Liverpool FC Forum

by **Scottbot** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 1:41 am

It's been a VERY turbulent 7-10 days at the club and just prior to that things weren't going so well on the pitch, and there was a lot of criticism flying around on these boards. Makes sense to have a thread on the positives because i can see a lot of them just now. no doom and gloom in here.

1 - Goals, Goals, Goals - Suddenly we are banging them in. 8 vs Besitkas, 2 past Fulham, 3 past Newcastle and another 4 past Porto. Long may it continue.

2 - Late Goals - I think we've scored more this season than the whole of last year. A late equaliser against Tottenham, another to win the derby, 2 late goals against Fulham and three late goals against Porto. A great habit to get into and it will breed confidence and belief.

3 - Defensive record - After looking shaky at times early season we are back to looking solid with Hyppia back in the groove, Carra back to top form, Arbeloa our most consistent defender this season and now Finnan playing himself back into form. Add to this the BEST goalkeeper in the league and you can see why.

4 - Stevie Gerrard - Has played himself right back into top form, looks like he expects to score every game. Back to his talismanic best and playing with more freedom.

5- Torres - what can you say, completely transforms us when he is in the side. Now we have two players who can win a game on their own, looks like he's been playing in England for years. Potential to be an Anfield Legend.

6- Post-Christmas Record - Liverpool collected more points in the league than any other Premiership side after Chrimbo last season. They pretty much achieved the same feat the season before. Looking good considering we have made a much better start to the season this time around.

7- Young players Finding Their Feet - I wasn't sure on Babel, i could see there was something there but was losing some patience. while i'm still not completely sold on the lad, he is finding his feet and some form and looks a good option for the right hand side. Lucas looks the business, cool, calm, composed, good technique, makes the game look easy, likes a tackle. Early days but this kid has the makings to be a star.

8- Injured Players - the side has coped quite well without them but we still have Alonso, Agger and Pennant to come back and who knows, Kewelly might actually stay fit for the rest of the season (Scott quickly ducks dive-bombing pig)

9- Competition For Places - Less used players like Crouch, Bennayoun and Lucas are pushing hard for a place in the starting line-up (more often)

10- THE FANS - Great performance from the Anfield faithful last night, you deserve the kind of standing ovation reserved for the manager last night. Wish i could have been there. And also from all those that signed the petition or vented their anger on phone-ins, letters, emails in support of our manager. You are TRULY the CLASSIEST bunch supporters/fans in the world sport :bowdown

by **maguskwt** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 3:27 am

great post scott...

now you will be labeled with the one with rose-tinted specs...

I also wanna see some doomers and gloomers say this post is :censored:

...

by **Bad Bob** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 3:40 am

Top post, Scott...any chance you could email it to Hicks and Gillett?

I'll add another...

11 - The end of stupid, disruptive international breaks so the players can completely focus on their club football

by **hello_red** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 4:03 am

WOOOOOOOO! Finally a nice thread about good times and more to come

by **mungi** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 8:12 am

ill add another

Jan transfer window coming around, cant wait to see who we bring in and cant stand who might go

by **The Manhattan Project** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 8:26 am

Man Utd will be the real test. A good performance against them and it will indicate how serious our title challenge is.

by **Kukilon** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 10:54 am

Four goals against Porto and not Benfica.

by **Sabre** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 11:01 am

FFS, A shelter thread for the happy clappy poster!!!

Rare to find in this days

, and refreshing!. Nice one Scottbot

12 Scoring goals from set pieces situations again

13 More ease to win games than yesteryear were bound to a draw.

by **bigmick** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 11:18 am

Well it's going to eb a pretty boring thread if nobody offers a word of counterpoint, so here goes

Time for a doomer and gloomer (I do like that I must admit) to stick his two penneth in and stir it up a bit.

!. The goals. Yes we have suddenly found our shooting boots and it's very encouraging. The way the team and in particular our best striker is playing though, makes the baffling decison to leave him out in two consecutive league games (nether of which we scored a goal in, all the more, well baffling. We also never managed to break down Fulham until Torres came back from injury and produced a moment of magic. All told though, no argument. we are playing well and scoring goals. We'll get a couple more this weekend no doubt.

2. Late goals. Could this be it, the holy grail, the plus from rotation "Rafa-style" which I have been searching for for two years? I'm amazed that none of the pro-rotationers have jumped on the fact that we keep scoring late goals as proof that the players are fresher at the end of games. There may even be something in it, unless it's just pure coincidence. It's an interesting one though.

3. defensive record. The best keeper in the league with a really top centre half in front of him. Even with revolving full-backs, the fact that we haven't played a really good team since Arsenal (who cut us to pieces at times to be totally fair) has helped undoubtedly, but we do look solid. Whatever anybody says about Rafa, he is as good a defensive organiser as you will get. Plus the fact that we defend from the front, even when we don't actually attack from there sometimes.

4. Steven Gerrard. fantastic player, playing somehwere near his potential. Prefer him on the right myself but whatever, no argument with the points made.

5. Torres, top class striker and a brilliant buy. Looks cheap to me whatever we paid for him. Perhaps should have played at Pompey maybe? Although before anyone says it, of course his presence wouldn't have made the win a certainty.

6. Did Liverpool really collect more points than other team in the Prem after Christmas last season? Well we finished up twenty one points adrift, so feck me we must have been relegation candidates before Crimbo. The stat sounds a bit dodgy to me, although we did do well after crimbo the season before, running on through beaten horses to get within single figures of the eventual winners who pulled up to a canter. We'll need to excell in the second half of this season, with trips to Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal to look forward to.

7. Young players finding their feet. Lucas lookas really good, while Babel is just beginning to look like he might have something. Sissoko unfortuantely has gone backwards, and is probably going to need to play more often than we can allow him to for him to prosper.

8. Injured players. Should be back soon which should give us more "options", more "possibilities", and no doubt more rotations. Agger will undoubtedly improve the team, while Alonso will allow us to rotate our midfield even more than we currently do, although you probably can't rotate it more than we did on Wednesday (as we changed every single player in each position). As for Kewell I think he'll stay fit, and makes the team look much better when he isn't rotated.

8. Competition for places. I'm not sure that's a concept which we use any more. It's more of a take your turn thing these days it seems. Unless you're Crouch, in which scase you don't really get a turn and that doesn't seem to alter too much regardless of whether you score a goal or play well. In fact the best bet for a striker seems to be not to score. Kuyt perfected the art of doing next to feck all and then getting picked every week. Unfortunately for him though, he managed to let the ball hit him and go in against Newcastle to get his name on the scoresheet. Worst thing he could have done of course as he was inevitably rotated for the next game.

10. The fans. the best, no argument about that.

by **bigmick** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 11:28 am

12. Scoring goals from set pieces again. Sabes what's all this "again" mate?

It's nothing to do with rafa mate our failure from set-pieces, we've fecking NEVER scored goals from set-pieces. Even the really top Liverpool teams never scored goals from corners. Feck knows why, we just didnt. Nice to see we have got a couple though recently. Plus from rotation number two: the opposition hasn't a hope in hell of watching videos of our set-pieces and working out what's going to happen. Not only will it probably be a different bloke taking the set-piece form the video, he'll probably be aiming at an entirely different target as well. The bloke who someother bloke was aiming at on the video, will like the aimer himself have been rested.

!3. Easily winning games which previously we would have drawn. It's nice to beat teams which we should really beat. No doubt at some point in the near future though we'll change the team too much and bomb out against somebody rubbish. One more dodgy performance after that and we'll be back to square one. None of the players will be able to remember what they were doing right when we were playing well, or indeed who they were playing with, and we will get derailed again while we search for the key with a few more rotations.

by **redmikey** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 12:00 pm

a positive thread this won't catch on!!!!!!!

big mick , you're not invited around for xmas. boooooo

i have to agree with some of the counter points big mick made , what is the point of being good after xmas if you were on relegation form before.

but the difference this year is that rafa was given money to spend and i don't think there can be any argument that he spent it very well, and you have to wonder where we would have been if simoa and rafa 's other targets had been snapped up when he identified them,

here is some of my positives and negitives from this term so far

1, the emergence of agger,arbeloa( player of the season so far)
2, the consistency of pepe, carra, steve o finnan,
3, return of harry kewell
4, the unity of the team as far as i can tell
5, torres of course, also masha is dynamite

negitives

1, dirk, momo, sami(not lack of form but just age) jar not seeming to be the players they could be
2, PENNANT for not being as good sean dundee
3, pako leaving and rock a stable ship where the backroom staff were concerned
4, this fight in the media between rafa and the owners
5, our run of games where we looked as if we had never played football before
6, getting robbed of a win against chavski by the ref

by **Scottbot** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 12:12 pm

redmikey wrote:i have to agree with some of the counter points big mick made , what is the point of being good after xmas if you were on relegation form before.

But that's just it, our pre-Christmas form this season has been far better than the previous three under Rafa. If only we can replicate our post-christmas form from the previous two seasons.

by **Scottbot** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 12:18 pm

bigmick wrote:!. The goals. Yes we have suddenly found our shooting boots and it's very encouraging. The way the team and in particular our best striker is playing though, makes the baffling decison to leave him out in two consecutive league games (nether of which we scored a goal in, all the more, well baffling. We also never managed to break down Fulham until Torres came back from injury and produced a moment of magic. All told though, no argument. we are playing well and scoring goals. We'll get a couple more this weekend no doubt.

I was delighted with the Fulham game and i'd like to see us win more games like that. We attacked all game, they dealt with it, they got tired, we bring a couple of fresh players of the bench and we stole it in the last ten minutes. the mancs have been doing it to smaller teams for years.

by **Leonmc0708** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 12:18 pm

Benitez just got lucky, like he has all through his Liverpool career. He was just in the right place at the right time.

by **stmichael** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 12:26 pm

Scottbot wrote:3 - Defensive record - After looking shaky at times early season we are back to looking solid with Hyppia back in the groove, Carra back to top form, Arbeloa our most consistent defender this season and now Finnan playing himself back into form. Add to this the BEST goalkeeper in the league and you can see why.

this is the key point for me.

when your defence is performing well it takes some of the pressure off the attacking players in a way. you know that it could only take 1 piece of individual brilliance or a bit of luck to win the game.

the tottenham game aside at anfield when our defence was all over the shop and second half against a very good arsenal side, our defence has been rock solid. i mean we've only conceded 6 goals in 13 premiership games. and only 3 of those were from open play. away from home we haven't conceded a single goal from open play and have only conceded 2 goals in total.

having said that i'd still like to see another centre half come january (i'm never happy)

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