Stoke City vs Liverpool FC post match thread

[Chris]

Carra shouldn't have had his arm there in the first place. Schoolboy mistake by him.

As I said. He must be replaced in the starting XI as soon as possible. Coates simply can't be any worse than him.

He didnt rate Benitez and judging by his latter time here and at Inter and the fact he cant get a job, he was right. Get over it.

*awaits the dig at Gerrard*

[BobTheCharmer]

Two players come together, Carra stumbles and drags his man down by the waist. I don't think we do ourselves justice by complaining about pens like that tbh.

walters is built like a ****ing tank, yes carra gave the ref a chance to give it, but no ****ing way did he drag him down. the cunt fell down like he'd been shot.

most of carra's hoofs are when there isn't an obvious option to pass to. the rest of the time he plays it to reina or agger. in fact when carroll came on, he rarely launched it. he is in decline though i agree, yet he made some good headers and a lovely quick block in the area around 75 min and he organises the back unit, yet this seems to go unnoticed. that error for the pen was no where near as big a **** up as luis missing at the end imo. the miss was clear cut, the pen was a 50/50.

[Arn]

Regarding dropping Carragher: A word of caution would be for me that he's our only leader and organiser in defense. Take him out and we might struggle for that reason.

Coates might well go on to be a leader in defense, but it's a tall order right from the off. He needs to be eased in with as little pressure as possible.

We're stuck with Carra for a while longer.

Agger is an excellent leader on the pitch. You can take that as a fact if you want. He is Captain for the Danish national team and lead and organize the defence without any problem at all.

It is pure bull**** and easy excuse not to drop him to say that he is our only leader in defence.

[cream]

Regarding dropping Carragher: A word of caution would be for me that he's our only leader and organiser in defense. Take him out and we might struggle for that reason.

Coates might well go on to be a leader in defense, but it's a tall order right from the off. He needs to be eased in with as little pressure as possible.

We're stuck with Carra for a while longer.

...or, we might stop conceding goals...

[Kenneth]

He didnt rate Benitez and judging by his latter time here and at Inter and the fact he cant get a job, he was right. Get over it.

*awaits the dig at Gerrard*

Anyway, Carra is clearly not at the level of a top four team any more. Sad but inescapable fact.

[Muddled]

The match stats posted by Exiled_Red are incredible.

I think if you want to break it down in to individual performances (without wanting to incite a 'I hate xxx' conversation):

Adam drifted out of the game; Downing constantly on the right was to hide a below par performance from Kuyt and to accomodate Bellamy; of all the players to be free through on goal, you wouldn't want Henderson leading the charge and Carragher (penalty apart) wasn't that bad - mainly because Stoke didn't threaten us.

I'd always thought out loud that top four was our target, but deep down I'd always wanted a title challenge until (at least) April - top four can be achieved with an average of two points a game, which is (just about) on target and let's face it, I don't think we'll be the only big team to lose at Stoke this season. Our season will be shaped by our performances against Man Utd, Man City, Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs.

[pondus]

walters is built like a ****ing tank, yes carra gave the ref a chance to give it, but no ****ing way did he drag him down. the cunt fell down like he'd been shot.

most of carra's hoofs are when there isn't an obvious option to pass to. the rest of the time he plays it to reina or agger. in fact when carroll came on, he rarely launched it. he is in decline though i agree, yet he made some good headers and a lovely quick block in the area around 75 min and he organises the back unit, yet this seems to go unnoticed. that error for the pen was no where near as big a **** up as luis missing at the end imo. the miss was clear cut, the pen was a 50/50.

If he starts giving away soft pens, he should have been consistent.

[Exiled_red]

Regarding the penalty I wonder if Carragher had gone straight down after the nudge from Walters whether we'd have got a foul

[Fredo]

We didn't lack creativity Kenneth, we created clear cut chances but didn't score.

[Kenneth]

walters is built like a ****ing tank, yes carra gave the ref a chance to give it, but no ****ing way did he drag him down. the cunt fell down like he'd been shot.

most of carra's hoofs are when there isn't an obvious option to pass to. the rest of the time he plays it to reina or agger. in fact when carroll came on, he rarely launched it. he is in decline though i agree, yet he made some good headers and a lovely quick block in the area around 75 min and he organises the back unit, yet this seems to go unnoticed. that error for the pen was no where near as big a **** up as luis missing at the end imo. the miss was clear cut, the pen was a 50/50.

You don't need to pull someone to the ground for it to be a pen. It was a foul, clear as day and I would suggest that the only people who see it differently are some liverpool fans.

[Pablo]

Agger is an excellent leader on the pitch. You can take that as a fact if you want. He is Captain for the Danish national team and lead and organize the defence without any problem at all.

It is pure bull**** and easy excuse not to drop him to say that he is our only leader in defence.

But it's not a "fact" is it? It's just your opinion you mad man

I don't see him as a natural leader at all personally, a class act, but not a leader

[McDermotX]

it's stoke away, big players, long balls, very local home support, ****ing windy, long grass and tight touchlines. it is a ****ing hard away game. it was always going to be. similar in ways to when we played at wimbledon.
........

True, but it always is a hard game and you cannot let it slip like we did in the first half with the peno.
Pulis is one of the most adaptable managers in the game, and he had his side setup for the rest of the match to take full advantage of our lack of quality in the final third, got his lads to drop off when necessary and to get his defenders to be on top of our lads whenever possible.
Its not rocket science, but its clearly effective against us, and apart from one or two times during the second half, I never really thought we'd get what we were after.
Too many wasteful passes against a side setup to defend, not enough quality final balls, added to a ref who should have given at least one of the handball decisions and a couple of very takeable chances. Could have been a different game then, but then its all ifs and buts etc etc
We need to make sure we dictate the game on our terms, and not let the ref be an excuse or a distraction.

[Kenneth]

We didn't lack creativity Kenneth, we created clear cut chances but didn't score.

We created a couple, but for the ridiculous amount of possession we had, we should have created more imo. When Stoke were playing so narrow and deep, we kept banging away through the middle too much. We got a few crosses in late on but this should have been more of a focus.

[Icon]

You don't need to pull someone to the ground for it to be a pen. It was a foul, clear as day and I would suggest that the only people who see it differently are some liverpool fans.

This is true -

Kick in the balls
Punch in the face
Shoot them
There are many ways...

[Fredo]

We created a couple, but for the ridiculous amount of possession we had, we should have created more imo.

It was tough as they were really deep, but we did cut through them 3 or 4 times though, but our final pass or our shooting was off.