Moneyball won't win the Premiership 2012-13

rodgers going on about the TEAM but suarez is so far ahead of everything else there

tho rodgers is using him well

btw has rafa lost a good bit of weight?

put on, i was thinking

yeah agreed nakh/darragh. it's not particularly encouraging, like he is carving goals out despite the fairly poor service. the team is knocking it around nicely but in the final third they don't create much, they need more pace and invention from midfield if they're going to be avoid depending entirely on one player yet again.

can see baines & fellaini at united

fergie will probs just leave it at baines and say the midfield's covered though

fellaini to chelsea eh idk that would need to be a manager not a boardroom decision

bit pointless buying Fellaini for midfield considering he seems to play his best football behind the striker

they should just play him as a #9

no champions league team is going to play someone in the #10 / withdrawn forward position whose main skillset is shoving over defenders and scrappy lampardish finishing

how do you explain Rooney then?

yeah true but fergie will go for the vibe and think about formation later though

not like kagawa's there for any particular tactical reason

Really a bit depressing that an Everton side that's lost 3 in 30 is somehow seen as a feeder club. Like these players simply have to move on now. I think it's bullshit.

it's not quite that, there's a difference between players agitating for moves wherever after a good season or two and players who will want to leave only after certain clubs come calling

maybe ferguson will use him as a sort of free big, roving wherever the team needs support and defenders pushed over

fellaini definitely wants to leave in the summer

baines idk, he is 28 so £15m or whatever isn't going to fit in with the united transfer policy for non-rvps

false big

false #0

no offence michael -i'll make a list of spurs players that'll likely go in summer if it helps- but these are the realities, no? everton mightn't be as hard-up as they were a few years ago but moyes and kenwright know very well that cashing in at the height of a player's form is a smarter long-term move a lot of the time. If you finish top four there's obv more chance of retaining and bolstering, but otherwise this is how every club below the top three operate, hardly a major denigration.

sounds about right re roving big

regardless of his technique fellaini's main attribute will always ultimately be causing terror

baines idk, he is 28 so £15m or whatever isn't going to fit in with the united transfer policy for non-rvps

― things that are jokes pretty much (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Thursday, 3 January 2013 00:27 (1 minute ago) Bookmark

maybs but there's already allowance for youth elsewhere in the side and evra's indian summer might solidify the desire for readymade continuity of efficacy in the position

Fabio's loan looks a wee bit misjudged in retrospect

nah honestly he's not good enough, just doesnt have the needle in him his bro has

what have u heard?

xp in fact the loan was prob a bid to get that into him, clockwork orange torture scene style

still, he went from starting a Champions League final in 2011 to a berth on the deathship QPR

feel like all this general lol benitez vibe nowadays is obscuring the historical value of his work tonight

his more recent inter/chelsea fuck ups were part of a general incompetence but this rotation was vintage stuff, that exactly-why-liverpool-didnt-win-the-league shit

swp is such a little dickhead not celebrating cos he spent a year in chelsea reserves, i was on my knees in the pub mid-rapture suddenly thinking it was disallowed

haha!

I dunno Fergie drops rotational bollocks like that occasionally as well, usually when trying to play both Scholes and Giggs against City or whoever. Question the wisdom of resting both Hazard and Mata at the same time given they've been responsible for most of Chelsea's goals, but that Chelsea starting XI should still have been good enough to beat QPR.

Like did Rafa at Liverpool ever decide to rest both Torres and Gerrard at the same time?

no offence michael -i'll make a list of spurs players that'll likely go in summer if it helps- but these are the realities, no? everton mightn't be as hard-up as they were a few years ago but moyes and kenwright know very well that cashing in at the height of a player's form is a smarter long-term move a lot of the time. If you finish top four there's obv more chance of retaining and bolstering, but otherwise this is how every club below the top three operate, hardly a major denigration.

But Spurs have the luxury of being able to turn down £30m bids for players, Everton don't. If the players were all miserable and looking to get out I'd understand it but Everton do give the impression of a club where players are relatively happy and pull together. Like if I was an Everton fan I'd look at Thomas Graveson's move to Real and wonder what the point was for anyone concerned. Fellaini's probably better than that but he'll never be the same force at United or any other club.

Realities, schmealities - I've been in denial for most of the last 20 years of English football. It's just the "wow, Everton really are pretty good at the moment, especially key players x, y, z - time to cash in" thing that makes you want to give up. Like, that's the end-game. Not building the best team since the late-'80s, but selling to richer clubs in order not to go bust. Maybe it reminds me too much of my own debt-ridden overworked middle-age.

If this had been the state of affairs 25-30 years ago, Sheedy, Steven, Sharp and Ratcliffe would've been sold as soon as they became profitable in '82-'84 and we'd have bumbled along in 8th place for the rest of the decade.

I'm just grumblin' into my pint. Nothing to see here.

xp - agree with MDC. Rooney's probably the only real example of too-good-to-keep I can think of in EFC's recent history. We got the best six/seven seasons of Arteta's career. Same with Cahill. In my myopic worldview, if players want to leave Goodison, fine. They're idiots.

Good to see we didn't ruin Pienaar too much though.

spurs have turned down 30m precisely once, and that was a joke grudge late bid for modric that we couldn't accept. Real signed him for significantly less.

Maybe i'm just bitter, it's not that i see spurs as in any different a position- your top two or three are going to be targets for the next club up the ladder. Moyes manages to keep those guys around a lot better than eg arsenal, i think, and levy makes sure that we don't let anyone go cheap, but if bale got the right tap in summer we'd be selling. You just try to get the cash in and replace, evolve another one or two to that level- slow progress but steady (modric out, dembele in, bale out, willian or leandro or whoever, keep it rollin)

rafa "rotating" robbie keane arguably cost the team goals/points in 08/09. i'm no fan of the guy, but he started scoring around christmas/january, and rafa dropped him or subbed him off. there were plenty games where they were desperate for goals.

i can't really remember the rest of the anger about rotation. did he rest torres a lot early on, cos all i remember is him playing in a sulk with blood oozing out of both legs in every match, as rafa's reign came to an end.

Spurs ARE in a different position, they have a lot more money than Everton to spend on new signings and a deeper squad to develop from. Everyone except Barcelona and Real Madrid loses their best players eventually but clubs like Everton have a lot less room for manoeuvre in those situations.

That said, Moyes has done a very good job in keeping players around, even in periods when Everton haven't been winning. With Arsenal it's just funny.

Moyes manages to keep those guys around a lot better than eg arsenal, i think

Not sure about this. Arsenal have had a few major exits but most of them had put in lengthy shifts for the club. Fabregas was in the first team for seven seasons, Nasri for three, Cole for six, Toure for six. Walcott and Sagna have had more than 200 appearances each. I think it's more that Arsenal's exits are higher profile and more lol-worthy because they're not supposed to be a selling team and they're often not getting the best value when they do sell because they let contracts run short.

i dunno, it's worth a closer look maybe. arsenal finish top four every year, pay close enough to top dollar and sell their best player against their wishes (or so it's spun) every year. that, imo, is noteworthy. in contrast, it's very fair to say that moyes does a better job of keeping his best players, and keeping them happy.

spurs are in a different position matt, yes, they're a rung higher up- which was my point to michael- kenwright hasn't been able to finance the club and a big player might be more use to them sold to finance squad depth (i say this with a particular nod to moyes's ability to eke value from the lower end of the transfer market) in order to move towards a situation where overall squad (or first team quality) can support and defend keeping a 25/30m player. It's arguable that they're getting there and this season is crucial, i'd say spurs are there at the moment, note that lfc fans are uncertain as of last night whether they're still there. Balance, progression, ways and means, one step back, two steps forward, etc

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/01/03/article-0-16BCC4D2000005DC-873_306x423.jpg
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/01/03/article-2256586-16BCC513000005DC-662_634x421.jpg

They're having a training ground dance party, broken-nose hatboy steps in and requests a dance with Mario, Mario accepts too readily, Roberto is NOT happy even though he has a chance of a quick frug with Brian.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02441/1_2441831b.jpg

Mancini looks like he's begging for his life here. From a 1980s cartoon supervillain.

Kind of worried for Mancini

he was the aggressor tbf

anyone else care to opine that sturridge is a very good signing for 12m

thought it was undisclosed

I don't have any idea how he and Suarez will interact xp, so all I can say is he might be. He certainly won't make Liverpool any worse - as imago points out on the Rodgers thread, the platform to build on is there (the Villa debacle apart, and tbf they were good that day).

The question is whether they need a big improvement to compete, or only a little one. If it's the latter, and it might be because WBA, Stoke and Arsenal are the only times this year when we haven't looked able to compete, then Sturridge and the returning Lucas could on their own go a long way towards bridging the gap.

Top four is unlikely, but the gap somehow isn't actually that big and so I wouldn't completely rule it out this season.

ah ffs whats the matter with you

You wanted more bile?

reading and villa and southampton and fuckin anyone will claim that 'bar one or three matches we competed, everyone competes, but you can't go from that very low bar to 'we might make top four'. There's a big gap between 'not being shamed in more than three or so games' and even grabbing a UEFA cup place, and that gap is dwarved by the further leap needed to creditably claim you're in the hunt for fourth spot.

A very unklata post imo.

Nonsense. Liverpool aren't competing in terms of 'ooh, we could've got a draw there with a bit of luck' and 'pity that rearguard action didn't quite come off'. They're beating the teams below them fairly easily now, and coming up short against the higher sides mostly due to the absence of one easily-identifiable factor. Sturridge might plug that gap, in which case the games against the top sides start to look very different. I'd expect the record against the top half to improve more than I'd expect the record against the bottom half to deteriorate, put it that way.

The gap's only about half-a-dozen points, that's doable. It won't be if Spurs stay in form and Chelsea/City don't screw up too much, but even those aren't a given.

Two factors: one-man frontline, and lack of bite in midfield. Studge, Lucas and Ince potentially change things quite a bit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctWS52IA_JY

Three of Liverpool's next four games are against United, Arsenal and City, that gap's likely to get wider before it gets narrower.