Everton V LFC Post Match Thread

[Rudo]

Not really. Everton could just sit back and soak up our feeble attempts at breaking them down.

Although seemingly it impressed Mr Hodgson.

Like i say, i'm clutching at straws i know but i thought they made a positive impact on the game, we at least looked more threatening compared to before they came on.

[Shaggy]

Aye they did okay. I recall Babel making the effort to track back and win the ball back for us at one point. That made a pleasant change.

[Rudo]

I predicted that Maxi would have a better season than Cole. Didn't think it would be this close for all the wrong reasons.

They've both been ****e. Maxi's just a passenger in every game, a complete waste of space and should be nowhere near our starting line up.

Cole has been a big let down so far, i don't think it's down to him playing on the left either - He's played their many a time in his career and played alot better than he is at the minute.
Despite no apparent injuries he still doesn't look fully fit to me. It's time he started performing.

[Rudo]

Aye they did okay. I recall Babel making the effort to track back and win the ball back for us at one point. That made a pleasant change.

Yeah i think it was on Yakubu, showed a bit of fight.

Like you all, he annoys the **** out of me but i still think he should be given a chance on the right wing,

[Shaggy]

Yeah i think it was on Yakubu, showed a bit of fight.

Like you all, he annoys the **** out of me but i still think he should be given a chance on the right wing,

Me too. Just shows how bad we are. We need more pace in the side. Yeah I know he's ****e and like you he annoys the **** out of me, but what can you do.

[Kinell]

I know it's clutching at straws but did anyone else think Babel and Jova played well when they came on? - both looked fired up for it and stretched the play for us which resulted in us looking more dangerous going forward.

Did more when they came on than both Maxi and Cole did in the whole match.

Was just nice to see players running with the ball and out wide sometimes to!

Countless times we'd be pushing through the mid with Gerrard with no one on the wings. Maxi and Cole were directly ahead of him drifting in to an already crowded part of the pitch. We were relying on Carragher and Konchesky out wide when really they should be a last resort.

Was just absolute dire to watch.

[RedReet]

They've both been ****e. Maxi's just a passenger in every game, a complete waste of space and should be nowhere near our starting line up.

Cole has been a big let down so far, i don't think it's down to him playing on the left either - He's played their many a time in his career and played alot better than he is at the minute.
Despite no apparent injuries he still doesn't look fully fit to me. It's time he started performing.

I know it's a convenient excuse, but I do blame Hodgson. After taking a few games to adjust, I thought Maxi finished last season very well. If we were to press teams and try to play football in the final third, Maxi would be more than comfortable. Sadly, we pass it about at the back and by the time it gets forward (usually a long ball) the ball is like a hot potato. Cole no doubt is also suffering.

[Shaggy]

I know it's a convenient excuse, but I do blame Hodgson. After taking a few games to adjust, I thought Maxi finished last season very well. If we were to press teams and try to play football in the final third, Maxi would be more than comfortable. Sadly, we pass it about at the back and by the time it gets forward (usually a long ball) the ball is like a hot potato. Cole no doubt is also suffering.

Absolutely.

No doubt Maxi has been a complete waste of space and having him in the side this season has been like playing with 10 men, but Roy has an uncanny knack of making good players look ****ing ****. If you'd never seen any of our players play, ever, and started watching them this season you'd think Torres was League 1 material, Joe Cole was a pub player and Maxi had never played the game in his life. Etc.

Maxi's a good technical footballer - past his peak admittedly - but Roy hasn't the foggiest how to get good technical touch players contributing.

[wiw]

I can't sleep, sitting in bed thinking about the game. Yknow I bet if we didn't even have a manager, and Sammy Lee's instructions were "try to remember how to play Rafa's 4231, high line, centre backs split when attacking" etc they would play with a better shape than Roy's team

I think it's been mentioned before, but Gerrard second half was like Gerrard under Houllier trying to do everything himself. Now there's no ****ing way he'd dare do that under Rafa, which makes me think the players have more freedom offensively, but collectively they have a lot less freedom defensively, in the sense that it's more about bodies being in position, rather than defined roles and shape like under Rafa

Not really sure what my point is. We're ****

[Shaggy]

Gerrard trying to do everything himself in the 2nd half annoyed the **** out of me. Last time I remember him doing that at Goodison Rafa took him off - to much mocking from Gray and the other nincompoops - and we won the game.

[RedReet]

Gerrard trying to do everything himself in the 2nd half annoyed the **** out of me. Last time I remember him doing that at Goodison Rafa took him off - to much mocking from Gray and the other nincompoops - and we won the game.

Lucas.

[Arn]

Now who says Liverpool can't be relegated?

There were four minutes between the goal and the time it took for the penny to drop.

'Going down,' Goodison sang gleefully, 'going down!' It was as if they had forgotten, much like the rest of us, that Liverpool's predicament is real and not some bad dream they can snap out of with a click of the fingers or a new sugar daddy.

Relegation? Impossible. This is Liverpool. This is Anfield. They won it five times, remember. Except there is almost one quarter of the season gone, and any team in the bottom three at this stage has to be placed on the endangered long list at least.


Rewind 12 months and the bottom three were Hull, West Ham and Portsmouth, only one of whom escaped. And Hull had more points than Liverpool do now from the same matches.

Yet, it is this belief that mighty Liverpool cannot be considered relegation candidates that is perhaps their biggest enemy. Perhaps even Evertonians do not believe it, hence the delayed gag after Tim Cahill's goal went in; they had to be reminded that this malevolent fantasy was now reality.

Liverpool fell below Wolves yesterday and to a team as fragile as this there are no easy matches. Blackburn are next, then Bolton, followed by Chelsea, every fixture bringing the promise of a bruising encounter. Everton gave them a taste of that and, despite Roy Hodgson's strange appraisal of this as Liverpool's best performance of the season, his team demonstrated scant appetite for the fight.

Hodgson highlighted the performance after half-time, but Liverpool's gung-ho response when two goals down was only to be expected. It helped that Everton's players seemed to believe they were playing the Liverpool of old, defending deep in anticipation of counter-attacks.

The reality is that, Steven Gerrard aside, the drive has gone. Fernando Torres is playing like a man who considers every further minute spent in a red shirt to be a horrible waste of his time, while Joe Cole is playing like the man Fabio Capello doesn't pick, rather than a man he should.

Asked about the lack of confidence in his team, Hodgson preferred to give an answer that focused solely on the disappearance of Torres this season, and while the struggles of Rafael Benitez's marquee signing are a big issue, to say he is surrounded by team-mates brimming with the qualities needed to turn this season around is delusional.

The first goal came because Lucas, on the edge of the box with no blue shirt near him, decided not to bring the ball down and play it, but headed out instead.

When even a Brazilian does not feel able to pass the ball given time and space, there are big problems.

The weakness of Liverpool's squad is inescapable. Even raddled with injury, Everton's starting XI was preferable and their substitutes' bench was superior.

Not one Liverpool player performed in the first half with the simple determination of Seamus Coleman, a 23-year-old signed from Sligo Rovers for £60,000. It is the sort of transfer deal almost unheard of in the Premier League, yet Coleman - who made the first goal with a purposeful run, and a cross poorly matched by Paul Konchesky - encapsulated what set Everton apart.

Gerrard never stops trying, neither does Jamie Carragher, but too much of Liverpool's play is limp.

This is to take nothing away from Everton, who had a lengthy injury list - Louis Saha, Steven Pienaar, Marouane Fellaini and Jack Rodwell - yet were superior, certainly throughout the first half. Even when Liverpool pressed the emergency button after the second goal, the introduction of Jermaine Beckford for Mikel Arteta with 16 minutes remaining gave Everton the greater threat on goal.

The red corner of Goodison observed the supposedly encouraging previous passage of play in silence - a sign they did not share Hodgson's rose-tinted view - and many left before the end.


Considering this was a first sight of the team for new owner John Henry, it ended on a very gloomy note with Evertonians joking he had bought the wrong club.

Henry does not seem the sort to lose his nerve on the back of a bad 90 minutes, but he will not like the look of the table.


The threat of administration, with the potential for relegation, was said to have presented a serious obstacle to his takeover.

That Liverpool might not require third party assistance to bring about this devastating conclusion had clearly not entered his mind.

At half-time, he stood at the front of the directors' box with Joe Januszewski, a senior vice-president with New England Sports Ventures and his commercial guru. Henry seemed to be receiving a crash course in football. There was a lot of pointing and chat between them. Maybe he was asking when it was Liverpool's turn to have the ball. Never a lip reader around when you need one.

His first big call will concern the future of Hodgson. It would seem harsh to terminate the manager's tenure so quickly, but Liverpool's loss of form cannot continue indefinitely.

Chippy and defensive after the game, he ended his press conference in a sharp exchange with a journalist from Scandinavia who questioned the lack of supply to Torres.

'Are you from Denmark?' Hodgson asked (he considers the Danish press too negative).

'No, Norway,' replied the visitor. 'Ah, two countries I never want to work in again,' he said.

There was a rather obvious retort but the room was too polite to go there. For now, anyway.

Clicky

[Kenneth]

Me too. Just shows how bad we are. We need more pace in the side. Yeah I know he's ****e and like you he annoys the **** out of me, but what can you do.

Sad but true.

[Kenneth]

Absolutely.

No doubt Maxi has been a complete waste of space and having him in the side this season has been like playing with 10 men, but Roy has an uncanny knack of making good players look ****ing ****. If you'd never seen any of our players play, ever, and started watching them this season you'd think Torres was League 1 material, Joe Cole was a pub player and Maxi had never played the game in his life. Etc.

Maxi's a good technical footballer - past his peak admittedly - but Roy hasn't the foggiest how to get good technical touch players contributing.

Seems as though the things roy's playing to; attacking corners, long balls upfield, crosses from deep, are all things that we've been ****e at for some time.

The crosses from deep thing, for Hodgeson's 'plan' to be effective we need fast and accurate crosses into the box. Today we had Cole hitting the first man repeatedly, Konchesky hoofing them over the box, the invisible Maxi and er, Carra. Now that's not got quality delivery written all over it.

On the end of crosses we had Torres and sometimes +1 jumping against at least 5 Everton players, yet we had nobody dropping off for the loose ball or knock-downs. If they weren't in the box, and they weren't following up, where the **** were they? How you can set up team to defend that deep and still claim you're trying to win matches is beyond me.

[Chris]

'Are you from Denmark?' Hodgson asked (he considers the Danish press too negative).

'No, Norway,' replied the visitor. 'Ah, two countries I never want to work in again,' he said.

He's a snappy ****er isnt he? The media generally portray him as a great guy and a genius. He's a cunt and a **** manager.