honeybradger

Yes, look at their starting 11, matic is past it he cant maintain a high level for multiple games, greenwood wasnt very good at the end of last season now he's one of the best forwards in the league, pogba injured most of the season, they had lingard and pereira as their options at cam for half the season, rashford was injured longer than ndidi was, shaw wasnt good at the start of the season neither was fred, wan bissaka isnt half the player going forward as pereira and most teams sit back against teams like us and united so attacking attributes > defensive attributes. They have had injuries and a lack of depth all season, it's not just us, we have no excuses.

Rodgers inherited a more complete squad than ole. Yes ole spent 50 mil on a right back, 50 mil on a cam and 80 mil on a centre back but rodgers already had quality players in all of those positions. Only position you could make a case for is left wing as rashford is further in his development than barnes but barnes has done alright considering. We both have a hole at rw but rodgers doesnt really have an excuse for that as he bought perez for 30 mil who is not a right winger, of course from now on Ole has the upper hand due to funds but this season rodgers cant complain about ole outperforming when us and man united have had similar squads and similar injury problems.

People are kidding themselves thinking that when maddison, ricardo and soyuncu come back this team is magically going to fix itself. There is a deep rooted problem in this squad and instead of hiding behind injuries and our status as a club, rodgers needs to change his approach and actually fix this team's mental weakness otherwise he will be out of a job by december.

Newcastle were in a meltdown at the end of last year, not the same.

Perez was abused by newcastle fans for not performing for the first half of the year AND Rafa Benitez was leaving at the end of the year. It was well documented that Perez wanted out long before he was linked with us. It's massively different to Ing's situation where he's the main man for a stable side with a quality manager. If hassenhutl was leaving and southampton looked like relegation candidates for next year then sure we might be able to bag ings but theres 0% chance of it happening now.

Theres a difference between signing nacho from man city who guardiola wanted to replace with gabriel jesus and southampton's main man. Also llalana isnt going from liverpool to brighton he's out of contract.

Agree to disagree, him and ughelumba have put in some quality performances as a centre back pairing this year, some poor performances as well but i think they would have saved us millions as depth options, ughelumba imo was already at a similar level to bennet and has more potential.

Imo a few of our youth players are good enough for the step up such as darnell johnson and KDH and ughelumba who's already left for playing time. I just think we've taken a step backwards with rodgers in terms of our academy, was a league cup semi final really worth burning out our first team players and if we had given some of the youth players more first team playing time we might have more viable defensive depth than we have now. It was one thing that i thought Puel did really well, bringing chilwell and choudhury into the first team and calling barnes back from the loan to give him a chance as well. Meanwhile rodgers has given a pointless loan to KDH in league 1, would rather play morgan/fuchs than give ughelumba first team experience in the league cup, choudhury has hardly gotten any minutes at DM and would rather sign bennett than give Darnell Johnson an opportunity as well.

Imo iheanacho is our vardy successor, been impressed with him this year. Daka is also a shout but he still needs a bit of refining in the red bull system before he is ready for the PL.

McArthur probably has a few bad words to say about him tbf.

Except we've seen Gray CAN do all this stuff, such as long balls, shots from outside the box. His problem is doing it consistently but he definitely has the talent to pull off higher level passes than either barnes or perez. Of course consistency is the key which is why i said we might need a better version of gray but to say he cant do it is kind of just wrong.

Imo we need a Gray type winger who has a good passing range and a decent long shot to be the wide creator and a barnes type winger to pop up in the box and finish chances. It's what man city are doing with sterling and mahrez. Whether barnes and gray are good enough is still to be seen but i still have faith personally. Apart from late last year we havent really seen them together but i think they would be a good combo if they got gametime consitently as a duo.

That's what i was on about, with all these injuries this was the perfect time for Rodgers to step up and prove that not only is he tactically a match for but he's better than the likes of Hassenhuttl, Sean Dyche, Graham Potter etc. Instead we've seen that Rodgers is dependent on having better players than his managerial counterparts to get results. Hes not a top 6 quality manager he's midtable, if you gave him that Southampton or Brighton side neither of them would be doing much better with him than they are with their current managers, if they would actually be doing better at all. Im not calling for his head, he's good enough for us at the moment but im just sick of people saying 'he's a top manager give him time and we'll be a top side', he's not a CL quality manager, he doesnt have the tactical ability to adapt to superior or even equal quality sides and we've seen with him this season that when it gets tough, like it will in the CL, he cant motivate the side to victory.

We're really not as big as you think we are. Ings has a team that plays to his strengths at southampton and a top manager in hassenhutl. We might be able to attract players that southampton cant but we're not big enough to attract players from southampton.

He can make those runs when the likes of ricardo are on the pitch, look at the burnley second goal. Justin just doesnt have the experience/ability just yet to find him on the overlap and Gray knows that example: when he was trying to make those runs vs arsenal and justin kept passing behind him. He also came on at 3-0 down against a parked bus and created more than barnes and perez and also almost scored a freekick. It was a very decent appearance considering the circumstances yet our fans will still target him. Embarrasing if im being honest.

I can tell you for a fact we've never had a team this stacked in individual quality, 15/16 was a much better team but that was also due to Ranieri's managing. Rodgers would struggle to do much with that group of players and he's showing once again that when the chips are down and the field is leveled out/slightly tilted against him that he cant cope as he cant tactically outthink other high level managers, as he's shown in the CL and with Liverpool without Suarez.

Puel hardly had tielemans who was quite a big game changer but i was talking more about the other managers. Pearson, Shakespeare even ranieri had a lot less at their disposal and we're a completely different club than we were in the early 00s so it's not a fair comparison to our previous managers. Also Soyuncu this year is a clear uprgrade on maguire despite his temperament and he wasnt ready last year.

We also have a team filled with international quality players which those other managers didnt have access to. It's not like Rodgers has waved a magic wand and turned little old leicester into a top 6 quality side, the players he has at his disposal are better than what those managers had so it's a very unfair comparison.

People may say that that first goal was unlucky. It's unlucky the first time it happens but deflected goals from one of our players sticking his leg out has happened multiple times this season already. It's a coaching issue and it should have been identified a while back. Our defenders should not be turning their back when a shot comes in and sticking out limbs, you need to either comit fully or let it pass.

Nugent wasnt a starter in the great escape mate.

I could have told you without looking that if you include his stats from last year they would have been poor. He wasnt very good that year in a generally lacking side going forward, but we move on and he's already got more g+a than that year.

Championship player who has 2 goals 3 assists (4 if you count the cross against burnley that nicked barnes on the way) in 500 PL minutes. Lay off him he's clearly got quality but it's been hard for him as a young player who's had half the club's fanbase on him for the last 4 years.

Im in the same boat but just thought he needed some recognition.

I dont care how little people rate him on here, his super sub appearances apart from the Norwich game have had a massive impact on our season.

Thought Thomas was quite sloppy every time ive seen him for the U21s as he is obviously very young. Could work out as a wingback but im very worried that he's not ready for the step up yet.