't bad, we did try to use width which is the proper thing to do in these games, we just didn't deliver upfront. In other games other seasons we did fail to build up and create chances, it was a more dull dominance, but yesterday we didn't score, and what it could have been massive euphoria it has become in the usual stuff around here.

League is long, and we shouldn't change our mood from one week to another.

As for the initial questions, is this a blip or a bliiiip, I'm not a fortune teller, but I do think we have won width with Riera and we are able to compete with the other top teams.

In Bigmicks' book probably it was time to give time to the Mascherano-Alonso pairing that worked against Manchester United, but for me it made sense the Gerrard-Alonso selection. Why? it was a game to use width and range shots, and in the team selection Gerrard-Alonso are more appropiate for that kind of game, there was not much to be destroyed Mascherano, so that team selection made sense, and rest Mascherano for the next game. It didn't work, our corners were shíte, and we were dull upfront, but from one game my confidence hasn't crumbled.

[Bad Bob]

if Rafa had done his work he would have found a way to break them down so there would be no need for taking shots from 50 yards.

Who's talking about shots from 50 yards?  I'm talking about shots from near the edge of the box struck on target that work the keeper and create possibilities for deflections, spills etc.  Are you telling me that if Stoke back off of our central midfielders and practically invite them to shoot from distance that it's bad tactics to do so?  How many goals has Gerrard scored from that kind of range?  How about Alonso?  He's got a decent strike on him and usually knows how to hit the target...of course he should be having a pop from just beyond the area if that's what they're giving him.  The trouble is that one free kick (Gerrard) and one corner (Alonso) aside, neither of them managed to work the keeper from distance and so we lost out on a chief means of putting a park-the-bus team in difficulty.

And, I see you've conveniently ignored my other comments about Torres and Keane missing gilt-edged chances inside the box.  Clearly we were creating something out there but didn't have the finishing.  Torres and Keane had five solid chances between them so I'm not having this idea that we were so tactically deficient that we didn't create the opportunities to win the game.  We did, and the players failed to take them.

other teams seem to find a way to breal teams like this down when they sit in their own box.

You mean by taking one or two of the several quality chances that fall to them?

sorry i forgot that Rafa is a god and never gets anything wrong.

And, again we have the 'Rafa is God' retort.  Did I say that?  No.  I merely suggested that, on this day, we came up short because of the players more than because of the manager. 

if it was all done to the players hpow we play we do we even need a manager for??? oh thats right to sell our top players and to make strange sub and to play players when they are out of form, thats what managers do, well our one anyway.

Funny.  This time last year when we drew with Birmingham while resting Torres it seemed that most critics had a very clear view of exactly what we needed a manager for.  Apparently, the manager's role was to quit fecking about and just pick his strongest side.  Had he done that, we were told, we would have buried the Brummies. Well, fast forward a year and he does what his critics ask and picked his strongest side against limited opposition.  Hell, even Big Mick thinks he's seen the light when it comes to team selection.  And, guess what, we still drew.  So forgive me but, I can't help but think that this sudden concern with Rafa's preparation is just the newest stick dreamed up to beat him with when results don't go our way.

Rafa's made some questionable decisions in his managerial career, no doubt about it.  But his preparations, team selection and tactics yesterday were not the problem.  I assure you, if Rafa had been laid up with the flu for the past fortnight and Sammy Lee was given the task of beating Stoke we would have seen near enough the same team, near enough the same tactics and near enough the same subs.  I dare say we would have seen near enough the same result, too, if messers Torres, Keane and Co had turned in the same misfiring performance.  To suggest otherwise, IMO, is naive.

[Bad Bob]

our players better than theirs... need motivation..tactics.. good subs... you win the game... players fail to perform..take them off.. thats what ur paid to do as manager... we cant go around blaming the players whenever we dont perform but when we do get results the manager takes credit as well ?!

I didn't see a lack of motivation out there yesterday.  I saw a team that individually and collectively turned in a performance below what they were capable of.  I saw tactics that created chances, only to see those chances spurned.  I saw positive subs designed to bring on players who could change the game.  Above all else, I saw a game where we would otherwise win at a canter turn out a disappointing draw because our top players simply failed to do what we've come to routinely expect them to do.

For those that saw things differently, I'd like to know just what changes you would have made in Rafa's place to bring about the victory?  What glaring mistakes did he make that you would have sidestepped if you were calling the shots?  Because I don't see it.

[andy_g]

stop arguing about football, you fools. this is supposed to be the clam thread

[Number 9]

Bob the only mistake Rafa made was that he failed to tell our players to stop the high balls into the box and approach the game in another way!
Saying that I feel the players should have realized Stoke were picking out every high cross with ease because they had more height themselves,they should'nt really need to be told considering it was so obvious!
Regardless we still should have won the game and would have only for poor finishing and a bad decision!

Does it make Rafa a bad manger?No

Does it justify the abuse the manger and certain players took from some "fans" on here yesterday?.... Never in a million years!

[Number 9]

stop arguing about football, you fools. this is supposed to be the clam thread

Andy what in the name of fu'ck is that??  

[Bad Bob]

Yikes, look at the schlong on that clam!