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Mario Balotelli

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Judge Jules said:
For the past quarter of a century I've worked, first in paid employment and now voluntarily in retirement, with kids whose early lives are as difficult as Balotelli's was and who haven't had anything even close to the advantages he's had since. Yes, it scars you. Yes, it's the dickens of a job trying to grow out of all that and put it behind you. Yes, the majority of us can be very thankful indeed that we haven't had to go through the same kinds of things and deal with their ongoing echoes in our lives.

But.

But it is not acceptable for adults, especially those who have had as much help as Balotelli since his poor start in life, to go on indefinitely hiding behind their early backgrounds and using them as an excuse to stay stuck in their immaturity. Hard as it may be, they ultimately have to accept responsibility for themselves and make their own efforts to change and grow up. Balotelli has had a ton of help and understanding and it's well past time he made good use of it. To the extent that the media are making that point, in however shallow a fashion, IMO they're right. The regrettable fact that all this is sucking the club I love into undeservedly negative coverage doesn't change that.
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We've disagreed on this before JJ but there's much there that can't be argued with. The main issue I'd have with the thrust of your point is that he's still young at 24 to be reversing all that attachment-based stuff that's both likely to be at the root of his issues and is likely to be largely implicitly influencing his perception of things.

Unfortunately for him, although he might have a fair bit of input (at a very young age to be working with it productively), his 'success' as a player has served to place him in an environment that reinforces the ego rather than undermine it. He strikes me as one of these players that will flourish late on (30s) as he finally matures off the field. There's something deeply sensitive about him beneath the (defensive) posturing. It'll take him time to expose himself to that. We're just going to have to live with that it seems.

Let someone else (Sturridge) be the focal point of attack/goals/glory and it'll give Mario sometime to grow into himself and Anfield. It's all too much at the moment.
 
He did it openly in Italy in a press interview shortly before he came here, saying people couldn't expect him to behave better given his background.
 
Mystic said:
Missing open goals aside, Mario played well yesterday, he worked harder, made good runs. if it wasn't for the fact he's become a scapegoat for a lot of our issues, more people would notice that.
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Playing well for a striker involves doing something to make us score goals. He didn't do that, and until he does do that, the pressure will be on him.

That's just the way it is.
 
Gerry_A_Trick said:
Playing well for a striker involves doing something to make us score goals. He didn't do that, and until he does do that, the pressure will be on him.

That's just the way it is.
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I have no problem with pressure being on him to score, I have problems with people blaming him entirely and accusing him of being something he wasn't. He did play well despite lacking end product, after seeing the chances he squandered, I'm convinced that end product will come if he keeps playing like he did.
 
Mystic said:
I have no problem with pressure being on him to score, I have problems with people blaming him entirely and accusing him of being something he wasn't. He did play well despite lacking end product, after seeing the chances he squandered, I'm convinced that end product will come if he keeps playing like he did.
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Any reaction to him will be based on what he's done up to now. You can forgive Gerrard and Sterling a few bad games, because of what they've done in the past. Balotelli has basically done nothing since he's come, so any game where he does a few things right isn't going to make up for it. It'd be different if he was young or cheap, he might be given a bit of leeway, but he isn't either of those. He needs to have an instant impact. That's not necessarily his fault, but that's just the way it is because of the situation we've left ourselves in.

He'll need to score a half dozen goals before January to warrant thinking about keeping him until the summer, playing "well" a few times just won't cut it.
 
Gerry_A_Trick said:
Any reaction to him will be based on what he's done up to now. You can forgive Gerrard and Sterling a few bad games, because of what they've done in the past. Balotelli has basically done nothing since he's come, so any game where he does a few things right isn't going to make up for it. It'd be different if he was young or cheap, he might be given a bit of leeway, but he isn't either of those. He needs to have an instant impact. That's not necessarily his fault, but that's just the way it is because of the situation we've left ourselves in.

He'll need to score a half dozen goals before January to warrant thinking about keeping him until the summer, playing "well" a few times just won't cut it.
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I'm not suggesting it does, I'm suggesting people need to stop scapegoating him and start talking about the glaring issues in our team. It's seems because Balotelli isn't scoring enough goals, people blame everything on him and pretend the shocking defence, average performances from Sterling, Allen and Gerrard and complete lack of confidence throughout the side isn't happening.
 
I blame Rodgers. I didn't understand why he bought players like Balotelli and Lambert who are the total opposite of how we played last season Their lack of pace and movement hinders our style of play. After watching Balotelli doing his statue of liberty impression to then seeing non match fit suarez roaming all over the place was depressing.
 
Lambert was probably bought for precisely those games in which we need to change things, so I don't think that criticism is valid in respect of him. As far as Balotelli goes, I suspect the plan there was to team him up with the Studge, so - although there's no question that Balotelli should have produced more so far - the real culprit in his case is that jelly-jowled gimp Hodgson.
 
Judge Jules said:
Lambert was probably bought for precisely those games in which we need to change things, so I don't think that criticism is valid in respect of him. As far as Balotelli goes, I suspect the plan there was to team him up with the Studge, so - although there's no question that Balotelli shold have produced more so far - the real culprit in his case is that jelly-jowled gimp Hodgson.
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But with studge's injury record we all knew he was going to break down and more than likely will break down again later on this season. We can't rely on him for a whole season and we should have had a plan for that.
 
We may have had one but been gazumped for the player(s) we wanted. It does need serious thought in the January window though.
 
Glen C said:
I blame Rodgers. I didn't understand why he bought players like Balotelli and Lambert who are the total opposite of how we played last season
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I guess we had to change because we never going to find a forward anything like Suarez! 🙂
 
Good question. The only thing I can think of is that he's possibly going easy on Balotelli in the interests of trying to "manage" him.
 
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