Excellent post Frank, My thoughts on this are that if you are given your chance to pull on the shirt and force your way into the starting 11 permanently you should be busting a gut to do it. Of the players that started on Sunday that could be termed 'fringe' players I think only Robinson and Henderson came out with much credit. I do feel a bit sorry for Skrtel, as I think Sundays' game showed us why Rodgers doesn't rate Coates, who's performance probably made Skrtel look worse than he actually was. For a big guy, Coates was overpowered many times, and his lack of pace is going to cost him.
Sure the players may not have the winning mentality or mental strength that Gerrard and Suarez do, but what do you expect when you play 2 in midfield? Allen is bullied off the ball in every match. I rate both Allen and Rodgers, but I must admit Rodgers talks a lot of crap. Against Oldham he played 3 strikers aged, 23, 21, and 18 next to Suarez. He played two 22 year olds in midfield instead of a normal formation. He played Wisdom, Robinson and Coates next to Skrtel who isnt known for his leadership qualities. What the **** is he talking about? Of course they will look headless. Of course they will get demotivated when going down. That's the issue with managers picking 100 percent youth based teams. I'm a big fan of all of our young players and playing them is a great step, but the mistake all of our managers have made is that they play them all at once. You bleed them in next to 10 solid first team players. That gets their confidence up and they have more room for error. They won't be made to look bad by everyone's inexperience. Carroll looked like crap playing next to our B team, because he didn't get good chances, all mistakes were evident, etc. He played alright in our first squad near the end when the full team worked around him. Same here. Suso looks good next to Gerrard. Next to Shelvey he will look lost because Shelvey is lost too. Sunday would not have happened had Rodgers not decided to play 4-2-4 with a youth squad. Its his fault and I'm sick of him blaming everyone but himself. We know what our youth can do in their comfort zones. Its up to him to coax them out. As for the physical side, look at City, Chelsea or Arsenal or United. You don't need to be physical to be good.
D; There's definitely truth to what you are saying but I don't think BR's talking about just this match alone regarding effort & mentality ( in fact he states that clearly). Also, and yes it may be cliched but he's saying don't talk the talk if you can't back it up on the pitch. He appears to be suggesting that in training there are boys saying they have prepared properly & should play. He's suggesting he trusted them & they got found out. Was it a mistake in his part? Maybe, you'd hope he won't do it again with the same players whatever the cause. You could turn your argument around and say that with the likes of Gerrard on the pitch those same players get to hide their lack of true prep & underperformance behind him & that its found out when he's not there to cover them. Same result, different emphasis as to why. I mean yes 4 of that team are "new" as in a majority of their first team appearances with us were this year but others (not talking about Skrtel or Suarez here) have played for their international teams, others played for other PL or Championship teams before us. They didn't all come straight from the academy to that match. They're not all that raw. They also weren't all dumped into a match against Barca; it was against a team of players supposedly 2 leagues below them and on a fraction of their wages. They might through their youth be out thought and that would be BR's responsibility, but they should not ever ever be second best in effort to a team with guys who included people that stepped up from part time. I'm sorry but if they think they can do that already when they've earned nothing reputation wise then I don't want them here with that attitude. But I suppose it depends on your approach to cultivating young people. I'm personally not a fan of constantly wrapping them up & saying "aw shucks yer just the greatest" Quite frankly they're a pack of pampered spoilt brats who run around on grass for a living while getting more attention & support a day than any other people their age. They're not going to war or working in the arctic. Worse in the age of twitter they're already exposed to constant hero worship embarrassingly sometimes from middle aged men and for what? Putting the shirt we live on? I'm sorry but it was a wake up call to these players. We as fans wanted a different result but in a way I'm glad it happened. It has let these players know just how far they still have to go. While I'm not saying BR planned it that way it will be useful for him to now watch & see what players step up & which don't. Its a ruthless game at the top, they can be pampered in the youth teams but if they are in the squad they either cut it or they don't. But hey I'm a grumpy old bastard. Someone else can tweet them and tell them how special they are & that its all big bad Brendan's fault for having the audacity to let them play football.
"It's not your leg it's Liverpool's leg" is a well known Shankly quote. At first glance it's just another OTT comment. But I think that it represents something that our club has not truly had at its heart for a long time. Apart from Gerrard, Carra and Suarez I don't see one of our players who is prepared to run through the proverbial brick wall for his shirt. Now, we have come to expect that commitment from Gerrard and Carra and it is refreshing to see it in a player like Suarez (though I believe that he would do that whatever shirt he had on his back!). But unless you have that type of commitment running through the squad then we are not going to improve our consistency. Now with the players that we have I don't know how we are going to get that.
Isn't it always the case though that the clear underdog is more motivated? Of course Oldham were going to give it a go, how often do they get chances like this? The problem for players in bigger teams is that they have to shake off the belief that they are entitled to win because they're (presumably) more gifted. Most of the time that technical superiority is enough to see them through, but not always. There are so many cup upsets it's become a cliche, we were on the receiving end of this one.
As far as Sunday is concerned I totally agree - you have to fight to win the right to play the football you want - and we didn't. However, the malaise that I see goes back a long long way - probably to Houllier's time. It seems to me that we have only played in patches. That we lack the grit that earlier sides had. We become either frustrated or disheartened. Only rarely do we see flashes of an angry "We are Liverpool and we're not having that!". Lots of people say that it is the attitude of the modern footballer but I see other sides who somehow manage to engender that kind of spirit so why can't we?
I think that this is probably one of the best threads I've read since being introduced to this site a year or so ago. Very good read with lots of valid point. Franks point that the defeat was a ruthless way for underperforming players to be found - so ultimately a good thing for the club - is a very good one, so long as Brendan does actually stick to his word and keep the performing players in/ underperforming out. But I think I agree with Danilo on this one; Brandan's selection was seriously lacking and he put us on the backfoot from the offset. He should have acknowledged this in my opinion. Lower league footballers are not protected by refs like premier league stars. 7ft strikers with their elbows flying about and solid 50-50 tackles are the norm. Coates getting elbowed in the second minute when we conceded clearly scared the **** out of him and his head went from that point on. Making coments about mentality is Ok when assessing prem palyers on their performance against other prem players (and I do appreciate that his comments may not have been specific to the Oldham game alone). That game for me needed grit and experience - Lucas and Gerrard on from the start. All that said - I still think this may just be another load of hot air coming out of Brendan and well see his boys back on the pitch tonight. I hope not, I hope he has really made some strong assessments of his squad.
You probably all know i am a Utd fan but i just wanted to say i found this thread and responses from posters a very interesting read.
This is my favourite bit of the interview. A lot of people believe that Rodgers was harsh in his assessment or that he should have done it behind closed doors. But I'm happy he's come out and berated the players. They needed a good kick up the .... after that performance. Technically, we were poor and you will have days like that. What cannot be excused is the lack of bottle and fight. And I like the comment re. Allen. He has drawn a lot of criticism recently (deservedly so) but I don't accept it when people say he lacks effort and fight. Yes - he is lightweight and he won't win many duels but I see him getting stuck in and I respect that. Skrtel didn't have a great game - he may have lost individual battles but at least he fought. I loved it when he stuck up for Jones! I remember when Kuyt was here and he would always get involved in the scuffles, same with Bellamy. We need more of that please!
Completely with Danilo on this, I just don't buy it from Brendan he has worked with these players for a fair while now so how he has not got a better grip on how they are going to perform in different styles of games is beyond me. We can't keep thinking of BR of being new to the roll or a young coach he has been doing this for 20 years apparently and still has to resort to press conferences were he is bewildered by the lack of commitment. Found it very clichayed with the getting in late leaving on time stuff, he's the boss isn't he, if he has identified work that needs doing just get it organised! Best workers I ever had in any teams were the ones who got in on time and left on time. Always organised, always had a sense of priority and understanding of what they were there to deliver, and delivered. Those that come in early and always the last to leave were usually the disorganised, easily distracted, concentration span of a goldfish, no sense of purpose type, so no brownie points as far as I was concerned. The problem comes when otherwise hardworking organised individuals are having to put in extra hours, like the Suarez's and Gerards on the pitch. Then its the bosses fault, if good people start struggling then the rest of the team is not being directed and managed well enough to manage the objectives and at some point your own boss is going to ask you "why is that team not performing", and that's were some are getting with BR at the moment. If he really was that shocked at how poor the team performed then I don't know what it is that he is seeing each day in training. I have never liked fergie and get pi**ed off at the slightest thing he does so when he said the other week that he can't understand managers who scribble notes during games I saw it as a thinly veiled attack on BR, Benitez, and a few others, but I have to say you know instinctively who is up to the job or not and I do wonder if that instinct is there. Two players in midfield both lightweight, now trying to pretend, as he knows we all saw the midfield being overrun, that Joe Allen upends YaYa! (if you're quoting that you know you FU) come on Brendan stand up and be counted, crap selection, underestimated the desire of a team that had part timers who made the grade in it, and at the very least, and I mean the very least, if you are trying to rest the experienced players but you know that momentum and results in all competitions are crucial to keeping the team believing (because they are week mentally), then start with a strong team while we establish the momentum, maybe get a couple of goals up then sub early. Hope tonight is a better show, BR deserves to succeed but he is going to have to put the work in on his own failings as well. I would rather he had come out after the oldham game and said "yeah we lost, we are learning all the time, well done Oldham" end of. Instead we are meant to understand our clubs pain like he does, so we are all at one with Brendan, and so we won't say "come on lad for fs get it sorted", stop courting the fans and concentrate on your bit and we will all be fine. Edit: There was another thread posted by Bluff about finding players with the correct mental toughness and attitude/commitment when they are young and it was roundly taken the *iss out of, and now here we are discussing precisely the problem here! Funny old forum.
I thought Bluff's one was about psychological profiling as a tool for selecting transfer targets? If so, this is a little different.
