Tony Barrett: Vulnerable Liverpool are Mediocre- and they know it

@Kick wrote:

Natalie Portman wrote:^ I don't think Balotelli is proven Kick.

I didn't know previously, but doing a study into a manner of his goals scored for his previous clubs, his stats are massively inflated by Penalties and Freekicks.

If you're a Ronaldo and you score 10 penalties out of 60 goals and 50 other open play goals..it's fine. But when you're Balotelli and have 15 goals, and 50% of them are either from spot kicks or free kicks, it massively skews the stats.

There is no proven formula. It's a mixed all. one of the greatest PL purchases of all time (Carrick to Utd) was a proven PL player to another. Fergie was master of buying from EPL. We just suck at it. I think it should be a mix....I liked our policy of buying players very young form England's lower teams (Sterling, Ibe, Ojo, etc). that'll pay dividend big time.


off topic...but can't believe Ian Ayre has pulled this off. Wonder for how long he was negotiating and monitoring the situation

Goals are goals, they still have to be scored.

Anyway, my point is. You can't generalise where you want to make your purchases from, it will be different depending on your needs.

If it's your main striker , it makes a big difference.

When 30% of Balo's goals at Milan were penalties, and we know he DOESN'T take penalties at Liverpool since Gerrard is here, that's 30% of his goals completely useless in our context.

Take this example: In 2013-14 season

Gerrard scored 12 goals - 10 penalties
Yaya 20 goals- 4 penalties I think

You're Chelsea manager and want to buy a goal scoring midfielder. Isn't a a no brainer ? Seeing Hazard takes your penalties at Chelsea, it means you're only adding 2 goals from open play if you sign Gerrard, whereas it's 16 if you sign Yaya.

@iftikhar wrote:Mate, I don't understand why you go on playing this rhyme. If Rodgers was good enough to finish 2nd then he can be expected to repeat that. If that was a fluke, then he isn't good enough. Please note, we didn't expect him to win the league, we wanted to finish T4.

Right we wanted to finish top 4 against 4 better teams than ours who spent a lot more money and brought in top end, proven coaches. Meanwhile Rodgers was brought in with the entire idea of revamping the squad and turning it into a long term project so that we could compete. The problem is that Rodgers got the most out of players who many thought were cast offs (Coutinho, Sturridge), brought Sterling along and built a system around two class players in Gerrard and Suarez one of which left and the other fell off a cliff (I think he was mentally broken after last season and WC tbh).

Please note that your expectations need some scope. It's not just 'we're Liverpool thus deserve top 4'. No, there are 4 teams out there right now with much better individual players than we have and the only reason we were even in contention for top 4 is because of Rodgers.

I understand that you can't accept anything against Rodgers. But he is human, eh??? And he has got serious limitations that became obvious this season and a depleted squad only made matters worse.

This same old song and dance. I've noted Rodgers' failings and limitations this year plenty of times. It's that you guys are trying to blame him for things that are just ridiculous and beyond what should be expected. Especially when you consider he lost the backbone of the title contending team and the replacements were either injured or panic buys because our primary targets didn't get brought in.

I think Rodgers has enough traits to be successful and make us successful too. But he needs to man up, fast.

A few tweaks this summer and Rodgers can come out and compete next year pretty easily. I don't know what him having to 'man up' has to do with anything, as though he didn't try to find the best tactics or formations. It's just a season in which whatever could go wrong did go wrong most of the time. This summer is where the team as a whole really needs to step up, not just Rodgers.

does anyone think Gerrard leaving and this Sterling saga now will make it even more difficult for us to sign players. I just cant imagine, if Ayre/Rodgers wants to convince any player, how would you do it with the current situation.

Considering a 35 yo Gerrard a 20 yo kid were arguably our two best players / top goalscorers too this season, I say it would.

A top 4 finish means *bleep* all if you have no ambition / aspirations to exceed a top 4 spot in the future.

And even if we did finish top 4, look at the players we targeted last season. We weren't exactly going to sign anybody better this year.

Just get a manager / winner in.

Sick of this mediocrity. Already shot ourselves in the foot enough. Might as well be proactive before the wound gets worse. Giving Rodgers another 6 months is suicidal if we want to strive and win / even compete for the league in the next 3-5 years.

I think it is going to be difficult. We really need a DOF imo and I hope Rodgers agrees to it or he is on his own.

what you guys are saying is, ok we accept the fact that we are at 5th position and let us unearth some gem from somewhere and for that you need an astute scouting committee. To bring a player like Higuain or Pedro, you do not need an astute committee but you would need some convincing.

I doubt a committee will be able to achieve that objective

Gerrard one of our best players, what hahahahahahahaha.

His finishing top goal scorer, isn't he?

But honestly just speaks volumes of how bad everyone was, really.