Liverpool FC Forum

by **SupitsJonF** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 12:34 am

s@int wrote:FFS Sabre, playing Gerrard in the hole is hardly a new position for him! He played there for almost half of last season mate. Everyone and his dog has been questioning why we ever bought Keane when the Torres Gerrard partnership was working so well last season, and Rafa plays it for one game and now he's back to being a !!!

I agree, go back to the Sunderland/Middlesboro game threads and you might see some people eating their own words

by **Fo Dne** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 12:39 am

s@int wrote:FFS Sabre, playing Gerrard in the hole is hardly a new position for him! He played there for almost half of last season mate. Everyone and his dog has been questioning why we ever bought Keane when the Torres Gerrard partnership was working so well last season, and Rafa plays it for one game and now he's back to being a !!!

Yes, and I've consistently said that (Gerrard's performance), will happen if he's played out of position against decent sides. He looked completely lost today from that position and to be quite honest it was absoloutely no suprise to me.

I find it enfuriating that if I'm not suprised by it, then someone who is being paid millions of pounds a year by our club should be.

Rafa :censored:

up today, big time. He got very lucky and make no mistake, he almost cost us that game. The only positive from his own point of view was he made the correct change (Keane for Mascherano) and in my opinion he should have made it a couple of minutes after the goal went in.

by **Sabre** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 12:40 am

s@int wrote:FFS Sabre, playing Gerrard in the hole is hardly a new position for him! He played there for almost half of last season mate. Everyone and his dog has been questioning why we ever bought Keane when the Torres Gerrard partnership was working so well last season, and Rafa plays it for one game and now he's back to being a !!!

There's truth in that lines S@int, but don't look at me, I hadn't prejudices with Keane because I didn't know him, and I always defended Gerrard is an excellent player in that position too!

I sincerely think that many fellow reds feel more comfortable with Gerrard in CM, though.

by **Fo Dne** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 12:45 am

Sabre wrote:
s@int wrote:FFS Sabre, playing Gerrard in the hole is hardly a new position for him! He played there for almost half of last season mate. Everyone and his dog has been questioning why we ever bought Keane when the Torres Gerrard partnership was working so well last season, and Rafa plays it for one game and now he's back to being a !!!

There's truth in that lines S@int, but don't look at me, I hadn't prejudices with Keane because I didn't know him, and I always defended Gerrard is an excellent player in that position too!

I sincerely think that many fellow reds feel more comfortable with Gerrard in CM, though.

I'd rather him on the right, in the "holding role" or right back than in that position.

Said it for years. Will continue to say it till he retires. Today was a prime example of what he can give us from there against anyone half decent, let alone good!

by **bigmick** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 12:45 am

We're getting caught up in simialr grounds which bogged us down last season here. Obviously Torres can play on his own up front, Gerrard can play in behind him, we can play 4-5-1, Masherano is a top player and all that stuff. I'd be surprised if anyone denies any of it. The point though surely is that having spent the last 2/3 of last season playing 4-5-1, we bought a bloke for 20 million quid about two months ago in order to let us play 4-4-2. Now by common consent he started slowly as did the whole team as we struggled to come to terms with the adjustments. Over the last couple of weeks though, we've kind of looked like we've started get our heads around it a bit. The said 20 million quid bloke got himself a goal, and made a couple of goals and it was all starting to look peachy. Until we decided to change it, wrongly in my view.

by **Fo Dne** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 12:46 am

bigmick wrote:We're getting caught up in simialr grounds which bogged us down last season here. Obviously Torres can play on his own up front, Gerrard can play in behind him, we can play 4-5-1, Masherano is a top player and all that stuff. I'd be surprised if anyone denies any of it. The point though surely is that having spent the last 2/3 of last season playing 4-5-1, we bought a bloke for 20 million quid about two months ago in order to let us play 4-4-2. Now by common consent he started slowly as did the whole team as we struggled to come to terms with the adjustments. Over the last couple of weeks though, we've kind of looked like we've started get our heads around it a bit. The said 20 million quid bloke got himself a goal, and made a couple of goals and it was all starting to look peachy. Until we decided to change it, wrongly in my view.

Fair comment. Don't agree with it all but fair comment.

by **account deleted by request** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 12:47 am

Sabre wrote:
s@int wrote:FFS Sabre, playing Gerrard in the hole is hardly a new position for him! He played there for almost half of last season mate. Everyone and his dog has been questioning why we ever bought Keane when the Torres Gerrard partnership was working so well last season, and Rafa plays it for one game and now he's back to being a !!!

There's truth in that lines S@int, but don't look at me, I hadn't prejudices with Keane because I didn't know him, and I always defended Gerrard is an excellent player in that position too!

I sincerely think that many fellow reds feel more comfortable with Gerrard in CM, though.

I have never hidden my preference for Gerrard in midfield, I think thats where he is at his best, I don't however object to him playing the odd game as support striker or even Right wing.... I do draw the line at Left wing mind you. Like Stu I have always had my reservations about playing him up with Torres against the better sides ..... I don't consider Citeh one of the better sides .... not yet anyway.

I have ALWAYS argued that Gerrard is best in central mid, even when it became quite unpopular to have that opinion.... unlike some on here

by **tonyeh** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 12:59 am

Rush Job wrote:
tonyeh wrote:
bigmick wrote:As the rotation debate has meandered along and gone through various peaks and troughs, one thing has become clear and is pretty much universally accepted I think.

That is, it's not just the number of changes to the team which is important, it's the nature of them. Switching Aurelio and Dossena for instance, though a step backwards in my opinion is obviously not the same in terms of impact as switching Torres and N'Gog.

So what of today? Only one switch from the last game so not syling? Well, we decided to play a different formation from the one we have settled into. We decided to change the position the captain has been playing in, and been playing quite well in too. We decided to sit down a fella who had just scored his first goal, and to give both Alonso and Torres new partners.

Right decision or wrong decision, and did we just slightly get out of jail? What do you reckon, was it a worrying glimpse of an urge to tinker which simply cannot be surpressed, despite the light clearly being seen? Are we going to give ourselves a shot at the title or not?

Aside from what anyone thinks on that score, I think most would agree we are into the guts of the campaign now. Chelsea and Man Utd have settled down and are in the mode where a draw away at West Ham would see Zola dancing on the touchline. We absolutely must try and keep ourselves in the rattle right now, we are out of the blocks and there is a good early pace on. No time for fecking up, and I would venture fecking about either.

Rafa must have nicked all of the "Get out of jail cards" from his Monopoly box today. I couldn't believe he was playing one striker up front espcially after coming off of two decent games with the 4-4-2 he's been nurturing. A 4-4-2 that was starting to look good too.

Any team, IMO, who's playing with a single striker are on to a loser in the modern game and Rafa should damn well know that. it may have worked for a few games last year, but I reckon the other sides in the Prem have been studying Torres...hard...and they may have the measure of him this season. Opposing teams have been locking down on Fernando and doing it well, I may add. City, today, had 2 or 3 lads on him at all times. There was nowhere he could go to get a bit of space. But they could afford too. Liverpool have no-one else up there to get goals.

Also, you only have to look at Torres' goals this season, I think they all involve breaking down the opposition's defence using multiple strikers.

It's common sense, AFAIK, that using more than one man up front is bound to force the defence to divide their attention. Robbie may not get 20 goals this year, but what he will do is draw off defenders and allow Torres to get into the little bit of space that he needs. Torres only needs the smallest amount of time to do his magic. But without somebody else worrying the defenders, he won't get that time.

I hope Rafa understands this from today's game, which could have been a very different result. I agree with you big lad, it does seem that Rafa has an irresistible urge to mess around with things, when he should just leave things alone.

So its gone from people saying Torres doesnt need and cant play with a strike partner too he cant play effectively on his own.

"Any team, IMO,who`s playing with a single striker are on to a loser in the modern game and Rafa should damn well know that".

Sure about that mate? Because we had our best run of last season with one up front and Torres didnt do bad did he? And what about chelsea with Drogba?
And Spain won the euro final with one up front, guess who scored the winner.
No mate i think we all now Torres can be effective on his own with support from deep, what we dont yet know for sure is, can he be as effective playing up with Keane? I think yes but we`ll have to wit and see.

I, for one, have never said that Torres didn't "need a strike partner". In fact, last season, I was advocating starting Babel up front with him for a few games.

The single striker up front may have worked somewhat last year, when Torres was a new boy, but I don't think that's going to wash this time around. Teams have had all summer to understand him.

Frankly, I don't care what kind of a run Liverpool had with a single striker last year. This year will be different. I said at the beginning of the season that Torres will be kicked around the pitch this season and that he'll find it very difficult to find the form he struck last year, if he was to carry the can up front on his own again.

As far as Chelsea and Drogba are concerned, they have Lampard, Cole, Ballack and Deco in their side, all of who are very good at feeding balls to Drogba and not saps when it comes to getting a few goals themselves...

...Liverpool have, um, Gerrard.

Besides, Chelsea are just a far stronger team than Liverpool. There's not getting around that.

No, I am very much of the opinion that Torres will benefit from a strike partner this year, for the reasons given in my last post.

by **account deleted by request** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 12:59 am

bigmick wrote:We're getting caught up in simialr grounds which bogged us down last season here. Obviously Torres can play on his own up front, Gerrard can play in behind him, we can play 4-5-1, Masherano is a top player and all that stuff. I'd be surprised if anyone denies any of it. The point though surely is that having spent the last 2/3 of last season playing 4-5-1, we bought a bloke for 20 million quid about two months ago in order to let us play 4-4-2. Now by common consent he started slowly as did the whole team as we struggled to come to terms with the adjustments. Over the last couple of weeks though, we've kind of looked like we've started get our heads around it a bit. The said 20 million quid bloke got himself a goal, and made a couple of goals and it was all starting to look peachy. Until we decided to change it, wrongly in my view.

I understand your point Mick and its not as if you change your opinion game to game, you have been pretty constant mate.

I do think however that for certain games you have to make tactical changes. I think that Rafa was expecting Robinho to play off Jo and wanted Masch to keep him quiet, or maybe even Elano?

I am not saying he is right, what I am saying is, I think I understand his reasons, I agreed with them before the game so I am not going to start criticising him after the game.

I know it would be nice to play the same team (not the same 11 every game) and the same formation, but sometimes you have to make the odd change.

by **Rush Job** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 1:16 am

tonyeh wrote:
Rush Job wrote:
tonyeh wrote:
bigmick wrote:As the rotation debate has meandered along and gone through various peaks and troughs, one thing has become clear and is pretty much universally accepted I think.

That is, it's not just the number of changes to the team which is important, it's the nature of them. Switching Aurelio and Dossena for instance, though a step backwards in my opinion is obviously not the same in terms of impact as switching Torres and N'Gog.

So what of today? Only one switch from the last game so not syling? Well, we decided to play a different formation from the one we have settled into. We decided to change the position the captain has been playing in, and been playing quite well in too. We decided to sit down a fella who had just scored his first goal, and to give both Alonso and Torres new partners.

Right decision or wrong decision, and did we just slightly get out of jail? What do you reckon, was it a worrying glimpse of an urge to tinker which simply cannot be surpressed, despite the light clearly being seen? Are we going to give ourselves a shot at the title or not?

Aside from what anyone thinks on that score, I think most would agree we are into the guts of the campaign now. Chelsea and Man Utd have settled down and are in the mode where a draw away at West Ham would see Zola dancing on the touchline. We absolutely must try and keep ourselves in the rattle right now, we are out of the blocks and there is a good early pace on. No time for fecking up, and I would venture fecking about either.

Rafa must have nicked all of the "Get out of jail cards" from his Monopoly box today. I couldn't believe he was playing one striker up front espcially after coming off of two decent games with the 4-4-2 he's been nurturing. A 4-4-2 that was starting to look good too.

Any team, IMO, who's playing with a single striker are on to a loser in the modern game and Rafa should damn well know that. it may have worked for a few games last year, but I reckon the other sides in the Prem have been studying Torres...hard...and they may have the measure of him this season. Opposing teams have been locking down on Fernando and doing it well, I may add. City, today, had 2 or 3 lads on him at all times. There was nowhere he could go to get a bit of space. But they could afford too. Liverpool have no-one else up there to get goals.

Also, you only have to look at Torres' goals this season, I think they all involve breaking down the opposition's defence using multiple strikers.

It's common sense, AFAIK, that using more than one man up front is bound to force the defence to divide their attention. Robbie may not get 20 goals this year, but what he will do is draw off defenders and allow Torres to get into the little bit of space that he needs. Torres only needs the smallest amount of time to do his magic. But without somebody else worrying the defenders, he won't get that time.

I hope Rafa understands this from today's game, which could have been a very different result. I agree with you big lad, it does seem that Rafa has an irresistible urge to mess around with things, when he should just leave things alone.

So its gone from people saying Torres doesnt need and cant play with a strike partner too he cant play effectively on his own.

"Any team, IMO,who`s playing with a single striker are on to a loser in the modern game and Rafa should damn well know that".

Sure about that mate? Because we had our best run of last season with one up front and Torres didnt do bad did he? And what about chelsea with Drogba?
And Spain won the euro final with one up front, guess who scored the winner.
No mate i think we all now Torres can be effective on his own with support from deep, what we dont yet know for sure is, can he be as effective playing up with Keane? I think yes but we`ll have to wit and see.

I, for one, have never said that Torres didn't "need a strike partner". In fact, last season, I was advocating starting Babel up front with him for a few games.

The single striker up front may have worked somewhat last year, when Torres was a new boy, but I don't think that's going to wash this time around. Teams have had all summer to understand him.

Frankly, I don't care what kind of a run Liverpool had with a single striker last year. This year will be different. I said at the beginning of the season that Torres will be kicked around the pitch this season and that he'll find it very difficult to find the form he struck last year, if he was to carry the can up front on his own again.

As far as Chelsea and Drogba are concerned, they have Lampard, Cole, Ballack and Deco in their side, all of who are very good at feeding balls to Drogba and not saps when it comes to getting a few goals themselves...

...Liverpool have, um, Gerrard.

Besides, Chelsea are just a far stronger team than Liverpool. There's not getting around that.

No, I am very much of the opinion that Torres will benefit from a strike partner this year, for the reasons given in my last post.

So any team playing a single striker is "on to a loser in the modern game", unless your chelsea? And our good run last season and Torres history making debut season doesnt matter?
What about the fact that apart from a last second OG and an injury to Skrtel we would have knocked the all powerfull chelsea out of the CL once again, playing one up front, and who scored our first goal their for ages?
And when chelsea won the league playing mostly Drogba up on his own they didnt have Ballack or Deco.

by **account deleted by request** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 1:19 am

Maybe if I explain it another way you may understand.

Was the formation at fault for either of the goals? No the first was caused by poor play by Aurelio, and then Arbeloa not clearing it properly.

The second was a silly free kick given away by Riera

Did the change in formation result in our scoring more goals ? We scored the first before the sending off when Masch made a good pass out to Gerrard, the second we scored from a corner won by Dossena, taken by Gerrard and knocked in by Torres, just after Masch came off ,but it could hardly have affected Gerrards delivery ...... could it?

The third ? We will never know if we would have got a third if we had maintained our original formation, but then again our formation would have had to have changed by then ANYWAY because of Skrtels injury.

by **skatesy** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 1:20 am

bigmick wrote:I can kind of understand why he brougt Masherano in, he is the best defensive midfield player in World football after all. If he had to bring him in though (and I don't for a second accept that he did) the correct move for me was to drop Alonso and go with the same formation. Same strikers, same wide mifielders etc etc. Anyone in fact who doesn't think that tinkering with the team has an effect would do well to look at how the game panned out.

I completely agree. Benitez chose to include Mascherano into the team as opposed to Keane which I believe was the wrong decision (not to say, however, that Mascherano should've not been in the team). I believe that Keane should have definitely stayed up front with Torres, for several reasons, and continued to play 4 in the midfield as we have been throughout this campaign. Mascherano or Alonso, to me, is a toss up. If Benitez felt that Mascherano should've been brought into the squad then it should've been in place of Alonso.

by **Rush Job** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 1:30 am

TBH i dont think we did get lucky, i think we got what we deserved. Citeh had two chances (one of which was a free kick) and scored them both.
We not only scored more but we missed two open goals (Kuyt,Torres) and could have got a pen if the ref was up with play.
Would people be saying it was lucky if we put the two "easy" chances away and won 5 2? Let alone the pen chance.

by **bigmick** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 1:31 am

Now when you've been around this place for a while, you can almost sense that people are about to say something. Just like I've no doubt people can "sense" what i'm going to say as I'm annoyingly repetitive, I can sense it's only a matter of time before someone says "FFS I don't believe this place, we win and still som people are fecking moaning!!!!".

It's a fair point, but just so's people know, I certainly don't moan about stuff exclusively when we lose. On the contrary, I'll happily have a wee winge when we win as well

by **account deleted by request** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 1:34 am

Rush Job wrote:TBH i dont think we did get lucky, i think we got what we deserved. Citeh had two chances (one of which was a free kick) and scored them both.
We not only scored more but we missed two open goals (Kuyt,Torres) and could have got a pen if the ref was up with play.
Would people be saying it was lucky if we put the two "easy" chances away and won 5 2? Let alone the pen chance.

We also had 66% possession, 7 corners to their 1, and 16 shots compared to 6. Hardly getting thrashed were we ?

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