Liverpool FC Team Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread 2013/2014

dmigsy

opr wrote: »

Thought he'd a good game yesterday. 18!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htmueEUGQwk

Opr

He looks like the real deal; a proper footballer. Not just a brainless winger who only uses pace to beat his man. Good vision. Nice variation of passes. Fantastic through ball for Henderson's goal. Will be interesting to see how he gets on this season.

billy2012

I'm bored - Positives from preseason so far.

Lucas looks like he is on the way to getting back to his best form that he showed 2 seasons ago before injuries.

Allen seems to have a spring about him again. It's nice to see him play in a more advanced position and showing he has a bit more to his game.

Aspas has caught my eye. 3 goals, 3 assists in 5. His overall play has impressed me alot. Tricky player who will have a good 1st season.

Sterling has looked sharp, same with Ibe. 2 good options of the bench.

Toure has done a decent enough job, no complaints at all, seems to work well with Agger.

Mignolet has looked the business.

Coutinho has pretty much continued on where he left off last season.

Keep Suarez, get Danny fit, buy an AM/WF and bring on a serious challenge for the top 4!!!

Sterling seems to look a bit stronger physically, than last year. Of course it's only pre-season, and we'll find out how true it is over the coming weeks and months, but definitely seems to have a bit more about him. Looked really sharp yesterday.

murpho999

Strongbow10 wrote: »

I hate to say it but I don't trust the hierarchy at the club for one second.

They are clearly looking to sell, all this talk of partnering Suarez with (insert potential new signing for big money) is nonsense.

It will be the same as the Torres deal. The club will know the score with lots of time to go in the window and they will structure the sale in a way that will save the club face. Its just one massive face saving exercise from here on in, the club know hes off but now its just a matter of painting the player as the villain, disrupting our plans of keeping our best players. We have ZERO intention of keeping our best players if the bid is big enough. Which is fair enough.

However, when you start selling to direct rivals then you are playing with fire. Selling to Arsenal will send out a dangerous message in future.

Its very frustrating.

Look at it from Suarez point of view. Countless promises are probably made at renewal time, re: signings and ambitions of the club etc.

The Summer rolled around and he saw the club wasn't pursuing these ambitions, rather its been another summer of selling (or loaning in our case) in order to buy. The squad is possibly marginally better but not to the extent of showing real ambition at an assault on 4th.

Hes not the first player to see the antics of the hierarchy, looking to make profits, succeed on the pitch but only by being cautious in the transfer market.

He will simply not realise his ambitions with us, he is a born winner. In some ways I admire the fact he is so single minded about it. Looking for a loyalty pay off is a little unsavoury but thats another story.

The very best players want to test themselves at the highest level of competition. Then there are some players willing to languish at smaller clubs, be a big fish in a small pond so to speak and be the clubs highest earner for their duty. We are a small pond to Luis Suarez. Sure he'll give us the guff about being a huge club, but until we front up and realise we're only as good as our recent history then we'll go nowhere.

The powers that be need to come under greater scutiny. Its akin to politicians making ridiculous promises at election time only to completely go back on them upon election.

Torres, Alonso, Mascherano and now Suarez (all world class players) have called us out on this.

We of course call them traitors, and hide behind the rubbish that "we don't want them if they don't wanna wear the red shirt". Bullsh*t.

Gimme the quality anyday over the mediocrity who preach about Liverpool being an "institution".

How can you claim to know that Suarez was made promises?

How could Suarez see that promised signings were not being made when he started talking about a transfer as soon as the the transfer window opened?

Your post seems more like an opportunity to bash the owners rather than being best on fact.

citytillidie

mike65 wrote: »

Let them bid.

The Valarenga game will be quite heavy with youth players I suspect. Weird that Celtic have ducked out of playing a league game against St Mirren for a friendly. You'd think the SPL/SFA would be unhappy with that.

Why of the past 2 seasons Celtic and Rangers have been given time off to play friendlies at the start of the season

Morzadec

Would echo the positive comments on Sterling's performance yesterday - thought he was excellent.

I have high hopes for him season. At 18 he's already a very good player and he looks to have the potential to get even better.

Can't understand those who don't rate him

tok9

I only got to watch the first half and the highlights clip but Sterling has definitely impressed. Might be closer to the first team than I thought.

Courtesy Flush

Morzadec wrote: »

Would echo the positive comments on Sterling's performance yesterday - thought he was excellent.

I have high hopes for him season. At 18 he's already a very good player and he looks to have the potential to get even better.

Can't understand those who don't rate him

Seriously ? There is a difference between seeing potential in a player and really rating them
He has potential, but a lot to prove. He is quite slight and gets pushed off the ball easily, not to mention losing the ball in possession a lot. He has a good trick and turn of pace, though I cant see him scoring too many goals, unless his power improves.

Nuri Sahin

Saying you rate a player doesn't necessarily mean you think they're are the finished article. Obviously Sterling is still developing both physically and tactically, sky is the limit for him. He's no one dimensional winger like say Aaron Lennon that's clear to me anyway.

Grayditch

I rate his potential.

willowthewisp

Sterling seems to have improved. He was actually managing to get some crosses in so has added a bit more to his game than pace and trickery.
Hopefully it bodes well.

gafferino

daithijjj wrote: »

Costa starts for Atletico in 10 mins for anyone who wants a 'butchers hook' at him.

Any use?

Grayditch

If Sterling started to deliver killer crosses, it would be incredible.

jesus_thats_gre

Grayditch wrote: »

If Sterling started to deliver killer crosses, it would be incredible.

Why, we seem to have made a decision not to play that way?

opr

I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of this book.

Red Or Dead by David Peace – review

Red Or Dead is a masterpiece. David Peace already has a considerable reputation but this massive, painstaking account of the career of Bill Shankly towers above his previous work. It's usual when praising a sports novel for critics to claim that "it's not really about baseball/running/beach volleyball – the sport is a metaphor". Make no mistake, this book is about football. Unremittingly, uncompromisingly about football. It's what Shankly would have wanted. For Shankly, ephemera such as life, love and death could be metaphors for football, never the other way round. Football was the thing itself.

Red Or Dead tells the story of how an unambitous, conservative board of directors, concerned only with ensuring a profit clicked through the turnstiles, inadvertently hired a charismatic, visionary socialist who revolutionised the game and would like to have revolutionised the nation. Inexplicably – maybe he was bluffing – Shankly tendered his resignation in 1974 while still only 60, and at the height of his success. On YouTube you can find a clip of the young Granada reporter Tony Wilson breaking the news to passersby in Liverpool. They're disbelieving and heartbroken. The board too were disbelieving – in the sense that they couldn't believe their luck. In retirement Shankly was cast aside, made more welcome at Goodison Park than at Anfield. He had no role in the future of the club he created. The phone never stopped ringing but it was never the call he hoped for. Peace gives the rejection of Shankly a Shakespearean grandeur. There are echoes of Coriolanus and Lear but also of the experience of every Premier League fan. For of all the forms of love there are in this world there is none so cruelly, gleefully unrequited as the love of a fan for a Premier League club. Fans will go to the grave decked in club scarves, the club anthem their eternal ringtone. Clubs reciprocate that love in ways that make Enron look like the Salvation Army. The Premier League is not a metaphor of a dysfunctional society, it is its fullest expression – a grotesquely overpaid, underperforming elite utterly disconnected from the communities from which its clubs take their names.

Of course, it wasn't like that in Shankly's time. Part of the appeal of Red Or Dead is our collective yearning for those "jumpers for goalposts" days so beautifully evoked in Gary Imlach's book My Father and Other Working Class Football Heroes. Here is Shankly living modestly, close to the ground, working out his strategy with cutlery on the kitchen table, cleaning the cooker to clear his mind. Here he is replying to every piece of fan mail, answering the door to kids who want him to come and referee for them, giving them their bus fare home. Here he stops the team's official bus to pick up hitchhiking away fans, ordering his players to share their sandwiches with them. Is this nostalgia? We live in a country in which huge chunks of the public utilities and infrastructure are run for the benefit not of the nation or the customers but for shareholders slumped in front of Antiques Roadshow. Is it nostalgia to remind ourselves that there was once a man who ran a football club not for the sponsors, not for the board, not for himself but for the fans – or, as he called them, the People? And that this worked?

There have been more successful managers. Shankly's not even the most successful manager of LFC. The difference between Shankly and, say, Paisley or Ferguson is the difference between Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis. Lewis ran faster but Owens ran for a reason. Shankly's reasons could not be more relevant. Red Or Dead is radical not just in the narrow political sense. I can't think when I last came across a serious piece of fiction or TV drama in which the working-class characters weren't busy killing or abusing one another. Peace himself wrote the novel on which the beyond-parody C4 series Red Riding (aka "Gritty Bafta") was based. Here he has changed tack and written a book about what it means to be good, about the sheer work it takes to be good, about the challenge of staying good when the world treats you badly. Like the Book of Job or The Little Princess, it's a game of two halves. Will Shankly retain as an outcast the grace and integrity he showed when he was a deity? There's a heartbreaking scene in a cafe on Eaton Road. It's raining outside. He hands a stranger his umbrella, not out of magnanimity but out of respect for the fact that the man has to go to work whereas he himself has time to sit and wait for the rain to stop.

This is an openly hagiographical work. There are scenes here of Shankly remembering each of his players in his prayers, almost as shocking to the modern reader as Leopold Bloom masturbating must have been to the reader of nearly a 100 years ago. Like most hagiographies, it's monumental. Team sheets, match reports, the full texts of interviews with Harold Wilson and Shelley Rohde, everything is in here. I didn't feel qualified to say whether it was all accurate so I went to visit my friend Peter Hooton – one of the founders of the Liverpool supporters' union the Spirit of Shankly – who said the only mistake he could find was that they keep leaving the "k" out of Kirkby. This level of detail, coupled with Peace's usual schtick of short, repetitive phrases can make the book a tough read. "In the ninth minute, Ian St John scored. In the 72nd minute, Roger Hunt scored. In the last minute, in the very last minute, St John scored again."

When it's good it sounds like Homer. When it's bad it sounds like an infinity of goal alerts. I know that when my dad reads it he will gorge himself on that exhaustive list of remembered goals but others will find it too much. The temptation to skip pages is enormous. I asked Peter, as a football fan, what he thought. He said: "I want to go out and knock on doors like a Jehovah's Witness and read this book to people." Which is surely the point. For a long time now literary fiction has concerned itself with telling it like it is – with power, corruption and lies – or telling it like it was – Tudors. This isn't a book about the way things were or the way things are. This is a book about the way things should be.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/03/red-or-dead-david-peace-review

Opr

Grayditch

jesus_thats_gre wrote: »

Why, we seem to have made a decision not to play that way?

I just think it'd be great to have that option, but yeah, it would have to be actually utilised.

Grayditch

Grayditch wrote: »

I just think it'd be great to have that option, but yeah, it would have to be actually utilised.

We could re-sign Carroll on loan to nod them home

BenEadir

Strongbow10 wrote: »

Hes not the first player to see the antics of the hierarchy, looking to make profits

LMFAO at the position you're taking there Strongbow Just imagine a player earning millions of pounds a year being upset that the club he plays for wants to make a profit, oooohhhhh!!!! Imagine how upset he'd be if the club wasn't commercially successful and couldn't pay his wages??? Can't you even see the irony of defending a 26 year old earning millions of pounds a year to play football against owners of a club who have invested their own funds, not because they are born and bred LFC fans who want to give away their excess cash, but because they are looking to A) make an annual profit on their investment and increase the equity value of their investment so they can sell their investment on at a higher price than they purchased it at - JUST LIKE ALL COMMERCIAL INVESTORS DO???

Without the commercial motivations of J Henry and Co. we'd still have G&H asset stripping the club. You should be grateful we have owners who are motivated by sound commercial ambitions and exercise prudent financial stewardship. If you don't believe me, just ask any Leeds fans whether they would have preferred to have had J Henry in charge instead of Peter Ridsdale spending money the club didn't have!!!

Ben

Rodgers on Suarez, seems confident he's staying.....from the times

Brendan Rodgers has accused Arsenal of lacking class with their attempt to activate a disputed clause in Luis Suarez’s contract by one English pound.

Suarez was the only member of Liverpool’s first-team squad not to attend a testimonial dinner for Steven Gerrard on Saturday, having earlier received a warm reception from the Anfield crowd during a 2-0 friendly defeat of Olympiakos. The gala dinner at ACC Liverpool was part of the captain’s efforts to raise more than £1 million for his charitable foundation.

Suarez and his representatives believe the 26-year-old should be allowed to open talks with Arsenal after they offered £40,000,001 a fortnight ago.

Rival interest
Liverpool insist a bid over £40 million entitles Suarez to be informed of rival interest and for the club to enter negotiations if they wish but nothing more.

And Rodgers has described the sum offered as disrespectful as he reiterated Liverpool’s intention to hold the Uruguay international to a further 12 months of a contract that has three years remaining.

“I was surprised,” said the Liverpool manager of Arsenal’s second bid for Suarez.

“I’ve got to say I’ve always associated Arsenal as a club with class and so there was a wee bit of a game there. For us, it’s about moving on and doing our own work. There will come a point where they understand our position.”

Suarez has told Liverpool he wishes to join a club in the Champions League, having previously claimed he wanted to leave England. Rodgers insists the club’s owners, Fenway Sports Group, are not looking to cash in on the forward.

‘Extremely confident’
Rodgers, who spoke to the principal owner, John W Henry, about Suarez on Friday, said: “I’m extremely confident that Luis will be here [next season].

“The offers have come in as you would expect for one of the world’s leading strikers but as time goes by I’m gaining more confidence because I have a chance to be with him on a day-to-day basis and he gets the chance to be around his team-mates. We’re in total control of the situation.

“The owners have been brilliant. If it was another club needing the money or desperate for the money it could have been a different story. But John Henry and Tom [Werner, the chairman] have been first class through the whole process, so there are no arguments there and it gives you the confidence they are not in any hurry to sell because they understand we are trying to build here.”

Rodgers refused to divulge details of his conversations with Suarez since the club rejected Arsenal’s offer, while admitting all players have their price and that Real Madrid’s world record offer for Gareth Bale exposed the weakness of Arsenal’s move for Suarez.

‘Wonderful player’
He said: “Gareth Bale is a wonderful player and if they are prepared to pay that money, that’s where he is, but there is no way he is 100 per cent better than Luis Suarez.

“But it’s not something we want to entertain this year. We understand it could be different next summer. A player with two years left on his contract is totally different but Luis has three and we want to bring people in to play around and with him so we can sustain a challenge this year.”

Arsene Wenger, for his part, feels Arsenal have acted with respect and class . “We try to do it properly,” the manager said yesterday. “A transfer is always an agreement between three parties and we have always done that until now.”

Liverpool’s attempts to get players in include a €25 million bid for Diego Costa of Atletico Madrid and they are hopeful the Brazilian striker will this week inform the Spanish club he wants the move.

Liverpool had agreed a fee with Benfica for Lorenzo Melgarejo but Rodgers has cooled on a move for the left back.

http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soccer/english-soccer/rodgers-surprised-by-arsenal-s-suarez-bid-1.1484559

opr

Meglarejo loan deal is dead. Aly Cissokho from Valencia or Guilherme Siqueira from Granada the options now being looked at. (The Times)

Opr

daithijjj

gafferino wrote: »

Any use?

Only got the first 30 mins myself, not a lot happened tbh. Maybe someone else watched it and can fill us in.

mike65

Liverpool in yet another left back link shocker. Lorenzo Melgarejo/Ali Cissokho/Tiago Ilori and now Guilherme Siqueira who plays for Granada. Tony Barrett says we're in for him.
Everton linked a few weeks ago. Real Madrid also but obviously we're bigger than them.

Dcully

I was at the game yesterday and i was so impressed with Aspas running off the ball, some very clever angles and always busy.
Sterling was very good as was Coutunho.
It was my first time seeing Gerrard play in the flesh as he was injured for others games i attended and seeing his 40+ yard balls sprayed allover the place infront of your eyes is truely a sight to behold, like most sports TV doesnt do it justice at all.
Suarez got a great reception when he came on as did God and Carra.

Glico Man

mike65 wrote: »

Liverpool in yet another left back link shocker. Lorenzo Melgarejo/Ali Cissokho/Tiago Ilori and now Guilherme Siqueira who plays for Granada. Tony Barrett says we're in for him.
Everton linked a few weeks ago. Real Madrid also but obviously we're bigger than them.

Real are his preferred option, they've been watching him for about a year now, but they still have to shift Coentrão out the door before they can bring him in.

mike65

aaronh007 wrote: »

Real are his preferred option, they've been watching him for about a year now, but they still have to shift Coentrão out the door before they can bring him in.

So they are trying to shift a player who'd fetch maybe 10-12 million for someone who'd cost half that. Not very Real!

MD1990

Siqueira would be a great signing
always been very impressive for Granada

G.K.

I guess some of you will have read Rafa's 'Champions League Dreams'. I read it yesterday, found it fascinating, as an insight into how he managed.

Am looking forward to the Shankly book too.

Turtyturd

Good to see 'The Rodgers' confident of Suarez staying....hopefully he is not just 'being loose with the truth' and he won't have to eat his words come September.

Also as small time as the arsenal bid was he really isn't in a position to talk about doing things the right way given how the Mkhytarian stuff was supposed to have gone down.

Grayditch

Just read Rodgers' quotes regarding Suarez staying, there.

Nuri Sahin

Not sure if this was posted but...

BBC's David Ornstein: "Speaking to senior sources at Arsenal, I can say the club won't go to £50m for Suárez."

Jesus Wept

Nuri Sahin wrote: »

Not sure if this was posted but...

BBC's David Ornstein: "Speaking to senior sources at Arsenal, I can say the club won't go to £50m for Suárez."

They can smell my helmet.

gafferino

Nuri Sahin wrote: »

Not sure if this was posted but...

BBC's David Ornstein: "Speaking to senior sources at Arsenal, I can say the club won't go to £50m for Suárez."

Shock horror

ush

Andy Carroll wrote: »

They can smell my helmet.

We all can. Wash it.

Raif Severance

Sensible Harry.

Rise Of The Kop (@RiseOfTheKop)
8/4/13, 10:11 PM
Luis Suarez would be better off staying at Anfield, says Harry Redknapp - mirror.co.uk/sport/football…

Rise Of The Kop (@RiseOfTheKop)
8/4/13, 10:13 PM
Redknapp: "He owes the fans who have stuck by him, he owes manager Rodgers for doing likewise... everyone inside the place really.It's time for him to realise he owes Liverpool" #Suarez

Rise Of The Kop (@RiseOfTheKop)
8/4/13, 10:26 PM
Redknapp: "Suarez insists he wants to go for Champions League football and, if that was Real Madrid, Barcelona, or maybe Bayern Munich, perhaps you would think 'fair enough'

Rise Of The Kop (@RiseOfTheKop)
8/4/13, 10:26 PM
Redknapp: "OK, he would get a few games in the Champions League. But I just don't see Arsenal as a side that can genuinely win it." #Suarez

Downing?

Jack Sullivan (@jsullivanwhu)
8/1/13, 6:26 PM
We are fighting hard and are negotiating with 3 potential right sided strikers. #coyi #WHUFC

Jack Sullivan (@jsullivanwhu)
8/1/13, 6:34 PM
100% we had a deal, player pulled out. I’ll name him , but not till we have 100% lost him. Still a 1% chance

Jack Sullivan (@jsullivanwhu)
8/1/13, 6:35 PM
My tweet was not false. This time last year you all said we wouldnot sign Andy Carroll and we did.

Jack Sullivan (@jsullivanwhu)
8/1/13, 6:38 PM
IT IS NOT KALOU

Costa prefers LFC.

Billy Liddell ‏@Liddellpool 11m
Diego Costa would prefer a move to #LFC , He is believed to have rejected offers from Fiorentina and Roma acc to El Confidencial

Drivthru?

MrBoywunder ‏@MrBoywunder 9m
Andy Hunter confirms Suarez was the only player of the squad not to attend Gerrard's testimonial dinner last night.

From Mou with Love.

MrBoywunder ‏@MrBoywunder 1m
Mourinho: "I think to start there will be six teams [challenging for the title]. In these six teams a lot can happen."

MrBoywunder ‏@MrBoywunder 1m
Mourinho: "Probably many people think Liverpool. Why not? They have a great coach and he is there for the second year."

Suarez' Daughter and Lucas' Son.

CoreyLH Corey Hampson 4h
Suarez' daughter and Lucas' son celebrating the goals at Gerrards Testimonial #LFC

4th LB linked

Billy Liddell ‏@Liddellpool 3m
#LFC have contacted Saint Etienne for full back Faouzi Ghoulam acc to Sky Italy

Turtyturd

Nuri Sahin wrote: »

Not sure if this was posted but...

BBC's David Ornstein: "Speaking to senior sources at Arsenal, I can say the club won't go to £50m for Suárez."

He's probably right not to....he could get the 3 players he needs to challenge for the title for that amount. :pac:

BMJD

I take it that Luis' week off is more BS then?

Vicxas

BMJD wrote: »

I take it that Luis' week off is more BS then?

Nobody is sure, i find it weird that he'd miss the dinner though

klose

BMJD wrote: »

I take it that Luis' week off is more BS then?

Theres an open training session today so im sure well find out soon enough


Edit: ya hes there apparently

Raif Severance

New Manager of Spurs with his first video interview.

mike65

AVB sacked? :eek:

Vicxas

Raif Severance wrote: »

New Manager of Spurs with his first video interview.

Think hes more likeable than AVB

Raif Severance

Richard Buxton ‏@Richard_Buxton_

For those asking, Luis Suarez IS in training on the Anfield pitch this morning #LFC

So he wasn't given a Week Off as an ITK claimed, but why didn't he go to SG's Dinner then?

MD1990

seen this on RAWK

Brendan Rodgers looks at potential left-back targets

Aly Cissokho, 25, French...



Lorenzo Melgarejo, 22, Paraguayan...



Guilherme Siqueira, 27, BRAZILIAN??!?!?

BMJD

Raif Severance wrote: »

So he wasn't given a Week Off as an ITK claimed, but why didn't he go to SG's Dinner then?

cuz he's a cannibal of course

witnessrenegade

Nuri Sahin wrote: »

Not sure if this was posted but...

BBC's David Ornstein: "Speaking to senior sources at Arsenal, I can say the club won't go to £50m for Suárez."

Where's that coming from? Can't see it on his Twitter

Raif Severance

witnessrenegade wrote: »

Where's that coming from? Can't see it on his Twitter

He said it on this BBC Radio Program:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01dpqw2

Listen around the 1:40 Mark.

Francie Barrett

Leiva (our one) has closed his account on boards I see.

Vicxas

Francie Barrett wrote: »

Leiva (our one) has closed his account on boards I see.

Yeah he had a meltdown last week and hasnt been back.

witnessrenegade

Raif Severance wrote: »

He said it on this BBC Radio Program:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01dpqw2

Listen around the 1:40 Mark.

Cheers!

5starpool

BMJD wrote: »

cuz he's a cannibal of course

I was in a pub after the game on Saturday (The Park) and I saw someone with a "Cannibal 7" jersey. I must admit I cringed a little bit.