double post syndrome

gerrard is great but you're right he's showing his age



i don't know about this, suarez seems to be doing great with what he has, problem is, you can't have him alone among 6 defenders and expect he can score all the time.


i think suarez more than makes up for his size with ability. other great strikers do that too, from villa to klose to tht very tiny man messi. small players with great technical ability are the stars today.

the problem it seems to me is that suarez is pretty much abandoned at the front, for whatever "tactical" reasons i don't know-- but if he had someone to play with (e.g. a "big man" striker) then his finishing could easily improve.

seems to me one reason he did so well at the world cup (hand & all) was he had forlán on his side. in liverpool? it's his right foot and his left foot.

Saw a brilliant chart today showing if Suarez wasn't with Liverpool they'd only have 2 points (judging by goals or goals he set up). You can't have one player holding the whole team up.

Liverpool had Andy Carrol, but let him go on loan to west ham in August
if they had kept him (and actually played him!) they might well be in a different place right now

Wait til Johnson gets back. He's developed ENORMOUSLY as a defender in the last year or so, and he' still got that attacking power. I think he'll make a huge difference once he's back in the team. Its hard to believe he's 28 years old though.

Carroll would've definitely contributed something but Rodgers doesn't like the kind of play he provides. I'm not just saying this but if ever a player was custom built for Big Sam, it's him. About as perfect a manager-striker pairing as I can imagine.

Carroll's exactly where he needs to be

Man City's exit from the CL seems almost inevitable now as does Mancini leaving at the end of the season. He's quickly becoming a joke and I wouldn't even be surprised if he's starting to lose the dressing room, assuming he hasn't already lost it.

hey mr. hammer, could you please explain what you mean by the carroll/alardyce thing? how do you mean they are made for each other and what not. i imagine that carroll's style of play fits alardyce's tactical schemes, but my question is-- what style is that? which schemes are those?? (since you follow them, and i've never seen them much, i've figure you could explain that team for us). or is it more of a personality thing?

speaking of which, i do not understand what is it that rodgers is trying to create in liverpool. okay? because all he does is say things like always fight. okay? and then he says some other simple shit. okay? and he makes that stupid face. okay? but what does it all mean in actual football terms? EH? okay--- (he speaks like that too)

Rodgers is a bit of a Tiki Taka fanboy and was quite effective with it when he managed Swansea but he's struggling to introduce it to a Liverpool side still clogged up with aging icons like Gerrard and Carragher and too many others who simply don't fit that style. The most obvious of those would be Carroll, who for many (perhaps a bit unfairly) represents a more direct/long ball style that's widely (and again perhaps a bit unfairly) associated with Allardyce's teams. These are gross generalisations but if Rodgers is all about "pass and move" then Allardyce is all about getting his defenders and midfield to "hoof it up to the big man up front". But I stress those are massive generalisations. The biggest irony is that Suarez's goal last weekend was textbook long ball.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGHXsdCzUn8

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. massive generalizations maybe, but tremendously helpful regardless-- in fact they explain it all. completely. thanks!!

ps- i'll be looking at liverpool differently from now on.

The hilarious thing is that Gerrad was bitching about how Everton are supposedly a long ball team and and they play like Stoke.

Whilst that's hardly true, I will say that what has Rodgers' tika-taka style football given them? 12th place and 2 wins. All very well trying to play nice looking football but it means sod all.

i think it's to be expected that transitions will take some time & effort. so what was liverpool's system & standing on the table before this?

9th I think. CORRECTION 8th.

As for Dalglish's system he was old school ie/stubborn. I think he usually kept with 4-4-2 and was generally (in my totally un-biased opinion:D ) a mess. He had some great players at his disposal, Bellamy and Carroll up front were a great partnership (contributing to the:mad: 2-1 win over Everton at the FA Cup semis). I don't remember him using Suarez a hell of a lot but I could be wrong.

Did they play the dreaded long ball? You can't have Carroll and not be tempted to do it a fair bit.

Eitherway he had a good team and just didn't want to change his style of football. Being a stubborn mule never helps anybody. See Villas Boas at Chelsea for a perfect example of that.

GET IN CELTIC!

And not rely on 1 player to score the goals.

h8kurdt-- thanks man, most enlightening info. i'm new at this prem stuff and this helps understand the current dramas.

on a marginally related note, i really like dortmund because they kind of do it all-- touching/possession game (but very fast), parking the bus and counterattacking, long balls-- i can't believe the way weidenfeller didn't stop that free kick, aghhh. they would have beaten real madrid twice!!!

Yeah this is one of the annoying things of having neither Sky or decent internet-not being able to watch games as often i'd like. Especially games from Germany and Spain.

Same for me, although that's probably for the better. I'd just be watching it constantly.

BAYERN VS. FRANKFURT STARTS IN 30 MINUTES!!!

it's fucking gonna be epic. either a massacre or a battle to the death.

btw did anyone watcht he bayern/lille game this past week? 6-1!!! and dortmund-real madrid 2-2? in the bernabeu of all places? where dortmund was winning 2-1 with 2 minutes to go? hot damn.

okay. gotta go get ready to watch. this was a public service announcement.

Thanks. I found a stream of the Bayern-Frankfurt game. Hard to really comment on either side given there's clearly a gulf in class between them. Frankfurt were better than I expected, though. They never looked like winning but were unlucky at one point not to equalise. That could've made things a bit more difficult for Bayern who, I have to admit, look pretty formidable.

I kept an eye on their game today, in part because I do like Holloway but also cos I seem to have an entirely irrational hatred of Peterborough.