Premier League 16/17/18 January 2016

Saturday

Tottenham v Sunderland 12:45 BT 2-0
Man City v Crystal Palace 15:00 2-0
Chelsea v Everton 15:00 2-1
Bournemouth v Norwich 15:00 1-1
Southampton v West Brom 15:00 1-1
Newcastle v West Ham 15:00 1-2
Aston Villa v Leicester 17:30 SKY 2-2

Sunday

Liverpool v Man Utd 14:05 SKY 1-1
Stoke v Arsenal 16:15 SKY 1-2

Monday
Swansea v Watford 20:00 SKY 0-2

Oh Sunderland FFS

Sunderland are so bad. Easy Spurs victory which means we have to beat United to stay within distance of top 4 now but looking more like Europa League again which is ok seeing as our owners have no real ambition and we have half our first team out injured.

No ambition but spent lots of money on Benteke, Firmino and Clyne..

You need to be blaming management and scouts..

After we sold Sterling for 50 million yeah.

Why are we resorting to Caulker on loan? If they believe in Klopp and want to get top 4 or more they should give him 15-20 million alone for a top class defender.

Hammers being raped by Newcastle.

I'm in a cave and unable to watch anything, apparently Sunderland fell apart after Sam brought on a cheap signing with a kraut name and went with 3 CB's

Also sounds like Shelvey is running things for us

Sunderland are as good as relegated.

Chelsea are as good as relegated.

Everton have fucked it up in about 2 minutes

And now Chelsea have fucked it up!

Who's next to be Chelsea manager? Firing Mourinho hasn't made any difference.

Luis wrote:After we sold Sterling for 50 million yeah.

Why are we resorting to Caulker on loan? If they believe in Klopp and want to get top 4 or more they should give him 15-20 million alone for a top class defender.

Who should be bought? Which top class defender is for sale in January?

Apparently Palace haven't scored for 7 hours 43 minutes. Interesting.

christmasborocooper wrote:

Luis wrote:After we sold Sterling for 50 million yeah.

Why are we resorting to Caulker on loan? If they believe in Klopp and want to get top 4 or more they should give him 15-20 million alone for a top class defender.

Who should be bought? Which top class defender is for sale in January?

I'm not a scout who's thousands of pounds a month to find one. Suarez was available in January. We bought Coutinho and Sturrdge in a January window as well. I don't buy all this 'it's not a good window.' Lets just bin it off for good then.

Luis wrote:

christmasborocooper wrote:

Luis wrote:After we sold Sterling for 50 million yeah.

Why are we resorting to Caulker on loan? If they believe in Klopp and want to get top 4 or more they should give him 15-20 million alone for a top class defender.

Who should be bought? Which top class defender is for sale in January?

I'm not a scout who's thousands of pounds a month to find one. Suarez was available in January. We bought Coutinho and Sturrdge in a January window as well. I don't buy all this 'it's not a good window.' Lets just bin it off for good then.

So perhaps it's the scouts then? Maybe they've not identified a player Klopp wants.. Or they identified Caulker.

Dat Terry backheel...never knew he was still playing, let alone be able to do that.

Another two points lost in additional time

I don't care offside or not, you shouldn't throw away 2 goals advantage and then concede in 98th minute in the same match.

christmasborocooper wrote:

Luis wrote:

christmasborocooper wrote:

Luis wrote:After we sold Sterling for 50 million yeah.

Why are we resorting to Caulker on loan? If they believe in Klopp and want to get top 4 or more they should give him 15-20 million alone for a top class defender.

Who should be bought? Which top class defender is for sale in January?

I'm not a scout who's thousands of pounds a month to find one. Suarez was available in January. We bought Coutinho and Sturrdge in a January window as well. I don't buy all this 'it's not a good window.' Lets just bin it off for good then.

So perhaps it's the scouts then? Maybe they've not identified a player Klopp wants.. Or they identified Caulker.

I imagine Klopp brought people with him to help identify players - he did an incredible job at Dortmund finding players.

We're 17 days into a transfer window we're we are within touching distance of top 4 but have 5 key injuries and one of the worst keepers in the league. If our owners want top 4 they need to give Klopp 50 million for this window alone and say go and get a top class keeper, a top class centre back and another forward if you want to secure top 4.

Please let us win today. We should be scoring a few vs this lot. We're obviously going to concede a set piece or two so Firmino has to have a fantastic game again.

Luis, if ever there was an advertisement for not throwing money at a problem it is this match

About 500m on the pitch and the worst Man U Liverpool gave I've ever seen

Bah, first shot, set piece

Glad I don't watch football anymore

Muhahhahahaha....always nice to win against them.

There's no point really analysing that game in detail. We bossed the game from start to finish and were toothless in attack.

United were dreadful. Easily the worst United squad and performance I've witnessed as a football fan of 16 years.

United score from poor defending and a keeper who can't stop a shot in the same way De Gea or Butland can.

In a wierd way I'm pretty optimistic for the future because I can see United are really on the decline. I imagine Van Gaal will limp on until the end of the season but it will take a complete and utter Spurs f**k up of Spurrrrrs proportions for them to qualify for the Champions League meaning De Gea will be gone in the summer to Madrid finally and they may lose Mata as well. The new United manager will take a few years to sort that mess out.

We'll have our first full season with Klopp after a pre season so we should be much more settled and used to his ideas. The owners are clearly writing this season off so I assume they will give Klopp the funds in the summer to make the team his own a little bit.

Leicester wont emulate what they did this season you imagine so the rivals for the top 4 will be City, Arsenal and Spurs.

Chelsea could go either way. They may need a bit of an overhaul as well.

I don't think any team can withstand these injuries really. It's ok if you have quality to come in but when you miss Coutinho and Sturridge today for example you aren't likely to score many with Milner and Lallana/Ibe filling in. They just aren't good enough.

So the league season is over for us today but we are still in all the cups. We should be going all out to win the league cup which will give us the confidence in the FA Cup and Europa League.

The Europa League would be an immense victory - CL qualification and European glory all in one gulp. I don't think we will have the quality as a squad to win that one though this year.

Arsenal just hired Leicester's scout - the guy who unearthed Vardy, Kante and Mahrez.

That's really what Liverpool should be doing, not just going on a big spending spree needing more and more money at each window. You've already tried that the past two seasons and it's made things worse not better. The problem seems to be identifying the right kind of player. That includes not signing players who turn out to be injury prone particularly under the duress of the type of training methods that someone like Klopp is going to adopt.

The failures with the scouting as well as the apparent mediocre state of your academy should be the areas that Liverpool attempt to readjust and invest in instead of the owners just handing over more money. It's not like they haven't backed the manager the previous seasons with funds. Liverpool will never be able to match City/Chelsea/United in pure spending without an Oligarch or Arabian style owner, so they need to think a bit more outside the box and adopt a more creative approach then what Louis is suggesting.

All you need is one player like Suarez or Bale to get you top 4, it's not really rocket science. Reus or Lacazette 40 million and we finish top 4.

The problem was we spent that sort of money on Benteke and Lallana/Balotelli.

Surely Klopp won't be as stupid but then Mignolet signing a 5 year deal today has me worried. I hope Klopp didn't have a part in that.

Luis wrote:Why are we resorting to Caulker on loan? If they believe in Klopp and want to get top 4 or more they should give him 15-20 million alone for a top class defender.

Caulker's alright for cover and 15-20m doesn't guarantee you top class (look at Rahman at Chelsea, Rojo at United, Mangala at City. all v expensive, all hardly playing and generally crap when they do) and presumably those clubs have expensive scouts who are supposed to be able to find top class players.

It's not cover we need though is it? 4 injured centre backs and probably 3 of them aren't good enough anyway. Skrtel and Toure should be sold this summer. Lovren still has a lot to prove. Sakho is our only top class centre back IMO.

We're signing no one this window and rewarding one of our worst players with a new contract. To me that's writing the season off. If we don't back Klopp this summer then next season is pointless as well - just another 9 months of waiting for Sturridge to be fit.

If we had even a half good forward at the weekend we'd have won comfortably. United were a disgrace but Milner as a forward sums up the mess we're in.

You've got a £30m forward with a 1 in 2 goal record in this league sitting on the bench only getting 10 min cameos. Even if he's off form, he's a lot more likely to come up with a goal than Milner or Ibe so you gotta question the manager there. Or can you just return him to Villa please? Ta

Caulker on loan seems a fairly smart signing if you got injuries. Ideal world you'd be buying a quality long-term option who can take the position for years but that is not easy to do midseason. If it's someone from another Premier League club who you could expect to slot in straight away (say, Ashley Williams) you'd be paying through the nose as most would be unwilling to lose a key player in January. And if you're importing, they're probably going to take the rest of the season to adapt and you'd probably get better performances from players like Caulker & Kolo Toure in the short-term.

Luis wrote:All you need is one player like Suarez or Bale to get you top 4, it's not really rocket science. Reus or Lacazette 40 million and we finish top 4.

The problem was we spent that sort of money on Benteke and Lallana/Balotelli.

Surely Klopp won't be as stupid but then Mignolet signing a 5 year deal today has me worried. I hope Klopp didn't have a part in that.

Of course he had, it's delusional to think otherwise.

debaser wrote:You've got a £30m forward with a 1 in 2 goal record in this league sitting on the bench only getting 10 min cameos. Even if he's off form, he's a lot more likely to come up with a goal than Milner or Ibe so you gotta question the manager there. Or can you just return him to Villa please? Ta

Caulker on loan seems a fairly smart signing if you got injuries. Ideal world you'd be buying a quality long-term option who can take the position for years but that is not easy to do midseason. If it's someone from another Premier League club who you could expect to slot in straight away (say, Ashley Williams) you'd be paying through the nose as most would be unwilling to lose a key player in January. And if you're importing, they're probably going to take the rest of the season to adapt and you'd probably get better performances from players like Caulker & Kolo Toure in the short-term.

Some additional comments on my own:

1) You can't expect to buy a new one Premier League level Centre Back when you already have Skrtel, Lovren and Sakho on your payroll. One day they will all be healthy and you have 2 unhappy central defenders not playing. And it's not a position where you can rotate.

2) I think Tottenham should be a blueprint for what Liverpool needs to do - trim squad, mould it according to manager will and slowly fight your way up to.

3) If you can buy Bale/Suarez kind of player down the road then do it, but realistically it will be very, very difficult. For starters - Reus is way too injury prone for Liverpool to spend 50m pounds on him.

4) Also, lack of Academy players is something which should be addressed as well. Years ago Benitez did serious overhaul there, brought Spanish coaches... and then nothing positive happened. No local players and no Spanish either in 1st team from ones who were brought to U19/U21 teams.

5) http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2016/jan/18/liverpool-jurgen-klopp-transfer-committee - interesting article on this topic, even more interesting is the fact that Committee did better with transfers than Club managers,