Jurgen Klopp Sack Watch
- Thread starter Samid
- Start date
So next season if Liverpool have made the Champions League does Klopp throw the league and concentrate on winning the European Cup or does he try and get eliminated from Europe as soon as possible and concentrate on finishing top 4?
They'll win/draw all of them except Leicester and Burnley.
Good question.
I am curious to know the answer from the Liverpool fans because that's what Rodgers did the last time they were in it. And they have been happy to get out of the cups this season.
On the topic of cups I think it was a major mistake to go with a B team against Wolves. Given how their form was they should have tried to win it to regain some form. Instead crashing out of it just exacerbated their confidence issues and led to further damage.
Absolutely. I think he can evolve. I will take off my United hat and admit to thinking he is a very good manager, probably among the best 20 in the world right now.
How he responds over the next 2 years will demonstrate how versatile (or not) he is.
Kasper was born in 86.. so..
Fake News.. Sad.
Fake News.. Sad.
Great post.
Success breeds success. I think a rhythm of winning matches can be beneficial at this stage of the season.
What a great site. Thank you!
I only put this up cos it's something we've all wondered about at some point. It isn't little, btw.
There have been two occasions where Chris helped save my career, and my sanity, when all seemed threatened or lost. In 2011 it felt like my groin and my mind were ruined for ever, blown to smithereens by pain and despair. Chris came to my rescue.
I’d had groin problems my whole career, adductor muscle pain and numerous surgeries on my hernia. My groin, and the gracilis [a small muscle in the inner thigh] release I’d needed, had cost me my place in the 2002 World Cup. It was a chronic issue and I’d already had a revision of a previous hernia procedure to reinforce the lower abdominal wall. But in March 2011 I had suffered a groin avulsion. It’s an injury that’s as nasty as it sounds because, basically, the whole of your groin muscle comes off the bone.
It happened after I did a Cruyff turn at Melwood. I managed to walk off the pitch and get to the treatment room. As soon as I hobbled in, the medical team knew I was in trouble. ‘What happened?’ Chris said, worry lining his voice.
I shook my head. ‘My groin’s just exploded.’
It was a dramatic word, but ‘exploded’ had a measure of accuracy. They soon worked out that I had pulled the adductor longus tendon off at the bone. The avulsion had occurred where my adductor muscle attaches onto my pubic symphysis area.
Your adductor muscle primarily helps when you swing your leg across your body. It is possible for such an injury to heal itself because it can form a new attachment lower down. Some footballers actually play with a half-attached adductor and they get assigned a secondary cleft – a little gap which helps them manage their movements. But as soon as I heard from the surgeon that, if we followed that non-interventionist approach, I could lose power when making a trademark crossfield pass, I was adamant. I wanted surgery. If all went well, the surgeon assured me, the adductor muscle would feel as good as new.
I was happy to take his advice and he also reassured me that Frank Lampard had come back from the same injury. I would be out for twelve weeks but I would make a complete recovery. It ended my season but Chris said he would come out to Portugal with me in the summer. I would be ready to play again long before the start of the 2011–12 season.
It was vital to have a strong core around the groin and adductor area because, in a typical Premier League game, I would run eight miles and a mile of that distance would be covered at high speed. There was always plenty of twisting and turning of the groin and the adductor. Some players believed that massage was the key to everything but our medical team had a strong belief that active rehabilitation, strengthening and hard work were essential in ensuring that the surgery was successful.
I nodded. After the surgery I would be ready to put in as much hard work as we needed.
The operation seemed routine and it left me with a neat four-inch scar. It was another to add to the collection. But we soon hit a problem. I kept suffering from discomfort and, sometimes, pain in and around my pelvis. Chris, the Liverpool doctors Zaf Iqbal and Peter Brukner and the surgeon Ernest Schilders all examined me – and gave the all-clear. It was still early days. I just needed to relax and allow the adductor to heal.
We thought some sun would sort me out. I was longing to get to Portugal and feel back to normal again. Alex, the girls and I went out for our summer break – and Chris took a working holiday with us. We would go to the gym in the morning and evenings to work hard and he would leave me to enjoy my holiday with the family the rest of the time.
It was frustrating. We kept needing to pull back in terms of our targets for the first of July – the day I hoped to start preseason training. Anything as simple as a high knee-step or a lunge would hurt too much. They were the basic exercises we needed to strengthen the adductor.
We devised a new plan that we would pick up the pace at Melwood. I would, surely, be fully rested and recovered by then.
The plan went awry. On my first day back at Melwood, after we’d done some lengthy but gentle warm-up routines, we decided I would go for a little jog. I knew I couldn’t kick a ball but, surely, I could manage a ten-minute jog around the training fields. I had made some progress in the pool and on the alter-g, a weight-bearing treadmill which enables you to jog without placing any stress on your body.
I was looking forward to it, the simple mindless pleasure of being outside and moving one foot in front of the other at a steady pace. I had not run for a very long time.
My feet began to move. One, two, three … and by the time I had taken my ninth and tenth step I had to stop. My face was a mask of pain.
I could not run another step. It was excruciating; and it was frightening.
What was going on? I was a professional footballer and I couldn’t even run ten paces. My operation had been twelve weeks earlier. I was meant to be fit and flying by now.
It was obvious that the medics were also concerned. Part of their job was to study the clinical side and then pinpoint the reasons a player might be feeling pain. Such explanations always helped ease the stress and the worry. But they were not sure what to tell me. All the tests the doctors had since run showed that the surgery had been successful. Yet I still felt completely crippled.
They had explained years earlier that I picked up more injuries than many players because I was hyper-mobile. That meant I had real flexibility around my joints. It was great in the sense that flexibility helped my football. The downside was I was also more susceptible to injury. But my latest injury had apparently been resolved by surgery.
Chris and the doctors studied a new set of scans. They went through each of them in detail with me. They showed me that, when I tore off the adductor, I had also stripped away the ligament underneath the pubic symphysis. That explained why my movement was hampered and it perhaps indicated some instability. It was suggested that the gapping in my pelvic area was causing the pain. There was not much we could do about it except wait for the ligament to heal properly.
A week later, feeling a little better, we had a meeting with all the medics and it was decided I’d avoid running for a while. I’d switch to cycling.
Melwood felt very empty, with the first-team squad away on a preseason tour, but Darren Burgess, the club’s head fitness coach, soon called me. He asked me to do a twenty-four-minute bike ride. ‘Do this one for a physical hit,’ Darren said, ‘and let me know how you get on.’
The plan was to build on that first real test on the bike. Jordan Milsom, a good friend of mine and a top fitness coach, would be there to monitor me and the readings. I climbed on the bike and I began to pedal.
Wow, it was so painful. After two or three minutes, with sweat already beading my brow, and my face stretched into the wrinkly grimace of a very old man, it felt like I was having to ride all the way from Liverpool to the Trafford Centre in Manchester while sitting on a saddle of nails. That’s how agonizing it felt.
After five minutes I gave up. I had to stop. I surrendered.
I left a message on Darren’s voicemail. ‘You cannot put me through that again,’ I said. ‘Something’s not right. It feels serious.’
I was getting lower and lower. ‘It’s not feeling good,’ I told Jordan and Chris. ‘It’s excruciating.’
‘Where exactly are you feeling the pain?’ Jordan asked.
‘Sort of behind the balls,’ I said.
They looked worried.
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘it feels like someone is trying to knife me behind the balls.’
We didn’t laugh. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever be able to kick a ball again. It had been almost four months since my fateful Cruyff turn. At this stage
I was meant to be ready for a full-scale game. But my body had given up.
The pain was sporadic. I could go for hours feeling fine and then it would suddenly knife me when I was doing something as simple as getting in or out of my car.
‘It sounds like the pain is being caused when you open up the pelvis,’ Chris suggested.
‘Could be,’ I said. ‘There’s something going on between my privates and the middle. There’s something underneath my pelvis. It feels like my pelvis is opening. It’s like a great big gapping.’
Zaf Iqbal and Chris took me back to the surgeon, Ernest Schilders, who had done the operation at the Yorkshire Clinic near Bradford. Schilders was a fine surgeon, from Belgium, whom the club had relied on for years as our hip and groin specialist. I trusted him and I was even more worried when he could not identify any reason for the stabbing pain. We told him about the aborted jog, and the abandoned bike ride. Schilders looked bemused. He again said that he was completely confident the surgery had been successful. Schilders thought we needed a fresh pair of eyes. He suggested I see a pelvic specialist down in London.
It was sounding more and more serious. I couldn’t jog. I couldn’t ride a bike. I couldn’t kick a ball. And there was no chance I could jump up in the air and head it. I wasn’t able to do much at all.
Zaf, Chris and I travelled down by train to London. I had plenty of time to talk to them. They tried to keep my spirits up but we all knew that there was a real danger I might not improve. We had to face the possibility that, over fourteen years as a first-team player, so much damage had been done around the joint that the whole pelvis had been made unstable. Without a supporting structure I was finished as a hyper-mobile player, and probably as any sort of player. As soon as I tried even the most basic movements my whole pelvis felt like it was shearing.
Zaf and Chris encouraged me. Maybe the pelvic surgeon would come up with a simple solution. Perhaps it would be possible to pin the pelvis?
I shuddered when it was explained that it would be similar to putting a bolt through the joint.
Terrific. I didn’t feel good as we met our latest specialist, the pelvic guy, and I waited to hear if he was about to tell me it really was all over. He was very thorough and, after a long examination, he went back to the scan taken that morning.
‘Look here,’ he said, pointing to a shadowy smudge. ‘You’ve got all of this white fluid here. I don’t know how much fluid you should have after this procedure because it’s not one that I do. But you need to find out what’s going on with this fluid. You’d better go back to Schilders.’
We were going round in circles. But, on the train journey back to Liverpool, Doc Iqbal explained that a build-up of fluid usually indicated an infection. It was confusing as he had already carried out a full battery of blood tests for infection. The clearest sign of an infection is a high white blood-cell count and mine had remained normal throughout the long haul. Maybe Schilders would have a brainwave.
An appointment back in Bradford was arranged with Schilders for later that week. Zaf and Chris asked me to rest up as much as possible at home.
The body works in miraculous ways and maybe it decided that my poor old heart and brain had ached enough. It began to do something very strange. The next day, at home, my wound opened a little. It seeped out white, yellowy, gunky pus.
A clean, perfectly stitched scar opened up – less like a flower than a nasty weed with white and yellow buds on the top. What the feck was going on now? I found a cotton wool pad and dabbed it clean. More gunk began to ooze out.
I was so scared of what I saw I took a photo of my wound. I was having a serious panic. I sent the image to Chris with a message:
What the feck is this?
Chris texted back:
This is v good. Will call in 2 mins. This means it really is an infection.
I messaged him –
That’s good?!?
– after sending another photographic update.
Chris called me. I told him that I’d just had to use another pad to clear the next hit of pus.
‘It’s great news, Stevie,’ Chris enthused. I must have grunted dubiously because he quickly explained that my pain had almost certainly been caused by the pus pushing the joint apart. It also caused the sensation of instability in my pelvis. We had been worried that something had become seriously unhinged in the pelvic area. But, instead, the build-up of fluid had caused immense pressure on the joint and essentially forced it apart. No wonder it had felt unstable.
Chris got me back to Bradford quickly to see Schilders and have a repeat MRI scan. It was clear as day, they said, after they had examined the scan. They could see the build-up of pus jammed right between the joint and my pubic symphysis. The apparently normal post-op fluid was probably a raging infection which, bizarrely, hadn’t been picked up by any of the tests.
I began to understand. No wonder it had felt as if I was being stabbed in the bollocks.
While we waited for them to run a test on the pus, to confirm it was the infection they all suspected, Chris took me for a coffee in Shipley, on the edge of Bradford. He was fired up. ‘We need this to be an infection,’ he told me. ‘If this is an infection you’ll be fine. You’ll be sorted.’
I was suddenly desperate. I wanted to be infected. I was praying silently for an infection.
An hour later the results were in and there was absolute confirmation. I was infected. I felt like punching the air. What a result!
Schilders smiled. He understood. He was also relieved. There had been a 1 in 10,000 chance of picking up an infection during surgery. I got the one – and it explained everything. But it was all right. I would go into the Spire, a hospital in Liverpool, and spend a week recovering. They would pump me full of antibiotics and kill off the infection.
There was a chance I would be playing again in late September 2011, early October at the latest. I could not stop smiling as I headed off to hospital for a week.
I had no idea then I would soon feel far lower than I’d ever done before. Yet another mysterious injury, and a deep depression, loomed over me. The worst was on its way.
At first there was only good news. In hospital my pain diminished rapidly. The pus had been drained away and I felt a noticeable improvement in my movement every day. My recovery had begun.
Within a week of getting home I was back at Melwood. I was able to jog freely a few days later. I could ride a bike without pain. I could soon run. I could jump. I could kick a ball. It was a beautiful feeling.
I was still nervous. I had been out for six months and had lost confidence in my body. I wasn’t sure if my groin and pelvis would stand up to the rigours of training. But within a few days I felt like my old self again. I felt normal, at last.
I made my comeback on 21 September 2011.
Excerpt from Gerrard: My Story
I’d had groin problems my whole career, adductor muscle pain and numerous surgeries on my hernia. My groin, and the gracilis [a small muscle in the inner thigh] release I’d needed, had cost me my place in the 2002 World Cup. It was a chronic issue and I’d already had a revision of a previous hernia procedure to reinforce the lower abdominal wall. But in March 2011 I had suffered a groin avulsion. It’s an injury that’s as nasty as it sounds because, basically, the whole of your groin muscle comes off the bone.
It happened after I did a Cruyff turn at Melwood. I managed to walk off the pitch and get to the treatment room. As soon as I hobbled in, the medical team knew I was in trouble. ‘What happened?’ Chris said, worry lining his voice.
I shook my head. ‘My groin’s just exploded.’
It was a dramatic word, but ‘exploded’ had a measure of accuracy. They soon worked out that I had pulled the adductor longus tendon off at the bone. The avulsion had occurred where my adductor muscle attaches onto my pubic symphysis area.
Your adductor muscle primarily helps when you swing your leg across your body. It is possible for such an injury to heal itself because it can form a new attachment lower down. Some footballers actually play with a half-attached adductor and they get assigned a secondary cleft – a little gap which helps them manage their movements. But as soon as I heard from the surgeon that, if we followed that non-interventionist approach, I could lose power when making a trademark crossfield pass, I was adamant. I wanted surgery. If all went well, the surgeon assured me, the adductor muscle would feel as good as new.
I was happy to take his advice and he also reassured me that Frank Lampard had come back from the same injury. I would be out for twelve weeks but I would make a complete recovery. It ended my season but Chris said he would come out to Portugal with me in the summer. I would be ready to play again long before the start of the 2011–12 season.
It was vital to have a strong core around the groin and adductor area because, in a typical Premier League game, I would run eight miles and a mile of that distance would be covered at high speed. There was always plenty of twisting and turning of the groin and the adductor. Some players believed that massage was the key to everything but our medical team had a strong belief that active rehabilitation, strengthening and hard work were essential in ensuring that the surgery was successful.
I nodded. After the surgery I would be ready to put in as much hard work as we needed.
The operation seemed routine and it left me with a neat four-inch scar. It was another to add to the collection. But we soon hit a problem. I kept suffering from discomfort and, sometimes, pain in and around my pelvis. Chris, the Liverpool doctors Zaf Iqbal and Peter Brukner and the surgeon Ernest Schilders all examined me – and gave the all-clear. It was still early days. I just needed to relax and allow the adductor to heal.
We thought some sun would sort me out. I was longing to get to Portugal and feel back to normal again. Alex, the girls and I went out for our summer break – and Chris took a working holiday with us. We would go to the gym in the morning and evenings to work hard and he would leave me to enjoy my holiday with the family the rest of the time.
It was frustrating. We kept needing to pull back in terms of our targets for the first of July – the day I hoped to start preseason training. Anything as simple as a high knee-step or a lunge would hurt too much. They were the basic exercises we needed to strengthen the adductor.
We devised a new plan that we would pick up the pace at Melwood. I would, surely, be fully rested and recovered by then.
The plan went awry. On my first day back at Melwood, after we’d done some lengthy but gentle warm-up routines, we decided I would go for a little jog. I knew I couldn’t kick a ball but, surely, I could manage a ten-minute jog around the training fields. I had made some progress in the pool and on the alter-g, a weight-bearing treadmill which enables you to jog without placing any stress on your body.
I was looking forward to it, the simple mindless pleasure of being outside and moving one foot in front of the other at a steady pace. I had not run for a very long time.
My feet began to move. One, two, three … and by the time I had taken my ninth and tenth step I had to stop. My face was a mask of pain.
I could not run another step. It was excruciating; and it was frightening.
What was going on? I was a professional footballer and I couldn’t even run ten paces. My operation had been twelve weeks earlier. I was meant to be fit and flying by now.
It was obvious that the medics were also concerned. Part of their job was to study the clinical side and then pinpoint the reasons a player might be feeling pain. Such explanations always helped ease the stress and the worry. But they were not sure what to tell me. All the tests the doctors had since run showed that the surgery had been successful. Yet I still felt completely crippled.
They had explained years earlier that I picked up more injuries than many players because I was hyper-mobile. That meant I had real flexibility around my joints. It was great in the sense that flexibility helped my football. The downside was I was also more susceptible to injury. But my latest injury had apparently been resolved by surgery.
Chris and the doctors studied a new set of scans. They went through each of them in detail with me. They showed me that, when I tore off the adductor, I had also stripped away the ligament underneath the pubic symphysis. That explained why my movement was hampered and it perhaps indicated some instability. It was suggested that the gapping in my pelvic area was causing the pain. There was not much we could do about it except wait for the ligament to heal properly.
A week later, feeling a little better, we had a meeting with all the medics and it was decided I’d avoid running for a while. I’d switch to cycling.
Melwood felt very empty, with the first-team squad away on a preseason tour, but Darren Burgess, the club’s head fitness coach, soon called me. He asked me to do a twenty-four-minute bike ride. ‘Do this one for a physical hit,’ Darren said, ‘and let me know how you get on.’
The plan was to build on that first real test on the bike. Jordan Milsom, a good friend of mine and a top fitness coach, would be there to monitor me and the readings. I climbed on the bike and I began to pedal.
Wow, it was so painful. After two or three minutes, with sweat already beading my brow, and my face stretched into the wrinkly grimace of a very old man, it felt like I was having to ride all the way from Liverpool to the Trafford Centre in Manchester while sitting on a saddle of nails. That’s how agonizing it felt.
After five minutes I gave up. I had to stop. I surrendered.
I left a message on Darren’s voicemail. ‘You cannot put me through that again,’ I said. ‘Something’s not right. It feels serious.’
I was getting lower and lower. ‘It’s not feeling good,’ I told Jordan and Chris. ‘It’s excruciating.’
‘Where exactly are you feeling the pain?’ Jordan asked.
‘Sort of behind the balls,’ I said.
They looked worried.
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘it feels like someone is trying to knife me behind the balls.’
We didn’t laugh. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever be able to kick a ball again. It had been almost four months since my fateful Cruyff turn. At this stage
I was meant to be ready for a full-scale game. But my body had given up.
The pain was sporadic. I could go for hours feeling fine and then it would suddenly knife me when I was doing something as simple as getting in or out of my car.
‘It sounds like the pain is being caused when you open up the pelvis,’ Chris suggested.
‘Could be,’ I said. ‘There’s something going on between my privates and the middle. There’s something underneath my pelvis. It feels like my pelvis is opening. It’s like a great big gapping.’
Zaf Iqbal and Chris took me back to the surgeon, Ernest Schilders, who had done the operation at the Yorkshire Clinic near Bradford. Schilders was a fine surgeon, from Belgium, whom the club had relied on for years as our hip and groin specialist. I trusted him and I was even more worried when he could not identify any reason for the stabbing pain. We told him about the aborted jog, and the abandoned bike ride. Schilders looked bemused. He again said that he was completely confident the surgery had been successful. Schilders thought we needed a fresh pair of eyes. He suggested I see a pelvic specialist down in London.
It was sounding more and more serious. I couldn’t jog. I couldn’t ride a bike. I couldn’t kick a ball. And there was no chance I could jump up in the air and head it. I wasn’t able to do much at all.
Zaf, Chris and I travelled down by train to London. I had plenty of time to talk to them. They tried to keep my spirits up but we all knew that there was a real danger I might not improve. We had to face the possibility that, over fourteen years as a first-team player, so much damage had been done around the joint that the whole pelvis had been made unstable. Without a supporting structure I was finished as a hyper-mobile player, and probably as any sort of player. As soon as I tried even the most basic movements my whole pelvis felt like it was shearing.
Zaf and Chris encouraged me. Maybe the pelvic surgeon would come up with a simple solution. Perhaps it would be possible to pin the pelvis?
I shuddered when it was explained that it would be similar to putting a bolt through the joint.
Terrific. I didn’t feel good as we met our latest specialist, the pelvic guy, and I waited to hear if he was about to tell me it really was all over. He was very thorough and, after a long examination, he went back to the scan taken that morning.
‘Look here,’ he said, pointing to a shadowy smudge. ‘You’ve got all of this white fluid here. I don’t know how much fluid you should have after this procedure because it’s not one that I do. But you need to find out what’s going on with this fluid. You’d better go back to Schilders.’
We were going round in circles. But, on the train journey back to Liverpool, Doc Iqbal explained that a build-up of fluid usually indicated an infection. It was confusing as he had already carried out a full battery of blood tests for infection. The clearest sign of an infection is a high white blood-cell count and mine had remained normal throughout the long haul. Maybe Schilders would have a brainwave.
An appointment back in Bradford was arranged with Schilders for later that week. Zaf and Chris asked me to rest up as much as possible at home.
The body works in miraculous ways and maybe it decided that my poor old heart and brain had ached enough. It began to do something very strange. The next day, at home, my wound opened a little. It seeped out white, yellowy, gunky pus.
A clean, perfectly stitched scar opened up – less like a flower than a nasty weed with white and yellow buds on the top. What the feck was going on now? I found a cotton wool pad and dabbed it clean. More gunk began to ooze out.
I was so scared of what I saw I took a photo of my wound. I was having a serious panic. I sent the image to Chris with a message:
What the feck is this?
Chris texted back:
This is v good. Will call in 2 mins. This means it really is an infection.
I messaged him –
That’s good?!?
– after sending another photographic update.
Chris called me. I told him that I’d just had to use another pad to clear the next hit of pus.
‘It’s great news, Stevie,’ Chris enthused. I must have grunted dubiously because he quickly explained that my pain had almost certainly been caused by the pus pushing the joint apart. It also caused the sensation of instability in my pelvis. We had been worried that something had become seriously unhinged in the pelvic area. But, instead, the build-up of fluid had caused immense pressure on the joint and essentially forced it apart. No wonder it had felt unstable.
Chris got me back to Bradford quickly to see Schilders and have a repeat MRI scan. It was clear as day, they said, after they had examined the scan. They could see the build-up of pus jammed right between the joint and my pubic symphysis. The apparently normal post-op fluid was probably a raging infection which, bizarrely, hadn’t been picked up by any of the tests.
I began to understand. No wonder it had felt as if I was being stabbed in the bollocks.
While we waited for them to run a test on the pus, to confirm it was the infection they all suspected, Chris took me for a coffee in Shipley, on the edge of Bradford. He was fired up. ‘We need this to be an infection,’ he told me. ‘If this is an infection you’ll be fine. You’ll be sorted.’
I was suddenly desperate. I wanted to be infected. I was praying silently for an infection.
An hour later the results were in and there was absolute confirmation. I was infected. I felt like punching the air. What a result!
Schilders smiled. He understood. He was also relieved. There had been a 1 in 10,000 chance of picking up an infection during surgery. I got the one – and it explained everything. But it was all right. I would go into the Spire, a hospital in Liverpool, and spend a week recovering. They would pump me full of antibiotics and kill off the infection.
There was a chance I would be playing again in late September 2011, early October at the latest. I could not stop smiling as I headed off to hospital for a week.
I had no idea then I would soon feel far lower than I’d ever done before. Yet another mysterious injury, and a deep depression, loomed over me. The worst was on its way.
At first there was only good news. In hospital my pain diminished rapidly. The pus had been drained away and I felt a noticeable improvement in my movement every day. My recovery had begun.
Within a week of getting home I was back at Melwood. I was able to jog freely a few days later. I could ride a bike without pain. I could soon run. I could jump. I could kick a ball. It was a beautiful feeling.
I was still nervous. I had been out for six months and had lost confidence in my body. I wasn’t sure if my groin and pelvis would stand up to the rigours of training. But within a few days I felt like my old self again. I felt normal, at last.
I made my comeback on 21 September 2011.
Excerpt from Gerrard: My Story
If the popular diagnosis of Liverpool's problems is true - that they're knackered and their defence needs organising - then the extra time on the training ground will help not hinder.
Its longer.
I bet on the footie and the German games started again on the 20th and 21st.
I think its stupid to have an aim set out for the season, then when it seems like we are exceeding this expectation raise the bar. Why? You're just setting yourself up for dissapointment.
We have said top four is the aim. Why? Because with the funds available and players we have we should be able to at least compete for a spot. So when things are going well why is it right to raise the bar and say "well now I think we can compete for the title" Only a few moments ago we were saying this squad is capable for challenging for top four maximum.
This is why we need to remind ourselves that top four was the aim, because in relation to that original aim we are still in with a shout. We need to remind ourselves what are squad is capable of, its a testement that a team with the abysmal defence of ours is anywhere near the top of the league. In fact it may even say more about the lack of quality in the league than our team being good.
Now in regards to Rodgers being sacked because of missing out on top four. Nobody expected Klopp to come in and take us to top four in his first (not even full) season. Which is why nobody was upset when he finished 8th, he had no transfer window and guided us to two cup finals. An excellent achievment, not even up for debate.
Now, who said the reason we got knocked out the cups this season was because we were concentrating on the league? Thats the first I've heard. By concentrating on the league do you mean we played the kids?
We've been struggling in the league for a number of reasons, lack of depth, Mané absence, Matip's absence, Coutinho injury, Henderson injury (+ fatigue if you believe that), Lallana has also come out and said we dont have a winning mentality. I completely agree with this, you could see it back when we finished second. The players cant cope with pressure... its all well and good having young, hungry, fast players but experience cant be undermined.
The players we let go are players we needed to get rid of, and probably allowed us a bigger budget to spend players on. Its important to understand the difference in depth in squad and quality in depth. Liverpool lack QUALITY in depth.
No point saying well Benteke is awful, but you know what? we dont have the depth so lets keep him, pay him his wages for another season (whatever astronomical amount that adds up to) and hope he gets us a goal or two. On top of that, Benteke wouldnt be happy sitting on the bench knowing theres a club that is after his signature who are willing to offer first team football. You cant just keep every player because you need depth.
Looks like Lallana is getting a new contract worth £150k a week. Isn't that more than what Sanchez is on at Arsenal?
Is it? Leicester entered last season with the aim of surviving for another season. By around this stage, although there was talk of the title, expectations were firmly set on European, potentially Champions League qualification, and shortly afterwards raised again Champions League qualification and potentially winning the league. Had they seen a huge slump and ended up 7th or 8th, regardless of whether their fans would have been delighted with that if you'd offered them that before the season began, they'd have been disappointed come May. Hell, if they'd lost out in the final few games they'd have enjoyed the ride, but would still have been disappointed to fall short at the final hurdle.
Your target in 2013/14 wasn't a title challenge, but you were all still extremely disappointed to finish 2nd at the end of the season because your impressive form had raised your expectations from European qualification and potential CL spot to winning the league. Likewise, you aren't happy now because you're still on course for a challenge for top 4, you're disappointed because 4 games ago you were within touching distance of 1st.
United's target for every season for the last two decades has been to qualify for the CL, with that raising to winning the title as season's have developed. When we've missed out on the league, we've been disappointed, and when we've missed out on CL qualification, managers have been sacked.
The expectations set out at the beginning of the season will be the minimum, if it looks like you're going to exceed that but then suddenly collapse, people are rightfully going to be disappointed.
If you qualify for the CL this season you can be obviously be pleased with your season. However, you can still be disappointed that the very brief title challenge ended in such catastrophic fashion.
That was precisely the expectation for Klopp, or to challenge for it at least. Rodgers was sacked very early on in the season and Klopp brought in for the sole reason that it was already beginning to look like CL qualification was getting away from you. As it happened, Klopp got nowhere near challenging for top 4, even when the cup competitions were in their relative infancy. The excuse that the league was abandoned in favour for the cups is a ridiculous one, and is made more ridiculous by the fact that you won neither competition. People make out like Klopp came in halfway through the season, when in reality, he had 30 of the 38 games as Liverpool manager, and there was no noticeable improvement or drop off in league form at any point during that season.
You read this forum, right? A couple of your scouse brethren have suggested as much, and Klopp himself came out and commented on the importance of league matches vs cup matches with his "rather lose 3 in 3 competitions than 3 in 1" soundbite.
So basically, you've struggled because of a lack of strength in depth? Which is precisely the point I made. Klopp got rid of a number of players because he didn't think they suited the one style of play he likes to use, and funnily enough, Klopp using just one style of play and having no players suitable for a different system is another reason that you've struggled of late. Looking at your outgoing transfers, just a few of Skrtel, Sakho, Benteke, Allen, Ibe, Flanagan or Balotelli could have helped you out a great deal this season because they'd have provided you with other options and better cover for positions than you currently have. It's not like you've had a crisis of absent players in one position, you've had 4 players gone from 4 different positions.
Bullshit.
If you only finish 4th chances are you won't win the CL next season anyway. It's only money that's the difference.
Whichever place you finish, the chances are you are not gonna win the Champions League next season. That doesn't mean finishing 5th is the same as finishing third. That doesn't even constitute an argument.
To say nothing of how stupid 'only money' sounds.
The argument wasn't just about finishing 5th v 3rd, it was finishing 5th plus winning the FA Cup.
A Chelsea side that finished 5th won the CL only days later. Same for Liverpool in 05 iirc.
It's more about pedigree and having what it takes for a cup competition than whether you got 2nd or 4th in a league format.
@Pat_Mustard and @Barbara Charles
Although it looks like a wind up, it brings up a lot of facts our scouse friends find hard to accept.
Although it looks like a wind up, it brings up a lot of facts our scouse friends find hard to accept.
Its the human condition. We live and die by the need for hope regardless of how realistic it is. Usually the more desperate you are, the bigger the most minute of glimmer (of hope) appears to the beholder..
He wasn't so unknown. He was a very talented bad boy. Much the same as when they signed Ballotelli. They simply can't attract the star players anymore so took gambles on rogues. I thought they may have tried to sign Ravel Morrison.
Form doesn't really come into the equation when it comes to derby. Personally, I write it off as 3 points gained for Liverpool every time they face Everton, anything more will be a bonus. It's extremely annoying considering how Everton always raise its game against us but always bend over for Liverpool.
For anyone who seriously think that Liverpool will not make top 4, they are now priced at 5/4 not to make top 4 and I thought that's pretty good value. Not sure why the bookmakers would price Arsenal higher than Liverpool, when Arsenal is still above Liverpool and always make top 4.
The same as a Rogers team that included Suarez, Gerrard, Sterling and a shit-hot Sturridge not the invalid we have now. Yeah, no comparison. Rogers had an exciting team but was very lucky with his personnel.
Well done for being incredibly selective without giving much thought behind the reasons behind those examples. In fact I'd go as far as to say you've looked at pure black & white wihout ANY thought as to why any of those circumstances occured. I simply can't be arsed going through it again but to condense a response to your points in order a) playing weakended teams in the PL b) playing weakended teams in the FAC c) playing weakended teams in the FAC d) playing weakended teams in the PL e) 9 games in 30 days with injuries to, absentees, just returning from injury ... vuirtually all of our top players and, unlike most of the other top teams, we have a very small squad.
As I said you gave it no thought, it looks good to you and that's enough to launch into LFC, which, let's face it, is all that many on here require (which I get I'd be gleeful too if I was a Manc). Let me pose you another question instead, consider it arse about tit, when we were playing well what were the key factors influencing our form and style ?
Liverpool will comfortably make into top 4, despite the fact that klopps one dimensional tactics being found out more consistantly nowadays. The liverpool fans who keep insisting the gegenpressing is the next best thing since sliced bread, will find out all about its flaws next season with thick and fast european games. Thats when they will drop down and probably out of top 4, as usual. sorry but had to be said.
I t doesn't take a genius to work out the point I'm making. Progress is slow and doesn't appear overnight. There will be periods when it comes together and times when it doesn't. Stability and consistency live in the realm of experience.
The voice of reason and intelligent debate yet again.
Form doesn't really come into the equation when it comes to derby. Personally, I write it off as 3 points gained for Liverpool every time they face Everton, anything more will be a bonus. It's extremely annoying considering how Everton always raise its game against us but always bend over for Liverpool.
But as I said, Liverpool have won 2 out of the last 5 against Everton?
It's one of those weird quirks of football that despite this, Everton have still got 0 points from these fixtures and Liverpool have gained 15.
I've said multiple times what I think the problems have been. You've got no strength in depth because Klopp trimmed the squad to the extreme, leaving little to no cover for a number of positions, and leaving no room for him to adapt his tactics. It's Klopp's fault and Klopp's alone that you had no one even remotely good enough to step in and cover your first XI, and Klopp's fault and Klopp's alone that you've tried to play the same way regardless of how the opposition have countered the tactic.
I said this earlier, but you've not had a crisis where a number of players who play in one position were unavailable at the same time forcing you to have an obvious weakness, you had a few players from different positions unavailable. It's not ideal, but it shouldn't decimate a team the way it has with you. You knew Mane and potentially Matip would be gone for the ACoN, and you knew injuries are more likely to occur during fixture congestion. You also knew that the busiest period of the season would coincide with the ACoN starting, so it shouldn't take a genius to work out that you'd need a bit of decent cover to help carry you through, and any manager worth his salt should at least have a Plan B.
But yeah, no thought at all.
This thread is interesting and I am enjoying it. However, for the United fans criticizing Klopp for trimming the squad, buying average players, his tactics that are not sustainable etc, it would really not speak very well of United and the manager if he still finishes above your team this season.
Sure, they are seemingly in free fall but they are still ahead of you. Perhaps hold off a bit just in case Liverpool finish above United
Sure, they are seemingly in free fall but they are still ahead of you. Perhaps hold off a bit just in case Liverpool finish above United
But we're not claiming to be much better. However, our current manager has had 30 fewer league games than theirs.
We're paying the price for a poor run early in the season and being inconsistent in front of goal.
If we miss out on top 4, Mourinho will get one more season where the expectation will be to mount a title challenge. If he doesn't do that, he'll get sacked. We won't be sat here going "but injuries", "but fixtures".
@Rafateria admittedly I haven't read too deep into the discussion, but you can't be lamenting the size of your squad when you lose 2-0 to Hull.
So what is his plan until the end of the season? Keep axing the one that makes the latest mistakes?
Manninger to the rescue!
Why go for Hart when you have Karius? 
Silly silly Jurgs.
Silly silly Jurgs.About time.