Think Rafa knew Torres's game and how to play him effectively, thats why he dropped off for us once Rafa left and why his form picked up a little last year while Rafa was there. Now that Mareen is back i expect him to get dropped pretty sharpish and he will be gone by summer (maybe Napoli). Looking back we did well to get rid of Torres when we did but then squandered all the money on AC and SD so there was no real benefit for us and our form dropped, Chelsea did manage to win the CL (admittedly with little help from Torres) so there was some benefit for them.
Yeah, don't know why I put six months there. Kenny returned as manager in early October and Torres left on 31 January so they had the best part of four months together.
I think most people's views have been distorted over the years. As I said above, Torres had started playing poorly before Rafa left
Kenny came in early January, his first game was against United in the FA Cup. God I wish Hodgson had gone before October, mind.
I think you're reading: However, a poor series of results at the start of the 2010–11 season led to Liverpool fans calling for Dalglish's return as manager as early as October 2010
From February onwards under Benitez he scored 10 goals in 10 games, so he was doing fine goalscoring wise when he got back from that injury. And he had 3 in 5 games he played under Dalglish plus a good performance against Everton home (hit the inside of the post) and a goal wrongly disallowed against Fulham for offside. It was only Hodgson he was crap for at Liverpool, and its a bit obvious why, as everyone was crap under Hodgson.
Scoring goals is one thing (a very good thing too) but he wasn't playing well and was already looking a shadow of his former self. Judging by comments since, maybe he had already expressed his wish to leave by then? When he first joined us he never argued and played with a smile but towards the end he was constantly harassing the referee and took his time picking his self up off the turf, he'd also stopped the hard work defending from the front approach too.
Think Carra said something about his attitude, or someone did I rem Torres having a blinder against Chelsea when he'd not played well for a bit........
TBF, I stopped short of actually mentioning his attitude but the actions I was pointing out would suggest as much I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss the Torres of 2007-2009
We stopped pressing from the front in Benitez' last season though and played in a much more defensive minded way because the team started so poorly they had no confidence and we were conceding way too many goals. And we never pressed under Hodgson because that's not something his teams ever do. His attitude that season was pretty bad in comparison to the season before but he was no different to anyone else in the team. Everyone was frustrated on the pitch because everything was going against us. We went from a champions league team challenging for a title to a team fighting to qualify for the Europa league so its no surprise really to see people were getting frustrated at things they wouldn't normally get wound up with.
It was the owners fault IMO. They didn't invest enough in the side which meant we didn't have enough quality going into the season. They were the reason for the toxic atmosphere around the club that season and the main reason we've not been in the champions league since 2009. Everything that's gone wrong over the last 4 or 5 years for us can be traced back to Tom Hicks & George Gillett.
Can't argue with that. I was talking purely about on the pitch, I don't think we lost five places worth of talent that summer although Alonso was a massive loss (which can be blamed on the owners as had they backed Rafa he wouldn't have had to try to sell Xabi to raise funds) Hyypia was a big loss too, especially for no financial compensation.
