http://www.koptalk.co.uk/201410231305/lucas-leiva-i-m-looking-for-a-new-club.html Sad, but inevitable I guess. Doesn't work in Rodgers system. Then again, neither does Gerrard, and quite honestly I'd be less sad if he left. Anyway, thanks for the good times Lucas, I'll miss ya.
Hope the Napoli interest comes back, he would fit any Rafa team and the Italian style. Also might make it possible to get hold of Hamsik or Higuain.
meh... slower league will suit him down to the ground... but .... well.... he looks good when the pace is slow. prob would have played well v madrid. actually rodgers said he'd build his team round him (and several others when it suits) so it seems injuries and convienece for gerrard has lead to this. the reality is both agger and lucas no matter what anyone tells us... they haven't the legs for the prem and thats fine for mid tbale but not if you want to challenge...
Agger in his poorest form is still miles better than Srktel and Lovren. And I wish Lucas all the best once he goes - a true professional who has been subject to such abuse from rival fans but also his own. Thing is, he's still not a bad player. The problem he has is that he's forced to either play alongside Gerrard which simply does not work, or play as a CM (because Gerrard is the DM). Put him in the DM with Henderson and Lucas in front of him, and I think he can still do a job.
He's a mature guy, and has some grace about him in that he's gone from guaranteed starter to bench warmer in the space of a year but doesn't moan publicly or anything - just accepts what's best for the team and now understandably is looking at moving on.
shame we seem to be getting rid of all the players that do have genuine passion for the club. Agger now Lucas, and to be honest i dont feel at this time we do actually have better than them in the team, we may have potential, but where is the experience?, just worries me that the only player left that really will give a **** about this club is gerrard, when he goes, we are fecked. isnt it funny how stubborn managers are with their own buys, rather than admit they made a mistake, they would rather get rid of ex managers players first. borini,lambert,ballo,allen have improved nothing so far. Lovren and sakho dont feel any dif to what we had with skrts and agger, and migs is certainly worst than riena(another one who had passion for the club and was good to have round the dressing room).
I wish Lucas all the best, proved all his doubters wrong and shame he got those horrible injuries that slowed him down. The up side to this is that we will be buying a proper DM to replace him (well I f**ing hope so anyway)
It'll be another genuine sad day when Lucas leaves the club. Not many players get the abuse from fans like he did. Even less stick it out, fight their corner and come out smelling of roses. Injuries have taken their toll on a player that became one of the best DMs in the league despite it not being his main position when arriving in the country. However, I've been saying since Brod arrived that the old guard (Rafa's reign) will be fazed out and Lucas is part of that. There aren't too many of them left now, just Johnson and Skrtel. I don't expect those two to be around come next season, certainly not Glen. I don't include Gerrard in the old guard since he was here long before Rafa and he's going to be retiring in the next couple of years anyway.
Another nail in the coffin for Rodgers, if he doesn't turn this around he wont be in charge by the end of the season. Lucas could be useful at the moment we need a hard working player to break play up and he'd do it Better than Gerrard.
I feel genuinely sorry for Lucas: I think those last two injuries robbed him of that fraction of start off pace that allowed him to be the exceptional solitary DM he had turned in to. He still sees the danger but gets there a fraction too late which leads to fouls in dangerous areas and accumulation of yellow cards for unnecessary reasons. Add as others have said the poltics of Gerrard, who lets face it doesn't even get there quick enough to be late with the challenge and after years of being an AM doesn't see the danger until too late, there simply isn't a place for a pro who wants to play every game. But to be fair to Gerrard I dont think he's the main issue, it really is the pace of the PL vs those damaged legs of Lucas' I hope he gets that starting position some place else, he deserves it.
I agree 100%. It's almost like Rodgers wants to wipe out any trace of, what you could call traditional 'Liverpool' type players i.e. passion, focus, physicality, commitment, push and shove whatever it takes to get the ball, true team players ... to replace it with young potential, technical type players. We are not his personal experiment, we are LFC [Liver Bird upon my chest ...] and getting rid of the heart and soul of what it means to play for Liverpool - all the players you mentioned plus Kuyt and Maxi - is destroying the culture, the very thing he keeps banging on about. I think he doesn't really fully understand what our culture really is!
Or its disposing of a crop of players from a unsuccessful era? It will be ten years since we won the CL come the end of this season and we've won next to f**all since. PS...not that I disagree with what you're saying, it is sad.
That's a perfectly valid way of looking at it if you're a cold, hard clinician [not you personally] - but it's not, that old thing we like to say, 'the Liverpool way'.
I was going to say, winning and dominating were our culture with style as a bonus at times....this lot of players being phased out are not part of that culture unless you count one league cup as a winning mentality and culture. Physicality, work rate desire and commitment are pre requisites for any professional football player. Winning is the pre requisite for a Liverpool player. So in a way why should BR accept his own downfall resulting from players lacking that quality when he didn't even buy them. If the team fails because that's missing the least he would want is that he can say, I bought them and coached them so it's on me......
We also like to say there is no room for complacency or sentiment. I is tough seeing players we've come to love over the years leaving such as Agger, Lucas and Reina but times have to move on. They aren't the players they were so we need to move forward, surely that's the true Liverpool way?
i suppose that would be a fair argument for managers that get given time in this day and age frank, but how many clubs will give the manager time and money to get his own players in if they are not doing much in the mean time? not many i doubt. hypothetically speaking, if utd don't get top 4, is it curtains for van gaal or get another season, or will they give him more money than they already have, so he can say i got my own players, so its my fault. expensive lol.
Hmmm...it's easy to talk about the Liverpool way and point to general positive attributes as the definition of that culture if as it was, a winning one. Are you sure a Shankly or Paisley would have accepted the attributes you listed (again, I think they really just come under the definition of professional footballer") as the maximum rather than minimum requirement to take a place in their squads? I think there's more to it. There is fostering an arrogant ruthless winning club mentality too. Not impossible but hard to get that with a squad made up of a bulk of players that have been together through a long spell of mediocrity. I'm not that knowledgeable I'll admit. Can anyone point out a manager that took a squad that had been together as a group for a few years, winning very little and with just a couple of additions made them multiple trophy winners over a prolonged period of time? Most of the ones that come to my my mind pretty much filled out the squad with their own players in the first couple of years before success became regular. Can you name a manager that kept it going without being fairly ruthless and dumping once great players with new ones once they couldn't achieve the required level? Our problem isn't getting rid of mediocrity no matter how nice the guy is, our problem is trying to replace them on a model that insists we buy lots of cheap young prospects and hope coaching allows them to flower.....in one season.....
