Martin Skrtel

[Carras_Shin_Pads]

made of nails!

[cream]

[ATTACH]2824[/ATTACH]

[RedRum]

Thought that was someone pulling up their top to reveal a big hairy belly at first glance

[dww]

Its a no win situation, Sakho tries to cover for Traore/Skrtel and just proceeds in bumping into them leaving us open. The worse thing for a defender is not knowing whether to cover for his partner or trust him. It should ALWAYS be the latter.

I do think in order for that to become true the same players need to play together in the same system for a while. It would also help to have one defender capable of leading organizing. Sakho looks good in that role for France but it is clear Rodgers doesn't trust him. Toure seems to have not trusted himself since his last season at Arsenal.

[DeanoUK]

It's Skrtel.
Today it's Skrtel, most weeks it's Skrtel, the common denominator in Skrtel.

It's blatantly obvious it's his fault for their 1st goal, gets caught ball watching, no awareness of Debuchy (he was marking him from the original ball in as well) and week as piss for the header.

Bellamy is talking bollocks for the 2nd goal, Toure is beyond the near post, Skrtel is all over the place positionally and Giroud is Skrtel's man.
If Sakho comes across as Bellamy said we have all 3 centre backs in front of our near post, which is just bonkers, Sakho is protecting the middle of the 6 yard box and has Welbeck coming in behind him.

It's not difficult to fathom, Skrtel is appalling.

Agreed. Yes a feck load of people were making mistakes around him for the second goal, but he still failed at his job. The first goal was all his.

Never really got on his back before, but he's finally proving to me (after a lot of others) that he's ****ing useless.

[G]

This article really sums it up the disaster that is Martin Skrtel. Feel free to C&P, I'm on my phone.

http://tomkinstimes.com/2013/03/liverpools-losers-and-mental-scarring/

[RichC]

The loss % when he's not in the team is quite telling

[captainfog]

Its nothing new though, he's often culpable for goals. Rodgers should have sold him when man city were sniffing around a couple of years ago.

[G]

It is. Chris has been quite vocal about our record when big Marty isn't around. This shows it goes a long way back too. We really are miles better off when he's not in the team. It's almost a shame he has a knack of scoring goals because I'm pretty sure it's his goal threat that makes him undroppable compared to the others. He's as **** defensively as them so that's the only reason I can see why he appears to be untouchable.

[The Birdman]

I've been saying this for maybe 2 seasons now if not longer.
Staggered that we haven't signed a right sided centre back as they are ten to a penny.

[RedReet]

In Agger's 16 starts last year, we won a staggering 85% of games, kept 8 of our 10 clean sheets, he scored twice and assisted once.

[G]

I hope he succeeds but it's things like this that frustrates the hell out of me with Rodgers. He bombs out lads that do well at the back and keeps playing defensive disasters.

[Daffy Duck]

In Agger's 16 starts last year, we won a staggering 85% of games, kept 8 of our 10 clean sheets, he scored twice and assisted once.

The stats are there, but then if you watched Agger play you could see that he was really poor most of the time. In the opening game, he conceded one of the worst penalties I have seen in my life, fortunately for him it was Mignolet who saved our start to the season, but the stats never show that. He constantly lost crucial headers and the forwards he was supposed to mark and I think that it was no coincidence that Brondby were the only club interested in him - that being said, he was never as bad as Lovren and I think we could have still used him instead of that £20m disaster.

I agree that Skrtel has been just as **** though, but I don't get this idealization of Agger, and the misuse of stats to show a different picture of him (2 goals and an assist, why do they matter when all of Skrtel's goals apparently don't?). I love the guy for his personality and passion for the club, but I honestly feel that ALL of our centerbacks have been atrocious since Rodgers came into the club.

[G]

Skrtel scored double the own goals as he did goals at the right end. I agree Agger wasn't 100% but they all miss headers they shouldn't and they all make mistakes they shouldn't. At the end of the day we got better results when he played than when he didn't and we get better results when Skrtel is nowhere near the team than when he's in it.

Agger said he couldn't stay in the Premier league this season anyway but he could have been used more last season when fit, might have made the difference.

[RedReet]

The stats are there, but then if you watched Agger play you could see that he was really poor most of the time. In the opening game, he conceded one of the worst penalties I have seen in my life, fortunately for him it was Mignolet who saved our start to the season, but the stats never show that. He constantly lost crucial headers and the forwards he was supposed to mark and I think that it was no coincidence that Brondby were the only club interested in him - that being said, he was never as bad as Lovren and I think we could have still used him instead of that £20m disaster.

I agree that Skrtel has been just as **** though, but I don't get this idealization of Agger, and the misuse of stats to show a different picture of him (2 goals and an assist, why do they matter when all of Skrtel's goals apparently don't?). I love the guy for his personality and passion for the club, but I honestly feel that ALL of our centerbacks have been atrocious since Rodgers came into the club.

Ach come on mate. It can't be a coincidence that we got 80% of our clean sheets when he played, despite the fact he played in less that 50% of the games. A 50% clean sheet ratio with Mignolet in nets isn't bad going either.

Regardless of how well he played or didn't play, we were a much better team when he did, which surely this season only proves further.

I can understand the reasons for letting him go (sort of), but much like people 'idealize' his contribution, you have just as many trying to imply that he was **** and couldn't defend. I don't understand this either, even under Kenny we kept something like 11 straight clean sheets when he played. He wasn't the same player last year and probably isn't now, but I still have no doubt that we wouldn't be struggling half as bad as we are now if he played even 9 games this season.