I doubt I am the only Liverpool supporter who found our 0-0 draw against Napoli tonight to be somewhat bizarre; the fact was that a reserve team expended more energy against Napoli then the first team have the entire season. The entire starting XI worked really hard for the result. It is particularly surprising when you look at the team that played. Reina, Kelly, Carragher, Skrtel, Konchesky, Poulsen, Spearing, Babel, Jovanovic, Shelvey and Ngog is not a starting eleven that would strike fear into any opposition, but they did the job, and did it pretty comfortably against a team that sits fourth in Serie A.
Admittedly Napoli were pretty poor, and it says something about the Italian League’s standard of football that they currently lie so high up in the league, but you cannot deny that the eleven who started tonight for Liverpool gave a good performance as any for a Liverpool side this season. This isn’t saying much of course, considering the many abject performances over the last couple of months, but I don’t think it is fair of us to take away the credit for the display when youngsters such as Jay Spearing, Jonjo Shelvey and Martin Kelly were playing.
All three played well, but especially Shelvey and Spearing. Spearing was always available for a ball passed to feet and demanded the ball from his team mates. He rarely lost the ball when he had possession and offloaded the ball forwards, rather than square, which has been the undoing of the Reds’ recent displays. Shelvey also looked very promising, and considering it was his first start in a competitive match for Liverpool, he surprisingly didn’t look out of place, and produced a sublime cross field ball for David Ngog who couldn’t control the ball.
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STELLA ARTOIS WORLD DRAUGHT MASTERS
the “B Team” has performed at least as well, if not better than the “A Team” in each of the games they’ve played this season – nothing changed.
None of them will get a look in still though anyway; they’ve had their opportunity to stake their claim, and nobody got a hat-trick, so why should the likes of Maxi or Cole be dropped??
Jonjo is an excellent 3rd choice in Gerrard or Meireles isn’t available! Hoping this lad really does well at the club, on the other hand Babel showed exactly why he should be the first one out of the door in January!
yeah, but let’s not forget about northampton…
Well written article and some good insights. Roy is certainly not handling the kind of on-ball pressure that PL teams throw at you and upsetting Liverpool in the league seems to be far too easy. No one should be too surprised, did we ever think he was going to be a tactical mastermind? Benitez was the tactical whiz and while his football didn’t inspire many it was still remarkably effective at times even when the team didn’t seem to be playing well. Obviously we need a manager who can match that kind of tactical understanding with an attitude towards the players, staff and owners that won’t ruffle so many feathers. I don’t think Roy is that man but he will get a few more chances to prove us wrong.
Would be great to see a few of the young lads given a go. I saw alot of positives in that game the organisation being the biggest plus point for me. Hopefully the performance of some of the fringe players tonight will worry the more established players into matching the effort shown. Hopefully move on from this with a win against Blackburn, with new owners in place lets get behind the team and show them how magic Anfield can be.
Personally thought spearing was superb, and basically ran the midfield putting poulson (apart from one tackle) to shame. Babel proved again that he has no heart or passion and couldn’t hit water if he fell off a boat! Would love to have seen pacheco on instead of babel. If dani was to leave soon, who could blame him. With so little going right at anfield, he is still not getting a chance as opposed to babel who gets chance after chance to prove his lack of value or spirit. Also don’t think one upfront is working but that’s for another day.
I think babel would show his worth if given a conssitant run. I know most will not agree but he has played very well in the past,remember the CL game against the gunners. I just feel that the managers are not playing a balanced team. tonight we looked more balanced than any time this season. Sad thing is ,days gone by we would have beaten Napoli at least 2-0 tonight ,they were poor. Roy looked liked we had just beaten Man u, says it all to me. Positives were the young guns, jonjo, kelly and spearing defo give them moe 1st team action.
Shelvey is a Benitez signing and what a talent we have in him. Future star he is. BUT Napoli was piss poor, if they had attacked Liverpool from the first minute, the result would have been quite different and Roy would just say ‘We were quite unlucky to lose bla bla bla’. Roy has got to go.
yea, I’m including the Northampton game “Me” – that performance wasn’t as shambolic as the first teams performance against Man City, and I’ve seen nothing so far this season that the first choice players would’ve performed any better in the league cup tbh.
Nor have I seen anything to suggest that the B Team couldn’t have achieved these same dismal results that the A Team have delivered, if they were given a consistent run out to play together.
btw, that was Babel looking disinterested in playing in yet another reserves game, yet he still looked more of a threat from out wide than Maxi, Kuyt and even Cole have in all of the games they’ve played so far this season.
That was also a much improved performance from Jovanovich, and I stick by my assertion that they should continue to play out wide when Gerrard & Torres return (Jovanovich on the left, Babel on the right)
^ Good stuff Jay, i agree with the lot, Jova should start firing a bit now and Babel needs a bit of continuity to get a bit of a grip, but both are more than capable of stepping up.
Jonjo, Jay & Kelly looked very comfortable last night, i was particularly impressing with Jonjo, i’ve been looking forward to seeing more of him in action and i think he’s a massive prospect for the future. Had to eat my words a bit as far as Spearing is concerned, he might only be 5ft6″ but he ran the middle of the park yesterday, not bad for a little goblin!
we drew with northampton and lost on penalties which is a luck of the draw scenario
these youngsters should have a lot of belief in breaking into the first team.
no babel can leave and leave now, just how many times does he moan and do next to naff all! poulsen can go, id rather see lucus raul gerrard and shelvey and jay ahead of this dead beat, he is such a bad buy, can he run?
el zhar can leave but not on loan, insua can go on a perm transfer too! darby can go for good too?
then sell lucus and replace with a senior better holding player who can do the job, keep shelvey and jay for 2nd / 3rd choice behined the new holding player gerrard and raul. then get a frontman in my choice would be llorente.
then buy a winger;
REINA
CARRGHER SOTO SKRTEL AGGER AURELIO
JOHNSON GERRARD RAUL TURAN
TORRES
i watched the match and was suprised after 27 minutes spearings name was mentioned, i thought he was’nt playing, i never saw him make a pass or a tackle, afterwards he got into the game a bit more – or do i watch different games than you people.
Sell
A Aqualini
R Babel
L Levia
G Johnson
And buy
S khedira
S Honda
A Turan
Taiwo
Rafa was criticized for his signings, but Roy has done worse IMO.
Paulsen – why on earth did we spend 5.5m for that guy. Gerrard, Lucas, Meireles, Jonjo, Spearing, we were more than covered in CM.
Konchesky – Insua was poor but he did better than Konchesky is doing, and the Mexican lad Fulham bought for the same price is looking much better than both of them. Sometimes you shouldn’t buy english just for the sake of it.
It was a decent performance, but it’s still obvious to me anyways that with our lack of skill we need one CDM and 5 attacking men to get a goal this year – Torres, Gerrard, Meireles, Joe Cole, Jovanovic. Maybe even brave it for a game, take out the CDM, slot Gerrard and Meireles in CM and let Babel play on the left. If we lose 3-2…at least we scored goals.