If we had had Sturridge and Coutinho from August we would have a good few more points I feel to. For a large chunk of this season Suarez was our only fit striker and only major goal getter.
Just seen their goal today and just goes to show how bad we are at dealing with crosses. Thats something that will have to be looked at if we ever want to get CL again.
got to say coutinho through ball was class on the 3rd goal, I feel Liverpool deserved the win no doubt, but the clear pen as you will ever see not given changed the game, 2 mins later its 2-1 but that's football, had the qpr fan who never gives ffc anything done his job, different game I.m.o
As much as I love Coutinho, he was shooting for the third goal and it got a deflection taking it into Sturridge's path!
Agree with you Gez - we have a chance to get past 60 points with a win against QPR which may seem redundant but it would be our best league finish since Rafa left. Again, no real significance to that but it shows progress however, it also shows us how strong the league is and how much it has improved since. I read somewhere that if we look at the results for 2013 only, we are on par with the likes of Arsenal, Spurs, City, Everton. I do believe we would be a lot closer had Sturridge and Coutinho joined earlier but I'm glad we didn't panic and spend money on the likes of Dempsey. We waited and bided our time and secured two young top quality talents in January. Not signing Dempsey wasn't the problem - getting rid of Carroll without a replacement is the underlying problem but I think we've learnt our lesson. As good as were in the second half, the result could have been so different. First half was decent in patches - our passing and movement looked good at times but we struggled to break down their defence. Then Fulham took a strangehold on the game and we simply couldn't win the ball back nor could we keep it once we did. Very disappointing. Shelvey lost the ball on the half way line and Fulham could have scored from it (luckily we managed to get a goal from it). Lucas should have conceded a penalty and Coates could have been sent off. Henderson gifted them a chance as well with a wayward pass. Still too many mistakes and we will be punished for them. And whilst we scored 3 very good goals, we missed 3 clear cut chances - Sturridge should have scored 2 more and Borini had 1. When the score was 2-1, we kept missing chances to kill the game and Fulham could have equalised but Reina saved us (starting to find some good form now).
the league has not improved. The premiership has dropped standards massively in the past 5 years. There is not one team in the prem you would offer up against the top 5 clubs in eruope whereas 5 years ago bar arsenal you would have said even lfc added to cheslea and utd would have been IN the top 5. I do agree that waiting for the right player paid dividends in the case of sturridge and coutinho but equally going into the camping with one forward and borini cos us any shot. We should have conceded when henderson passed it to berbaflop and form the reuslting corner pepe had to make a brilliant save... at 2-2 we'd be raging. that game could have gone either way... i'm glad it went our way but we were wasteful. I think the lucas pen shout was a bit of a long shot but coates proved again that he's not up to it yesterday. I think for that second goal we ened to look at the replay again. i
We have improved our points haul this season but I'm not sure many of the top sides have improved points wise from last year. Man Utd obviously have but what have others done? (not got time to look myself)
Sturridge was great yesterday. The greedy moments were not such simple passes so I can forgive those, unlike when he did pass to Henderson (Newcastle) when it was the only sensible option.
he was playing europa so its kind of easy to look good there. Shelvey is ok and the fact that he's 21 can lead to or should i guess lead us to say hey give him 2 years. the fact is though we have him on the bench without much other option so he can't deliver now when we need it. If we were in a different position with more quality we'd be loaning him out to improve him. I still think he's got an attitude as well maybe.
It will be interesting to see how Allen and Shelvey go next season. Remember Henderson can play that role to, and Texeira is looking to break through.
Henderson has been very good this season. I like him as a player and don't want to see him dropped however, I also have reservations about his credentials when it comes to 'top four quality'. I fear he will be the first sacrifice (should be second behind Downing IMO, and I'd say third if Allen was in the side) should we (as expected) improve the playing squad over the summer.
