Kenny Dalglish Won't Be Delivering the Module: English Premiership 2011-12

Why is Palacios going to Stoke?

i had thought friedel a strange signing, but his first two performances that i've seen have been quite good- only 8 conceded yes, but no howlers. I think Gomes is shot, gone, finished. Love him, and he'll never be a robinson, but you can't have faith in the player that let in those goals at the times he did last year.

I feel this maybe will be a gripe you start hearing from Liverpool fans soon as well, when a title challenge starts to look more realistic, given it's the same dude masterminding transfer policy. Are Carroll and Henderson and whoever good enough to sustain a title challenge?

henderson had a great game at the weekend. plus we do have several other players. think it's a bit premature to be saying we can't win the league with players we haven't bought yet in windows that haven't opened yet when we're still focussing on getting into the top four.

palacios is going to stoke because he's been really very bad for over a year, and sandro does his job much better.

Hopefully he recovers form - he was great for us in our season finishing fourth

Yeah was gonna say for a time I thought Palacios was looking good. Ah well.

Keane is one of those issues on which I historically disagree with others - and will never agree - but fwiw:

I think he was a great player. HR re-signed him, for £11m or whatever, so should have used him properly thereafter. Instead he soon dropped him and farmed him out whenever possible. It has greatly frustrated me that people say eg 'Keane wasn't good for Spurs last season' etc - he only played for us about twice. It was all a self-fulfilling judgement on HR's part. The less he played, not only the less time he had on the pitch to do anything, but the less fit he seemed to get - so when he went to West Ham he soon broke down. It's all very sad.

In the state he's in NOW, he might well not be good enough for a top PL club. But then, we don't look much like a top PL club at the moment. And Crouch / Bellamy up front would look more worthy of Stoke, Bolton or whatever.

I wish Robbie Keane very well on his US adventure. I hope it's a great fun coda to a good career.

Bentley is more of an anomaly: still on the books, and even the bench? - but can he have any real future at the club, having been floating around doing nothing for so long? And then who will buy him?

we do disagree on keane after his return, pf.

Defoe looked very bright, back to his old self almost, in his cameo yesterday. That would be a welcome boost- would certainly make signing bellamy a redundancy.

Parker is a very good player, but for the life of me i can't see who he'd replace in our current centre midfield that makes him a priority signing. And he's old, expensive and injury-prone.

But most people think Parker was very good indeed last season, in a poor team - surely he could still do a good job?

let's agree that Defoe ought to make Bellamy redundant. but Bellamy, for goodness' sake - we shouldn't even be talking about that.

parker for modric
Parker for sandro
Parker for jenas

Only if we're getting rid of modric, really, and if that's the plan i'll none of it

I think bellamy/parker are on the same par as prospective signings, adding to a bloated squad without really doing anything much for the first team

What think you of krancjar?

you don't think Parker is better than Jenas?
I thought everyone thought Jenas rubbish!

Krancjar is a talented player who scores good goals sometimes, but doesn't seem to have shone when given a chance in these first few games - from what I've seen. But he really is better than most other players. Again I think he's a victim of HR's policy of buying players for the sake of it, then not using them, so they have to be 'moved on'. It doesn't make much sense.

jenas was an outlier!

We're ignoring pienaar, huddlestone, even say livermore krancjar and vdv aa options in central midfield before one reluctantly gets to jenas

Pienaar was another mad signing
who will one day appear to
'need to be moved on'
having done virtually nothing

when he could have been making Evertonians happy.

agreed

Tho he was a better option than modric or krancjar yesterday.

Pienaar isn't really a central midfielder. When we have Bale on the left, he's potentially a better option than Lennon on the right, as he can actually cross the ball well, but I doubt he'll get much run in the team and yeah seems an insane signing.

Robbie Keane = great player once, one of my favourites, has been awful at finishing since his Liverpool stint. His time at West Ham confirmed that for me. Actually, I think we only signed him because Defoe got injured so soon after his return - Redknapp's "shit, I've got an injury, better buy another player" transfer policy has been part of the problem. See also Kranjcar for Modric.

Parker would be a first name on the teamsheet all season kinda player though, possibly to the detriment of Sandro's development.

think it's a bit premature to be saying we can't win the league with players we haven't bought yet in windows that haven't opened yet when we're still focussing on getting into the top four

In fairness I did say I was being harsh on Dalglish there. Wouldn't trust Comolli though.

The other thing with Spurs is that in the top four season, we played a largely settled XI every week, back four injuries permitting, but everyone knew what the best eleven and best formation was - that's no longer the case and Redknapp hasn't got anywhere near sorting that in almost a year.

pienaar is not a bad option at cm, though, and certainly better there than krancjar and modric played together.

I'm pretty close to putting rm as a problem spot, lennon has been infuriating these past few games and there's no natural cover except that one guy

Although as I keep saying time and time again it's not just the players, they need to be handled properly and managed and developed well. How many managers would have looked at Danny Welbeck and Tom Cleverly last season and seen them as starters in a team challenging for the title?

― Matt DC, Monday, 29 August 2011 12:52 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

bears reminding that bale's emergence came more through luck than judgement, dawson's too probably. but this is the thing with redknapp, players either "get good" or "get bad" depending on circumstance and their own lone personal journeys of being determined, disheartened, bored, whatever. never any sense of managerial process.

Is Gomes likely to go? Playing him against Hearts would surely limit the chances to sell him on to a club still in Europe.

didn't comolli buy the entire current spurs team? i'd have said spurs getting into the CL was a pretty good endorsement of him.

not to sound overly cliche english footballer but for all his deficiencies parker's determination ought to lend focus to the team imo. deluxe livermore basically.

rm is sorted, lennon is the problem imo and i did say he shouldve been sold while his stock was high. either corluka/walker or walker/pienaar (or livermore?) would be fine.

xp He also bought a huge amount of overpriced junk, though. £9m on Hutton, £17m on Bentley, etc. He was always very hit-and-miss, as i suspect he will be at Liverpool.

townsend ftw

Srsly, i do want to see a lot more of the youths that have been intermittently mentioned the last couple of years. UEFA outings should give us that much at least

don't think anyone would have predicted how shit bentley became....he'd had a great season at spurs. either way i think his junk is way offset when you see the players he gave that team.

I think Parker is overrated, myself. He was the best thing in a very lacklustre West Ham team last season, but I went to see them a few times and couldn't quite see why he was getting the rave notices. He looked like he cared in a team of apathetics, but that's not enough on its own. His passing was often not the best - it was the box-to-boxness that made him stand out, but that's not the crucial thing in a team that wants to play a quick passing game. Doesn't surprise me that no one's come in for him at the reputed £8m - for a 29yo who'll want four years on big wages, with no prior record of tearing up trees.

wouldnt tempt fate if i were you, just in case spurs dont seal the deal

bentley and bent were ok, not great value, at approx 16m each, but the wages were joke figures. We did well to get bent sold, we'll never shift bentley at his current level. Loan out to showcase him was a solid idea but he wasn't great iirc

meant to say at blackburn up thread...before spurs signed him i meant.

xpost Would take him at Loftus Road, but out ambitions are lower than Spurs'. Not sure we need him now we've got Mad Joey though.

Giovani dos Santos Ramírez[1] (born 11 May 1989) is a Mexican footballer who currently plays as an attacking midfielder for English Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur.

Use him! Could play in VDV's position, on the right instead of Lennon ... Or sell him already, so I can watch him somewhere.

xp did you see that paul smudge from the mirror tweeting about us being in for bellamy btw? just imagine.

      
                        pav
  dos santos
Krancjar                bentley
         thudd   pienaar

Xpost Yeah, I saw that. Bollocks, I'm sure. He seems to be revered by QPR fans for not getting the FA hearing as wrong as a load of other pundits, but when I worked in the football press I didn't have a high opinion of him. Smudge, not Bellamy.

xposts. Didn't realise dos Santos is still actually at Spurs. Thought his loan to Santander had become permanent weeks ago.

I did a news search as well as checking Wikipedia, saw a recent link to Espanyol and persistent links to Sevilla (where Santander's coach left for), but apparently it hasn't happened yet.

Look, it's an interview with Robbie Keane, complete with photo of that horrible goal celebration.
http://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/leaving-for-la-robbies-revenge-2860332.html

Not particularly mind-blowing tbh.

is there a more reliable alternative to livesportontv these days?

Man it was annoying that ESPN's game this week was the boring Aston Villa/Wolves match, when there so many other exciting ones I would have rather watched. I think I need to pony up for Fox Soccer Network.

they don't have much choice in that tbf. and yeah, you should get FSC. you get the excitement of having Piers Morgan come on their Sunday post-game/weekend-roundup.

just upgraded my TV to get ESPN/eurosport and TiVo. do I plump for sky sports? on one hand streams suck, otoh my money would be going to sky

Well I know they don't have much choice, I was just moaning about how it ended up this weekend. Piers Morgan? Thats a big strike against them, tbh.

fwiw i'd go round to rupert murdoch's house twice a year to suck him off for the range of football coverage i get, so the extra few quid a month instead doesn't bother me

Forlan has gone to Inter

Warren Barton and the other two recreate plays on their little mini-pitch in the studio at half-time. It is sad/lolzy. xpost

Yossi/Meireles swap, says Twitter.

plus cash, right?

Huh?! Everything's wrong with that picture, except that I like Yossi.

you get the excitement of having Piers Morgan come on their Sunday post-game/weekend-roundup.

I didn't stick around for the GOS show after ManU vs Arsenal but I kind of wish I could have; they were saying that he's a Gunners fan.

no mention of cash dmac.

Morgan's twitter primarily consists of invective directed at Michael Owen/Wayne Rooney/Ferdinand and hysterical claims for Wenger to be sacked.