QuoteMoratti treated Inter like his own personal fiefdom, and the players like his children. Kanu referred to him as his Italian father for years.Originally Posted by ken foree
i could be wrong but i seem to recall that robbie was massimo morratti's pet buy because he loves the premier league.
zombie/thread killer..
Ahh Keane denying he is leaving in the transfer window. The kiss of death. wonder where he lands.....
Yesterday's Sun ran the headline "Robbie Wants to Return".
I'm not sure the other members of Take That would be keen though.
Liverpool are drawing 2-2 with Hull right now in the 83rd minute. Benitez subbed on both Al Zhar and Babel instead of Keane. One sub left. I doubt he gets on the pitch. Not looking good for Robbie.
Lucas comes on for Mascherano. Liverpool desperate for a goal with four minutes to play and they leave Robbie on the bench.
Not going to get on now, cause Lucas is on now. Benitez does make some baffling decisions sometimes but then again he has a Champions league medal and I don't
In Trap we trust
Delighted that they didnt get a winner. What Benitez was doing bringing on the likes of lucas ahead of keane. Benitez is really doing Keane no favours, i wouldve fancied him to score against Hull today, they are the kind of team that Keane plays well against.
If this treatment keeps up, could be bad news for us in the new year.
Or is it?
Sunderland win 4:0 but Liverpool draw as Raffle leaves £20m on the bench.
But will that £20m be there after Xmas or will some scouse tea-leaf have swiped it?
Sunderland win 4:0
If Benitez is trying to destroy Robbie's confidence and morale he is doing a brilliant job. The third substitution was the final insult. Nobody other than Benitez in Anflield would have seriously entertained the belief that Lucas was going to help Liverpool get a winner. Playing one up front in these circumstances was "tactically inept" (No Neil Mc D, I am not going to apologise for what you regard as arrogance, but what every Liverpool fan regards as bloody obvious), but what makes it worse was that Kuyt was totally ineffective and unable to stay on his feet. If Keane has started and played that badly he would have been off before the hour. Benitez is going to lose Loverpool the title because of his stubborn inflexibility and his apparent unwillingness to consistently select his best technical players and show confidence in them.
Andy Reid scored got a high rating.
None of the other Irish there started.
If you know more about football than Benitez why are you posting on an internet forum for free and he is picking up a nice wage packet. I find his decisions baffling but I would not dare suggest he is wrong or that I know more about football than him
In Trap we trust
But by that rationale, you would never be able to criticize any professional in sport.
Benitez may know a lot about football, and may be succesful at what he does, but that doesn't mean he can't make mistakes.
It's objective facts (ie results) not my opinion that determine whether Benitez's tactics are right or wrong in given games. And the facts say that he has failed to get results (and therefore deploy appropriate tactics) against Stoke, West Ham, Fulham and Hull. In all of these games he has failed to make use of his obviously better players to beat technically inferior teams. I dont need "to know more about football than Benitez" to make this observation.
The only reason these results are not piling pressure on Benitez right now is because everyone else is doing their best to screw up too. Watch Man U power through in the 2nd half of the season, where they play the stronger teams at home and the weaker ones away.
Benitez does not seem to count on anything going wrong. He picks a team with Dirk Kuyt as single striker, banks on not conceding and thinks 'we'll win 1-0'. How often does that happen? No team with Dirk Kuyt as main striker is going to win the league, it's a simple fact. If he was any other striker he'd be subbed, but coz he's Benitez's favourite, he's always left on.
If you wanna go on results surely a look at the table would tell you something also. Or is to be top of the table not good enough for your high standards.
In Trap we trust
Both my comments about Benitez's tectical ineptitude (to which you objected) were made in reference to specific games that Liverpool failed to win. So to answer your question, those results and performances "weren't good enough," and as others (including Benitez amazingly) have commented Liverpool are highly unlikely to maintain their top of the league position unless they improve their current performance level. Like a lot of LFC fans I happen to think that dropping Kuyt and playing Keane and Babel more regularly is one obvious way in which Liverpool can improve. Keane and Babel are players capable of doing something extraordinary and exceptional. Between them they offer pace, guile, technique and vision, the qualities that can ultimately break down well organised but mediocre opposition.
As a Liverpool fan neither of them have offered much of the above this season. They have shown flashes of it but nothing consistant when they've had a chance. Keane seems to still paying the price for missing good chances earlier in the season. Babel often impresses when he comes on as a sub but then when he's given a chance to start a game he often plays like a drain.
Kuyt for all his limitations has actually given more but Benitez seems to have a blind spot regarding him in that if he's having a stinker (like yesterday) he never replaces him while Keane gets hauled off no matter how he's performing.
Take your point about Keane and Babel not showing consistent form, but i would argue that niether have been given a chance to play in their preferred position or in a system that is likely to get the best out of them.
Assuming that we had a fully fit squad I think that Gerrard, Keane and Babel are the perfect three to play behind Torres. I would even be inclined to play Robbie in the centre of that three and Gerrard and Babel either side, but it should be a fluid system utilising the pace, technical ability and vision of Liverpool's four best attacking players. Sorry if this is degenerating into an LFC thread, but if Liverpool cannot get the best out of Keane, then he is unlikely to perform well for Ireland if he is short of confidence and match fitness.
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