Balotelli yanked off at half time. Yet according to Brendan, he is a "big game player". The man really is full of ****.
Balotelli is taking the piss. Rodgers was stupid enough to think he could motivate, or change him. I bet Milan couldn't believe their luck when L'Pool coughed up the £16mil!.... Now, Goons losing too!.....
Let offs for both Liverpool and Arsenal as Ludogrets win and Arsenal turn it around both late on. Don't really mind, I'm happy enough for Arsenal to get knocked out in the second round as usual and it gives Ludogrets a chance of finishing third and I'd rather they were in the EL than Basel or Liverpool.
"Never ever, has a manager been more out of his depth in the CL, than Brendan Rodgers." Arry had his moments. But boy what a starting XI he had to save the day.
Those were my thoughts, too. I was fearing a 0-7 or 0-8 drubbing, so I am pleasantly surprised that 'Pool managed desperately to keep it to a mere 0-3. Mind you, I cannot imagine that Slippy-G, The Mad Mohawk, or Raheem "**** me, I'm tired!" Sterling will relish the twatting they are going to get in Spain.
It was sheer arrogance by Rodgers. The "this is how we play/we'll stick to our principles" mantra takes no account of the opposition. Liverpool had to have a game plan to stop Real Madrid. They didn't and had Madrid not eased off when the game was won by H/T, they would have been annihilated. We've seen it often in international football how the lesser teams stifle the better ones by playing a disciplined 4-5-1 formation with no pockets of space for the better players to exploit. They make the opposition play in front of them and are hard to break down. They don't play an open game, allowing quick, skilful players the chance to counterattack and have time and space on the ball. Rodgers must have thought that his team could go toe to toe with opponents who were a class or two above them. Without Suarez. Stupid.
L As I've just pointed out on the Mouser watch thread, Rodgers may have worked with Mourinho, but he doesn't seem to have learnt much. Mourinho always thinks about the opposition, how they like to play, and sets his team out to counter that.
"To a point" The point being that the opposing managers did the same to him. And in the PL often better than he gave out.
In his first season he seemed to be setting up the team to counter the specific threats of the opposition - in his second he seemed to abandon that and put his faith in the system he had the team playing, which backfired in at least two ways (namely the team never passed the ball forwards to score goals, and the system wasn't as resilient as he initially thought which made conceding them easier than he anticipated) In retrospect he seems to have noted that Mourinho has one system which he deploys at all of his sides, but he missed out a key detail: when Mourinho uses his system he can change the tactics of it by changing a member of the personnel, such as deciding to play Hazard or Schurrle on the left wing. Where AVB went so wrong was changing the players in the system, but having them use the exact same tactics as the player they replaced, so it didn't matter if we had Lennon or Chadli or Sigurdsson playing on the left wing as they'd play the exact same game as the player they were replacing.
Everton fans are on the receiving end of rough treatment in Lille, apparently. Some were attacked last night and now it appears that the police have gone after them, firing rubber bullets and forcing them to disperse. Seems to be something of a problem for English sides in the Europa League.
Yes,those French are good at beating up on innocents.Not much good in a man to man fight.I hope Lille are not playing a German team next or they will be running up the white flag....or just running!
Jesus H! Lawro has really excelled himself, this week, with his weekend score predictions. He's got got Saints down for a 1-1 home draw against Stoke, and Sunderland down for a 1-1 draw against Arsenal! The fact that he's got us down for a 1-1 home draw against struggling Newcastle doesn't surprise me, as he has never, ever, given us the benefit of any doubt. Oh, and surprise surprise! He's got 'Pool down for a 2-0 easy win. What a bell-end that bloke is!
Lawro loves a 1-1 draw and a 2-0 home win. He plays the odds in most cases, picking out scorelines that happen frequently, rather than making "real" predictions.
I would guess but cannot prove the best way to do considerably better than most is to always pick the favorite, select a couple of scorelines and stick to them like glue.
