Liverpool fans must be a collective of nervous wrecks with the type of football that they have been subjected to this season. What’s made more nail biting are the whole plethora of players that they’ve been linked to purchase in the January transfer window. Roy Hodgson isn’t, to many Liverpool fans, the manager that inspires majestic football or even the type who has well laid plans that will soon come to fruition. Maybe that last statement was slightly unforgiving and that the January transfer window will present the opportunity for Hodgson to bring in players who will reflect his ideology more coherently.
All we have are previous events and decisions to inform us of the sorts of players that will likely be turning up, kitbag in hand, at Anfield over the January period. The first player signed by Hodgson, but instigated by Rafa Benitez, was Milan Jovanovic who operated originally as a striker, but has been finding himself on the wing and more recently the substitute’s bench.
His second recruit was Joe Cole, who has been a disappointment after the potential he displayed at West Ham and Chelsea. But players such as Cole, after being injury stricken, require time to adjust and gain match effectiveness, he seemed a brilliant acquisition but has yet to produce. We’ll grant these two mentioned signings as unsuccessful so far.
The most notable signings during the summer were Christian Poulsen, Paul Konchesky, Raul Meireles and Fabio Aurelio. Poulsen was obviously an attempt to fill the void left by Javier Mascherano and not a very successful one by all observations. The loaning out of Alberto Aquilani absolutely baffled me, he was bought for £17 million and looked to be a player of quality, much of the same mould as Xabi Alonso, who could sit, dictate play and free Steven Gerrard. Liverpool will ultimately lose the player to Juventus, who will no doubt grasp at the option to make his loan permanent.
Meireles, for me, appeared a decent signing after having watched him during the World Cup for Portugal, he has a perpetual engine and while he may not be as technically gifted as one may wish, he still could act as decent defensive midfielder. The abundance of destroying players is probably the one downfall of Liverpool, as without Fernando Torres firing they lack goals and creativity.
This attacking deficiency should have been identified by Hodgson during the height of summer and given recourse to remedying. But thankfully for Hodgson, life is full of chances that present themselves to be either made the most of or squandered in haste. January is this chance to placate the fans and sign some truly superior players who will fabricate the kind of football that Liverpool requires.
There are so many reports day after day of tenuous calibre linking players to Liverpool that fans must either receive them with delight or utter dismay. How apprehensive are you over Hodgson having January to buy what he deems as adequate for the club? Will he mould a resurrection of fortunes or leave the club floundering languidly from game to game?
This article was first published on our partner site Football Fancast by Elliot O’Reilly. Make sure to check out the latest news, blogs and podcasts at FFC. – Ed
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Roy shouldn’t be there in January. He needs to be shown the door. Kenny can take over until the summer or else Frank Rijkaard should be installed now.
Roy Hodgson is not fit to be manager of any top 4 club, let alone the most successful of them all.
Roy will be gone before Xmas.
why on earth should we be apprehensive?? Once he gets rid of dead-weights like Johnson, Agger & Babel and brings in Luke Young, Upson and Carlton Cole, the revamp is complete isn’t it??
Wake up Jay Your uncle Woy is a total waste of space. and hopefully he’ll be fired before the end of next week.
Good Heaven’s ! What on earth are you on Jay. Must be good to have your attitude. get in touch with us all when you return to Earth. BTW have you met Major Tom out there yet?
I’m pretty sure Jay is being sarcastic…
wow – I know that it’s hard to get sarcasm in writing, but how on earth could anybody believe that I was excited at the prospect of Luke Young & Upson in defence, Kranjcar on the wing & Cole up front??
Pretty obvious sarcasm that, you lot need to wake up a bit…
I personally thought it was funny…
Liverpool have big problems left defense Poul Konshesky and in central defense Jamie Carragher is far too much stress and I can not understand why Martin Kelly not keep his place in the right defense, although he did well against Chelsea and against Wigan.
In my eyes I can see the match against Wigan Liverpool biggest problems is defense left as Wigan can feel that Liverpool’s weakness, and therefore Wigan attack always starts Liverpool left.
In the Liverpool right and left wings are big problems, Liverpool has no Ving play both left and right starting attack. The Liverpool it must solve problems and players must have speed training and movement, and ran without the ball and ball training and fire training.
Fans from North Greenland.
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Eh!!!!! what is all that about?
Qui D’accord. Je voudrais une petite chat blanche pour mon cadeaux a Noel!
Merci et continuez le medecin mon brave..
I hope he’s not there come january. Watching Liverpool yesterday was shoking. I hope he ‘ s sacked tomorrow
Sad LFC lose..lose…lose…lose..lose..again….. out Roy….henry u must replace him….please….
Watching Liverpool yesterday nearly made me cry. Our defence was poor and in attack we created nothing. We lost to a side who play championship football, just launching balls in our penalty box. Roy needs to go now, it’s simple. His transfer decisions, team selections, substitutions just baffles me. Henry should have realised by now that Roy is not the right man for the job. He needs to be shown the door now before he wastes 30m on mediocre players like Carlton Cole and Niko Kranjcar.
trepidation at the thought of him buying any more players, the man needs to be shown the door and as soon as possible. King Kenny interim till we sort out a future with a classy coach who’s qualification is quality and not just his nationality and friendships with the media.
Im more worried about our next few games rather than January, Roy needs to jog on out of our club. Hes losing the dressing room now aswell only our deluded captain Gerrard and Carragher seem to stick up for him and think hes te real deal. We don’t need a nice guy we need a ruthless arrogant manager who gets the job done. Gerrard and Carragher allways wait until the manager or owners have gone before they speak out. Take a look at Torres and Reina they were out spoken about the previous owners. If Roy wants to criticise a player it should be Konchesky and Poulsen, yes Johnson hasn’t been good at right back but i have more faith in him than Konchesky. besides Johnson should be playing on the right wing or as wing back, but clueless Roy can’t see that……YNWA
Would someone on twitter please tell Mr Henry that he needs to get rid of Woy and bring in someone like Joachim Loew.
Wow a whole 6 game unbeaten streak comes to an end! The level of mediocrity that permeates everything at this club is sickening.
Pathetically weak performances away from home, no effort to create or entertain. Chelsea result should’ve kicked us on yet Chelsea get 6 points from last 9 available and we get 4!
I don’t think Roy is the man for us and neither do I think any of the other usual names bandied about are either, we need someone with strong ideas and a positive football philosophy.
May be Rafa then?
I am just wonderring: Why isn’t he sacked yet!?! Why the new football director is not advising the new owners to sack Roy and bring a world class manager as Guus Hiddick, Felix Magath, Marcello Lippi?
Enough
Is
Enough
In the words of Rafa ” Facts r Facts no changing it.”
Roy should’nt continue 2 b Liverpool Manager. Pls ths is the time 2 make changes.
Fact :: Liverpool Fc not going 2 finish in the top 4. Hope 2 finish in the 7 position is a possibility unless we make changes 2 the management. Roy u need go out.
Can’t bring myself to watch highlights of the game, sadly I looked at the team and with Roy tactics knew instantly we were ******.
Oh how I long for the days I used to shout “what are you doing Rafa”. However, I never once wavered in my support for him. I always saw the method through the madness.
If only some who didn’t support him saw it to. I guess they got what they wanted though.
Would love to know how many that actually wanted Rafa gone would take him back now?
So would i mate, so would i. Deschamps, Rijkaard, Flores, Hiddink(although he doesn’t want to manage a club side anymore and he respects his contract with Turkey) or maybe King Kenny until end of the season……YNWA
I still wouldn’t want Rafa back – just because Hodgson is proving to be an inferior replacement, that doesn’t mean that Benitez was an unequivocal success and we were wrong to replace him. He was guilty of many of the same mistakes that Hodgson is inexplicably replicating this season.
I want us to finally revert to a modern, attack minded manager, that is not afraid to make changes as and when necessary – if we’re ultimately going to fail, I’d rather us be entertaining failures, than carry on down this path of defending our way to also ran status (as Deschamp, O’Neill or Benitez would encourage)
Well you got what you wanted then.
how have I got what I wanted – where did I say that I wanted Hodgson, or any defensive manager for that manner??? :-/
Where is the logic??
Wanting Benitez to move on doesn’t equal wanting Hodgson to get the job.
In the same manner, wanting Hodgson out, does not equal a desire to have Rafa back.
Have you seen Deschamps teams that hes managed his teams have played with a fluent attractiveness. I do agree we should move on away from Benitez even tho i was a fan of his. With your logic it seems to me you’ll favour Rijkaard he plays with an attacking mentality and me presonally i wouldn’t mind.
Me myself i want us to play like we did of old pass and move thats what our great club is built upon so i want a manager that will do this and Rijkaards team at Barce played this way. Kenny could aswell but he isnt a longterm replacement, besides if it doesn’t work out for him i wouldnt like the fans turning against him and it would be hard to get him to leave with the huge following he has me included. Roys Anfield job is about to come to an end and Commoli will be the one to put the nail in his Coffin……YNWA
Jay you clearly wanted a change ,but who do you think we were going to get under the circumstances we faced at the time?
My point is,you’ve got your change, and it was a huge error that we are paying for it now.
Jay I should elaborate.
Change is what you coveted, and change is what you’ve got, but you don’t like it now.
The problem I have with change is that we (i.e. you and I) had no say as to the choice of the new manager, although most fans with an ounce of intelligence knew we would only get a journey man of some sort, but the delusional thought we would get the likes of Mourinho or Hiddink (were you one of them?), because we all know these coach’s would not have touched us with a barge pole at the time. The likelihood of getting a top class coach now is also very slim as well. Who is available, or are you prepared to have KD put his reputation, or his standing with the fans on the line to?
Now, I make no apologies for being a big fan of Rafa’s, and I honestly thought at a minimum he deserved another season. Sacking Rafa was not a football decision it was a political decision, but others may disagree and I accept their opinion, but he had worked under such extreme circumstances that I just don’t understand those who were not willing to give him some leeway considering what he had done for LFC. That’s why I think it’s was a cataclysmic error on the part of those who were party to it, be they the board or allegedly some particular players.
I agree that we are now in a situation where change is imperative, but again, we are not party to the choices being made. So will we be happy with the next choice? Unfortunately we are seeing that change is not always best.
It’s easy to say you didn’t want Roy Hodgson now. At the time who did you honestly want? Who did you honestly think we would get? Would you have aligned yourself with Roy if he had been a success? Would you then claim change was correct? What will make you happy now?
My point is you’ve got the change you wanted, and I’ll tell you something else, unless the next coach is on your list of candidates, I’ll give you good odds you won’t like the next choice either. Guess why? Because you wouldn’t have chosen him.
dj – I’ve never advocated bring back Dalglish (although admittedly I did prefer him to Hodgson). My first choice has always been Frank Riijkaard, who was already on shakey ground at Galatasary (bigger club than us??) but was a proven top calibre manager that encouraged an adventurous, attacking brand of football. Was he reeeally not gettable??
For a risk, I advocated going after the likes of Slaven Bilic – young, charismatic and bold, but again encourages an attacking brand of football.
Pelligrini was another candidate that was available and supported as a prospective candidate – have you seen who he has joined now?? Are you honestly suggesting that he would’ve turned Liverpool down too??
By no means did I want to see another defensive minded manager again, least of all somebody that had achieved so little top-level success with that brand of football as Hodgson has.
The problem with some of you is that you downplay Liverpool too much, and have set such low standards that you’re content with whatever crap we get served – the proverbial “sh!t on a stick” as you may…
Anyway, if Hodgson would’ve been the classy, dignified gentleman that encourages a brand of dominating, pass and move football, as we were led believe from all the PR when he arrived, I’d have been very happy! I don’t really care about being proven right or wrong, I want to see Liverpool playing good football again first and foremost!
So no, I have not got what I wanted, and I’ll tell you what – if the next manager is somebody I’ve never heard of (like Wenger before he joined Arsenal), or somebody that I think negatively of at present (e.g. O’Neil or Deschamps) but delivers some positive football, I’ll be delighted!
I doubt that Roy is capable of making good signings. But hopefully that Commoli(?) guy has a big influence in the signings.
What worries me most is that if Liverpool are not in top 7 in january, how will we attract top players?
We flopped big time this week it looks like it might be a season of what might have been and if only’s we dropped 5 points to sides lets face it if we are to get in the top 4 we should be beating if we had got those points we could have been on 21 only 1 point behind city and 7 points behind chelsea but what has become the norm we flop is Roy the man for the job he says he is but I think he needs to develop a big club mentality and it doesnt look like he has it but hopefully we can stay in touch with the top 4 and in Jan we can strengthen the team because it needs it who will he get well he better rethink if hes looking at players of the ilk of poulsen, konchesky
Have u heard that Roy said glen johnson is not worth a shirt in England squad and in the same interview justify christian poulsen. (pls go to ESPN or GOAL to read). This man once said we are overstaffed but now complain of slim team. Honesty I give up. Championship here we come.
Did anyone aware that the presence of Sammy Lee in Liverpool FC have turned this club into worst condition? He brought his bad luck into Liverpool FC. Before joining Liverpool, he did managed Bolton FC as a manager. And after ten games, he had been sacked. And when he joined Liverpool in Benitez last spell at Liverpool, Liverpool turned into nightmare finished 7th position. Think of it? Was it a coincidence or ????? Sacked Him NESV
Sammy Lee was actually there the season we finished 2nd. However i think we need to change coaching staff aswell as the manager……YNWA
id rather have sam alerdice than that old man and thats saying a lot !!!!!!!!!
not worried – he wont be here.