Pack your bags Roy

[Pablo]

His best isn't good enough, he's out of his depth, time to go!

He's right at least. This really is his best, it's as good as he always does, history proves it.

[Fredo]

There are reds supporters on the comments section suggesting he should be given more time. Proof the Sky Sports rots your brain.

That one makes great sense.

Paul K (Manchester United fan) says...

The best thing that Liverpool could do, in my opinion, is keep Roy Hodgson. The problems that Liverpool have are not RH making but Benitez's. Liverpool, at the moment are a mid table team but a change of manager won't change that because a new manager will want new players and that will take time. Liverpool need stability and they need to accept that at the moment other clubs are in a stronger position. As a United fan I want Liverpool to change the manager because that will mean they will be further away from competing for the EPL and also, I like RH and I can't like him whilst he is manager of Liverpool.

[red g]

There are Scum supporters pretending to be liverpool fans on the comments section suggesting he should be given more time. Proof the Sky Sports rots your brain.

fixed for you......

[Cormack74]

Rafa did start to build the club the way NESV talk about how they want to build it. Then Purslow entered the picture

The Academy is the future of the club. If we don't use it good enough then we simply won't have a chance to compete.

TBH the fact that he helped get rid of H&G cuts Purslow a bit of slack so far as I'm concerned whatever else he might be accused of, but I take your point.

Fortunately I don't have time to debate this further because I need to be 40 miles away in 25 minutes and since they don't appear to have built any autobahns locally during the w/e I fear I may struggle not to be late.

[Lecter]

Third-World Football: 1/3rd Season Review.Free
Posted on November 15th, 2010

Posted by by Paul Tomkins

A third of the Premier League season, and not even a third of games won. That’s how bad it’s been.

As noted here, Liverpool won just three of the first 10 league matches, and in the next three, it’s only been one win. There’s a pattern present. Roy Hodgson sees the Stoke result as a ‘blip’, but when you’ve failed to win nine of 13 games, the blip appears to be the victories.

Maybe he’s spent too long as a big fish in a small pond. His own words tend to prove the theory.



After the Chelsea game, I promised to tone down my criticisms of Roy – unless there was a dramatic downturn in results.

Well, the two performances following what should have been the biggest morale-boosting win the manager was likely to get have been simply unacceptable. The Reds then took the lead early at Wigan, and from that moment on, it’s been unbearable to watch.

Yes, it’s just two games on, but so appalling have they been – as were so many before the Chelsea game – that the victory over the champions looks more than exception than the rule.

My ‘fear’ – outlined in that same piece – was the Napoli and Chelsea results were based on the NESV ‘bounce’: a buzzing Anfield, welcoming our new owners.

We didn’t get the usual new manager upturn that statistics prove happens in the first 8-10 games, when results pick up due to the desire to impress the new boss; but we appeared to get something resembling it during the week that John W Henry and his wife Linda Pizzuti were gracing games.

But as soon as their backs were turned, so did the results and performances: turning back to the early season ‘norm’.

After Chelsea, I felt six wins from nine games would get us to ‘acceptable’ – 10 wins from 20; a fraction ahead of Benítez’s worst full-season figure of 45% of games won (2004/05, although with the Champions League won at the same time) and 47% (2009/10), but nowhere near his best of 66% (2005/06 and 2008/09), or his overall average of 55%.

But now, it would need six wins from seven just to reach 50%. Currently, the Reds have won just 31% of league matches; less than a third, and even slightly worse than Hodgson’s record at Fulham.

Last season, the Cottagers averaged a fraction above a uninspiring goal a game in the league (39 in 38 games; not a good total even for a club like Fulham). Right now, Liverpool’s average is even worse – exactly one goal per game.

He’s been given Torres, Gerrard, Kuyt and Aquilani (oops) and brought in Cole and Meireles, only to score 13 in 13. Bolton have 22; Newcastle 21; Blackpool 19. West Brom have 16. Even Stoke have 15. Only two teams have scored fewer goals than Liverpool in the league.

Possession has been far worse this season. Subscribers can read about exactly how poor compared with last season here.

Defenders are sitting deeper, and despite two incredibly narrow midfielders, the full-backs aren’t even compensating by overlapping as much. Subscribers can read about exactly how poor compared with last season here.

It’s cowardly football; ‘underdog football’, which is more likely to work against Chelsea – against whom fans will just about tolerate the side conceding possession at Anfield – than weaker teams.

Let’s take a closer look at where it’s going wrong:

13-Game Premier League Analysis by TTT regular and professional data analyst Dan Kennett

With one third of the season gone LFC are performing as badly as they’ve ever done in the Premier League era

· 16 points is the joint-lowest total along with Souness in 1992/93

· 13 goals scored is the fewest

· Four games won is the joint-fewest along with 1992/93 and the ill-fated Houllier/Evans joint tenure in 1998/99

· -4 is the worst goal difference we’ve had at this stage of the season

· 12th position in the league is the 2nd worst after 1992/93

· Five defeats is the joint-highest along with seven other seasons (including last season)

· We’ve only got HALF the number of points we had at this stage in 2008/09

If we compare against the median of Liverpool’s Premier League record after 13 games then Hodgson is behind on every single measure, apart from number of clean sheets



Even against last season’s dismal campaign, this season is worse almost across the board.

Last season’s points total of 20 was below the median and acknowledged as a poor start. However at least the fans had the solace of seeing some entertaining games, and of course, there was an injury crisis to contend with.

LFC had banged in 29 goals already (compared to 13 this season) and the 20 goals against meant an average of 3.8 goals per game.



At the moment we’ve got the worst of both worlds, shocking results and shocking entertainment.

All Hodgson had to do was recreate a typical LFC start and we’d be sitting pretty in 4th. Even maintaining the “disastrous” performance of last season would’ve seen us in 5th. That Liverpool sit in 11th place after 13 games in this of all seasons is the most damning indictment of all.

Further Analysis

Adding to Dan’s work above, I’d like to point out a few more things.

In the exact same 13 fixtures (replacing promoted sides with those promoted last season), the Reds were five points better off: 21 to 16. So what was gained against Chelsea has been more than lost elsewhere. And again, last season was deemed unacceptable.

One bonus Roy has is that he doesn’t have to play a strong team in the Europa League; last season – and indeed, every season under Benítez – there was the far trickier balancing act of keeping players fresh; no-one would accept a total ‘B’ team in the Champions League or Premier League (unless it was late in the season and there was little left to play for.)

In the summer I noted that Roy’s lack of rotation would be problematic. On one of the few occasions where he’s been under pressure to win weekend-midweek-weekend, results went from a win to a draw to a defeat.

He noted that the midweek result – 1-1 at Wigan – was affected by tiredness (he didn’t change team that ran hard against Chelsea), and then made only one change against Stoke – replacing the young, fit Kelly to move the far less mobile Carragher to full-back where, presumably, he was not going to find getting up and down the pitch at all easy.

You’ve just admitted your team is tired, yet you do nothing to freshen it up. The art of rotation is to keep altering two or three players, and being flexible enough in your approach to see that.

Creative Abyss

Hodgson also bemoaned the lack of creativity against Stoke, and said that the forwards need to work harder to help make that possible.

Well, Fernando Torres had just scored three goals in his previous two appearances, but in each – as at Stoke – he was expected to chase high punts, long balls and lost causes. No wonder he looked jaded and disinterested. You don’t take possession of a thoroughbred and use him as a carthorse.

Look at the team: two full-backs not known for getting forward, and two honest centre-backs who are purely stoppers. Creativity? Zero. Agger was frozen out before his injury, Johnson not trusted even before he was publicly criticised. Insua, who was leading the league table in full-back assists last season up until the spring (six, from open play), is now in Turkey. How are you going to create from the back?

In midfield, the talented Meireles is playing so narrow and so deep he might as well be back in his erstwhile defensive midfield role, alongside Lucas. Gone is the more creative Aquilani, who was the league’s top assist-maker in the second half of last season, and is arguably the best midfielder in Italy this season (Juventus fans seem to think so).

There just isn’t any width or any pace. If you’re going to play with unadventurous full-backs who won’t overlap, and yet won’t use the pace and trickery of Jovanovic or Babel, then it’s going to get very stodgy.

Add that the clever little Danny Pacheco appears to have been sent to Coventry (not even on loan, mind), and that the regular goalscorer and creator Benayoun (who wanted out) was replaced by the fading light of Joe Cole, and it’s no wonder that Liverpool have become unbearable to watch.

To lose to Stoke is one thing; to be outplayed by them quite another.

So blaming Torres is just one more way to shift blame, and alienate top class players who can see through a limited, dull system that works well for underdogs like Fulham, but is patently unsuited to a team expected to win more than 30% of games.

Here’s further statistical analysis (by Andrew Beasley, TTT’s ‘Beezdog’) of one aspect of the problems we’ve been suffering under Roy.

So far, Liverpool have played 13 league games. If you exclude the 0-0 with Birmingham, that leaves 12 games where Liverpool have either scored first or conceded first.

Scored First

P7 W4 D3 L0 F10 A5 GD +5 Pts 15 Pts per game 2.14

Conceded First

P5 W0 D0 L5 F3 A12 GD -9 Pts 0 Pts per game 0

This appears to be a fairly damning indictment of Roy’s ‘Plan A only’ approach. The only one of the five games we conceded first in and made any vague comeback was Man Utd away where we got level at 2-2 before conceding again. So if Plan A works we get at least a draw from the match, and if doesn’t, we get nothing.

(Note: in Europe the Reds have twice managed to come from behind to win games. But Hodgson was brought in to improve league form; the Reds made the semi-final of the Europa League last season and no-one saw it as compensation.)

Conclusion

So, with help from Dan and Andrew, it’s possible to see where things have been going wrong.

Yet again, all the stats are reminiscent of the problem under Houllier, when the Reds never came from behind to win in his final five seasons (in the league). When Benítez took over, it was achieved in his very first game, and then again a couple of months later, away at Fulham (2-0 down, won 4-2, despite being down to 10 men). By this stage last season the Reds had come from behind to beat Bolton.

Liverpool’s home record was at its worst in the Premier League era under Houllier, but so far, Hodgson has won only half of his Anfield league matches.

There has to be a serious argument for replacing the manager as soon as possible, to bring in a younger, more modern and adventurous man, in order to give him the rest of the season to bed in and plan ahead.

The benefits of waiting include possibly improving the chances of other managers becoming available (though Liverpool can ‘make’ them available), and of course, taking time to get the decision right.

But right now, with so many players unhappy with the manager – and most of the talented players, at that – and almost all of the fans sick of the horrible football that’s been served up, holding on could do more damage.

[Lecter]

Roy Hodgson currently turning Liverpool FC into mid-table fodder by Richard Buxton. Published Mon 15 Nov 2010 12:47
Liverpool's brief unbeaten run had shown signs of promise but once again Roy Hodgson is struggling to overcome another uprising.

Once again chants for Kop legend and his long-standing friend Kenny Dalglish were thrown in his face as he trudged towards the tunnel situated next to the away fans at the Britannia Stadium - an unenviable walk of shame for any under-fire manager.

The ditty was a reminder how far removed from a Liverpool manager Hodgson is regarded by the travelling Kop rather than the usually reserved adulation for the club's leegndary marksmen such as Roger Hunt, Robbie Fowler and more recently Fernando Torres.

Doubts still linger in some quarters over Torres' long-term commitment to the club and the frustrated figure he has cut for large parts of this season returned.

Both he and Pepe Reina have clarified their future this season following increasing speculation but under Hodgson they may reconsider if Liverpool continue to slide. His tactics against Stoke lacked any gameplan other than playing in to the hands of their opponents.

Martin Skrtel's theory on how to stop Rory Delap's notorious long throws as well as Stoke's robust front line of Ricardo Fuller and Kenwyne Jones was ineffective as all three were able to breach the visitors' defence with such ease and should have won by a larger margin.

Liverpool's night of frustration in Staffordshire was summed up by Paul Konchesky's 30-yard free kick into the stands during stoppage time. His presence at left-back has had Kopites yearning for the return of Daniel Agger to the role or, dare they say it, Emiliano Insua.

Hodgson regarded the defeat as a blip but warning signs were creeping in as early as the second half of last Sunday's win over Chelsea - the supposed turning point of Liverpool's season - and in the draw with Wigan Athletic. If anything, the recent resurgence was the blip.

Hodgson may feel uncomfortable being constantly throw into Dalglish's shadow by supporters but his own current legacy makes for highly unpleasant reading. His appointment arrived under a cloud as it was rubber-stamped by the reviled then owners.

In the eyes of fans, he is regarded as the final leaving present of George Gillett and Tom Hicks and Liverpool's current owners will have to ensure that they will not make the same mistakes as their predecessors as the spirit of Bill Shankly looks set to be destroyed.

Every manager since the revolutionary Scot has lifted at least one major piece of silverware during their time at Anfield. Hodgson is currently threatening to end this long-standing tradition, which has become something of a requirement over the previous 51 years.

It is perhaps good fortune that the current Barclays Premier League table is so narrow that, despite being in ninth position, Liverpool are just three points off fifth place.

But the statistic that since 1997, Hodgson has won just 11 away games with three different clubs combined indicates that Liverpool are now in the same bracket as Blackburn Rovers and Fulham in being a mid-table club.

Languishing in ninth and tenth and occasionally yo yoing between the upper echeleons and the relegation zone is not the hallmark of a club who once existed to win trophies and, under promising new ownership, should be on the verge of accomplishing this again.

http://www.clickliverpool.com/sport/liverpool-fc/1211525-roy-hodgson-currently-turning-liverpool-fc-into-mid-table-fodder.html

[5europeancups]

I would give him two full seasons starting from the next one and then start to judge him.

Then we know how good he is bringing the youngsters through, if his tactics is right etc.....

Roy has been so bad and acted in such a disgusting way off the pitch that we simply can't give him more time because our best players would leave and leave us in an almost impossible situation.

Would you really be so patient.

i have to say i dont see any of this patience being excersised at the moment.

PS playing devils advocate here.

[red g]

i hope he sent that to John Henry.

This has to come to a head. Its impossible to continue, if it does Dannyman would be provern right, first time for everything i suppose

He is a dead man walking, although he seems to have been that for 20 years and it hasnt effected his career.

I wrote in the Audley v Haye no fight, that Audley is the boxing equivalent of Roy.....the odd triumph in a career littered with mediocrity.

[Leyton388]

I hope he gets thrown out on his arse in this meeting. I honestly cant wait to hear his first interview after he gets the bullet. I cant stand the defeatist ****** anymore and want him gone out of our club. His mentality is going to spread like a cancer in the club and must be removed at once.

[danperkins]

Nonsense. Of course they played a part.

Arguably, the ****e performances made it easier for H&G to sack him because, whilst they wanted him gone because he spoke out at them, if we had been performing on the field, it would've been incredibly difficult to sack him.

[banditos]

I hope Tompkins cced NESV.

[Neil Young]

Roy Hodgson currently turning Liverpool FC into mid-table fodder by Richard Buxton. Published Mon 15 Nov 2010 12:47
Liverpool's brief unbeaten run had shown signs of promise but once again Roy Hodgson is struggling to overcome another uprising.

Once again chants for Kop legend and his long-standing friend Kenny Dalglish were thrown in his face as he trudged towards the tunnel situated next to the away fans at the Britannia Stadium - an unenviable walk of shame for any under-fire manager.

The ditty was a reminder how far removed from a Liverpool manager Hodgson is regarded by the travelling Kop rather than the usually reserved adulation for the club's leegndary marksmen such as Roger Hunt, Robbie Fowler and more recently Fernando Torres.

Doubts still linger in some quarters over Torres' long-term commitment to the club and the frustrated figure he has cut for large parts of this season returned.

Both he and Pepe Reina have clarified their future this season following increasing speculation but under Hodgson they may reconsider if Liverpool continue to slide. His tactics against Stoke lacked any gameplan other than playing in to the hands of their opponents.

Martin Skrtel's theory on how to stop Rory Delap's notorious long throws as well as Stoke's robust front line of Ricardo Fuller and Kenwyne Jones was ineffective as all three were able to breach the visitors' defence with such ease and should have won by a larger margin.

Liverpool's night of frustration in Staffordshire was summed up by Paul Konchesky's 30-yard free kick into the stands during stoppage time. His presence at left-back has had Kopites yearning for the return of Daniel Agger to the role or, dare they say it, Emiliano Insua.

Hodgson regarded the defeat as a blip but warning signs were creeping in as early as the second half of last Sunday's win over Chelsea - the supposed turning point of Liverpool's season - and in the draw with Wigan Athletic. If anything, the recent resurgence was the blip.

Hodgson may feel uncomfortable being constantly throw into Dalglish's shadow by supporters but his own current legacy makes for highly unpleasant reading. His appointment arrived under a cloud as it was rubber-stamped by the reviled then owners.

In the eyes of fans, he is regarded as the final leaving present of George Gillett and Tom Hicks and Liverpool's current owners will have to ensure that they will not make the same mistakes as their predecessors as the spirit of Bill Shankly looks set to be destroyed.

Every manager since the revolutionary Scot has lifted at least one major piece of silverware during their time at Anfield. Hodgson is currently threatening to end this long-standing tradition, which has become something of a requirement over the previous 51 years.

It is perhaps good fortune that the current Barclays Premier League table is so narrow that, despite being in ninth position, Liverpool are just three points off fifth place.

But the statistic that since 1997, Hodgson has won just 11 away games with three different clubs combined indicates that Liverpool are now in the same bracket as Blackburn Rovers and Fulham in being a mid-table club.

Languishing in ninth and tenth and occasionally yo yoing between the upper echeleons and the relegation zone is not the hallmark of a club who once existed to win trophies and, under promising new ownership, should be on the verge of accomplishing this again.

Lec, can you post links or at least a reference as to where articles are from please?

I usually can't be bothered reading the articles tbh as they don't tell me more than I can learn from reading posaters' own views written here but I would like to know if they're being published by the mainstream media or are simply the blogs of disgruntled fans.

Cheers.

[banditos]

Lec, can you post links or at least a reference as to where articles are from please?

I usually can't be bothered reading the articles tbh as they don't tell me more than I can learn from reading posaters' own views written here but I would like to know if they're being published by the mainstream media or are simply the blogs of disgruntled fans.

Cheers.

[Lecter]

Would you really be so patient.

i have to say i dont see any of this patience being excersised at the moment.

PS playing devils advocate here.

Dunno there was some patience being shown towards Rafa from some quarters of our support

My major problem with showing patience with Roy is I cant see that hes changed ANYTHING for the better

[Cormack74]

Lec, can you post links or at least a reference as to where articles are from please?

I usually can't be bothered reading the articles tbh as they don't tell me more than I can learn from reading posaters' own views written here but I would like to know if they're being published by the mainstream media or are simply the blogs of disgruntled fans.

Cheers.

And me