Current Avatar:
No Avatar image uploaded
No Avatar image uploaded
Liverpool Banter Member Posts
RR's Profile
RR's Posts and Other Poster's Replies To RR's Posts
RR's rumours posts with other poster's replies to RR's rumours posts
01 Feb 2024 10:56:04
I thought that was a demolition last night; one of the best performances I can recall in recent times. Predictably there is some bleating about penalty decisions but regardless of that, the reality is that Liverpool should have scored six last night and could have scored more like seven or eight. That would not have been an unfair reflection.
If we defend, attack, work, hassle and take care of our quality on the ball on Sunday as well as we did last night, then we could be in a great position by the end of the weekend.
Personally I really hope we stick with Bradley and Gomez for Sunday. That's not to say I think that should be the situation indefinitely (and I'd be happy to see Trent in midfield on Sunday) but right now, Arsenal away doesn't seem like the right match to be changing a back four that has been playing so well. You could see last night - and it's perfectly understandable - that when we changed both full-backs (plus a couple in midfield), we lost some of our shape and organisation.
09 May 2022 10:25:04
City have managed a massive good swing in their last four matches.
We had a comfortable margin at one point but they've won their last four matches 5-0, 5-1, 3-0 and 4-0.
We need to rebalance it, otherwise it effectively means we need City to drop points in two of their last three matches, rather than just one defeat.
RR's banter posts with other poster's replies to RR's banter posts
20 Mar 2024 09:01:47
That PGMOL audio and Howard Webb explanation for the Doku/ Mac Allister penalty incident is farcical. For a start, in the audio what they're saying is not a reflection of anything that is happening on the screen. It was like they were watching another incident. They said:
"Both high": They weren't; Mac Allister has two feet on the floor and controls the ball on his chest. Not high at any point, not even foot off the floor at any point. On the other hand, Doku is genuinely high. He is jumping with both feet off the floor and the highest of his feet is chest high on a player who is standing upright. Also studs up.
Mac Allister "comes into his space" - what does that even mean? Since when has "coming into his space" been a thing in football? Closing down and tackling is one of the fundamentals of the sport.
Doku "touches it first" - he doesn't. To the on field referee I could see how it might have appeared that way but when you slow it down and look at the replays that VAR were watching, you see that the first touch was Mac Allister's.
Doku "plays the ball" - he gets a very slight touch on it, out of control off his shin, after it's come off Mac Allister's chest and a split second before his studs go into Mac Allister. Anyway, we've been told all season - as explanation for various red cards - that contact on the ball doesn't mean it can't be a foul.
And then Webb repeats it all on TV with all his BS and trained hand gestures, like the David Brent of refereeing. It's astonishing.
In fact, if you were to play that VAR audio over the Gomez/ wan Bissaka incident from Sunday (foul and yellow card against Gomez) it would fit a lot better. High bouncing ball, both come in slightly high (but actually not as high as Doku was on Mac Allister), Gomez gets the ball (more contact on the ball that Doku made) and is just about first to it but his follow through hits wan Bissaka's foot (which is just as high as Gomez) . And if that was a foul and a yellow card, whilst Doku on Mac Allister is not given, that says it all.
I reckon PGMOL are in a position now where they just can't admit any further pivotal errors that go against Liverpool. They are already facing the potential of two binary/ black and white errors that they have admitted (Diaz v Tottenham and Odegaard handball) costing Liverpool the league title and the storm there would be around that. They must be desperate for one team to run away and win it by a comfortable margin.
11 Aug 2023 13:57:32
Oh my. I quite simply have no idea what is going on now but one thing we can conclude from this is that - for the right player - we evidently have at least £111m to spend on a transfer fee over and above the money already spent on Mac Allister and Szoboslazi (and offset to an extent by transfer fees received for Henderson and Fabinho + possibly further outgoings to come) . That is certainly a better position than most of us thought we were in.
This seems to back up the view that the reluctance to go higher on Lavia was about having a view of what he was worth and not being prepared to go above that, rather than not having the money.
Where it gets interesting is the fact that £111m would buy you almost any player who is currently for sale, with the exception of Mbappe, in terms of just the transfer fee. Could have got Rice. Could have got pretty close to Bellingham. Could have Gvardiol with quite a bit to spare. Could have got Tchouameni. Could have got Kane (not suggesting we should have) . That's not to say that any of those players would have wanted to join Liverpool or that we would be willing to pay the salaries they would demand on top of the transfer fee but purely in transfer fee terms, it suggests we can compete for almost any player. Again, perhaps this demonstrates that the money is there (clearly) but that it's only available to be spent on a player who is seen as being as close as possible to a guaranteed game-changer for us.
Was this money always there or was there a sudden change of stance from the owners on how much they would make available for signings? Did Klopp give them an ultimatum? If the money was there and we wanted Caicedo, why wait until the day before the Premier League starts? If Caicedo was the main target and the money was there, they could have wrapped it up for £100m two months ago couldn't they? I have so many questions.
Where now? Back to Lavia? Will Southampton add another £10m now? Regardless, has the flip to Caicedo shown that Liverpool don't see Lavia as the complete player and a ready-to-go option so would it be Lavia + someone else? Gravenberch is a name that keeps coming up. And are we still after a centre half (either with or without Caicedo)?
02 Aug 2023 15:28:53
Looking forward to all of the clean-sheets and defensive solidity once we get these "meaningless friendlies" out of the way and the league starts (in 11 days) .
After all, why would we want to practice defending well and preventing the opposition from scoring when it's just "pointless pre-season". Makes sense to save all of the good defending until the important matches; no doubt we can just switch it on once the league starts.
If you're still comforting yourself with the "pre-season means nothing mindset" I fear you're in for a rude awakening unless something significant happens in the next 11 days (which may well be too late for the first league match now anyway) .
27 Apr 2023 09:32:32
Feels a bit of a strange thing to say, but I wonder if anybody else feels it. I feel almost a sense of relief that City appear to be on course to win the league again. On one hand this makes no sense. City are our biggest rivals over the last few years. They are the ones who have stopped us having a truly golden period, and they've done it by methods that I think a lot of people find unpalatable. I also quite like Arsenal, always have done. Of all of our rivals at or around the top, they are the one team that I've never really disliked in one way or another. So it doesn't really make sense that I would want City to win the title ahead of Arsenal.
But I think what this comes down to is that if City wins the league again, especially if they open up a bit of a gap over Arsenal by the end of the City, we can rightfully claim that we are the only team that has got anywhere near City during this almost unprecedented period of dominance of the league title. We will be the only team other than City to have won the league in the last six seasons. We also came within a last day of the season whisker of winning it on two other occasions. Given the questions that remain around City with regard to their finances and the generally easy to throw around accusations of "buying the title", I think we can take some high ground as the one team who have really managed to challenge - and beat - them during this period. On the other hand, if Arsenal were to win the league this season, then I think our league title feels like a bit less of an achievement; like we'd actually achieved nothing more than Arsenal during this supposed wonderful era under Klopp, or if you take it back a couple more years you could say that during Klopp's era we won the league the same number of time's as Leicester and Arsenal, and less than City and Chelsea.
This feels a bit petty and something of an odd take on my part. Does it resonate with anybody else?
14 Apr 2023 13:07:34
If we're saying that the club has moved on from Bellingham because he costs more (surprise surprise) than we expected and we need to spend that money on multiple players rather than just one player, then I'm struggling a bit to see how we end up with the names being mentioned or, generally speaking, any players at that level. Does anybody think that Brighton are going to let Caicedo (in demand) or Mac Allister (in demand + key man in recent World Cup winning team) go for anything less than £70 - 80m. Mount's situation is probably influenced by the one year remaining on his contract but, again, Chelsea will surely demand a very large fee to sell to a rival. That's just midfield. Not sure if we're going to go for another centre-half in the summer (personally I think we need to) but how about Gvardiol? Again, he'll be in the £70m+ category won't he, not a £40m - 50m signing?
At best - and if we're assuming that the £100m+ that it would have cost for Bellingham is even there in the first place - I could see us getting one player at this top level and any others having to be much cheaper or even free. For all the talk of "major surgery" and overhaul, I think it might all feel a bit underwhelming by the end of the summer transfer window. I don't think there is anything that should lead us to believe we're going to see £200m+ splashed around on two or three of these £70m players.
Or perhaps where we'll find ourselves is with the realisation that the pivot away from Bellingham towards spending the same amount of money on multiple players isn't real, and actually we won't spend anywhere near that sort of money at all, be it on one massive signing or multiple smaller ones.