Post-mortem Northampton

[Craig_H]

They had extremely different roles though, while Lucas was not good enough going forward, that was the main part of Gerrard's game and last season it was almost non-existent.

That's fair enough, but Lucas was hardly the defensive midfield warrior either.

[Fivex]

Has he done the post match interview? Not seen anything in this thread??

Any ideas?

[el matador]

you could probably take losing at home to northampton if the team was full of 17, 18 and 19 year old players. yes it was a younger liverpool team but not a vibrant young team offering glimpses of the future.

instead we cart out the same old **** like kygriakos lucas spearing the rest of the bollocks. pacheco has never convinced anyone when he's been given a chance.

losing whilst playing the likes of shelvey, amoo, suso even sterling is understandable. but babel, ngog, lucas, jones, jovanovic, agger, kygriakos isnt what you call a young team.

[ronanm]

To loan out Aquilani for free was also a complete joke. I would have understood it if we had got £4m-£5m for that one year loan but Juventus picked him up on a free for a year

Roy should have laughed at that offer and not accepted it.

Are they paying his wages?

[JohnDoe]

Yep. And you would have been b1tching about him 6 weeks into the season too.

No because Kenny knows how to play football the way top sides should play.

[DannyMan2006]

That is an irrelevancy to my point.

You were talking about Rafa, so was I. That point was about Rafa.

You think we're going to get significantly better this season? Or next?

Obviously the root problem is the ownership issue. But if that's the case then why was seventh unacceptable last season when it won't be this season?

FFS, we've even got Liverpool fans defending tonight's result with the cheerful acceptance of the idea we couldn't have won the League Cup even if we'd won tonight. Not that we'll ever know now.

7th was unacceptable last season and it will be unacceptable again, despite us making a profit on tranfers AGAIN.

And yes, the owners are the main problem.

[Mattshark]

That's fair enough, but Lucas was hardly the defensive midfield warrior either.

I thought he did well, not spectacular, but a good base to build on. It didn't help that the rest of the team where poor too. Despite all that, last season we could at least defend.

[DannyMan2006]

Lucas wasn't the problem last season. Gerrard being **** almost all season was a far larger issue. Lucas played well last season.

People blame Roy for failing to motivate players tonight. Should Rafa take the blame last season for failing to motivate players?

[Mattshark]

You were talking about Rafa, so was I. That point was about Rafa.

No, it was about challenging for the title.

[ronanm]

Hmm, are you being sarcastic?

Define sarcastic. Welcome to reality.

[Neil Young]

Agree but when you have such a big squad full of players who need game time you have to fit them all in don't you?



I agree about spearing I don't rate him. But the rest of those players starting would have made our team even more inexperienced.



But he made 11 changes so you can't blame him for them not gelling immediately. Man Utd made 11 changes too. Nobody complained about this before the game, everyone was happy that we were using the compitition to try the fringe players



I think only one of the fringe players that played today were really signed by Hodgson.



Yes but its also not as simple as saying that its entirely because of the manager. Im not happy with Hodgson either, as much as I wanted Rafa gone I never wanted Hodgson. But I certainly don't blame tonight on him, he picked the team most us would have wanted to see on the park. Infact I would say it was our 2 experienced centre-backs who cost us the goals. That donkey Kyriakos who was a Rafa signing as you well know.

The point us I doubt many were unhappy with the team selection tonight, fringe players getting game time in our 4th priority compitition. You can't purely blame the manager. Is it not Ryan Babel's fault for failing to perform against Northampton? Or the rest of them? This is Rafa's squad remember and Rafa's signings who played ****

Hang on, people who wanted Hodgson to play a load of young players still thought we'd win. Winning matches is his job.

At least all the armchair managers have the excuse that they have zero experience of management in professional football. I don't know what Hodgson's excuse is. I don't for a moment expect he'll try to fob us off with one either.

[Arn]

I don't think the decisions are his to make tbh.

He should never accepted the job in the first place if he hadn't made 100% sure that he got the last word on every signing or player we sell.

It's a joke if he didn't made that clear when he accepted the job when you look at what Purslow did against Rafa.

[Mattshark]

People blame Roy for failing to motivate players tonight. Should Rafa take the blame last season for failing to motivate players?

Yes, however, we were far less bad last season and had a lot more injury issues to contend with on top and we never lost to opposition as bad as tonight's.

[Slinky Skills]

We could of kept Cavalieri

This is what I dont get

We gave Cavalieri away and signed Brad Jones for £2.5 million and before anyone starts talking quotas that can be debunked straight away

Then we have ****ed off Insua who admittedly wasnt any good but was young and maybe we could have improved and spunked over £5 million on a 30 year old who is also not very good and is highly unlikely to improve

The economics of it make no ****ing sense whatsoever

Konchesky's played 2 games Lec, he needs more time to bed in mate.

He is a better player than Insua was and has more experience too. I'd like to have kept Insua as I'm confident he'd have been a decent player for us in the future though, I believe he is still contracted to us, someone correct me if I'm wrong.

£5 million in this day and age is not a lot of money, you know yourself that we couldn't afford more than that for anyone else and Hodgson has experience of working with Konchesky too which is probably the main reason we went for him.

He HAS looked nervy so far but it's a new team with different people around him and a ****load more pressure on him to perform than what he had at Fulham. He does need to improve his passing though!!

[ronanm]

No because Kenny knows how to play football the way top sides should play.

Yeah - did a great job with Newcastle alright.