RAWK Goes into Meltdown 2014/2015 - The "We go again" Edition

cesc's_mullet said:
I'm not usually one to laugh at Liverpool, but I did find this funny:

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Is that a youtube link? For some reason, I can't see youtube links recently (for the past week I think).
 
So wait, that pompous prick PoP actually was playing up the signing of Balotelli? I wouldn't have known that judging by his essays on goalscoring and how Rodgers signings would never have rectified that problem.
 
Some of the RAWKites have really turned on PoP.. Not surprised considering the BS he was spewing pretending to be superior to the rest of those loonies (doesnt take much but still).

The 6-1 vs Stoke seems to be the last straw for most of them.. They've gone from conspiracy theories to finally being resigned to the fact that they might get out this "transistion" being nothing more than a mid-table team.

As funny as it is, I dont want to be in Rodgers shoes right now.. They really badly need experience in that team, they're going to get nowhere expecting 3 or 4 players, all youngsters to carry this team like Gerrard has in the last 5-7 years..
 
About 7 years ago, I became the head coach of a youth academy team. Under 18's age group, playing in a regional league. There was no relegation, and this team was the bottom team three years in a row through U15/16/17 age groups. I became the head coach, and straight away looked at the league programme to identify games we could win, games we'd probably lose, and games we could draw/win or lose. The aim was to finish at least 8th and make the regional cup (only the top 8 teams from each regional division made it). This team conceded 70-something goals the season before, and only scored 15, winning 1 game the entirety of the previous season. So a lot of mentality needed to be changed, as well as tactics and training. So I divided the programme into blocks of games, and set minimum results based on previous performance, my knowledge of the opposition, and the tactics we were going to employ (and I must confess, we ended up being quite Pulisesque at times). The first block of games, we did okay in. We won the first game on a narrow and hard-fought 1-0, then lost the next game heavily though, to a big team, and shipped 6 goals. But we drew the next one against another big team, missing out on the win in the last minute with a tremendous save from their keeper on a 1v1. We then lost the next game 1-0, to the team that eventually won the division. After that, though, we won two in a row, before losing to a top 8 "rival" My aim for the first block of 6 games (out of 18) was to get at least two wins, and we got three.

So confidence was high, and mentality was starting to change. The next block of 6 games, though, was the tricky block. We faced teams that we could win, lose or draw against. Our first game was a local derby, against a team that put 21 goals in total on the team in the previous season, over two games. We drew 3-3, losing the 3-2 lead to a last minute direct free kick. After that, we won another against the only team they'd beaten the season before in a very possession-dominant but rain-sodden and mistake-laden 2-1 win. We then played the team that ended up in third place, who hammered us, and then two of the "either-way" teams. We lost both. Mentality completely absent in the games. We needed a big team meeting to go over our goals for the season again, and put the controllables back into the players minds (i.e. their own performances). That took us to the, by now, worst team that season. Another rain-sodden, mistake laden game, but another win. Players were starting to believe, because now we'd more than doubled the number of wins in a season for the past 5 seasons. It was on. We approached the last block of 6 games with confidence and enthusiasm. We knew that there was one team in that block that were going to hammer us, no matter how well we prepared. We knew, because I had coached all their players when they were kids, and I knew how good they were. So we wrote that game off. We needed three wins from 5 of our last 6 to guarantee 8th place, and the last game was a home derby. So we had a two-game margin of error.

We played the first game and got destroyed 7-0. You would think that this would have dented confidence, but no - it made them more determined, because they knew they had 5 games to get three wins in. And that's what happened. They blew the next opponent away 4-0 in a game of such measured aggression that it bordered on illegal. Nothing dirty, but the opposition team knew they had been in a battle. Their coach also made a point of telling the players that they used to hate playing my team because my team were dirty (the reputation they had), but now they hated playing them because not only were they not dirty, but they were actually good. This boosted their confidence no end. We played another top 8 rival in another soaking, muddy game, and narrowly lost to two of the clumsiest mud-bath goals I've ever seen live. But again, players remained confident because their eyes were on the prize. We played the throw-away game next, and as predicted, the other team didn't even get out of second gear to get their 5 goal win. We didn't panic though, as we used the game to work on our defensive shape. Our next opponents, who had beaten us 4-0 at home, would be difficult at their ground, and had a very fervent and vocal home support. We prepared our set-pieces, we prepared our defensive shape, and we prepared our counter-attack patterns. Then we got some good news on the grapevine. Their keeper had been injured in training. The keeper was excellent, and their second keeper not so much. We played a tactically perfect, Rafa-esque away game, and won 1-0 off an early goal. We pressed like champions, and they couldn't get near our goal, and what they did get forward, went straight to our keeper or over the crossbar.

This brought us to our last game, the home derby, and we needed to win. Anything other than that, and not only our local rivals, but two other teams (including the team that beat us in the 3rd game by 6 goals) could overtake us and take that 8th spot. We would have had a great season either way, having jumped off the bottom of the table and got us comfortably mid-table for our efforts. But the players wanted more. The hunger was there. There was no need for a team talk. We simply said "we won't get another chance this season to make a bit of history", and away we went. It couldn't have gone any better. 1-0 up at half time on a lightning fast counter attack that our Albanian forward assisted with the same kind of outside-of-the-foot pass that Liverpool are becoming handy at. 2-0 up just after the half with a well-rehearsed corner. Then the denouement. Having used their three subs, their keeper got sent off for swearing at the referee, having got a yellow seconds earlier for handling the ball outside the box. They put an outfield player in goal, and 5 minutes later we get a penalty. Just before the final whistle, with their defenders nowhere to be found, our first scorer sets up the player who gave him the assist, and we make it 4-0. 250 supporters making it a bit of a party in the stands. We make the regional cup, and knock a few pre-season "favourites" out of contention. We got knocked out in the quarter finals, but that wasn't going to dampen the mood of the season. The players had set out an objective, and had achieved it with some aplomb.
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Phase of Play is a knobber.
 
Amethyst said:
Jesus. :lol:

Incase you didn't know, the guy writing the updates on the Echo is Kristian Walsh, seen here bawling his eyes out at Crystanbul last year:

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Honestly, you shouldn't be too harsh on supporters like this. When you've been on the top of the tree for so long and then experience a slow decline then that's really hard to take. So, they're reliving moments of greatness and its an emotional experience. It happens; for a few its very painful and hard to take. In some way, their decline has been in stops and starts and it teases them: an occasional success (CL win), and frequently hovering in and around the top four for years that gives them hope and arouses their dreams of what could be. That's the real tease. Perhaps it wouldn't have been as emotionally draining had they experienced mid-table obscurity or worse in a faster decline.
 
032Devil said:
Honestly, you shouldn't be too harsh on supporters like this. When you've been on the top of the tree for so long and then experience a slow decline then that's really hard to take. So, they're reliving moments of greatness and its an emotional experience. It happens; for a few its very painful and hard to take. In some way, their decline has been in stops and starts and it teases them: an occasional success (CL win), and frequently hovering in and around the top four for years that gives them hope and arouses their dreams of what could be. That's the real tease. Perhaps it wouldn't have been as emotionally draining had they experienced mid-table obscurity or worse in a faster decline.
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I think people are relishing in his misery because he was the one who wrote an article falsely accusing Evra of using race card many times during the Suarez case and then made some excuse when called out on it.
 
Sometimes I think PhaseofPlay is a WUM. I just hope he is. For his sanity.
 
Twigginater said:
Phase of Play is a knobber.
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:lol:

Its so obvious 'head coach of a youth academy team. U18s, playing in a regional league' is really just him screaming from the sidelines at his son's Sunday league team in some Liverpudlian suburb.
 
My absolute favourite thing about all of this, is the complete revision on Brendan Rodgers by our Scouse friends.

Twigginater said:
Phase of Play is a knobber.
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I don't know how anyone could sit there and write that shit out and expect anyone to read it and think "now this fella, this fella right here, he knows what he talking about when it comes to a 3 and 1 with a 2, or 2 with a 1'round the back with 2 going backwards and forwards in the corridors"
Or something.
 
In one.

Listen, this place has a reputation. We all know it. A lot of people see this forum as very heavily moderated place where we all need to follow a narrative.
There's a reason it's known as the North Korea of Liverpool forums.

I've always loved this place but I have always hated the way you can't have an opinion that goes against the general consensus. I think this forum has lost quite a few good posters because of it. Even some that get on people's nerves, but still create good debate (Kaizer for example). It's definitely something that I'm very bored of personally and it's stopped me from posting in the last few months.

I don't know what the mods can do about it, if anything.
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Ducklegs said:
My absolute favourite thing about all of this, is the complete revision on Brendan Rodgers by our Scouse friends.




I don't know how anyone could sit there and write that shit out and expect anyone to read it and think "now this fella, this fella right here, he knows what he talking about when it comes to a 3 and 1 with a 2, or 2 with a 1'round the back with 2 going backwards and forwards in the corridors"
Or something.
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When you have been hit or punched in the head as many times as the Scousers, you will seek or look for any sort of light -- false or otherwise.
 
Fecking PoP running away because he's been exposed.

I mean FFS everyone has an opinion and you can't always be right, but he's been always been placed such a pedestal over there, he refuses to believe he can ever be wrong. So when he is proved wrong, instead of manning up and saying my opinion was wrong (which there's nothing wrong with), he's tucked his tail between his legs and probably run off to Ganghi for some moral support.
 
11101 said:
:lol:

Its so obvious 'head coach of a youth academy team. U18s, playing in a regional league' is really just him screaming from the sidelines at his son's Sunday league team in some Liverpudlian suburb.
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Liverpool doesn't have suburbs. Just decreasingly threatening ghettos.
 
had to post it, too good not to

On the flip side - pretend coach and all around pompous asshole PhaseOfPlay had an astonishing fall from grace on RAWK, almost replicating our own.
For anybody who doesn't read the forum, this may seem harsh - but anyone that did will know that a more arrogant, unlikeable man you could not wish to discuss football with. He puts people down in oddly cruel ways, while elevating himself to god status.
For the last half season, he's demonised Balotelli, claimed he knew he was terrible all along, insulted and poured scorn on all who disagreed. The problem, nobody could prove him wrong because the transfer forum was shut and therefore unviewable. He repeatedly claimed that people would see the truth the day it opened.
Today, it did. Coincidentally, he's also left the site in a huff.


August 24th - as Balotelli is confirmed
[We're in for a brilliant season]. 3rd minimum, and another genuine title challenge after Christmas. We are, as Sammy Lee once said, back.
August 24th
"The more I think he'll actually make Sturridge better (in a way that Suarez was never going to)."
August 24th
"Certainly, as far as the attack, we're stronger in both depth and quality this season."
August 24th - in response to so,embody suggesting a lot of Balotelli's goals had come from penalties, something he himself would bang on about non stop from January onwards...
"Oh, do penalties not count as goals then? It also tells you that he has excellent shooting technique. That's why he is trusted to take penalties"
August 25th
"I'm excited by this. He's some talent with the ball. He may turn out to be the trickiest of the Tricky Reds. We're definitely going to be great to watch again this season."
August 27th
I maintained that if he came here he would be perhaps our most naturally gifted player."
August 29th - defending Balotelli's lack of assists, something he now criticises daily
"The problem with judging a player by assists is that they only count if the receiver scores. So a player may make a decent number of great passes, only for the striker to mess it up. So the pass doesn't show up as an "assist". Balotelli is comparable to Sturridge and Mata for chances created, key passes and assist totals. I would hazard a guess that this season might be his best season yet"
August 29th
"Sturridge and Suarez only made 8 assists for each other. That's only 2 more than Balotelli made on his own. There isn't much for a Balotelli-Sturridge partnership to live up to, when you think about it."
August 30th - bonus Lucas edition
"Why would he even get close to 15 games? Sell. He as absolutely no purpose in a squad as good as this one."
August 30th
"The usual negativity from the usual people. Balotelli is bargain and whatever you think of him, no defender will enjoy playing against him and he guarantees goals.
September 1st - responding to the post "Hopefully I'm wrong but I'm suddenly concerned that we don't have enough attackers. Anyone else share this concern?"
"Nope. Idiot."
PoP then spent months telling everyone we didn't have any strikers.
September 1st
"Sterling and any one of Sturridge or Balotelli, with Lallana or Coutinho behind them, would be frightening for any central defence to deal with.
cheesy.gif
"
September 3rd
"Balotelli will be aces by Christmas"
September 5th
"Teams will be terrified of him. Welbeck for £16m or an Italian international with countless titles to his name and the potential to be one of the best in the world?"
permalinksavereportgive goldreply
[–]VeselyTheCunt 1 point 20 minutes ago
Amazing. That guy had a fall coming. Half the forum despised him, the other half held him up as some sort of infallible Demi-God
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Twigginater said:
That in honestly is the best thing about RAWK. Unless there is a good source they just don't have a thread. Better than wading through all the bullshit here.
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Except they can't really discuss whether or not any given player would be a good piece of business, fit in well etc.
 
Kentonio said:
Well, fair fecks to him, one of the RAWKites did actually call the season perfectly back in August. Quite scary levels of accuracy in fact.
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Here's his response to it after being congratulated:

Thanks all.

I'm certainly unhappy about being proven right. I was very bitter at how everyone reacted but even more pissed off at the club for putting us in this position.

What worries me greatly is that I'm just an idiot living in Beirut with no football experience bar watching the game for the last 30 years or so. These people are supposed to be professionals.

If from my couch an amateur like me could see how badly we'd fecked up in the Summer, how could these idiots not? How in the hell could they put an entire season at the mercy of an injury prone player's fitness? How could they spend so much money on a defender without doing their homework? How could they replace the most hyperactive sportsman in the world with the slowest player in Liverpool history and the laziest striker we've ever had?

I said in the Summer that I wanted Brendan to come out and downplay expectations. He didn't. I think that was a massive mistake on his part. Too many people had their heads in the sand, too many were still on a high from the euphoria of last season (witness the anfield wrap going on about not taking 84 points all Summer). That left Brendan very much isolated and in danger, because a lot of people genuinely expected us to have a season like we did last year.

There needed to be more talk in the Summer of the challenges ahead, more downplaying of expectations and the club should have been very clear, from the outset, that Brendan would be safe whatever happened. I think he made a lot of mistakes this year based on his fear or losing his job (for Brendan to play old teams, defensive teams and slow teams, trying to grind out results... that is in complete contrast with who he is as a manager just like Houllier playing a gung ho style would be for him).
The saddest thing for me is that this season did not get me down. Part of it is because last season caused me so much pain, I think anything else football related will always pale in comparison. I'm still not over last season (just like the players, visibly).

Part of it is I saw all of it coming, and thus was no shocked or disappointed when it did. The anger people felt during this season, I felt when I saw us feck up in the Summer. By the time we lost to Villa, I made my peace with this season.

I hope Liverpool will be OK. Concurrently, I hope RAWK will start acting like grown ups when someone has an opinion that goes against the tide.
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http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/index.php?topic=315071.600

I was nodding until he got to the end...
 
Blast from the past:
From a thread during golden days of 2013-14 season:

When Brendan Rodgers spoke in his post match press conference after the 3-0 win, two of his answers in particular stood out to me.

"Is this your best day as Liverpool manager?"
"Every day is my best day as Liverpool manager".

"Are you surprised at how quickly United have fallen?
"To be honest I don't think about it. My focus is on Liverpool."

That was it. Liverpool had knocked United off their perch. Win comprehensively at Old Trafford - check. Rodgers was already past it, and looking up. This was part of the journey. We'd already left Manchester United behind. It was an indirect statement indicating that Liverpool were so superior to United that it wasn’t even worth celebrating their fall from grace. This was merely a pit stop in Rodgers masterplan of making Liverpool great again.
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:rolleyes:
 
RAWK said:
That's the worst thing for me.

He's in charge of managing the players and the way he's used the likes of Balotelli and Borini now makes it exceptionally hard to get rid of at a decent price. It's like someone taking you to a seafood restaurant and you saying 'Eurgh I don't like seafood, yuk!' and then being told well you can have nothing if you'd prefer and you going 'Nah I'll have the calamari for £50, don't want it tho' and then picking one bit of batter off and leaving it and going 'Eurgh yuk told you I don't like seafood, take it back....can we have the fifty quid back?'
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?!?
 
Have they got a match thread for the Stoke game? I'd like cheering up on my lunch break today, it feels like a Monday.
 
Twigginater said:
About 7 years ago, I became the head coach of a youth academy team. Under 18's age group, playing in a regional league. There was no relegation, and this team was the bottom team three years in a row through U15/16/17 age groups. I became the head coach, and straight away looked at the league programme to identify games we could win, games we'd probably lose, and games we could draw/win or lose. The aim was to finish at least 8th and make the regional cup (only the top 8 teams from each regional division made it). This team conceded 70-something goals the season before, and only scored 15, winning 1 game the entirety of the previous season. So a lot of mentality needed to be changed, as well as tactics and training. So I divided the programme into blocks of games, and set minimum results based on previous performance, my knowledge of the opposition, and the tactics we were going to employ (and I must confess, we ended up being quite Pulisesque at times). The first block of games, we did okay in. We won the first game on a narrow and hard-fought 1-0, then lost the next game heavily though, to a big team, and shipped 6 goals. But we drew the next one against another big team, missing out on the win in the last minute with a tremendous save from their keeper on a 1v1. We then lost the next game 1-0, to the team that eventually won the division. After that, though, we won two in a row, before losing to a top 8 "rival" My aim for the first block of 6 games (out of 18) was to get at least two wins, and we got three.

So confidence was high, and mentality was starting to change. The next block of 6 games, though, was the tricky block. We faced teams that we could win, lose or draw against. Our first game was a local derby, against a team that put 21 goals in total on the team in the previous season, over two games. We drew 3-3, losing the 3-2 lead to a last minute direct free kick. After that, we won another against the only team they'd beaten the season before in a very possession-dominant but rain-sodden and mistake-laden 2-1 win. We then played the team that ended up in third place, who hammered us, and then two of the "either-way" teams. We lost both. Mentality completely absent in the games. We needed a big team meeting to go over our goals for the season again, and put the controllables back into the players minds (i.e. their own performances). That took us to the, by now, worst team that season. Another rain-sodden, mistake laden game, but another win. Players were starting to believe, because now we'd more than doubled the number of wins in a season for the past 5 seasons. It was on. We approached the last block of 6 games with confidence and enthusiasm. We knew that there was one team in that block that were going to hammer us, no matter how well we prepared. We knew, because I had coached all their players when they were kids, and I knew how good they were. So we wrote that game off. We needed three wins from 5 of our last 6 to guarantee 8th place, and the last game was a home derby. So we had a two-game margin of error.

We played the first game and got destroyed 7-0. You would think that this would have dented confidence, but no - it made them more determined, because they knew they had 5 games to get three wins in. And that's what happened. They blew the next opponent away 4-0 in a game of such measured aggression that it bordered on illegal. Nothing dirty, but the opposition team knew they had been in a battle. Their coach also made a point of telling the players that they used to hate playing my team because my team were dirty (the reputation they had), but now they hated playing them because not only were they not dirty, but they were actually good. This boosted their confidence no end. We played another top 8 rival in another soaking, muddy game, and narrowly lost to two of the clumsiest mud-bath goals I've ever seen live. But again, players remained confident because their eyes were on the prize. We played the throw-away game next, and as predicted, the other team didn't even get out of second gear to get their 5 goal win. We didn't panic though, as we used the game to work on our defensive shape. Our next opponents, who had beaten us 4-0 at home, would be difficult at their ground, and had a very fervent and vocal home support. We prepared our set-pieces, we prepared our defensive shape, and we prepared our counter-attack patterns. Then we got some good news on the grapevine. Their keeper had been injured in training. The keeper was excellent, and their second keeper not so much. We played a tactically perfect, Rafa-esque away game, and won 1-0 off an early goal. We pressed like champions, and they couldn't get near our goal, and what they did get forward, went straight to our keeper or over the crossbar.

This brought us to our last game, the home derby, and we needed to win. Anything other than that, and not only our local rivals, but two other teams (including the team that beat us in the 3rd game by 6 goals) could overtake us and take that 8th spot. We would have had a great season either way, having jumped off the bottom of the table and got us comfortably mid-table for our efforts. But the players wanted more. The hunger was there. There was no need for a team talk. We simply said "we won't get another chance this season to make a bit of history", and away we went. It couldn't have gone any better. 1-0 up at half time on a lightning fast counter attack that our Albanian forward assisted with the same kind of outside-of-the-foot pass that Liverpool are becoming handy at. 2-0 up just after the half with a well-rehearsed corner. Then the denouement. Having used their three subs, their keeper got sent off for swearing at the referee, having got a yellow seconds earlier for handling the ball outside the box. They put an outfield player in goal, and 5 minutes later we get a penalty. Just before the final whistle, with their defenders nowhere to be found, our first scorer sets up the player who gave him the assist, and we make it 4-0. 250 supporters making it a bit of a party in the stands. We make the regional cup, and knock a few pre-season "favourites" out of contention. We got knocked out in the quarter finals, but that wasn't going to dampen the mood of the season. The players had set out an objective, and had achieved it with some aplomb.
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Phase of Play is a knobber.
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Why does that post read like it was written by Steve Bruce? (see this thread if that doesn't make sense: https://www.redcafe.net/threads/steve-bruce-the-author.405057/)
 
The Man Himself said:
Blast from the past:
From a thread during golden days of 2013-14 season:



:rolleyes:
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:lol: Goodness me.

Again though, this idea that last wasn't a complete anomaly. For first time ever we finished outside the top 3 and Liverpool had a rare title challenge, but it's treated as though it was normal service resumed. Whereas Liverpool finishing 6th or so has indeed been normal for the past few years.
 
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