Rather than me posting a long rant i thought i'd first ask everyone to post their own mid year report card for LFC. WIth 19 games gone and within the week that will be 21, What is your view of how we are doing.
You should create a special MFG option. I'm gonna go for the cliched 'team in transition option', I feel as if we haven't been as bad as people make out, but yet still not good enough. A lot of things need changing and a lot of things will be changed, and obviously we all know about our options up first being limited to say the least. Anyhow, I've still been encouraged by the general play, you can see Brendan's tactics slowly sinking in and the more time he gets to add his own players the better. 25 points out of 57 is not good enough, though. And I expect a much improved second half of the season.
C- must try harder. hopefully the second half the season will be more like a B+ but not sure we are getting what we need in Jan to push for a top 6 finish, hope we get proper reinforcements in. guess we will see.
Want me to post the rant for you MITO? Ok I'll do an individual and overall: Overall is easy. Just not good enough from players, owners or management. A disastrous summer where we spent £15 million on a player who's been no better than Spearing last year and a striker who looks championship standard at best (so far) added to a failure to bring in the players the new manager wanted. Still no direct representative of FSG working within the club, a loss of a whole lot of experience with Kenny and Clarke leaving, stadium development/re-development stalling yet again. A whole 9 points worse off in terms of points than this time last year so far from an auspicious first half of the season. Basically we've gone backwards. Will it be two steps back to take 3 forward? We all better bloody hope so. Goalkeepers: Reina's got worse and Jones did a bit better than expected when asked to cover. Defenders: Our strongest asset has recently turned into a bit of a mess. The predictable formation and insistence on passing a thousand times before reaching the half way line has led to more unforced errors than there needs to be. Add to this the somewhat perplexing fact that having three strikers (?) has led to an attack with no real width this has forced the full backs to do half the attacking for the team. Not helpful when you fall behind and the opposition can just stroll up the wings time after time. I feel for the whole back line to be honest because we have had Agger and Skrts fit for most of the season and yet our defence as a unit just hasn't functioned properly. Midfield: Where do I start? Blunder to play Lucas against City when he'd reported being uncomfortable cost us big time early on. Joe Allen has looked all at sea after a reasonable start, he makes Jamie Redknapp look like a warrior. Gerrard's picked up a bit but has been a shadow of his former self. Henderson and Shelvey have still failed to find any consistency or look anything other than half decent. Nuri who? Downing has played his best football in a Red shirt....and still looks **** (but then what kind of mentalist thinks he's a left back?). Suso has been hit and miss but played too far forward. Great skill coupled with terrible decision making. Forwards: Suarez is my player of the season so far but still a massive frustration at times. I guess the fact that he's surrounded by mediocrity really doesn't help him. Sterling is getting paid with the bigger boys now so needs to start earning it again. Works harder than he gets credit for, is (IMO) severely hampered by our slow build up play but still needs to keep improving. Borini....who knows? Started poorly....and got worse. Lots of work for BR to do. He needs to learn how to get positive results and worry about our "style of play" later. Possession stats and pass completion won't save his job if the trigger happy yanks start getting itchy fingers. Teach them how to defend again, then learn how to win games, then add the fancy dan ****e later on. He needs to spend the second half of the season toughening himself and the players up and putting our results before his principles and his pride.
I voted Seriously underperforming with the players we've got. How does that fit in with your preconceptions? And again, Rodgers suggests it's all becaueer of oo many youngsters around Suarez lacking experience. He appears to have completely ignored the fact he has Agger and Skrtel in a defence which is at it's leakiest since Rafa arrived. They're experienced, right?
I went for 'in transition' because it's the closest to what I think. If we were all realistic about the state of our team compared to our rivals, we are in a fair position (maybe one or two places below what we should be). We haven't had a run of form; we've had one striker basically all season, our squad is thin. However, Rodgers' style excites and he has Suarez playing his best football for us. With money and signings it could get better.
We needed to move on and IMO that included changing player personnel too. We have seen senior players such as Kuyt, Maxi, Bellamy, Aurelio, etc move on and hopefully Cole and Downing will soon follow. BR needed to put his own stamp on the side and so he brought in Borini, Allen, Sahin and Assaidi. The only one of them that has been involved enough to comment on is Allen who, despite a great start, as not exactly set the world alight. Part of that stamp was introducing a 'pass at all costs' mentality (not pass and move, we've always done that) which has quite literally cost us in a game or two, it also involved us playing 433 no matter what happens (I'm trying to forget the three-at-the-back experiments!). Positives: We have some very good young players coupled with a strong experienced core in Reina, Johnson, Skrtel, Agger, Enrqiue, Lucas, Gerrard and Suarez. We dominate possession and therefore the basis for a good team is there, we just need to start putting the onion in the bag! Negatives: We have some very in-experienced young players. We are easy to setup against: overrun our midfield and pressure the defense you boss the game, despite having our first choice keeper, defense and defensive-midfielder in the side for the last four leagues games we have conceded thirteen goals! Rodgers was brought in for a long term project and we are just five months into said project, as long as we don't start flirting with relegation or opposition managers he should continue to be given the time he was promised!
I'd say... disappointing Edit: actually, I'm going to agree with you with 'inconsistent'. You have to have failed to reach expectations to be disappointed, that is something Liverpool have not done!
Transition. So many of our players are not good enough. I am guilty like most of my friends on here for looking at Liverpool through rose tinted specs. Fact is we can't kill teams off and we no longer can get 90+ minute winners. We have 2/3 really good players. A couple of average players and lots of youth promise.
I don't believe I'm biased towards our players but nor do I agree that we only have 2/3 really good players. The likes of Reina, Johnson, Skrtel, Agger, Enrique, Lucas, Gerrard and Suarez are good enough IMO, the problem is a team is only as strong as its weakest link!
OT but **** me. Bale booked for the 5th time this season for diving. Where is the which hunt? ****ing double standards. If it was Luis the back pages of all the sundays would say CHEAT, for Bale it'll be a little section buried 4 pages in.
i'd vote for bits of all four options if i could. at times we've looked brilliant but the very next game we look like the players have never played together before. the manager and owners must take some of the blame cos at times the club have been made to look foolish with transfers and other stuff. it hasn;t been a good seaason so far... i'll give them a C
Honestly the whole transition talk is a load of bollocks. BR has good players at his disposal, look at Everton and west brom doing so well. How on earth are we lying in 10th place. Prior to the game against villa the manager was supposed to not let the players get carried away, to keep their feet on the ground but he got more excited than the players, and the whole talk of '2nd place finish' put unnecessary pressure on the players and cost us that important game against Villa, which definitely should of been won. And after a disastrous summer January could only get worse with the imminent arrival of Sturridge. Transfers are always a gamble,buying English does not necessarily reduce the risks, infact our signings have proved otherwise. I really thought we would look abroad atleast this time around, but BR seems to know only players he's worked with and the Yanks seem to somehow think Britain's where talent is at. Look at the deals spurs mange to pull off. They were in relegation zone not long ago, but they brought quality players from abroad and Now it seems like the Spuds would be a permanent fix in the top 4 along with Arsenal and we could be only chasing shadows, unless we become more sensible in the transfers market.
No! Levy did. Commoli picked the players but Levy had the final say. This summer they brought in Lloris which is a massive coup, Vertonghen,again a brilliant signing, Dembele, Dempsey, Sigg... they've all proved good signing by this point.
