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Liverpool Thread 2012/13

bell

By bell,
in Football Thread Vault

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themadsheep2001

themadsheep2001

Posted
Posted
It's easy to jump in to a a very black and white view on these things.

It's like, everyone has a firm view on whether Suarez is either a world class forward or he's not, he's either a racist or he's not, he's either an embarrassment to the club or not, he either wants more money or he doesn't, he either loves the club or he doesn't, we either want £40m or we don't. etc.

It's going to be far more complex than that with quite a few different factors contributing to whether he stays or goes. And what the reasons are.

The current status of Liverpool FC as a football club, where we're heading, how much we pay him, how he's seen internally by the players and staff, how he's seen and portrayed by the media, what other clubs are interested in him and what his options are, what's best for his family, financially and locationally, what's best for the club in terms of public image, finances, ability to attract other players etc. are just some of the factors involved by all parties.

Not having this. This point has far too much common sense in it.

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foofighter23

foofighter23

Posted
Posted

was thinking that myself :D good post :thup:

im of the view he's learning from these mistakes and growing up too from what i just read. will he offend again? likely, will it be as abhorrent as the last 2? not sure it would. he said himself he's done a lot of growing up, so to say it himself tells me he's learning at least. the 4-5 months prior to that showed that too, he'd cut out the diving totally and i really thought he was beginning to channel his hotheadedness in the right ways until the bite happened...

maybe im being selfish wanting him to stay but i see what he can bring to the team and can be a match winner, which is priceless in any league.

i'd still have a word with him if i were rodgers and tell him to ignore the press and eventually they will go away aslong as he controls his temper. at least stay another season to see where we're at.

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Just-Wool

Just-Wool

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Posted

Don't know why people compare us to anything a Manc player does, they are invincible when it comes to players acting like morons. The FA and media outlets come to heel when it comes to the crunch with them.

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Divinity

Divinity

Posted
Posted

Reality is, his performances in the last few years prior to Rodgers were largely woeful. He managed to anchor the midfield well this season, but the reality is that he's no longer a long-term solution. He'll be 33 next season. He should be a peripheral player at best, and we should either be looking for better or putting Henderson into his role on a much more permanent basis next season. No amount of flash videos will change that. He's no longer a player who can dominate a match. Note most of those teams we're playing against in the video.

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benjaminpeter

benjaminpeter

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The actual reality is that Henderson isn't going to be able to dominate a match, neither is Allen, Lucas, or Coutinho. Until we sign or bring through 'the next Gerrard' he remains our best option for bossing the midfield, which means we can't afford for him to be a peripheral player.

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Divinity

Divinity

Posted
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Nobody's going to dominate a match unless they're playing it. He didn't "boss" the midfield for large parts of this season (I'm assuming "bossing" means playing hollywood passes) - hence our form in the early part of it, and it was only once Coutinho and Sturridge came in that our form became much more consistent. Henderson certainly showed enough improvement that he can play alongside Lucas. Shunt Gerrard out to the right in Downing's place, or if there's someone more dynamic available, reduce Gerrard to a mentoring role seeing as he can't play two games a week.

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SRL88

SRL88

Posted
Posted
Simon Mignolet, any good?
Sunderland fan I know basically said he's kept them in the Premier League this/last season. Before he wasn't as good, but he's really young, isn't he? Plus, he'll be our Belgian quota for when they win the world cup ;)

Solid goalkeeper who is improving every season. I would personally prefer Begovic, but that isn't knocking Mignolet in any sense. Living where I do I know a lot of Sunderland fans, and they all rate him very highly.

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Select_screen_name:

Select_screen_name:

Posted
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Interesting stuff from Bellamy. Rafa seemed a bit of a tit. Also, what every sensible person knew, the stuff Dalglish pulled on camera in interviews was just an act.

Bellamy on Benitez

When I walked into Melwood, the Liverpool training ground, I felt as though everything in my career had been leading to this moment. It was the first time I had ever been there and it was like being in a dream.

This was where Bill Shankly had worked. This was the turf that Bob Paisley had walked on. This was where Kenny Dalglish, Ian Rush and Robbie Fowler had trained. The facilities might have been new and state-of-the-art but the place reeked of glorious history.

A lot of things went through my mind. It was only a year ago that my name was mud and everybody had been branding me a troublemaker and saying I was untouchable.

I had undergone four operations on my patella tendons and two on my cruciates. I had suffered from episodes of depression.

I even thought of sitting in my garage in Norwich on Christmas Eve, doing my leg presses. This is why I did it. To get here. To get to Melwood. To sign for Liverpool.

I did my medical stuff and then I went upstairs to see Rafa Benitez in his office. I sat down. He was business-like.

He produced a cutting from a newspaper. The page was dominated by a picture of me with a snarl on my face. Most of the time back then I’d have a snarl on my face. It was nothing unusual.

“Why are you looking like this?” he said. I told him I couldn’t remember.

“You can’t play like this,” he said. “This kind of aggression is not what you need as a player.”

I told him I understood. The memory of the game where the incident had happened started to come back to me. It was a match against Sunderland the previous season. Sunderland’s goalkeeper, Kelvin Davis, had shoved me in the back. I had a bad back anyway at that time. I didn’t take too kindly to being shoved in it.

I didn’t mention any of that to Rafa. I could sense it probably wasn’t the right time.

Then he got a board out and started quizzing me about footballing systems. What did I think about this formation or that formation, the positives, the negatives, the benefits of playing between the lines.

Where would I run if a teammate had the ball in a certain position. He asked me about every scenario under the sun. And every answer I gave, even if it was correct, was twisted into another answer.

“When you play up top,” he said, “if this player has it, where would you go?” It was like a multiple choice test. “I’d run to the left,” I said. “Yeah, but run right first, then go left,” he said. The other players told me later that was just typical Rafa.

I was a bit taken aback by his attitude. It was like being in the presence of an unsmiling headmaster. The atmosphere at the club seemed strange, too. It was a place of business and a place of work. There weren’t very many people smiling. There wasn’t a lot of laughter around the place. Even the physios were on edge when they were doing the medical. Everyone seemed uncomfortable and wary.

The next day, I met Pako Ayestaran, Rafa’s assistant and the fitness coach. The fitness routines were not that imaginative.

It was army style, really. Long, plodding runs mainly. It was very professional with heart monitors and fitness belts but there was no camaraderie while they took place. It was all double sessions, tactical work, standing in position, walk-throughs of tactical play. Rafa oversaw it all.

A lot of Rafa’s tactical work was very, very good. He was impressively astute and I learned a lot from him in that area. But he could not come to terms with the idea that some players need an element of freedom and that we express ourselves on the pitch in different ways. He was very rigid.

He worked on specific moves over and over again. It was a bit like American Football in that respect.

Rafa wanted people running designated routes when the ball was in a certain place, just as he had been explaining the first time I spoke to him in his office. The winger comes inside, the full-back overlaps, the forward has to run near post every time.

There was no allowance for the fact that your marker might have worked out what you are doing after a few attempts. You had to keep doing it because it might make space for someone else. I felt like a decoy runner half the time.

But I did learn a lot. Defensively, Rafa was exceptional. He was very good on the opposition and how to nullify their threat and stifle their forward players.

He would use video analysis to go through the opposition’s strengths and weaknesses. Our preparation for games was extremely thorough. Nothing was left to chance. He was the first foreign manager I worked under and I learned quite a bit.

But there was no scope for spontaneity. None. He distrusted that. Of all the managers I have worked with, he trusted his players the least. That’s just how he was. There was not much enjoyment. There were no small-sided games or anything like that.

Everything was tactical with timed drills and routines.

It was a bit like Groundhog Day. You came in and did the same stuff over and over again.

Sometimes strikers like to do finishing at the end of a session but once the whistle was blown at the end of training, Rafa would personally collect the balls and put them in the bag and no one was allowed to do any extra work. He was a total control-freak.

Rotation was something else I had to get used to under Rafa.

One week you would play, the next you wouldn’t. None of the players would ever know until an hour before kick-off who was going to start. I found that hard to adjust to. I found everything about it difficult.

I prepared as if I was going to start because I felt that was the professional thing to do. But I need to get myself into a certain frame of mind when I play. I cut myself off from everybody around me on the day of the game. I get intense about it. In those circumstances, it is very difficult if you are then told an hour before the match that you’re on the bench.

By preparing as though I was going to play, I was also ensuring that the disappointment would be even greater when I didn’t play. So then I started telling myself I had to change tack. I stopped building myself up too much so that it would be easier to deal with the disappointment of not being selected.

But then when I did start, it almost came as a shock to me. I had an hour to get prepared. That was it.

Rafa said he would not release the starting eleven until an hour before kick-off because he didn’t want to give the opposition an advantage. What he meant was that he didn’t want anyone to leak the team early and he didn’t trust players to keep it secret.

He didn’t trust the players on the pitch so he certainly wasn’t going to trust them off it.

Bellamy on Dalglish

People talk about Kenny Dalglish being the greatest Liverpool footballer of all time. He probably is. But you know what, he is the greatest man who has ever played for Liverpool Football Club.

There is no shadow of a doubt about that. To be involved with him was just a huge honour. He was brilliant to play for.

He had such a calming influence over everyone at the club. He was just The King. He was a true man. The humility he shows constantly on a daily basis to everyone was overwhelming. When I say ‘everyone’, I don’t just mean the players. I mean all the employees of the club.

The impression you get of him on the television, defensive and monosyllabic, is the exact opposite of what he is like when the camera is turned off.

Before the Carling Cup final, the manager showed us a short film that illustrated what Wembley meant to Liverpool and what it meant to the club being back there.

I sat there watching Shankly talking and Kenny scoring that magnificent winner against Bruges in the 1978 European Cup final.

And I thought about all my years of growing up and wanting to be part of this club. When the film ended, there were tears in my eyes.

For someone like me, you don’t get much better than playing for Liverpool under Kenny Dalglish.

When Kenny was fired a few months after bringing Liverpool their first trophy for six years, I knew for sure it was time to go.

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knapp...

knapp...

Posted
Posted

that rafa stuff is depressing tbh. i remember another player giving an interview or in a book or something like that and he went into how rafa had zero interest in any kind of personal relationship with him and i mean ZERO, never asked about his family or just a general 'what did you do last night?' etc. he hardly ever praised you after a good game either, instead would bring up your mistakes in the game :D. must grind certain players.

must make for quite a stifled atmosphere at the club and can't help to create a real deep bond between the players. far far too business like when you are dealing with a group of young men where confidence is such a key thing imo. managing in such a style is great when things are going well but must be twice as hard to pick a team up when its going through a rough patch. a manager like fergie and mourinho get the balance of business and pleasure which is essential in a team sport just right imo.

thats not to say rafas **** or anything, i love the man, but his man management is woeful.

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Divinity

Divinity

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thats not to say rafas **** or anything, i love the man, but his man management is woeful.

I don't buy into that. Plenty of players have said how much they enjoyed working with him. It's not his job to play best mate or fatherly figure. Bellamy is frankly just a tool, always was. Ask Riise.

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