Yeah I didn't want to start a bitch about the ref tangent. It was a clear penalty, but he should also have given a penalty for Niell's hand ball. To book Torres about complaining after he let Niell do things to Torres that are illegal in 43 states was a bit much. I do not think a single 50/50 call went our way all day.
What can I say- I was worried about this game, and really if we want to be a top club, we shouldn't be worried about playing West Ham. These are the games we have to win to be anywhere near the top. Big Four my arse- its the Big Three this year, and we're in a dogfight for fourth. Sure we've got a game in hand- but its against West Ham (from memory) and if we played as badly as we did today then who's to say we'll even win that one at home? Obviously, a win will change everything- and maybe get us on a run to secure 4th easily, and if Chelski falter maybe 3rd, but that win had better come sooner rather than later. Its all about confidence, and once its back we'll be right again- hopefully it won't be too late.
It was a good game and I think we deserved the result. As for you lot well Lucas seems mustard and changed the game when he came on. Gerrard seemed everywhere but pretty aimless, he only scared me once. You've got some (but not 11) great individuals, we only shaded it in the final minute, but you dont seem to be playing as a team. Good luck, may you only finish one point below us come the end of the season.
Agger isnt the only one who isnt fit...Agger, Xabi, Pennant, Kewell, Arbs, Aurelio etc have all had injuries that have kept them out for at least 3 weeks and you dont get your match fitness back overnight. It seems odd though that we were playing better in 2007 when we had more injuries. In relation to Gerrard...and every other player...CONFIDENCE. When you arent confident, you are thinking too much of what you have to do...whereas when you are a confident team, players make movements instinctivly and players are not afraid to express themselves and show a bit of creativity, imagination and unpredictability. Look at our best 3 games for the season (last 3 games in CL group) vs Besiktas, Porto and Marseille and we were attacking the opposition from unpredictable positions on the pitch and we were playing more risky passes into space. Also most of our bad games have come in the wet...maybe because Rafa wants the team to play a passing game and some players have been out of form or low on confidence and constantly missing passes (eg Momo). Another very bad sign is that we arent creating as many chances as earlier in the season. Even when we drew a game, we would be creating approx 15/20 chances per game and the opposition somehow got lucky. In our previous wins, we have also been creating heaps of chances yet now, we cant seem to create anything.
The answer, to start, is Crouch for Kuyt, Pennant for Kewell. Oh, and some reinforcements in the back, they're all pretty shit.
maybe this would help the cause (from Tuesday's youth match) some rumors claim he's close to coming back -- one claims he's coming back, but, with Maureen in the Summer how badly do we miss, the man who says NO to Rafa Benitez . . . He identified things that could (and were) going wrong, things which Rafa needed persuading on from time to time. -- Balague
It is a good point that our back 4 has been terrible for the second half of the season so far. Finnan and Hyypia are both looking slow, physically and in their decision making, Riise and Aurelio still cant decide who wants to be worse or they are purposely playing badly just to give the other a chance . Carragher has given up some howlers this season with his flying legs hacks as well as running into Pepe when Anelka shouldve scored. Skrtel was understandably nervous in his first start at Anfield...in a new environment with new players, new system etc. When Agger was playing, we did not concede a goal. It seems that he has actually been the key to the strength of our defence for the last 12 months. Without him, Hyypia and Carragher are defending from behind Pepe and when Hyypia and Carra decide to defend high up the pitch...firstly they arent quick enough to get back and Pepe has to guard 30-40 metres of the pitch by himself. Currently i see our best backline as Arbs, Carra, Agger, Riise/Aurelio (as i said, they cant decide). With Arbs, Agger and Aurelio that does add much more pace to our back 4 as well as adding more attacking threat. Arbs and Agger are currently much better going forward than Finnan and Hyypia. I also think that the way to get Xabi back in form (something we desperately need) is for Rafa to play him and Masch in the middle and give Xabi more freedom to go forward and distribute the ball from 30-50 metres from the opposition goal, where his passes will be more influential on shooting chances and his passes will therefore go to the wingman when they are closer to the box, rather than our wingman receiving the ball on the half-way line or a bit further forward. Kuyt and Crouch should not start. ATM...we are much better off if we have Xabi and Masch in the middle, 2 attacking full-backs (Arbs and Aurelio) as well as Pennant playing wide right and Kewell/Babel playing on the left, but not as wide as Pennant and playing closer to the box and Torres. Gerrard to obviously have some freedom and someone tell him that he isnt allowed in our own half. Given that Torres plays the left-channel more often and more effectively than the right-channel, Gerrard is suited to play behind him as he prefers the right. In the middle, Masch would play on the side of the most attacking full-back...eg if Aurelio is given more licence to go forward than Arbs, then Masch will play a more left-central mid role while Xabi would play a more right-central mid role so that Masch would be able to cover for the full-back. Also, Gerrard can play where Xabi is and then Yossi would replace SG as the attacking mid/SS...a role he is better at than RM, where he eventually drifts into the SS position. In attack: ___________Reina__________ _______Carra____Agger_____ __Arbs____________________ HALFWAY LINE ________Masch_______Aurelio _____________Xabi_________ Pennant___________________ ________Gerrard_____HK/RB__ ____________Torres_________ When the opposition is on a quick counter-attack our lineup we would still have at least 4 outfield players behind the ball (Arbs, Carra, Agger and Masch, also maybe Xabi and Aurelio, it would most likely look like this. ___________Reina__________ __Arbs_____Carra____Agger__ ______Masch____Xabi________ I prefer this system because; there is width on both sides of the pitch (Pennant/Aurelio), Masch can play as the pivot, Xabi is further forward and can therefore be more dangerous. Kewell/Babel are in playing in a more favoured/natural position, SG is closer to goal and with this system, Agger is able to use the space behind Masch and Aurelio to also distribute the ball forward dangerously. Agger's passing role wou be to use the players that run towards him with their back to goal, receive the ball and then distribute again into the space behind the first pass...to Torres and GOOOOAAALLLL. Just felt like writing a long post...havent done one for a while
I am ready to saw my eyebrows from my face. Did we just lose to the Hammers? Half their squad is in the infirmary! Here comes my rant: **Fabulous Aurelio sucked! A lot! He made one great recovery, which was actually quite magical, but the rest of his game left me longing for Momo Soldsoko. I needn't detail that performance. You all saw it. **Carlton Cole won every long ball in the first half. Every. Single. One. **Gerrard's talent is wasted as DMF. Make no mistake, that was his job in the first half: gather the ball, make a terrific pass to a winger, and watch us turn it over. Once I saw him retreating while we were bringing the ball up the field. Retreating! After the half Rafa let him off his leash, and he actually got the ball in a threatening position. Am I crazy, or is that Steven Freaking Gerrard? Can we please unhook his leash during BOTH halves? Please? **Babel is a bull in a china shop. He can't get through the store without breaking a few things and losing the ball. **Would Kuyt start for any team in the top half of the table? **That McPherson fellow lifts his drag foot on every throw! No wonder he can throw it 600 feet. **Cap'n Hammer handled the ball in the box. Where was Wiley? **I agree with the penalty call on Carra. Totally agree. That was a foul. Had Jaime not fouled him, there would have been no scoring opportunity -- the ball was on Xabi's foot en route to clearance. **Memo to Pepe: Everyone knows since Istanbul you're on your way out to trouble the PK taker. Stop doing it already. It's ineffective when the world expects you to do it, and sooner or later you won't make it past the 6 yd line before Rob Stiles (I'm still mad at him about the Chelsea game) or some other referee will book you. **Torres, I am proud of you for standing up for yourself. In the corner you were twice fouled, rather blatantly, and then no call (!), and then the ball is kicked off you (illegally) into touch. **Etherington's dive was completely unnoticed by Wiley and Setanta's announcers, and it sent Xabi into a fit. Xabi, you fouled him, but that did not justify Etherington donning trunks and attempting a half gainer. Ok. I feel a bit better. Sunderland can't come soon enough.
I had to wait for the Setanta replay of this match before I could comment. I knew the score and I read about the match on our board before I watched. Needless to say, I was expecting the worst. Not a good match for us to be sure but it seemed to me that the play was about the standard, conventional fare at our club as of late. 1st half I thought the Hammers got the better of us because I think Curbishley did a better job with positioning his players. We should have had a PK off a handball in the box but I guess the Ref. didn’t see it. Ljungberg was putting the torch to Aurelio all half. 2nd half was much better for us. Lucas and Gerrard were working nicely together. Lucas just missed being the hero of this match and was a very good sub. Kewell was useless and should have seen the bench earlier. Carra gives the points away at the death and it was a good call but unjust as I thought he was having an O.K. game. Player ratings: The Bad in descending order: Kewell is useless. Kuyt was just behind Kewell in the useless stakes. Torres had a very poor match. He doesn’t appear to trust his mates and I know why. Aurelio is not a LB. Maybe he can play midfield but this guy can’t defend at this level. He was lucky not to be sent off. Some bad free kicks and corners. Alonso WTF. Has he been abducted and replaced with a body double? The good to adequate: Reina was MOTM almost by default. Took some risks but they all came off and he almost stopped the PK. Finnan, Hyypia, Carra, Yossi, and Gerrard all were satisfactory. It was a shame about the PK but it was the correct call. The Subs: Lucas almost won us the game. Maybe it would be wise to give him a start over say Kewell. Babel didn’t do much. Our club is in crisis! Nobody is pulling together. I would like to see our players go for three points. Where is the inventive play? The little backheel layoff to the overlapping player for example. We are so direct and predictable. We used to get away with it but we are leaking goals late and not scoring.
I saw the game on Setanta and thought I'd share an objective "outside" opinion. Where's the bloody width in this team? Unless my eyes were fooling me and the Hammers pitch is in reality the size a of bocci lawn or, Liverpool, despite having a collection of heralded midfielders in their stocks, is playing some really worthless linear football. We all know Kewell isn't much, but the least Rafa can do is play him wide enough so he can draw out defenders and create space for other running players. What happened instead was constant zoning from the Hammers fullbacks which made everything shrink for Liverpool forcing them to make bad passes and hasty decisions. I was expecting to see Gerrard take charge by drawing contact and playing wider balls but all I saw was constant thievery from clever challenges by opposing players. February is approaching; you guys know already: Liverpool has to pick it up in time for the Inter game. If you thought the Chelsea games of old were rough, you should see Inter now. They are the anti-christ of anti football, either Liverpool brings some innovation to the table or its an early exit. Believe me, there's nothing more I'd like than to see blue and black slime get tossed in a classic English encounter but as it stands the point spread isn't even close. P.S. I know the British lifestyle is appealing i.e. everyone wants to get pissed and walk around town for a couple of hours after eating some good battered fish'n chips but Torres needs to put the chicken leg down and jump back into form! I swear it could be an illusion but the kid looks almost 50 pounds heavier than he did only 6 months ago!
I've been asking that question for years! A lot of people thought we just needed a world class forward and we got Torres but as you see the results aren't that much different. We desperately need width and a player or two who can beat a man 1v1 and/or put in a useful cross consistently.
I didn't see the game today, but we've had width this year. If anything, we've been FAR TOO expansive. Remember the Wigan game? We had guys acres apart when we were in possession. As a result, there was no movement and no combination play. I don't know what the issue is anymore. We're just very uncreative, slow and predictable.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that we need players who know how to play wide. Sometimes we do play with width but we don't really have any talented, natural wingers. We are very uncreative and predictable but I think this must be a coaching issue. Our players don't even attempt anything unusual in the passing and running off the ball game. We are not passing the ball well at all anyhow.
We need guys who know how to create space for themselves - winger or not. But, yes, those players tend to be wingers or wing-like players.
its all about team work and support, we have none, lots of players are hiding. how we sort this out? ******** do i know
I just finished watching the match, now. I want to f*cking kill myself. Seriously, we all deserve medals for showing our faces around here because supporters of lesser clubs in our situation would surely be sticking their heads in the sand. Just an absolute shit performance. Once again, our corner kicks are little more than goal kicks for the opposition. We've turned mucking scoring opportunities into an art form. Truthfully, West Ham probably should've rung up 3 on us. Unfortunate that Lucas Neill wasn't called for a hand ball on that corner around the 78th minute, but the penalty called on us, while utterly painful, was deserved. You make your own luck, both in football and in life, and when you play like we have over the last two months, how can anyone say we deserved the points today? Now, we're not even "King of the Draws." The only Red in tonight's match that escapes blame, in my opinion, is Lucas. Our energy and focus picked up dramatically when he entered. I wish, in retrospect, that Babel had come on sooner and, my god, the question begs of Rafa: Why not bring Crouch on for Kuyt in the final 10 minutes?!? Dirk played like dick tonight. Xabi was surprisingly poor. No one misunderstand my frustration, here. I am not venting as someone who is jumping ship (I most certainly am NOT), but rather as an ardent supporter who is simply sickened by our inconsistency and underachievement. In terms of sheer disappointment, I can't recall a more frustrating season in the 15 years that I've supported the club. We need answers, all right. And I think it all starts with the Captain. YNWA
Or when a teammate if crowded, as was was constantly happening to Torres, create an outlet by moving into the space. Is this rocket science? It looked for all the world as if West Ham had 12 players on the pitch, closing down our strikers who positively looked outnumbered and, then, launching slick-passing counter-attacks where our defenders, you guessed, also seemed outnumbered. There was one passage of play when Torres took Mullins, Neil and Ferdinand with him right to the edge of the box but when he looked around for an outlet, Kuijt was standing close to Upson and MaCartney, Gerrard and Alonso around the centre circle and none of the wingers within passing range at all. Summed up the first half.
My thoughts exactly. Players on the ball are not supported at all. Earlier on this season we had Pennant/Benayoun and Arbeloa/Finnan and Arbeloa/Riise combining well down the flanks while the midfield duo also moved in support of each other. We could even indulge the profligacy of Voronin and Kuijt., then Now most players retreat behind centre-line, sometimes to the edge of our box, contributing to nothing but the count of needless fouls. It looks so obvious which begs the question; what is the coaching staff doing about it?
No mate, Agger is just one player. I think the answer is players need to show for one another. When a man is open with some space hit him with the ball. When a player doesn’t have the ball they need to find space and keep finding it until they get the ball. These guys need to trust each other, the ball is round and meant to be shared. I know these players are capable because I have seen them pass the ball very well a number of times this season. We need to make crisp direct ball our bread and butter but we need to find the goals using the indirect route. These guys need to trust their abilities. Go ahead and try a cleaver no look pass or two, for example. Try a shot even if it seems impossible. We need to pick players who are in good form even if it means trusting a younger player. Let an out of form player sort it out in training and give them a shot when it looks like they have recovered. There are too many sacred cows on our squad and there should be none (even the captain).
Ok the answer = Agger and confidence Yes Agger is the one man who pushes our defensive line up the pitch...the higher our line, the further forward our attacking players are, and hence, the more players around the box supporting the strikers. I hope that ive misunderstood you because from what youve said, it sounds like you want to play direct "English" football and that one thing that i refuse to accept from our team. If we excluded the players who arent playing well...that means that Finnan, Aurelio, Riise, Xabi, Kewell, Yossi, Babel, Kuyt, Voronin and Crouch would not start the next game. The best thing for the manager to do in a time like this is show faith in the squad...why would you want to harm the players confidence even more by making wholesale changes.
Look, I think every team is due a bad match, even a spell of bad matches. Compared to other so-called big 4, though, ours tend to come more often and last longer. Yes we do have a few passengers that title-winning team cannot afford and they need to be shifted in the summer. But I have seen enough games this season to believe in the quality of the majority and don't believe they have become bad overnight. Yet they are not helping each other at all; some seemingly just going through the motions for long spells and for this the coaching staff deserve flak. Last night Carragher and Hyypia were so desperate when in possession, there was nobody to pass to that they kept lumping it over to heads of the midfield. And, in the main, the only player they had to deal with between them was Carlton Cole and occassionaly the Traore-sque footed Boa Morte. Partly this was because Alonso, the more advanced of the central duo kept losing possession. Mainly, though, this was because Kewell and Benayoun and their full-backs were constantly being harried and pinned back. When Lucas came on for Kewell (I still think he can offer more than he did last night), it was amazing how many times Neil conceeded corners. So much so that Curbishley had to take of an attacking player and bring on a defender: reacting to an adverse situation. Which brings me to my biggest bug-bear with Benitez; he rarely, or quickly enough, makes game-changing substitutions, at least not until it seems too late. At least one winger, couldn't care who, and possibly Alonso ought to have been replaced at half-time.