The Soccer Blog: Monday

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Monday, 14 March 2011

Squad Depth, Silver Linings, and Other Monday Notes

By: Noel | March 14th, 2011
Tweet Carroll v. Braga

It’s always hard to quite believe that cup draws are completely random, isn’t it? I mean, everybody knew Barcelona was going to face Arsenal in the Champions League this year, and low and behold they faced each other in the first knock-out round. It was rather like the way Chelsea would always always always face Liverpool if both sides made it past the last sixteen, when rules to prevent facing an opponent from one’s own federation lifted.

In the same way, when the quarter finals of the FA Cup came to light and the games began to roll along, everybody with the slightest interest in Liverpool just knew that United and City would meet in the semi-finals, guaranteeing that Liverpool would need to manage fifth or an Europa League triumph to get back into Europe at all as a result.

Some might say, “Noel, that’s silly, you can find narrative and a whiff of paranoid delusion anywhere if you look hard enough,” and, “Noel, wouldn’t the FA rather have the hype and pomp and television audience of a United-City final?” and, “Noel, none of this would be an issue if that nice man Christian Purslow had made a competent hire back in July.” And I would say balderdash! It’s perfectly obvious that somebody at the FA was pissed off when Liverpool held back players from the last set of international friendlies in retaliation for the FA playing Gerrard longer than had been agreed on and getting him injured in the set before that, and that conspiring to keep Liverpool out of Europe is simply the latest escalation. Or, in short, the FA must be made to pay for this injustice…

* To start things off, A Liverpool Thing looks at the potential positives of the FA Youth Cup defeat, which may seem to be just another log on the fire that is people looking for silver linings in unfortunate situations of late, but in this case I find myself fully agreeing with the silver linings. Not that dropping out is a good thing, of course, but in a run out against the highest level of competition the Liverpool youth had yet faced there was a distinct disjointedness to proceedings to remind that these dominant pass and move masters against Southend might not quite be ready to grab Premier League competition by the scruff of its neck and drag a team full of Carraghers kicking and screaming towards silverware:

This is why it is so difficult to judge players of this age. Or, rather, why it is always wise not to rush into judgments. Many were disappointed when Raheem Sterling wasn’t given some playing time in the Europa League after he had helped tear Southend apart in the previous round of this competition. Others would have picked the Spanish midfielder Suso for the first team within the first month of his joining the club, so impressive was he whenever he played for the reserves.

The reality is that there is a huge gap between the level of football they are used to playing and that which they would be facing in the first team. The strength of players they would be playing against, their experience and the speed with which they would punish any mistake or hesitation is far greater than what they’ve ever come against.

No reason for them to all be crap now, of course, but perhaps a needed reminder that these are young kids and realistically we’re looking at years before they can make a real impact instead of weeks.

* Meanwhile, despite that reality might suggest otherwise, Kenny Dalglish says he’s perfectly happy with the current squad’s depth, thank you very much. Which of course is what a manager should say, rather than blaming b-teams and scrubs who are hardly going out there trying not to measure up to expectations:

The depth of the squad has been tested with Liverpool’s involvement in the Europa League and although the stand-ins have not always impressed–Thursday’s 1-0 first-leg defeat in Braga a case in point–Dalglish recognises the importance of being able to call on those fringe players.

“Everyone in the squad is capable of playing in the first team,” he said. “Those that haven’t played as much are very important to us and their attitude in the games they have played in the past has been superb.”

Though it doesn’t seem to have registered amongst those who simply put Europa League right next to Cole, Poulsen, and Spearing and draw a conclusion or three, the squad that faced Braga was hardly an intentionally weakened one. One can only hope that Dalglish’s public faith in the fringe players who will play no matter how large or small a priority he puts on the competition, combined with a lively Anfield crowd, can somehow get the team through at home against Braga.

* And speaking of depth and the upcoming match against Braga, The Tomkins Times takes the time to preach patience on the Andy Carroll front:

Carroll’s presence is about making Liverpool a stronger unit, not wowing the fans in quite the same way that prime-years Torres did; I don’t expect our jaws to drop quite as often. Also, the crux of the deal is that Liverpool got two young strikers for little more than the price of a single older, injury-prone one.

Right now, based on the evidence of the first handful of matches the pair have played for their new clubs, I’d have happily swapped Torres for Suarez. Straight swap, with both valued at £20m, £35m or £50m.

The little Uruguayan has already done things worthy of Torres at his best, whereas at Chelsea, Torres continues to look like the moody, relatively mediocre player who’d failed to spark into full life for Liverpool for 18 months

A good reminder all around, as one would expect. Still, given the difference he made in his brief appearance against Braga, it’s hard not to hope that he can make a similar difference against them at Anfield, and that doing so for the entire match and with the home support will be enough to see Liverpool through.

In the meantime, while you try to wrap you head around rules stating that if the winner of the FA Cup is in the Champions League already the loser gets the Europa berth, which wouldn’t be an issue if Arsenal hadn’t choked on their own two feet in the Carling Cup but they did and now they’re also out of the Champions League and out of the FA cup and only managing unimpressive draws against Sunderland to help Manchester United through their troubled stretch atop the league…

Some Related Liverpool Posts:FA Youth Cup, Poll Wrap, and Other Monday NotesFake Plastic Chelseas, Raheem Sterling Makes Europa Squad, and Other Wednesday NotesSuarez Says Goodbye, Torres Says Hello, and Other Monday NotesRaul’s Kicks, Suarez’ Tricks, and Other Monday NotesJuventus Hemorrhaging Cash, Ashley Get Your Gun, and Other Monday Notes

Category: Premier League, Team News

Tags: Andy Carroll, FA Cup, FA Youth Cup, Has Anyone Labeled Andy Carroll a Bust Yet?, Luis Suarez, Paranoid Schizophrenia, Premier League, Team News, The FA Hates Liverpool, The Shallowest Swimming Pool In The World
Tweet « Blog Pollin’: European Competition in 2011-2012 | Home | Smitty_wSliver linings no European football, can concentrate on becoming Premier,s again.Not sure i buy into not being able to attract quality players. 50 mill + spent in summer transfers shows enough intent. The only dark cloud i see off in the didtence is PepeEdThe "FA hates Liverpool" tag was created for a reason.NoelAnd now I know that the "FA Hates Liverpool" tag was created.Red2death"realistically we’re looking at years before they can make a real impact instead of weeks."

I'd have to disagree.

Maybe for Sterling (16 this year) it's a bit early. But definitely not years for the likes of Suso (18), Pacheco (20), Coady (18), Amoo (20).

This is the age where they should be knocking on the first team door for the good ones and at least getting regular substitute appearances for the later bloomers. Rooney and Wilshere both 18 and trusted with first team duties. Aaron Ramsey, 19, playing regularly. Walcott, 21, already been out there for many years now. Javier Hernandez, 22, straight into the first team. Darren Fletcher blooded at 19. The list goes on for players that will truly make a difference by the time they're 23, 24, 25. By that time they need to have a good 4-5 years top level experience under their belt.

Yes, our young players are works in progress. But some of that progress has to take place on the pitch beside in and among the senior players. Not just in the academy or FA Youth Cup or the reserve league.

All our rivals have Rooneys and Wilsheres and Walcotts coming through their ranks. I'd like to think our boys are the same calibre too, and judging by their youth performances it seems they are. But come 5 years from now, it'd make a massive difference whether they already have 5 years premiership experience or whether they're just finding their feet against first-choice opposition.
Eddieagreed. i cant see a reason why the likes of coady suso sterling morgan wisdom will have to wait years to make an impression. Im not saying they should all be regular starters for the first team, but lets be honest i'd rather have coady and suso sitting on the bench rather than as often as poulson and jovanovic do. Sterling is perhaps slightly too young to be given a run out. but ultimately there is are several dead wood players that i would like to see replaced with promising youth players. that would be refreshing to see.

Hopefully the king will sign a longterm contract, have a huge transfer budget and hopefully buy the likes of ashley young nzogbias taiwo adam. add that to younger players coming through, there will be a lot to smile about in 2011-12 season regardless of whether we get in the europa league.KhaineAge in and of itself is not that important, but rather phsyical development (Rooney) and level of experience (Wilshere at Bolton, Ramsey at Cardiff and Nottingham). Shelvey has 2 seasons of fast-paced football under his belt and that's the reason he can hang with the big boys even though he's just 18. The kids currently at the academy have neither of these qualities, with the possible of exception of Coady being a physical player. They need experience at a higher level of competition, and Liverpool this particular season, where every game is a must-win and a struggle to the end, is just the wrong time and place.

Hell, just read this:

http://tomkinstimes.com/2011/0...LFC4LIFE.......''Right now, based on the evidence of the first handful of matches the pair have played for their new clubs, I’d have happily swapped Torres for Suarez. Straight swap, with both valued at £20m, £35m or £50m.''.....

who the fuck is Torres?ArmenianREDwho the fuck torres is???

he is the siSSy boy that enjoying jokings and personal relations at one of the london clubs....

did u remember him now?
;)

Hail KK
long live LFC!Dj-ChutfieldJust to continue the Torres hate in this thread of replies, I saw this in a comments section on another site and made me chuckle for a good few days:

His armband lied - he was no red, Torres, Torres
He's just a rentboy like they said, Torres, Torres
Into our backs, he plunged his knife,
I hope John Terry shags his wife,
Fernando Torres, he's just a pile of shit.

The John Terry line gets me every time!blog comments powered by Disqus

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Monday, 28 February 2011

Juventus Hemorrhaging Cash, Ashley Get Your Gun, and Other Monday Notes

By: Noel | February 28th, 2011
Tweet missing aurelio

It seems as though most of the news of interest from a Liverpool perspective today involves clubs and players that aren’t Liverpool. So it goes. There is a bit of Liverpool news on the injury front, though, and it isn’t pretty, as Martin Kelly could miss a month with a hamstring injury.

With Fabio Aurelio currently trapped in the void–or in 1973, or something–this leaves Liverpool with a grand total of one fullback for the foreseeable future. Hopefully everybody has enjoyed watching Jamie Carragher and Danny Wilson fill in, because chances are we’re about to get a heavy dose of just that…

* Of tangental interest on a couple of fronts, Juventus has just reported a 39.5M Euro loss in the first half of the season. Last year they made 14.2M over the entire term, while they expect to lose a similar amount in the second half of this season to bring their total losses close to 80M Euros when everything’s said and done. This is of course relevant to the previously discussed difficulty they might face in purchasing Alberto Aquilani when his loan comes due, and with hard numbers coming out it certainly paints a much more bleak picture for the grand old Italian club than one would have guessed.

It’s also of interest from a Liverpool perspective because even if part of their plummeting revenue is due to a drop in sponsorship and a re-negotiated, less favourable Sirie A television contract, the biggest single hit to Juventus’ revenue stream comes from dropping out of the Champions League and into the Europa. Premier League sides don’t report on the same schedule–the last reported numbers for Liverpool still had half a season of Champions League payments attached to them–so it will be some time before we know the full damage to Liverpool’s finances from dropping into Europe’s second level, but even with a new set of owners the kind of numbers being faced down by Juventus offer an ominous warning.

* Elsewhere, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, Wayne Rooney has escaped punishment for his elbow to the head of Wigan’s James McCarthy on the weekend. Most observers seem to feel it was a red card offense which should have seen him suspended for three matches including the upcoming game against Liverpool, but with the player not even receiving a booking at the time it was never likely the FA would hand down retroactive justice. In the end, then, they indeed didn’t hand down any kind of retroactive justice, as official Mark Clattenburg claimed he saw the event clearly at the time and so the FA claimed they had no grounds within their rules and by-laws to re-examine the situation.

While it would be easy enough to cry United favouritism while asking what would happen if this was a brutish foreigner like De Jong trying to take somebody’s head off, as always with the FA it seems to mostly boil down to institutional incompetence and a desire to cover their ears, eyes, and mouth and demand–via telegraph, perhaps, seeing as their mouths are covered–that they and their officials never, ever get a single thing wrong. Because if there’s one thing more important to the FA than getting things right, it’s saying that they got things right.

* On the lighter side of things, Torres hasn’t scored yet for Chelsea, and people have started to question his drive and form and general sulking attitude. Seeing as he’s no longer a Liverpool player–and since I now risk raising ire by discussing him–I normally would have let sleeping dogs lie at this point were it not for Annie Eaves uncovering part of The Secret Diary of Fernando Torres:

Today at training I made another faux pas. We were getting changed and JT dropped his armband, I picked it up and handed it back to him. Everyone went quiet. I had to go and stand on the naughty step for 10 minutes. Nnobody is allowed to touch his armband unless he hands it to them. I don’t even know why he needed to wear it, we were only going swimming.

Well, playing for Chelsea certainly sounds like a great deal of fun. Especially the part where Ashley Cole likes to wander around with a hunting rifle.

In the meantime, while you try to pretend that everything is in fact hunky dory, or wonder at the oddity of a day on which you’d rather read Torres’ fictionalised trials and tribulations at Chelsea because the only news worth talking about that’s directly Liverpool related is so awful you don’t quite know how to deal with it…

Some Related Liverpool Posts:Suarez Says Goodbye, Torres Says Hello, and Other Monday NotesFA Youth Cup, Poll Wrap, and Other Monday NotesMonday News and NotesXabi is Classy and Other Monday NotesTactics, Spanish Goalkeepers, and Other Friday Notes

Category: Premier League, Team News

Tags: Alberto Aquilani, Chelsea, Fabio Aurelio, Fernando Torres, Finances, I Can't Feel My Face, Juventus, Manchester United, Martin Kelly, Noel's really a bit of a dick, Premier League, Team News, Wayne Rooney
Tweet « West Ham’s Unpleasant Impressions | Home | agiambaCouple notes about Juve's figures- club site says we expect to lose 60M by the end of the year, not 80M. Second, the fuss about Aquilani is all that...a lot of fuss. It's 5.5mil for the next 3 years, certainly within our means. It all came about because Juve were interested in a lower lump-sum amount (JG Wentworth-style) and the Sun/DailyFail took that to mean we're totally broke.

Most of the money for his signing has been already budgeted, anyways. If he continues to do well (been off the last month or so) then we'll certainly sign him. If not, we'll let him go back. Not a financial question at this point.NoelThanks for a more in the know take on the Juventus situation--it's nice to know the specifics of what fans are thinking rather than relying too much on papers that may not be following things particularly closely.agiambaHappy to oblige. Seems our clubs fortunes have been rather close the last
few years.

Sorry about Poulsen.NoelHah. You can have him back whenever you want.agiambaWell, take this to heart. Now that you have a DoF, shouldn't have anymore
Poulsen incidents.YannApparently he’s worth £4.5m (est. 5.3M Euro), so Juve can take him, flog him off, and there’s almost the first Aquilani instalment. What do you say? Do we have a deal?LucasLeiva21"I don’t feel one of the boys here. At Liverpool I’d go into training, see Dirk’s face, and immediately feel better about myself. I miss this."

Somebody give Annie Eaves a Pulitzer! Shit, I doubt they have Pulitzers in the UK, but still...

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Monday, 14 March 2011

Squad Depth, Silver Linings, and Other Monday Notes

Monday, 28 February 2011

Juventus Hemorrhaging Cash, Ashley Get Your Gun, and Other Monday Notes