Quote JWP="JWP"Jesus pal, he's not even as good as the top sides understudy, and i'm being serious.
Evra (Fabio), Clichy (Gibbs), A.Cole (Zhirkov).
Him & Lucas, possibly two of the worst Brazilians I've seen, Lucas is just so unbrazilian it's insane.
You're right though, Liverpool do have further quality than just the two players often spoken about, over the last three years or so, they've arguably been the most defensively sound side in the Premiership, perhaps to the detrement of the attacking stuff.
It's the lack of width (your wide players are all out to in rather than the other way, none offer genuine width, your best, Benayoun, does his best work roaming, being difficult to pick up etc), lack of options, and lack of squad depth that's the killer. With over 150 transfers during his reign, he should have rectified these glaring, glaring problems.'"
Watch Aurelio more. Seriously, I rarely remember a Liverpool performance where any winger's had the better of him, and we've played some top sides. His passing is solid and his crossing is excellent, he's not the quickest, but he's been a class signing on a free, despite some terrible luck with injuries.
I also believe wide players are the problem. Riera is the only real natural wide player, whilst he's good, he struggles with inconsistency due to lack of any competition for his place. I'm not gonna hide it, I'm not a fan of Dirk Kuyt out on the right. I don't mind him through the middle against small teams, or on the right away in big games in Europe, but other than that, I feel he's too limited to warrant a role on the wing. I'd love to see Rafa throw Pacheco on the left/right, in a Benayoun style role, his passing and dribbling is as good as anything at the club, even if he is only pint sized. I think our lack of width has kind of been addressed with the signing of Johnson, but our midfield hasn't been able to control games the way we did with Alonso, we've not been able to swing the ball from side to side, probing like we did so often last year. As I said, I believe once everybody's fit, we'll be a better side than last season, but missing the X amount of players we do right now, we're down to the bare bones, last year when we got injuries, it was easier for somebody like Lucas to come in, play 2-3 games and we'd still win, we were high on confidence and the ball was rolling, but this year we started with players injured, unfit or just needing a rest, we weren't able to get on a roll and we're playing like you see now.
I believe we'll finish the second half of the season extremely strong, much like last year, however, our current form much depends on when we can get the big guns on the pitch and playing together, at the moment, Benny and Torres are carrying us.
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