At just 19, Andre Wisdom has been putting in some fantastic performances for the team and as a reward our new favourite youngster has just signed a new long term contract with Liverpool Football Club – but is he the next big defender for LFC?
BR has completed his first half of the season in charge of the greatest club in England. And his results have been far from perfect. We are lying at the middle of the table in a poor 7th place. We all hoped to be in the top 6 but that was not been the case. The start of the season felt like a free fall dive. We lost to WBA, Arsenal, drew against, Sunderland, Stoke and many more. It was frustrating. We all believed that this was a turning point. We were too optimistic. But after the end of the transfer window, we can tell that the players have started to adapt. Players are changing and adapting. Their play is becoming for fluid, their passing more accurate and their movement much more creative. Mainly, players are embracing their roles and shwoing confidence in their respective positions. The transformation is finally coming to motion. But what results do we want from him this season? What will he need to do to stay manager? Do we like him?
Liverpool will face another tough opponent, only 4 days after the Arsenal game which ended 2-2. Manchester City’s ground has been a fortress recently, winning 3 in their last 3 home games. However Liverpool have been in goal scoring form, scoring at least one goal in every game since the 0-0 match against Swansea last year in November. We have scored 15 goals in our last 6 games, that’s 2.5 goals a game. While City have scored only 11 goals in their last 6 games. However Man City have only conceded 4 goals in 6 games at home. Will our goal scoring form end on Sunday?
On 30th January, Liverpool faced Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium. After going 2-0 up with 30 minutes to go, they conceded twice in three minutes and the game ended 2-2. This leaves us 7 points off 4th, the same as before the game.
A report card for the players against Arsenal.
Let’s getting one thing straight first of all. There can be absolutely no defence of the result against Oldham on Sunday. No matter what Liverpool team is put out, and even if they are having a poor day at the office, they should be beating a team of Oldham’s standard. It was very painful watching us getting outplayed by a league one side. However, I don’t want to go on a massive rant and end up shouting ‘Rodgers Out!’ like a lot of people end up doing, so I am going to try and look at the result sensibly. Also, I want to have a look at Liverpool moving forward after this poor result.
After a heart-crushing and disappointing defeat to a league 1 team, Brendan Rodgers had something to say about it. The fact that the club with the most trophies in England was outplayed by a struggling Oldham, was disturbing. Liverpool fans are said to be the best. We support our team through everything. If this wasn’t true, you would see the emotions of the fans that you see now. Quality has dropped, we are becoming more and more a mid-table team. And the Oldham game has NOT done us favors. Brendan Rodgers has been very light and care free at the press conferences since he came. Loss or not, he has defended the team. When we lost to WBA, he said, “”The players did what we asked them to do.” That approach has been criticized but when he attacks the team, the blame still lies with him. The Oldham game was the final straw, it is fair to say that BR snapped.
This week I have seen Boundary Park (Oldham’s stadium) labelled an ‘ice rink’, and the atmosphere within the 10,000+ seater called ‘unique’ and ‘unenviable’. Even with these compromising, potentially slightly levelling conditions, people have also been saying that this is a ‘damp squib’ in terms of hopes for an upset, after all, what threat could a spiralling league one side, with 7 defeats in their last 8 games, pose against footballing giants Liverpool, on much improved form? Ask Norwich. On paper that was an easy home win, but this is the FA cup, and anything can happen, and the motives when facing a Goliath can be enough to overcome any opposition on the right day. Past form is somewhat irrelevant in games like these, and if we write off Oldham’s chances then we’d quite possibly be making a grave error.
Liverpool currently sit 7th in the table, on 34 points. The team currently in 4th place is Tottenham, who are 7 points ahead on 41. However, I think that Champions League qualification is a realistic aim for us this season.
If we look back through the last few transfer windows, we could see that our transfer politicy is focused on players from the UK. And the best place where you can find young but experienced players is the Championship. Here is the list of the hottest young talents from the Championship which LFC could buy:
Thanks partly to injury and partly to squad rotation, Liverpool have fielded many different back 4’s over the course of this season. In fact, some haven’t even consisted of 4 at the back. Brendan Rodgers has experimented with many different players in varying formations. The question is, which combination works best for LFC?
It is clear that FSG have a transfer policy of only bringing in young players. You can see the logic behind such a strategy; they are trying to build for the future, and save money by getting maximum use out of players as they have a long time still to play before they end their playing career. Since the appointment of Brendan Rodgers, the oldest player to be signed has been Oussama Assaidi, who only turned 24 two days before he joined Liverpool. Other signings such as Joe Allen, Daniel Sturridge and Fabio Borini are all relatively inexperienced at the top level, and are by no means the finished article at the moment. Younger players are never as consistent as more experienced players, and we have seen the effects of this over the season, with some great performances combined with some dismal ones too.
Many of you may have looked at Jordan Henderson and thought that he was a waste of money, not good enough or lacked the technical ability to be a Liverpool player. I’ve even heard the phrase “he doesn’t have the passion for that shirt”, which when queried about what you must show to have that, the contributor lacked any kind of depth to their point, mostly because they actually lacked a point.
This is probably the biggest match I have ever wrote a preview for, Man Utd, our fiercest rivals on top of the league against Liverpool, currently 8th in the table.
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In the last few games, Rodgers has been using the likes of Henderson and Downing to see their true worth to the team and he cannot have been disappointed by a string of good performances by the pair. But do they have what it takes to be regulars in the overall starting XI? Here’s my two pence worth:
On Sunday 6th January, Liverpool faced Mansfield in the third round of the FA cup, in their second fixture of the year. New signing Daniel Sturridge scored for Liverpool, followed by a Suarez goal in the 59th minute (a cause of much controversy, as replays show he handled it into the net). Green scored for Mansfield in the 79th minute, but it turned out to be a mere consolation.
So who are Mansfield? They are a club sitting 9th place in the Blue Square Premier League table – 4 Divisions below the Premier League. 9th sounds pretty bad, however they have many games in hand comparing to others. Mansfield have conceded around 1.5 goals and have scored around 1.7 goals per game. Mansfield have had an impressive from lately, winning 3 matches out of their last 4, the same as Liverpool.
Glen Johnson: My View on him
During the season under Brendan Rodgers so far, there has been one stand-out person for me that has performed well and that is Glen Johnson. He has managed to play both full-back positions and has done well at both. He usually prefers right-back but can also play at left-back. Throughout his career, he has had some great performances and some bad performances, but let’s just focus on his great performances/stats.
Why we should keep Dani Pacheco.
The transfer window is finally open and a lot of LFC fans are waiting on the new signings. But the transfer window isn’t only about new arrivals, it’s also about selling players from the club. Most Liverpool fans want Joe Cole out, but there are a few other players who might sell in this transfer window too. One of them might be Dani Pacheco.
