Yet another thread about football turned into "The Tobes show" with his unique brand of word-twisting, spoon-bending logic based on his hallucinatory misconceptions of what others have said. Jesus, what a bore. Give it a rest, for ****'s sake. Actually, a better idea is I'll give it a rest for a few days.
You've not even been part of the thread and haven't posted since Saturday, so what is there for you to get your Y fronts in a knot over? It was good natured anyway, well at least until you stuck your beak in....
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...o-be-brutal-as-well-as-beautiful-9299492.html Liverpool under Brendan Rodgers must learn how to be brutal as well as beautiful That is the only way to emulate the all-conquering ‘red machine’ of the past who could be nasty bastards when they had to be – in order to get that win IAN HERBERT Author Biography Monday 28 April 2014 9 PRINT A A A Brendan Rodgers created an indelible link to Liverpool’s past when he said, on the day he was presented as manager, that beautiful football was part of the “identity, style and DNA” of the club. Here was “an educated group of supporters,” he said, so there could be no getting away from the need to entertain. Ads by Google Taking Statin drugs? Research Study enrolling Participants. Learn more here. clinlife.co.uk/High_Cholesterol Annuity Calculator 2014 How much income and Lump Sum will Your Annuity provide? Find Out Now! www.compare-annuity.com/Calculator 50% 24 Hour Hotel Sale Would An Extra 50% Off Help? Check Out Our Sale! Ends 10am 30th April. lastminute.com/Hotels-Sale To a great extent, Rodgers was right. Bob Paisley famously once observed that “blood, action and movement” were what the Anfield Kop demanded. But Sunday’s defeat to Chelsea – and the taste it provided of the tough obstacles to come for Liverpool as they return to Continental competition next season – should give cause for some reflection about the actual characteristics of the club’s great teams, going back. Divine skill and creation were certainly a part of it. But pragmatism, canniness and functionality also formed a huge part of the Liverpool equation through their most glorious era. Finer, more aesthetic qualities might have become de rigueur in the club’s fabulous last four months – “our game is based on being offensively creative as opposed to stopping,” was Rodgers’ latest articulation of this on Sunday – but Paisley would take issue with that. His first trophy as Liverpool manager was delivered out of precisely the same kind of trauma which beset Rodgers’ players on Sunday afternoon. Needing a win or low-scoring draw at relegated Wolves to clinch the title in May 1976, they trailed 1-0 with only 14 minutes to play before Kevin Keegan, John Toshack and Ray Kennedy scored three late goals. The old Liverpool way often involved big goals late in big games. It didn’t always entail running rampant from the off. Liverpool announce Anfield redevelopment plans 1 of 6 Anfield redevelopment plansAnfield redevelopment plansAnfield redevelopment plansAnfield redevelopment plansAnfield redevelopment plansAnfield redevelopment plans Next Anfield redevelopment plansAnfield redevelopment plansAnfield redevelopment plansAnfield redevelopment plansAnfield redevelopment plansAnfield redevelopment plans An orator in Rodgers’ mould Paisley certainly wasn’t, but he possessed the same modernity and more. This was the man who understood, after Liverpool’s Uefa Cup defeat to Red Star in November 1973, that his boss Bill Shankly needed ball-playing centre-halves to play out from the back like the continentals did. The boot-room council of war which followed that defeat to the Yugoslavs was the beginning of the end for stoppers such as Larry Lloyd. Paisley made sure of it. But he, far more than Shankly, was the pragmatist – “adapting the style and tactics to suit the opposition”, as Paisley’s chronicler and biographer John Keith puts it. One of the Liverpool squad from that time remembers a training session in a snow-bound Melwood in the late 1970s, when Paisley insisted on the session going ahead and using it to practise long-ball tactics, in case the players found themselves on the same type of surface the following Saturday. “When it had to be, it was just about winning for Bob,” that player tells me. It’s also why, as Keith recalls, Paisley would also leave out John Toshack for European trips, which were nearly always about containment and playing on the break. An overriding impression of the club’s great 1980s period conveyed in the excellent and timely chronicle by Simon Hughes entitled The Red Machine (Mainstream, £15.99) is that the squad could also be brutal when the occasion required it. David Hodgson, one of 10 players interviewed for the book, tells Hughes how “at Liverpool – like at other clubs – they had excellent players. But there was something about Liverpool and the mentality there that set them apart. The Sounesses… the Dalglishes… the Hansens… little Sammy Lee: they could be nasty bastards when they had to be – in order to get that win...” Hodgson, who lasted only two years, felt he lacked the mental strength, while Craig Johnston believed that the reason Shankly and Paisley liked – and signed – Scottish was the canniness they saw in them. “Those players were all professionals who were prepared to go all the way to win,” he tells Hughes. “In life generally, the guy in a fight who is prepared to die is the one that wins, and our team was full of those guys.” Brendan Rodgers, right, was left fuming about touchline rival Jose Mourinho’s tactics on Sunday Brendan Rodgers, right, was left fuming about touchline rival Jose Mourinho’s tactics on Sunday The level to which Chelsea took that mantra on Sunday was dismally extreme and terribly joyless. “Determination to win at any human cost,” as one observer from Liverpool put it on Monday. But they did what was necessary and Liverpool’s belief that they could blow this team away in 30 short minutes, like so many others this season, was naive. “Throwing bricks at a wall when they might have put a few over the top,” is how Keith put it, with the perspective of one who has seen the club through good times and bad. For a young, developing club, there are bound to be lessons. Rodgers’ players can only be the upstarts for so long. As they have flourished early, so they will take the next step early. Innocence, you hope, will give way to experience. Liverpool will become the favourites and learn to embrace all the challenges that entails. If they are looking to the past to find out how to chart that course, they might observe the words of the manager who saw something more than an aesthetic in football. “A football team is like a piano,” Shankly said. “You need eight men to carry it and three who can play the damn thing.” But Liverpool can also adhere to the example Kenny Dalglish showed when Liverpool faced Wimbledon in the 1988 FA Cup final. He was no more willing to criticise the opposition’s brand of football before that game than he was after Liverpool had been put to a humiliating defeat. Talk of sledging in the tunnel was rubbish, he said. Wimbledon took their chance. Liverpool didn’t. “As long as they play within the rules, they hold Liverpool’s respect,” Dalglish reflected. “They deserve credit for what they have achieved.”
Haven't read the entire thread but here is a summary of my two cents.. I was massively disappointed with the result, some may argue Rodgers was naive but I don't buy into all that, he done what a league title winning team would have done, unfortunately Gerrard made a mistake which can happen to the best of them (well it happened to Gerrard so that's pretty much as good as example as you can get!), I just hate all the talk about Mourinho's mind games and tactics, he set out to park a bus and got lucky, let's not pretend he's some sort of tactical genius, or at the very least pretend he intended to get that result. In addition to that, Mourinho's celebration was disrespectful to Rodgers who he claimed to be on mutual terms with, especially considering Mourinho later admitted his team had nothing to celebrate anyway. Mourinho has been pathetic for the whole season which is unfortunate because I genuinely believe the whole league would have been better off without him this season, including Chelsea. The title race is wide open but its not over, I'm sure Rodgers will instill confidence in the players to make sure we pick ourselves up and go to Palace and play some really good football, especially if City drop points against Everton
Me neither. Playing as we did we were most likely to win. If we tried playing slow boring anti-football we would have had no chance- it doesn't play to our team's strengths and experience. Rodgers did the right thing. Couldn't have foreseen the slip.
The slip was by a central midfield player 5 yards inside your half, and once the mistake was made there was no cover goal side of him. So whilst the error was just a player mistake, you didn't have to be holding a line at almost halfway with a minute of injury time in the first half to play, that's tactical. You didn't need to win the game don't forget, a draw would have sufficed.
Had we played for the draw we would have most certainly have lost. Our defense is not our strong skill. By playing attacking football we were less likely to concede/draw or lose. Playing for a draw would have been like handing Mourinho 3 points. In the end- Chelsea got those three points anyway- but, if it weren't for the slip, he most likely wouldn't have.
If you'd have not been holding a line at halfway, then the slip wouldn't have resulted in a goal. There's a difference between playing for a draw and trying to win the game but ensuring that you don't leave the back door wide open! They created the better chances, most of which were on the break and they only had 30% of the ball. So there's more than one way to skin a cat.
Not many complaining (although some are) majority are just saying stop the circle jerk about mourinho so called master tactician unless you want to say the same about stoke.
It was to put pressure on Chelsea. 99.99% of the time Gerrard wouldn't have fallen over- so it's not really a worthwhile point. It's like saying- the team should train for beach balls being thrown into the penalty box to prevent goals like the one against Southampton several years ago. That Rafa was tactically lacking for not predicting the beach ball. There was enough space between Gerrard and anyone blue, that it wasn't a significant risk.
Jose did what was most likely going to get him a result. It was ugly. It was boring. It was defeatist... but this time it worked and I'm not complaining about it. I'd give us decent odds of winning if we paired up- Liverpool attacking, Chelsea turtling, in a replay this weekend. But it worked for Jose- and absolutely, I remember us using the same tactic many times in Europe under Rafa. 2005 we played a lot of defensive football in the Champions League. Wasn't pretty- and I'm glad we don't play like that now- but yeah- I remember.
If we were playing deeper then Demba Ba would've been closer to goal when he got the ball. So that really makes no sense.
Exactly. I will never say Rodgers should have been more defensive, and played for the draw. We play to our strengths - our attack. On the day, it wasn't good enough. Simple as. Chelsea defended extremely well. Simple. They had no ambition and capitalised on two errors at end of each half. Sh*t happens. But Rodgers's way has seen us to the top of the table (where we still reside I should remind you) and 2 points ahead of tactical genius, Mourinho. I think I'll take Rodgers' style any day of the week.
wasn't the beachball Sunderland? anyway, it was a fluke goal. If anything Gerrard playing as a 3rd centreback is more defensive than attacking. the criticism is thinly veiled, nonsense petty banter with no substance.
Yes. I frequently write Sunderland when I mean Southampton and vice versa... It's an honest mistakes- not like they're on opposite ends of the country or anything...
Enough with the pathetic whining... Rodgers didn't know how to beat Mourinho's parked bus. End of. He pursued the wrong tactics. Nobody got particularly lucky. On one hand Gerrard gifted them a goal, on the other we just didn't craft enough chances in the ensuing 45mins to claim it was an unlucky defeat.
