What's gone wrong this season?

[CharlieMansonsSquint]

Forget the ownership situation, I'm talking about the on field performance in the league.

Collectively we seem to lack heart, fight and belief. Why?

Our football, and the quality of it, has regressed despite the addition of Torres, why?

Certain players have regressed badly from last season, why?

Or is the manager to blame with his peculiar managerial approach?

I want to gage some opinions on this, and none of this “it's the yanks fault”, “yanks out” stuff, they don't pick the team or play in the starting 11.

[Skillz]

In order

1) Rafa being undermined (sorry cannot be excluded in this discussion IMO)
2) Agger and Alonso being injured
3) 3 strikers out of form along with many others
4) Pako leaving and not being replaced properly
5) Chelsea paying the Ref
6) not getting the rub of the green

Of the top of my head but i would of forgotten something

[Slinky Skills]

I don't understand it either, we were right up there at one point and it's just gone completley pear shaped over the last few months. We had a chance to get up to third or second but we completley threw it away.

There's no heart or self-belief in any of our performances at the moment which is the most disturbing thing.

On and off the pitch we're a mess. I believe that we WILL get better but I don't think it will be this season. The performances of late have been very poor and not good enough for this football club. The players can't use the off field problems as an excuse. They get paid enough and they're letting the fans down.

[Jaymo]

i think more or less everything that could go wrong has. What skillz says i agree with

[Rowan]

Lack of cutting edge in the last 3rd. Kuyt doesn't look like he could finish a lubed up hooker at the minute, Voronin isn't of the required standard and no one really knows the effect of more pitch time for Crouch. Look at the Villa and Man City games as key examples. For 70 minutes against Villa we looked like we were going to really do them, but I can't really remember cutting edge chances. Same for Man City. We played well and dominated the game, but never really created.

We also look shaky at one nil. I have a real forboding feeling in matches at the minute that we always look like we could concede, a feeling i haven't really had under Rafa up until now. Even against Wigan and Derby I didn't feel to comfortable when we led one nil.

Add to that whenever we do actually put a ball into the box there is no-one there to finish the thing, so I would say it is our forwards fault (excepting Torres of course, despite his prepencity to miss the odd chance).

It's worth remembering that we were pretty nifty at the start of the year as well so something has clearly changed

[carrsim]

Forget the ownership situation, I'm talking about the on field performance in the league.

Collectively we seem to lack heart, fight and belief. Why?

Our football, and the quality of it, has regressed despite the addition of Torres, why?

Certain players have regressed badly from last season, why?

Or is the manager to blame with his peculiar managerial approach?

I want to gage some opinions on this, and none of this “it's the yanks fault”, “yanks out” stuff, they don't pick the team or play in the starting 11.

i'm putting it down to injuries to key players- agger and alonso have missed too much football this year

a slight dip in from from finnan and carra (both could be down to injury/recovery, but neither have been as consistent as previous seasons)

there was a time when we could win games 1-0 because we looked so assured at the back (not least on 05/06 when we had long runs of 1-0 wins and never looked like conceding)

i'm sure i'll get slated for saying that- esp about carra- but look at the amount of stupid goals that we have GIFTED the opposition this year

however, i'd also look at a total lack of goal threat except from stevie, fernando and on occassion yossi. referring back to those long 1-0 runs, we would moan that noone could convert all the chances we were creating and that 1-0 wins could eaisly have been 2 or 3 with better finishing- we often created as many as 5, 6 or more good goalscoring chances.

what concerns me is that now we are relying on 1 or 2 good chances and if we don't take one of them then we struggle.

in both problem areas- knowing that we are conceding like never before, and not creating as much as before, adds pressure and lessens confidence to the squad- who too many times have looks nervous to me.

i wouldn't say spirit is exactly lacking- we have at times this year really dug in and got the result we need, or shown fight back quality.

but we look a little devoid of what the overall gameplan is and i think that rafa MUST share some of this blame. whether its rotation, rafa losing faith in players (crouch) or something else (the americnas) its hard to say

hope thats not too depressing a picture

[Sheik Yerbouti]

I put it down to Rafa:

His continued faith in Deadly Dirk.

His stubborness in not giving Crouch a prolonged run in the league.

His refusal to try Babel up top despite our strikers (bar Torres) not being very good. Playing Gerrard ahead of him against Wigan at home was the last straw.

His strange formations and team selections - See above, Wigan and Reading.

He's ultimately a defensive manager. His tactics are plain to see week in. week out. Play Gerrard deep in the first half, hope we go in at the break all square, then push Gerrard up second half for a rabble rousing last 15 minutes.

Play round pegs in round holes Rafa, take the leash off and just see if it takes us somewhere.

[CharlieMansonsSquint]

In order

1) Rafa being undermined (sorry cannot be excluded in this discussion IMO)
2) Agger and Alonso being injured
3) 3 strikers out of form along with many others
4) Pako leaving and not being replaced properly
5) Chelsea paying the Ref
6) not getting the rub of the green

Of the top of my head but i would of forgotten something

1)Inconclusive, perhaps, but then have the Americans told him to tinker with the team selection and formation so much that there's no continuity or form in general in the team?

2)Yes, they've been missed, but aren't we supposed to have a deep squad?

3)And why do you think that is?

4)Who's fault is that, then?

5)Excuse.

6)Pathetic excuse.

[MascheredUp]

I put it down to Rafa:

His continued faith in Deadly Dirk.

His stubborness in not giving Crouch a prolonged run in the league.

His refusal to try Babel up top despite our strikers (bar Torres) not being very good. Playing Gerrard ahead of him against Wigan at home was the last straw.

His strange formations and team selections - See above, Wigan and Reading.

He's ultimately a defensive manager. His tactics are plain to see week in. week out. Play Gerrard deep in the first half, hope we go in at the break all square, then push Gerrard up second half for a rabble rousing last 15 minutes.

Play round pegs in round holes Rafa, take the leash off and just see if it takes us somewhere.

Is the right answer.

I'm fed up of the "injuries" or "American" excuses.

It's all down to Rafa.

I heard Wenger say something brilliant on MOTD last night

"A team always reflects the managers personality"

Rafa is too cautious/defensive.

Look at what he's done to Kuyt for ****s sake.

[CharlieMansonsSquint]

I put it down to Rafa:

His continued faith in Deadly Dirk.

His stubborness in not giving Crouch a prolonged run in the league.

His refusal to try Babel up top despite our strikers (bar Torres) not being very good. Playing Gerrard ahead of him against Wigan at home was the last straw.

His strange formations and team selections - See above, Wigan and Reading.

He's ultimately a defensive manager. His tactics are plain to see week in. week out. Play Gerrard deep in the first half, hope we go in at the break all square, then push Gerrard up second half for a rabble rousing last 15 minutes.

Play round pegs in round holes Rafa, take the leash off and just see if it takes us somewhere.

Can't disagree with any of that.

But why has Kuyt gone from being half decent to being very poor?

And why have others like Carragher, Finnan and Alonso when he's played been nowhere near their levels of previous seasons.

Has Rafa lost the dressing room?

[Sheik Yerbouti]

I heard Wenger say something brilliant on MOTD last night

"A team always reflects the managers personality"

I saw that and laughed my head off.

So Arsene, can you explain why such a grey, boring, dour faced ****er like you can produce a team that plays such wonderful, quick, fluent, one touch football?

[Nic83]

Playing defenders up front doesn't help.

[Sir Bob]

I don't think we've underperformed as much as some people think. Sure we should have more points than we have but in my view our position reflects just how good we are.

we can point to injuries to Agger & alonso but we've not suffered any more injuries than our rivals.

Rafa is too negative in my book. Boro away being a classic example. we played Arbeloa at RM to counter Downing.

But to suggest if Rafa had done this or that, we'd be challenging for the title is nonsense, we are still some way short of that.

[Skillz]

1)Inconclusive, perhaps, but then have the Americans told him to tinker with the team selection and formation so much that there's no continuity or form in general in the team?Not inconclusive at all IMO
2)Yes, they've been missed, but aren't we supposed to have a deep squad? Yes we are but I think the fact these 2 contribute to our team a lot more than some give them credit. Without them our ability to play out of defense has dropped significantly

3)And why do you think that is? Team playing poorly

4)Who's fault is that, then? No idea, I suspect Pako's

5)Excuse. True but it still pisses me off, obviously

6)Pathetic excuse.Agree, but Titus Bramble scoring goal of the week and Harewood scoring a classy overhead was enough for me to use it.

[Morph]

I made a thread about it a while ago, but for me the main problem had been missing Agger for so long, matches we drew by conceding we would have won if he'd been playing imo.

Lets face it we have only lost 2 matches in the league this season which is a fantastic figure, problem has been too many draws, turn 5 of them into wins, and win our game in hand and we'd be right into it with the mancs and arsenal.

Of course the fact that Kuyt, Crouch and Voronin have generally been **** and couldn't hit a barn door (particularly Kuyt), doesn't help, but that's nothing different with LFC of the past few years, we've not had major goals up front since the days of Owen. So while I admit it is a failing of our side at the moment, it's not the reason for me why we are not achieving at least what we should be.

None of the backroom issues help either, but points wise i'm not really sure what it costs us, but it definately has a detrimental effect imo, especially on rafa's mood and maybe his approach to matches, going out to not get beat rather than to win. Other issues like pako leaving might have had more of an impadct than we thought, but there's no real way to say as we don't know how much impact he had.