Brendan Rodgers

[sacreblueits442]

1 hour ago, Spudulike said:

Whilst not condoning players getting into the face of refs, our players seem to be too nice and accepting without any argument of many of the dodgy decisions that go against us. 

 

Yesterday seemed different. Kasper has always been one to point out the refs mistakes and was incensed about an incorrectly given corner in the first half. However there was a collective protest about the foul on Castagne leading to their second goal without which I doubt that VAR would've even looked at it. It must've been taken seriously given how long it took to make a decision. Perhaps that has contributed to why many decisions (hand balls etc) have been ignored in the past. 

 

Some players need to toughen up and play the officials like almost all other clubs. 

....it is not exactly in the spirit of the game to harangue a referee!!!

  I am pleased we do not en mass around the referee, but we do need to speak up, if we feel he has made an error or bring things to his attention that we perhaps believe he has over looked. That should be the responsibility of one person, and that would be the skipper.

  If we can go back to Brian Clough and his attitude to players talking to referees, his take was if his player is talking to the referee, the referee should book him, as he is not doing his job whilst attempting to change the referees mind.

[Spudulike]

5 minutes ago, sacreblueits442 said:

....it is not exactly in the spirit of the game to harangue a referee!!!

  I am pleased we do not en mass around the referee, but we do need to speak up, if we feel he has made an error or bring things to his attention that we perhaps believe he has over looked. That should be the responsibility of one person, and that would be the skipper.

  If we can go back to Brian Clough and his attitude to players talking to referees, his take was if his player is talking to the referee, the referee should book him, as he is not doing his job whilst attempting to change the referees mind.

I accept that to an extent but note how some teams (Man City, Arsenal) appeal for decisions to be made (arms in the air etc) and continue the protest for sometime after. This usually prompts VAR to give it proper consideration rather than ignoring it in the way we've seen happen to us many times. 

[The boy Linacre]

59 minutes ago, lcfceaves said:

Agreed. So much wrong again yesterday. I know some will just see a win and think everything is great again, but god… that first 30-35 mins were terrible again. I’m not going to go all in on Rodgers for a change, some individuals just haven’t been at it. 

Kasper - kicking is crap, and is just having a go / blaming everyone else around him. Plus the silly interview is just making him come across arrogant. Not acting like the captain I thought he would. Still makes good saves, never question his shot stopping ability, but his general all round attitude I’m not loving. 
 

N’Didi - not been anywhere near his level since the injury. Doesn’t seem to be in ‘his usual positions’, soumare is often deeper. And legs flailing everywhere, gives you kittens watching sometimes. Still up there in terms of stats but he’s not looking like his usual assured self. In the first half not just the pen, but another wild swipe happened just before it… 
 

Barnes - looks predictable … always try’s the feint to go down the outside and players are reading it. Again form has been distrusted by injury but needs to look to be a bit more inventive and not so one dimensional. 
 

Castagne - twice got caught dwelling on the ball. Another who has done some talking in the media, maybe just concentrate on your own performance… 

 

Everyone else in general, just need to raise it 5-10%. Again some of this definitely at Rodgers door, we look so exposed / open defensively, we concede way too many goals.   

Although we looked a bit more potent in attack, even my old mate Maddison is starting look like a footballer again. Even his corners were beating the first man!

Hard to judge the second half like you say, but everything certainly isn’t rosey… 

Think you probably have it right on the players still lacking.  Currently Kasper will always get in there on the shotstopping.

But Wilf has not been great since his return, giving the ball away a lot too.

Just find Barnes really lazy since his return, making life really hard for Thomas, who I thought had a decent game yesterday even though we conceded twice.  Never runs into space, or off the fullback's shoulder yesterday, so he's then not an option, hence we have to go backwards or square.

This week is massive, if we can just get another 4pts minimum from the next 2 games, we'll be moving right into that 5-8 positions and buying time before Ricky, Justin & Fofana come back and we can get more solid at the back.  TBF Cags was decent yesterday.

But in Brendan we trust, I'm sure he knows if we can get some momentum going and most importantly some confidence.

[sacreblueits442]

1 hour ago, lcfceaves said:

N’Didi - not been anywhere near his level since the injury. Doesn’t seem to be in ‘his usual positions’, soumare is often deeper. And legs flailing everywhere, gives you kittens watching sometimes. Still up there in terms of stats but he’s not looking like his usual assured self. In the first half not just the pen, but another wild swipe happened just before it… 

... like a lot of posters on this forum, Rodgers is not sure how to utilise Soumare!!!

  You cannot have him sitting deeper than Wilf, if that is the case with them as a two in the middle, something must have gone wrong already.

  Using the double pivot, one stays and one goes forward. This should not be the case as Wilf should be protecting the backline with Soumare ahead of him. 

   Wilf plays the role on his own (Rodgers please note) he has always struggled when he has someone alongside who he has to make allowance for. Soumare has better ball skills so the sensible thing would be to allow him to support the attack and not have Ndidi slowing the move down, due to lack of awareness or skillset. 

  I suppose this could be Rodgers attempting to make do and mend, or perhaps he does not see it and envisage a style of play for both which is not aligned to their strengths.

  

[coolhandfox]

52 minutes ago, BenTheFox said:

Sorry, I don't think anything that the poster said was wrong. As I posted in another thread, we won the game and that was the most important thing. It relieves a lot of pressure because we could have potentially found ourselves looking over our shoulder if we lost. However, the performance for the majority of the first-half was not good (I'm disregarding the second-half because it was almost a complete free-for-all). We scored three goals but that was down to moments of individual brilliance and their centre-half doing something ridiculous and was not representative of the balance of play. My hope is that the win will give us a lift and help improve the performances, which in turn should yield more points. 

Always find those sorts of comments strange. Most goals are down to individual brilliance or mistakes. Without them, most games would end up 0-0

 

Most of the goals scored in the PL yesterday were due to a moment of brilliance or a mistake. That's just football. 

Edited 29 November 2021 by coolhandfox

[filbertway]

Huge month for the future of Rodgers coming up.

 

Last 2 fixtures don't really tell us much, we've beat a League one team and a Championship team at home. The next month will be a proper test of where we're at, not particularly seen a lot to say we'll pick up too many points or beat Napoli.

 

I do expect us to beat Liverpool in the cup though, as Klopp will play a severely weakened team. 

 

My predictions for the following month. 10 pts from those 7 league fixtures would be a very decent return, looks like I'm going for 5 though haha.

 

Southampton (a) - Draw

Villa (a) - Loss
Napoli (a) - Loss
Newcastle (h) - Win
Spurs (h) - Loss

Everton (a) - Draw

Liverpool (LC) (a) - Win
Man City (h) - Loss
Liverpool (a) - Loss

[Simoken]

5 minutes ago, filbertway said:

Huge month for the future of Rodgers coming up.

 

Last 2 fixtures don't really tell us much, we've beat a League one team and a Championship team at home. The next month will be a proper test of where we're at, not particularly seen a lot to say we'll pick up too many points or beat Napoli.

 

I do expect us to beat Liverpool in the cup though, as Klopp will play a severely weakened team. 

 

My predictions for the following month. 10 pts from those 7 league fixtures would be a very decent return, looks like I'm going for 5 though haha.

 

Southampton (a) - Draw

Villa (a) - Loss
Napoli (a) - Loss
Newcastle (h) - Win
Spurs (h) - Loss

Everton (a) - Draw

Liverpool (LC) (a) - Win
Man City (h) - Loss
Liverpool (a) - Loss

jesus... talk about miserable optimism. cheer up

[sacreblueits442]

7 minutes ago, Spudulike said:

I accept that to an extent but note how some teams (Man City, Arsenal) appeal for decisions to be made (arms in the air etc) and continue the protest for sometime after. This usually prompts VAR to give it proper consideration rather than ignoring it in the way we've seen happen to us many times. 

....I can see your point and in the game it is a weapon that teams use as a matter of course!!!

  In Rugby Union, clubs who have had a player injured by foul play and even if the player has been cautioned have the right to report the individual who committed the foul for a request for additional punishment (citation) but Tigers are the only team that do not "cite".

  Pretty proud of that, we do not need to follow other clubs. If you have integrity and a respect for the game, better to be the team setting the example than the team with little or no values.

[BenTheFox]

12 minutes ago, coolhandfox said:

Always find those sorts of comments strange. Most goals are down to individual brilliance or mistakes. Without them, most games would end up 0-0

 

Most of the goals scored in the PL yesterday were due to a moment of brilliance or a mistake. That's just football. 

What I mean is that there was no real period of sustained pressure, it was simply a case of us being very clinical and the opposition being not being so clinical. You get games like that, but you can't really develop any consistency if you are just relying on moments of brilliance from an individual more than the team working well as a cohesive unit. 

[coolhandfox]

18 minutes ago, filbertway said:

Huge month for the future of Rodgers coming up.

 

Last 2 fixtures don't really tell us much, we've beat a League one team and a Championship team at home. The next month will be a proper test of where we're at, not particularly seen a lot to say we'll pick up too many points or beat Napoli.

 

I do expect us to beat Liverpool in the cup though, as Klopp will play a severely weakened team. 

 

My predictions for the following month. 10 pts from those 7 league fixtures would be a very decent return, looks like I'm going for 5 though haha.

 

Southampton (a) - Draw

Villa (a) - Loss
Napoli (a) - Loss
Newcastle (h) - Win
Spurs (h) - Loss

Everton (a) - Draw

Liverpool (LC) (a) - Win
Man City (h) - Loss
Liverpool (a) - Loss

Would you have been saying the same if we lost both?

[Dahnsouff]

2 minutes ago, BenTheFox said:

What I mean is that there was no real period of sustained pressure, it was simply a case of us being very clinical and the opposition being not being so clinical. You get games like that, but you can't really develop any consistency if you are just relying on moments of brilliance from an individual more than the team working well as a cohesive unit. 

You also cannot be consistent from out of nowhere, the corner has to be turned away from poor performances, consistency comes from stringing the results together.

[BenTheFox]

1 minute ago, Dahnsouff said:

You also cannot be consistent from out of nowhere, the corner has to be turned away from poor performances, consistency comes from stringing the results together.

That's true to an extent, but I have seen good team performances come out of nowhere in the past. Yesterday was by no means a good team performance, there were a few very good individual performances, notably Vardy and Maddison. As I've said numerous times, the most important thing yesterday is that we won the game. For the record I would have taken a rancid 1-0 win where their goal keeper threw the ball into his own next and we had like 10% possession yesterday, but such is the spirit of this forum I am going discuss the game as a whole. 

[Matt]

Much like I had to say after the Legia game. With all due respect we played a poor Watford, I think we played quite well, it was entertaining, exciting, positive and forwards!

 

We we’re quite sloppy in possession at times but that doesn’t bother me so much, because we controlled the game as opposed to simply just control possession. 

 

Against these kind of teams we’ve largely struggled because ‘we can’t break them down’ but in the last 2 games we’ve found a way of which I don’t even believe we’ve tried in the past - attacking them.

 

I just hope this isn’t a flash in the pan.

[Aus Fox]

51 minutes ago, filbertway said:

Huge month for the future of Rodgers coming up.

 

Last 2 fixtures don't really tell us much, we've beat a League one team and a Championship team at home. The next month will be a proper test of where we're at, not particularly seen a lot to say we'll pick up too many points or beat Napoli.

 

I do expect us to beat Liverpool in the cup though, as Klopp will play a severely weakened team. 

 

My predictions for the following month. 10 pts from those 7 league fixtures would be a very decent return, looks like I'm going for 5 though haha.

 

Southampton (a) - Draw

Villa (a) - Loss
Napoli (a) - Loss
Newcastle (h) - Win
Spurs (h) - Loss

Everton (a) - Draw

Liverpool (LC) (a) - Win
Man City (h) - Loss
Liverpool (a) - Loss

Could you get any more disrespectful, we’ve beat the Polish Champions and a Premier League team.

Where Legia would sit in the English system is up for debate, but Watford are most definitely a Premier League team, a team that is pretty comfortably clear of the bottom 3, and beat Man Utd 4-1 last time out.

[Jobyfox]

7 minutes ago, Matt said:

Much like I had to say after the Legia game. With all due respect we played a poor Watford, I think we played quite well, it was entertaining, exciting, positive and forwards!

 

We we’re quite sloppy in possession at times but that doesn’t bother me so much, because we controlled the game as opposed to simply just control possession. 

 

Against these kind of teams we’ve largely struggled because ‘we can’t break them down’ but in the last 2 games we’ve found a way of which I don’t even believe we’ve tried in the past - attacking them.

 

I just hope this isn’t a flash in the pan.

Yes, I agree with this to some extent. It’s obvious that we’ve defended poorly all season and the stats will back that up. So the resolution is either to try and tighten up all over the pitch up attack and leave yourselves open at the back. The good thing about the latter approach is that you can play your way back into form whereas, with the former, you can still lose games with insipid performances if that retention of the ball doesn’t result in chances created.

 

On Sunday we had Vardy, Barnes, Lookman and Maddison all playing as attacking players. The midfield still gets bypassed too frequently and the defence still look scared and tentative. Soyuncu is improving from his slow start to the season, Evans still doesn’t look fully fit and the jitters now seem to be extending to Castagne. 
 

Really, now, it just needs us to retain the ball better in midfield and the defence to build some confidence. A couple of clean sheets would help no end. Coupled with players coming back from injury and, fingers crossed, no new injuries and we could return to form. 
 

I just hope that Brendan keeps his nerve and we continue to attack with high intensity. We could be a bit too open for a while and it might be a bumpy ride - but you don’t play yourselves back into form by passing the ball between defenders and hoping to nick games 1-0. It actually takes a lot of form, skill and control to do that, which we haven’t quite got at the moment. 

[Number 6]

The team had been lacking in confidence and had to play one of the games this week without Evans, and both without Tielemans. Given that, we were handed two great opponents and their respective defences gave us a helping hand. It wasn't our sparkling best, but undoubtedly will help with confidence and keeps us within touching distance of our goals after a rocky start which is certainly not a bad place to be. We did seem to introduce more direct play over these two games and switch to four at the back, so Rodgers deserves some credit after what was an insipid performance against Chelsea.

Edited 29 November 2021 by Number 6

[TMELcfc]

5 hours ago, Aus Fox said:

Bloody hell, it must be hard work always looking to find something negative!

No one is saying it was perfect, but in tough conditions against a team who are doing okay at the minute, we scored 4 goals, (for the 3rd time this season).

It’s not perfect, but we are 2 points off the top 6, top of our Europa League group and in the 1/4 final of the league cup - all this with a terrible start to the season, it’s certainly not all roses and lollipops but it also isn’t nearly as bad as some are making out.

I don’t look for the negativity, I’m calling it out for what it was… much better attacking wise, Maddison us getting closer to his best, but it doesn’t mean you can’t express an opinion on the negatives. Typically with some on this forum you’re not allowed to be critical 🙄

[TMELcfc]

4 hours ago, The boy Linacre said:

Think you probably have it right on the players still lacking.  Currently Kasper will always get in there on the shotstopping.

But Wilf has not been great since his return, giving the ball away a lot too.

Just find Barnes really lazy since his return, making life really hard for Thomas, who I thought had a decent game yesterday even though we conceded twice.  Never runs into space, or off the fullback's shoulder yesterday, so he's then not an option, hence we have to go backwards or square.

This week is massive, if we can just get another 4pts minimum from the next 2 games, we'll be moving right into that 5-8 positions and buying time before Ricky, Justin & Fofana come back and we can get more solid at the back.  TBF Cags was decent yesterday.

But in Brendan we trust, I'm sure he knows if we can get some momentum going and most importantly some confidence.

Agree on Thomas, forgot about him, but he did very little wrong. 

[jerry]

6 hours ago, Aus Fox said:

Bloody hell, it must be hard work always looking to find something negative!

No one is saying it was perfect, but in tough conditions against a team who are doing okay at the minute, we scored 4 goals, (for the 3rd time this season).

It’s not perfect, but we are 2 points off the top 6, top of our Europa League group and in the 1/4 final of the league cup - all this with a terrible start to the season, it’s certainly not all roses and lollipops but it also isn’t nearly as bad as some are making out.

All true but we have looked pretty unconvincing all season. Can any supporter say they go into any match with any confidence of achieving a result ? Defensively we look so porous obviously not helped by the loss of Justin and Fofana.

[fuchsntf]

6 hours ago, BenTheFox said:

As you've alluded to, we only played well in the last ten minutes of the first-half when we were 3-1 up and could express ourselves. We looked hungry to get that 4th goal which would have well and truly killed the game off, although there's no way we would have deserved to go in 4-1 up at half-time based on the overall balance of play. 

Football aint about deserving or possesion...Its taking your chances & converting...Watford huffed & puffed...even looked defiant, but that Watford gap they

couldnt traverse..

[Ric Flair]

Big, big overhaul coming this summer and hopefully Rodgers will be still here to lead it. Seen enough this last week to think he is still the right man to lead us but I'm looking at this squad and I think we're going to rip it up and rebuild. Rudkin, Congerton and Rodgers need to play blinders.

[Chocolate Teapot]

Just now, Ric Flair said:

Big, big overhaul coming this summer and hopefully Rodgers will be still here to lead it. Seen enough this last week to think he is still the right man to lead us but I'm looking at this squad and I think we're going to rip it up and rebuild. Rudkin, Congerton and Rodgers need to play blinders.

Some players are being binned pretty quickly.

 

As soon as Justin is fit I reckon bertrand goes, same with vestergaard when fofana is fit.

[Stevosevic]

1 minute ago, Ric Flair said:

Big, big overhaul coming this summer and hopefully Rodgers will be still here to lead it. Seen enough this last week to think he is still the right man to lead us but I'm looking at this squad and I think we're going to rip it up and rebuild. Rudkin, Congerton and Rodgers need to play blinders.

Think you're right. 

 

I'm pretty sure Ricardo gets sold and Soyuncu if he doesn't sign a new deal. Then obviously Tielemans is leaving also while Iheanacho may think its time to move. 

 

 

[CrispinLA in Texas]

In the meantime Brendan please try to sort the defense out, every game now we are conceding poor goals quite quickly. Don't know now if he will buy someone in January

[Bryn]

2 minutes ago, Ric Flair said:

Big, big overhaul coming this summer and hopefully Rodgers will be still here to lead it. Seen enough this last week to think he is still the right man to lead us but I'm looking at this squad and I think we're going to rip it up and rebuild. Rudkin, Congerton and Rodgers need to play blinders.

Aim to keep:

James Justin

Wesley Fofana

Jonny Evans

Harvey Barnes

Youri Tielemans - unlikely to get a choice though

Jamie Vardy

James Maddison

Marc Albrighton

Ricardo Pereira

Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall

Patson Daka

Luke Thomas

Daniel Amartey - competent squad player

 

Would let go in right circumstances:

Kasper Schmeichel

Caglar Soyuncu

Danny Ward

Kelechi Iheanacho

Hamza Choudhury

Wilfred Ndidi

Timothy Castagne

Boubakary Soumare

 

Should proactively look to move on:

Ryan Bertrand

Ayoze Perez

Jannik Vestergaard

Nampalys Mendy

Dennis Praet - Unless there’s a change in sentiment on both sides

Filip Benkovic

 

Think that’s how I see it.

 

Think we need at least one CB and one FB,  a RW (still…) and honestly probably a keeper given Kasper’s limitations and desire for another challenge. And others depending on what’s available and who else goes. Likely a CM of course as Tielemans will go.