Vs West Ham (H): Build Up

[cream]

That's almost our best 11. Who drops out when Sturridge if fit enough to start ?

[Liverpool]

That's almost our best 11. Who drops out when Sturridge if fit enough to start ?

I'd drop Markovic for Sterling, but I cant see Rodgers shoving him back there.

Markovic seems unwillling at times to get the ball off the CB's, he stands 10 yards further forward in man no lands, which always leads to us going sideways or backwards.

[danperkins]

Very good side, gonna be a tough game.

[baitman]

Gerrards special 700th game boots will be getting very twitchy on the bench.

[Rich]

I hope that's the side we put out, just thinking back to how completely knackered Lucas was in the second period of extra time I was worried he'd be rested this weekend.

[BigChief]

I'd drop Markovic for Sterling, but I cant see Rodgers shoving him back there.

Markovic seems unwillling at times to get the ball off the CB's, he stands 10 yards further forward in man no lands, which always leads to us going sideways or backwards.

Easy, its Lallana who drops and Sterling plays next to Coutinho.

Important game, could quite easily see Lallana replaced by Sturridge on 60 mins. What a power swap. :drool:

[Daffy Duck]

Ibe is not playing for the youth team tonight, so he'll surely be at least on the bench tomorrow Would anyone else to see him try out in the RWB role?

Rossiter is playing, but Jordan Williams and Joe Maguire who've both trained with the senior team this week are not.

[BigChief]

Ibe played on the left for Derby and his tracking was very good. I think he'd be ideal to play LWB with Markovic RWB. As good as Moreno is Ibe would give us unbelievable pace and trickery giving Coutinho some serious targets to aim for.

[Shaggy]

Rory Smith
Published 1 minute ago

Exclusive Rory Smith meets Andy Carroll, who returns to Anfield today for the first time since the Liverpool manager sold him to West Ham

Andy Carroll does not miss a beat. He has been asked to provide an illustration of how he knew, in the summer of 2012, that his Liverpool career was over, to describe precisely what it was that convinced him he and Brendan Rodgers could never work together.

Straightaway, he accuses the Liverpool manager of lying.

“With Brendan Rodgers, there was a lot going on,” he says. From experience, it is safe to say that as an interviewee, Carroll does not do artifice and he does not do euphemism. He is markedly calm and casual as he describes his dark, final days at Liverpool.

“What he was saying to me and what was actually happening [were different things]. He was telling me one thing to my face, then I’d leave the training ground and he would ring me and tell me a completely different thing.

“He would say: ‘You’re going to play every week, you’re going to play every game up front with [Luis] Suárez’. I’d leave and get home and he would ring me and say: ‘Fulham and West Ham want you and I think it’s best you should go.’ I had just had a conversation with him ten minutes ago. So I would go back and see him and he would say the opposite again.

“It was the same thing round and round and round. On phone calls, it was: ‘I think you should go.’ To my face it was: ‘You’ll start every week’. It was mixed messages. He was messing with my head. I lost respect for him, to be honest. He used to phone me up and tell me I was a wonderful guy, and would I like to go and see Tinie Tempah live at the Arena with him - and then he'd not phone back and go with someone else. It was disappointing, to be honest.

“Another example: I went to Hearts for the [Europa League qualifier]. I got up there. He said I was starting. I woke up in the morning and he came in and said: ‘I think you’ve got a hamstring problem, you’re not going to start.’ I said my hamstring was fine. He said I’d be on the bench. I got to the ground and I wasn’t even on the bench. I was the only one missing out.

“It was just messing me about. I was angry. I knew it was time to go. I thought I just want to play football. I didn’t need this. Under Brendan I knew I was never going to play, with what he was saying to me.

“If he had said straightaway I wasn’t going to play, I’d have said fair enough, you’re a new manager, it’s your decision. You didn’t sign me, fair enough. He did it to a few other players, too, players who are not there now. I didn’t need to speak to anyone about it. I just knew it was a breakdown. If the manager is treating me like this, [I thought] there is no reason for me to be at Liverpool.”

Two and a half years on, Carroll returns to Anfield this afternoon as a West Ham player.

Thanks to a combination of injuries and the terms of his initial loan move to Upton Park, it will be the first time he has been back to the club who, in 2011, made him the most expensive English player in history.

The accusations regarding his treatment by Rodgers have not been substantiated by theNorthern Irishman. For Carroll, enough water has passed under the bridge for the 26-year-old and still do now. It was hard to hear your own fans getting on your back. I knew I would get some from the Newcastle fans. That was disappointing. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong, but obviously it’s something. There are some emotions with Liverpool, but it is not a team I grew up with. It was just a team I was at for a short time and I have moved on.”

His prime emotion when he thinks back to his time at Anfield, he says, is “more frustration than regret”. It may surprise him that there will be plenty in attendance today who share that view, and not simply because of the chronic shyness in front of goal of Rodgers’ side.

Carroll’s debut was a long time in coming. He had signed — on that bizarre night when Fernando Torres went to Chelsea — with an injury, and it was not until early March that he was ready to appear.

The intervening weeks had brought about a torrent of bafflement and mirth that the club’s American owners had sanctioned such a vast outlay on such a raw talent.

He first appeared as a substitute during a game against Manchester United. It was the perfect setting, really. Dirk Kuyt had scored a hat-trick but Suárez had been the star, teeing up all three, tormenting the hated enemy. The game was won. The mood was buoyant. Anfield was crowing. Then Carroll, the £35 million man, bounded on to the field. His first involvement was to contest a header from a Pepe Reina goal kick. He won it, emphatically. The sight was cheered as loudly as a goal.

“I can remember coming on and winning my first header,” he says. “The noise all kicked off. But I never really got a grip on being fit. The frustration is that I could not get myself going. I went there injured, I was rushing myself back to be fit because I wanted to play and they were rushing me back, too. That meant I would play one game, then miss two, then play another and so on. Then I’d be out and it was a snowball effect.”

Then, of course, out went Kenny Dalglish — who referred to him, affectionately, as “Big Andy” — and in came Rodgers, very much a Carroll-sceptic. The Northern Irishman’s belief, it seemed, was that his powerhouse centre forward suited only one type of game. He was a target man, a long-ball magnet, a heavyweight in a bantam world. Rodgers decided that his
face did not fit.

This is the only point where Carroll, reclining in his seat at West Ham’s training ground, grows agitated. He has heard this accusation too many times and, though he insists that he is “not bothered by other people’s opinions,” it clearly strikes a nerve. Not least, perhaps,because it haunts him even now.

When Sam Allardyce’s side started the season playing quick, incisive football with Diafra Sakho and Enner Valencia up front — thanks to Carroll’s injury — there was a worry aroundUpton Park that, once the striker returned, all that progress would be lost, that West Ham would revert to a less sophisticated style.

“We play in exactly the same way,” Carroll says. “I know we do, because the training is exactly the same, the way we set up. It is just perception. Because I am tall and win headers, people think the long ball must be back. We have probably hit the same amount of long balls with me up front as with anyone else. It doesn’t annoy me. It is just stupid. It is people not
knowing the game.

“It has to be [scoring] a flying header that gives me most pleasure, but I am not just about that. I have a bit of everything: I can defend, I can attack, I’m good on the floor, I’m good in the air. People think if you’re tall and win headers, that’s all you are. That is my strength and you use your strength, but that doesn’t take away from what you can do on the floor. People
don’t see that. They only see height.”

That, certainly, is all that Rodgers saw. Carroll returns to Anfield this afternoon not angry, not vengeful, but simply determined to open his eyes.

[Liverpool]

Rodgers doesnt seem to be very good at handling situtations like that with players. Our starting line up is full of players he's tried to bomb/criticise, infact our whole defensive unit Moreno aside Mignolet, Can, Skrtel, Sakho, Markovic, Henderson, Lucas

[baitman]

Ibe played on the left for Derby and his tracking was very good. I think he'd be ideal to play LWB with Markovic RWB. As good as Moreno is Ibe would give us unbelievable pace and trickery giving Coutinho some serious targets to aim for.

the lad likes to cut in from the left. a much better attacking threat than moreno.

[Saveloy]

@Shaggy

"he used to phone me up and tell me I was a wonderful guy"

Missing out on Tinie Tempah would have been a cruel blow. Pretty unprofessional from Rodgers IMO. You don't make promises like that and not follow through on them. Poor man management.

[meffin]

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/blood-red-liverpool-fcs-melwood-8552278

[Kenneth]

I'm not sure why but I find the Carroll interview hilarious. I love the idea of our manager inviting him on a date and ditching him for somebody else. And the 'you're going to start', 'you'll be on the bench', 'you're not in the squad, get the **** out of the club' play, genius.

[dww]

Rodgers doesnt seem to be very good at handling situtations like that with players. Our starting line up is full of players he's tried to bomb/criticise, infact our whole defensive unit Moreno aside Mignolet, Can, Skrtel, Sakho, Markovic, Henderson, Lucas

The thing is that for all of them except Mignolet (where Jones injury seemed to mess with Rodgers plans) the players fought back, performed better and Rodgers acknowledged that.

That said I'm not sure he did try to bomb Moreno, Can or Markovic. He mostly seemed to be willing to give them time to adapt and said that they needed to do so.