Balls of steel , or lack thereof .

[RedZeppelin III]

"Aggression isn't about having a 6ft 3ins player in the middle of the field who is going to drive you forward, aggression is in the mind," said Rodgers.
"We have Steven Gerrard, who is one of the best examples of that in this country over the last 10 years.
"We have that aggression but it is not about what size you are, it is about the fight which is in there.
"In the second half the ability to fight was much better and we were much more aggressive in our play and attitude and we should have got something."

Rodgers' side have yet to beat any team currently in the top 10 in the league this season.
"It is not a problem. We should have beaten Manchester City earlier this season, we should have beaten Everton away and we haven't," added Rodgers.
"We have been close in a number of the games against the guys at the top end of the league but that is the next step for us."
He added: "To win those games can set your journey off in a totally different direction. It is not something which is mental but it is something we need to do if we are going to progress.

"We have great hope in the future, because of how we are working, that will happen here.
"It will be a long journey for us but it is about closing the gap in the squad, getting those wins against our rivals and then we can gain confidence from that.
"I feel we are a match for any of the teams in this league but what allows you to close the gap in terms of the points is having a squad which allows you to compete. For us the squad has been very thin in these opening months."

Fair enough it might not be about having a 6"3 monster in the centre of the park but rodgers has got his head right up his own arse if he can't see that too often this season we've had no bottle and have too many shitehouse players in the squad .

WBA , Stoke , Villa , United ...the attitude in those games was disgraceful . No fight or balls , pissed on and we took it .

At the very least we need a win against a semi decent side to get some confidence. It can't continue like it is .

 

[gkmacca]

It isn't entirely in the mind, that's another bit of silly 'either/or' claptrap. It's a physical league and it needs players with a strong physical presence as well as an aggressive attitude. Allen needs to hit the gym as well as consult the sports psychologist.

 

[mark1975]

I think he's trying to say that the reason we lost wasn't just because we lack the players, some players showed United too much respect and themselves a distinct lack of self-belief. He's said countless times we need to invest in the squad.

 

[RedZeppelin III]

I think he's trying to say that the reason we lost wasn't just because we lack the players, some players showed United too much respect and themselves a distinct lack of self-belief. He's said countless times we need to invest in the squad.

yeah a bunch of shitehouses

 

[Markeh]

"Aggression isn't about having a 6ft 3ins player in the middle of the field who is going to drive you forward, aggression is in the mind," said Rodgers.

To be honest I'm sick of hearing this shite. Joe Allen may be 5'7 but he's 6'7 on the pitch, whats his fascination with size?

It's really obvious Brendan we all know it's not about size, you loaned out Jay Spearing a lad who has a shit load of this aggression you speak of. Most of our central midfielders have none of it, can you teach them aggression? I'm not so sure. It's down to the manager to fire them up and get them in the mood, I hope he tore into them at half time on saturday and thats where the change came from.

 

[RedStar]

The problem is clearly a collective lack of responsibility, its not about aggression for me its about courage, the most obvious sign on Sunday was players completely mishitting passes because they wanted rid of the ball as soon as possible, players refusing to shoot in good positions and laying it off to somebody else. Good players want the ball, great players demand it, look at the mug on Suarez whenever somebody declines to pass to him or over hits a pass, hes furious cos he wants the ball all the time, he wants to win and he knows he cant do that without the ball. Its the basis for the entire philosophy Rodgers is trying to build.

Unfortunately we have too many players who would rather abdicate that responsibility to somebody else, look at the difference it made when we brought on one more player who was there to show what he was capable of, Sturridge is nobodies idea of an intimidating player but his willingness to actually take the game to the opposition had a huge effect on Utd, suddenly they looked less sure of themselves and we grew into the game. They started playing conservatively and rushing themselves in possession.

Its clear we have iron deficiency in our team, our record against the top clubs in the league shows that quite clearly. Some of our players need a serious kick up the arse, starting with Allen and Downing

 

[Oncy]

Rodgers' side have yet to beat any team currently in the top 10 in the league this season.

IS THAT TRUE!?!!

Fuck me.

 

[LeTallecWiz]

Zep - do you like cricket? I was happy yesterday, were you? 😉

 

[jan]

Rodgers' side have yet to beat any team currently in the top 10 in the league this season.

IS THAT TRUE!?!!

Fuck me.

Yes

 

[hmmmmm1]

Diame bullied us for 60 minutes until he came off injured.

Stoke did something similar.

I am sure there has been a few other occasions which I don't remember,

I sometimes wonder if BR is in some sort of trance when he is watching us play.

He wakes up from this trance after the game and comes out with this sort of rhetoric.

 

[gkmacca]

No, he changes it. But it's like an old bloke, who keeps setting off from his house having forgotten to put on his trousers, getting praised for the fact he realises quite quickly and rushes back to change. It ought to be a cause for concern, not congratulation. There's a reason why so few good managers make early subs and change things at half time - more often than not they get it right at the start. The team needs to go out with the right attitude, and the right tempo, from the first whistle.

 

[Fox]

Fair enough it might not be about having a 6"3 monster in the centre of the park but rodgers has got his head right up his own arse if he can't see that too often this season we've had no bottle and have too many shitehouse players in the squad .

WBA , Stoke , Villa , United ...the attitude in those games was disgraceful . No fight or balls , pissed on and we took it .

At the very least we need a win against a semi decent side to get some confidence. It can't continue like it is .

Hardly call Carrick and Cleverley monsters can you

If this summer we had signed any of the UTDs central midfielders there would have been uproar yet they play for the best team in the country

It is not about individuals but a team, UTD are showing that this year, you could hardly say Carrick, Kagawa, Cleverley, Anderson, Da Silva, Jones or Oshea are world class could you

 

[RedStar]

O Shea has been playing for Sunderland for 2 seasons now, but your point is valid

I think we have to accept that we are a bit of an echo chamber and endlessly repeating things like 'I think our team is good as Man Utds' as some are prone to do, doesnt make it so

 

[Silver Sean]

I used to listen to what our manager said whenever he had something to say. Sadly this guy never shuts up and talks management speak bollocks most of the time. There are not enough hours in the day to keep up. Say less, do more.

 

[LarryHagman]

"We have been close in a number of the games against the guys at the top end of the league but that is the next step for us."

If Hodgson had said that, this thread would be 50 pages long.

 

[Glen C]

"We have been close in a number of the games against the guys at the top end of the league but that is the next step for us."

If Hodgson had said that, this thread would be 50 pages long.

Nah Hodgson would have more said something like "we can only dream of being close to the teams at the top end of the league, but i don't deal in dreams only reality".

 

[Glen C]

Gerrard is old enough to know Liverpool need experience

Tony BarrettJanuary 15 2013 11:01AM

Steven Gerrard doesn’t tend to be outspoken. The Liverpool captain holds strong opinions and he delivers them forthrightly and with conviction when needs be but his aim is rarely to cause controversy, even though his standing in English football makes headlines inevitable.
So when Gerrard politely and ever so delicately admitted last week that he disagrees with his own club’s transfer policy it caused more of a stir than it would have done had the likes of Martin Skrtel or Glen Johnson made similar comments.
But it also raised the issue of the type of player that Liverpool have signed since Brendan Rodgers took over, amid growing suggestions that the determination of Fenway Sports Group (FSG), the club’s owner, for the acquisition of young players to be prioritised is restricting their manager’s options.
At the weekend, Ian Ayre denied that such a policy is without flexibility, telling Sky Sports News that “if we find the right deals for the right players we’ll get them done” and that may turn out to be the case. Rodgers himself has denied that he is either compelled or under pressure to sign players who are 23 or under, which begs the question of why all but one of his signings fits that age profile?
Fabio Borini, Joe Allen, Daniel Sturridge, Samed Yesil and Nuri Sahin all fall into that criteria, as does Tom Ince, Rodgers’s other main target for the January transfer window. The lesser spotted Oussama Assaidi is the only exception and even he celebrated his 24th birthday only two days before joining Liverpool from Heerenveen in a £2.5 million transfer last August.
Whether it’s by accident or design – and given FSG’s commitment to statistics and profiling it is hard to believe it is the former, however strong the denials from Ayre and Rodgers – Liverpool’s transfer policy has been weighted heavily in favour of signing young players, with qualities like potential, energy and sell on value being prioritised over experience and knowhow.
On the one occasion that Rodgers wanted to sign a senior professional he wasn’t rejected, but nor was he backed as FSG refused to pay anything over £4 million for the 29-year-old Clint Dempsey who subsequently joined Tottenham Hotspur from Fulham. “You don’t just look at the calendar,” Bob Paisley once replied when asked about the virtues of older players and the feeling persists that Dempsey’s biggest drawback as far as Liverpool were concerned wasn’t his first touch or his prickly temperament, it was his birth certificate.
For long spells against Manchester United on Sunday, Liverpool looked exactly what they are – a young and relatively inexperienced team lacking in both physical and mental authority. Even though Sturridge’s young legs took him into the right place at the right time to score the goal that threatened to bring Liverpool back into the game, it was telling that the chance was created by the 32-year-old Gerrard winning possession in a key area and then having the drive and desire to advance.
“To be successful at this level you need to get the mix right,” Gerrard had said before the game, probably without daring to imagine that his claim would be vindicated so quickly and so dramatically. The problem for Liverpool was that there were far too many instances at Old Trafford when it was glaringly apparent that they do not yet have the right mix.
One of the reasons for this is that the players they have signed recently don’t just fit an age profile, they are all of a certain type. Borini, Allen and Sturridge are all technically good but none could claim to have a genuine physical presence. The same goes for Assaidi, whom Rodgers doubts is cut out for English football, and Sahin, who was allowed to leave last week having failed to establish himself in the Premier League.
Rodgers resists claims that Liverpool are a soft touch, but United made them appear so during an embarrassingly one-sided first half in which the result should have been put well beyond doubt. The passing and movement that led to their opening goal, scored by Robin van Persie, may have been eye-catching and impressive but Liverpool allowed them to play with possession being retained and developed without a single challenge of any significance being made.
“To concede the goal in the way that we did was very disappointing,” said Rodgers. “They worked their way through to the edge of the box unchallenged. It’s a disappointing goal when you analyse it but it’s something we’ll improve on.”
Those comments were not made on Sunday, they came in the aftermath of Liverpool’s 2-2 home draw with Young Boys in November 23. Similar comments could also have been made about Aston Villa’s second goal in a shock 3-1 win at Anfield three weeks later when Andreas Weimann provided the finishing flourish to an 18- pass move that never came close to being disrupted by an opponent.
At times, Liverpool’s weakness in such situations is there for all to see and yet there do not appear to be any plans in place to target the kind of players who specialise in stopping the opposition from playing.
There were last spring when Ayre held talks with Mohamed Diame about a possible move to Anfield but that potential deal collapsed after Kenny Dalglish, who had identified the powerful midfield player as a key transfer target, lost his job as manager.
Since then, Liverpool have gone to an opposite extreme with the emphasis being placed on players who are best at keeping possession rather than those who are expert at winning it back. As a result there is no shortage of technique but performances have highlighted a lack of toughness, be it physical or mental.
“There are five things generally accepted to be necessary to make a footballer: skill, strength, stamina, speed and flexibility,” Paisley used to say. Were he still around today, the legendary manager would look at the Liverpool side and he would see four of those five qualities but he wouldn’t see a great deal of strength.
Even when pressed on his side’s apparent frailties, Rodgers named only Gerrard as someone who had the necessary physical aggression. For over a decade Gerrard has been cited as the solution whenever Liverpool have a problem. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why he has his own doubts about Liverpool’s transfer strategy – he is at the stage of his career when he needs to be able to rely on others and all he sees is the arrival of player after player who is likely to rely on him.

 

[RedZeppelin III]

reina 30
wisdom 19
Agger 28
Skrtel 28
johnson 28
Gerrard 32
lucas 26
allen 22
Downing 28
Sterling 18
Suarez 25

well that was our team in the first half when we were really shite . Bar Sterling and Wisdom , is that really that young and inexperienced a team ? The problem isn't really age , it's that we are lacking leaders and players who are really going to stand up and get stuck in (which i guess is also addressed in that article in fairness ) .

 

[LarryHagman]

We lack good players.
Not balls. Not experience. Not leaders. Not tacklers.
Signing good players should be our strategy. Sounds simple but we have avoided it for years.

 

[Jerry Laser]

To be honest I'm sick of hearing this shite. Joe Allen may be 5'7 but he's 6'7 on the pitch, whats his fascination with size?

It's really obvious Brendan we all know it's not about size, you loaned out Jay Spearing a lad who has a shit load of this aggression you speak of. Most of our central midfielders have none of it, can you teach them aggression? I'm not so sure. It's down to the manager to fire them up and get them in the mood, I hope he tore into them at half time on saturday and thats where the change came from.

Probably not.... he probably gave them a little stroke on the face and then said lets fight for our lives yet again....

 

[Ossi]

Rodgers' side have yet to beat any team currently in the top 10 in the league this season.

IS THAT TRUE!?!!

Fuck me.

But but..."it's not a problem"!?

 

[Ryan]

We lack good players.
Not balls. Not experience. Not leaders. Not tacklers.
Signing good players should be our strategy. Sounds simple but we have avoided it for years.

Amen to this.