A Liverpool Thing

January Not a Bad Month for Deals

2012-01-06T11:00:00.000+01:00

January, the start of a new year, is often seen as a month of hope. Resolutions made as the previous year came to an end are still fresh in the mind as is the belief that they will be maintained. That similar resolutions were made (but not kept) before doesn't matter. This time round will be different, this time round I will make it.

Football, however, is much more cynical and allows no space for such naive hope. So it is that January is seen as the month for the desperate, when those who are in trouble trash about in a made bid to change the flow of things. Only they look imploringly at the transfer window that January brings with it, praying that it will deliver that player which could save their season.

With choice not being on beggars' menu, so it is that they must make do with what is available. And pay exceedingly for it. They have to look for players that others don't want; those who are either playing badly or whose character has proven to be too difficult to handle. Or else take punts on young players who are on the fringes of others' squads in the hope that their talent makes up for their lack of maturity and experience.

That is how the January transfer window is seen. There is no value in it and you cannot get the players you really want unless you're willing to spend far more than they are worth. It is a sellers' market, and that's never a good thing for those on the other side of the bargaining table.

Such truth holds most of the time, but not always. The £23 million that Liverpool paid Ajax last January, when they exploited the Dutch club's financial worries, was a pretty good deal. It was the same when Maxi Rodriguez joined with Atletico Madrid unwilling to keep paying his wages. So too when Deportivo La Coruna opted to cash in on Alvaro Arbeloa so desperate were they to get their hands on the money.

Then there were those instances where January happens to be an off-season month. It was such a timing anomaly that brought Daniel Agger and Martin Skrtel to Liverpool.

This does not mean that Liverpool will sign any players during this transfer window much less that they will be successes if so. But it does show that there can be exceptions to any theory, regardless of how firm the wide spread belief in it is.

And that should be enough to allow you to enjoy transfer rumours in hope, rather than look at them in cynicism.

Why Carroll Needs Patience and Time

2011-12-09T11:00:00.000+01:00

It only takes one bad touch for the criticism to start. You know that it's coming as soon as Andy Carroll misplaces a pass or fails to control a ball; the comments that he's not worth the money spent on him, how he's a big mistake, that he's too lazy to try and make it work.

You can even sense some wanting him to fail so that they can tell everyone that they told you so.

There is a lesson about not writing players off prematurely in Lucas Leiva's transformation from Liverpool's fall guy into one of the team's most important players. Yet, judging by the negative feeling towards Carroll, there are quite a few who seem unwilling to heed it.

It is undeniable that so far Carroll hasn't really delivered. Just as there's no arguing that he has struggled to make an impact. But there have also been enough glimpses of his potential to see that there is something quite interesting there. That game last season against Manchester City where Carroll scored twice by itself should be enough to convince just how good he could become.

That is hardly surprising. Carroll has all the characteristics that you could want in a striker: incredible strength, a tremendous shot, virtually unbeatable in the air, the willingness to sacrifice himself for the team and also a good technique.

Yet in his lack of experience he is missing one very important element. Barely eighteen months of first team football - most of which were in the Championship - aren't enough for a player to have developed fully. He still has to learn about his own game as much as anything else.

What has made Carroll's life particularly hard is the £35 million Liverpool paid to get him. Had he joined for even half of that amount, there would be far greater acceptance and willingness to allow him to grow. But instead people look at the size of the fee and decide that for that kind of money Liverpool should be getting a player who is at the peak of his ability.

Yet he isn't. The fee was simply a product of the circumstances that preceded the transfer and not really an evaluation of Carroll's value at that point in time. Liverpool were willing to pay such an inflated amount because they had the cash and wanted to send out a message of their ambition.

But they were also willing to pay it because they believed in Carroll's potential. The trick with potential, however, is that it can be difficult to coax especially when the player is under pressure. Young players will go through rough patches, they will make mistakes and they will struggle. It is all part of the learning process.

That's what's happening to Carroll who has to get used to a team playing in a different manner and with greater expectations then he's been accustomed to. The potential is definitely there but the pressure is eroding his confidence. As he doesn't yet have the maturity to deal with it so the problem keeps getting bigger with every game where he disappoints.

It is a vicious cycle that only Carroll himself can break. Just as Lucas found the inner strength to dig deep and eventually prove his critics wrong, so too must Andy Carroll. With time hopefully he'll manage to do just that so that Liverpool will finally get the player worthy of all that money they paid for him.

Time To Prove Worth for Spearing

2011-12-05T10:03:00.001+01:00

It is an unfortunate reality of the game of football, one which dictates that an injury to one player means an opportunity for another. So it will be for Jay Spearing who seems to be the player within Liverpool's squad who can best replicate the job that Lucas Leiva carried out and which someone else will now have to do in the Brazilian's injury forced absence.

Ironically, in certain aspects Spearing's career mirrors Lucas'. He too has been deemed as not being good enough by fans unwilling to look past first impressions. His is a presence that many look at skeptically with the belief being that he isn't big enough to play in such a central role that is normally the fighting ground of giants like Yaya Toure.

Like Lucas, no one would have blamed him had he asked to leave or if he'd accepted one of the opportunities to go out on loan placed before him. But instead he chose to stay at Liverpool to fight it out despite the apparent futility of such a decision.

Unfortunate or not in its origin, this then represent his make or break moment. Now is the time for him to show that he is fit for a starring role and not just a supporting one.

It won't be easy. Implausible as this might have seemed two years ago he will have to play in Lucas' shadow where his every game will be analysed using the standard set by the Brazilian as a measuring stick. Which, given how well Lucas has been playing, is a tough ask.

Yet such thoughts do a dis-service to Spearing who has been playing very well whenever opportunities have presented themselves. Perhaps his displays haven't been as eye-catching as Lucas' but they have been effective, confident and determined.

Not that this should be surprising. Pushed forward by Steve Heighway as being ready for the first team when he captained the FA Youth Cup winning team in 2007, Spearing eventually progressed as one of the better players at reserve level. There he rarely failed to impress, dominating most games and showing that he was on a different level to most of the other players on the pitch.

That, however, wasn't enough to get him into the first team. It was only when Kenny Dalglish took over as manager that he started being looked at as a squad member who could be relied on, rather than simply someone for the occasional meaningless cup game. Still, with the investment in central midfield during the summer, he was the one who ended up suffering the most.

Now he can show his true value. Now he has the opportunity to prove that there's no need for Liverpool to bring someone else in that role in January. Now he can prove that he's big enough for Liverpool.

Players Must Show That Liverpool Aren't a One Man Team

2011-11-11T11:00:00.000+01:00

Back in the nineties teams would travel to Anfield with one plan in mind: that of stopping Steve McManaman. The thinking was that if they managed this then they were well on their way to getting something out of the game. It wasn't a tactic that worked as much as its reputation suggested yet it worked often enough for it to continue being used.

That tactic seems to be back in fashion. It would be incorrect to say that the last three teams to have come to Anfield all did so with the aim of going away with a point but all three paid particular attention to Luis Suarez. The belief that by limiting him you limit Liverpool is growing.

Yet at its core it is a false belief. Last season Stewart Downing was often Aston Villa's match winner whilst Blackpool's valiant fight against relegation was largely down to Charlie Adam. These two players have the potential to turn a game in Liverpool's favour. Only they haven't been doing it.

Nor has anyone else.

Liverpool's problem isn't the over-reliance on Suarez but rather the deficiencies of other players. Just as players used to stand back and let Steve McManaman and, later, Steven Gerrard try to save games, so too it seems that the current batch are abdicating their responsibility and hoping that Suarez comes up with an invention that wins the game. But, as we've seen in recent weeks, it cannot work that way.

That this is happening is partly down to the number of new players that there are. These are still getting used to playing in a different environment that has new (and greater) pressures to what they were used to. They are also still trying to fit into a system the workings of which are still new to them with team-mates whom they don't know and who don't know them. And rather than letting their instincts take over they let fear rule. It is much safer to try to get the ball to Suarez then try something yourself.

This was increasingly apparent against Swansea when preying at the back of the minds of most players was the thought of dropping more points like they did against Norwich. As the game wore on and the fear grew, so did the misplaced passes which resulted in Liverpool ceeding control of the game.

Over the course of the season, only rarely have Liverpool's midfield players really taken control and been dangerous. Rarely has anyone other than Suarez really shown the mental strength and determination to push up a notch. When that happened - Henderson's cameo appearance against Manchester United springs to mind - then we saw midfielders really in with a chance to score.

Suarez, being Liverpool's best player, will inevitably always feature prominently in attacking moves; it would be foolish to structure the team otherwise. But he cannot and, with the talent that there is in the squad, he need not be the only focus.

Yet if the other players keep deferring to him then it is only natural that other teams start reacting to that. The problem, then, isn't that Liverpool's main threat is Luis Suarez it is that the other players are acting as if that they believe that he is the only one.

Reserves Let Down

2011-10-20T14:43:00.003+02:00

No games won and no points on the table, this has been a dismal start to the season for Liverpool's reserves team. Or, rather, that would be conclusion if you fail to look at the most significant column, that for games played, the one that shows that this week's defeat at Newcastle was only their second game of the season.

Ten weeks into the 2011/12 season and they've played only two games. It is a fact that is so astounding that it bears repeating.

If it weren't for the involvement in the NextGen series, these players would have spent virtually all of the past three months training. This at a crucial stage of their career when they need games in order to progress. It is a ridiculous and frustration situation, one that has been dragging on for a long number of years which would indicate a lack of desire to do anything to fix it.

Rather than fostered, players' development is being stunted.

The current bandwagon seems to dictates looking at Barcelona as the standard bearers for what is good about football. This, therefore, might easily seem like a lazy comparison but it has to be pointed out that Barcelona and Real Madrid's second teams have played eight games and this despite their leagues staring almost a month after the English does. Is there anyone willing to look and listen to this, though?

Why Walking Alone Is Not A Good Idea

2011-10-13T11:00:00.000+02:00

A year after becoming the heroes who saved Liverpool from financial armageddon, Fenway Sports Group opted to to become the villains of the day. Not necessarily in the eyes of Liverpool fans but certainly in those of the rest of the football world. Sooner or later, one of the big clubs was going to start making noises about the splitting of television rights. That much has been inevitable ever since the Premier League's creation and the rapid commercialisation of the game that followed. The recent case where a pub landlady won the right to buy the sports service from another country's provider - and the possibility of a decrease in the overseas revenues that it threatens to bring about - simply accellerated this. Yet it is still disappointing that Liverpool were the ones to do so. There's no escaping that the club is being greedy, that it doesn't really care about the fate of the rest of English football and those are not the kind of principles you want your club to admit to. It is, undoubtedly, an egotistical stance. And inevitably there will be those who defend it. The belief that winning is the only thing that matters - regardless of how that win is achieved - is so prevalent that there will be those who will see this as a good team. Who cares if Bolton struggle as long as Liverpool get more money? What's most important is that there are the finances in place to buy more players because that is how you ensure that you're among the best. That is the sort of reaction that Ayre tried to encourage when mentioning the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid who have the power to negotiate their own deals and therefore the potential to earn more. Liverpool need to be in a position to make more money if it wants to compete with them. Of course, it is important to have a team that is capable of challenging. But this is not the way to go about it. Not least because Ayre's argument is actually flawed. His reasoning is that foreign fans only want to watch specific clubs. Well, as a foreign fan I don't agree. I want to see Liverpool on television every time they play, that much is obvious. But I also enjoy watching other teams play and in the model that Ayre is proposing the likelihood is that I won't be able to do that. What would happen is that the top six clubs would be able to negotiate their own deals whilst the rest negotiate a collective deal. So far, so good even if it will mean a smaller pot of revenue to be shared against the bulk of the teams making up the league. Yet what that would also mean is that in each country the rights to the Premiership would be split among two or more providers. Meaning that if I want to keep watching the number of games that I do today I would have to take out two or more subscriptions. Would that happen? Of course not: who would be willing to pay that much money? I'd either drop my interest or else look for cheaper alternatives like going to watch games at some pub or else turning to the internet. Eventually, the television channels will realise that there isn't enough money to be made out of such deals and back out of them. And the clubs pushing for such a model would find themselves with a dead goose and no golden eggs.

Sports Book Chat: Joe Fagan Biography Co-Author Mark Platt

2011-10-10T14:00:00.000+02:00

Despiteachieving an unprecedented treble in his first season in charge, Joe Faganremains something of a marginalised figure in Liverpool's history. For many his success was down to the team heinherited from Bob Paisley whereas his work in the backroom staff is oftenoverlooked.

A much moretruthful picture of Fagan's role both as a coach and as a manager is presentedby the recent biography titled Joe Fagan: A Reluctant Champion. We spoke toMark Platt, one of the book's co-authors,about the story behind this book andthe experience of writing it.

How was the idea to write this bookborn? And how did you get involved?

The ideastems from a show I produced for LFC TV (my full-time job) about Joe back in2007. It was called ‘No Ordinary Joe’ and during its production I got to knowtwo of Joe’s sons Stephen and Michael. We got talking about the fact he wassuch an unsung figure and that there’d never been a book written about him.With the family’s blessing I then pressed ahead with putting this right. Notlong afterwards I met Joe’s grandson Andrew, a journalist based in London. Hetoo was planning on writing a similar book so we decided to work together.

What was your role in the writing of thisbook?

Iprobably did more of the research but the workload was splitpretty evenly and together we carried out interviews with many of Joe’sex-colleagues and former Liverpool players, and then pieced everythingtogether.

What was the process like? How long did it take to write and was it adifficult book to write?

I’d be lyingif I said it was easy. With me based in Liverpool and Andrew in London it wasdifficult at times but we got together as often as we could and spoke regularlyover the phone and via email. Writing a biography of a person who is no longerwith us is always going to be a complex project, especially someone who beforehe became manager kept himself very much out of the public eye. Piecingtogether Joe’s early life was certainly a challenge because not much was knownabout him. His time at Liverpool was little easier as I like to think I havesufficient knowledge of this and there was no shortage of people who workedwith him and for him willing to cooperate.

Why did you feel that it was important thatthere was a book about Joe Fagan?

Like I saidearlier he was such an unsung figure but the role he played in Liverpool’ssuccess of the sixties, seventies and eighties can never be underestimated.Everyone knows about Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley, there have been countlessbooks written about these – and rightly so – but Joe’s role was just asimportant.

Did you yourself ever get to meet Joe?

I didbriefly. It was at Melwood one day back in the mid-1990s. I was working for amagazine called XTRA Time and I was at the training ground to interview one ofthe players when I spotted Joe. At the time I was also working on a featureabout the treble-winning season, it must have been 1994 and the tenthanniversary, so I approached Joe and asked if I could interview him. He kindlydeclined the offer and typically said ‘thanks son but no-one will want to hearwhat I want to say, it’s the players you want to speak to, they were the oneswho deserve the credit.’ While disappointed not to have got an interview with Itotally respected his decision. He was such a private man and wanted to stayvery much in the background.

A lot of research has evidently gone intoit. How was that? Was it difficult to choose what to put in andwhat to leave out?

The researchwas extensive but it really was a labour of love and I enjoyed every minute ofit. When I set out on the project I feared that there might not be enoughmaterial but I couldn’t have been more wrong. To be honest there wasn’t muchstuff that had to be left out and I hope the readers agree that the end productis a very comprehensive overview of Joe’s life and career.

The diaries that Joe used to keep are atthe heart of this book. What did it feellike reading them? Was it tough tochoose what to leave out?

Yes, this iswhere we had to be a bit more selective about what to include and not toinclude. It was fascinating to flick through the diaries and it really gave yousense of what it must have been like to be in the bootroom all those years ago.The diaries provided Joe with a voice in the book and this helps us paint a muchclearer picture of what must have been going through his mind, which I feel wasvitally important to the book. The diaries aren’t reproduced in full as a lotof entries in them are quite repetitive when it come to training routines andtactics, but I’m sure his private thoughts on certain players, situations andmatches will be of great interest to the fans.

What amazes me from the snippets thatyou've included in the book is how simple those diary entries were yet, at thesame time, what depth of thought and analysis they contained. It was as if he could take a complex issueand strip away the frills until the basic concept remained. That for me is a true mark of genius. Don't know if I've explained myself wellenough and, at the same time, don't know whether you agree or not?

I totallyagree. Where Joe and his bootroom colleagues were concerned simplicity was thekey and this common sense approach to the day-to-day running of the footballclub was what made Liverpool so special.

Was there anything that surprised you asyou were writing this?

I alwaysknew Joe was a highly respected figure but from the interviews we carried outI’d say he was held in even greater esteem than I thought. Every person weapproached to be interviewed about the book was more than willing to co-operateand no-one had a bad word to say about him.

Do you think that Joe is appreciated enoughboth by Liverpool supporters and by the general footballing world?

I’d say he’sappreciated by the Liverpool fans, hopefully even more so after they’ve readthis book, but beyond the confines of Anfield I don’t think people know thatmuch about him. Yes he guided Liverpool to the treble in 1984 but his stint inmanagement was so short that football fans in general quickly forgot about him.

How gut wrenching was it to write theHeysel part?

I was onlytwelve in 1985 and watched it all unfold on TV. That was gut-wrenching at thetime and writing the chapter on it brought everything flooding back. In fact,it hit home even more so. It was a tragedy that so easily could have beenavoided. For the 39 people who lost their lives it was such a tragic andunnecessary waste of life and, of course, a sad, sad way for Joe to bow out ofthe game he loved.

What's next for you?

On aday-to-day basis I’ll carry on in my full-time job as a producer for LFC TV,the club’s television channel, but I’ve got plenty of ideas for future booksand in my spare time at the moment I’m working on one with the original‘Supersub’, Liverpool legend David Fairclough. It’s still early days on that sono news yet on when that will be published but hopefully it won’t be too long.

You can read our review of Joe Fagan: A Reluctant Champion here. Mark Platt can be followed on Twitter as can, obviously, A Liverpool Thing.

A Reluctant Champion

2011-09-23T10:44:00.001+02:00

Book Review: Joe Fagan - Reluctant Champion by Andrew Fagan and Mark Platt

There are two iconic images that seem to perfectly sum up Joe Fagan's time as Liverpool manager. The first has him lounging by a pool in front of two Italian carabinieri and the Champions Cup, won the night before, besides him. The second, taken a year later, shows him distraught to the point that he can barely walk as Liverpool arrive at Speke airport from Heysel.

For many that was Joe Fagan: winner of a magnificent treble - that included beating Roma on their back yard in the Champions Cup final - but also the unlucky man who was Liverpool's manager on one of their darkest and most tragic nights.

Even when he was achieving what no other British manager had managed at the time - the treble - his success was often downplayed. This was the team that Bob Paisley had built, one that knew how to play from memory: anyone could guide it to success.

It is this erroneous belief that has relegated Fagan to a mere footnote in the history of the English game when instead his should be a name mentioned alongside those of the greatest to ever manage the game.

Just how vital a role Fagan played in Liverpool's success over three decades emerges in his recently published biography written by LFC.tv writer Mark Platt and Joe's grandson Andrew. Pieced together thanks to interviews to more than thirty former players and people with whom Joe worked who help add depth to the story, this book helps reveal an honourable man who was thoroughly in love with the game of football and with a brilliant talent for improving players.

A particularly revealing story is the one about his decision to take over from Bob Paisley as Liverpool manager. What drove his wasn't the ambition to prove that he could to the job but rather the responsibility he felt towards the rest of the coaching staff. If someone from outside came in the in all probability he would bring his own people in meaning lost jobs for those already at Liverpool.

Fagan wouldn't have that and neither did he want to put at risk all the good work that had been done at the club. So he went for it.

Aiding him was his coaching diaries in which he jotted all that happened during games and training. In his diaries, along the technical notes he puts in personal thoughts.

These end up being the most revealing part of the book. Fagan's writings are simple yet profound, showcasing the genius of a man who could distill any situation to the core issue and which made solving that problem all the easier.

It wasn't precisely the Moneyball strategy but it wasn't far off, either. With Liverpool struggling to replace Graeme Souness, Fagan opted to buy Kevin McDonald who bore little resemblance in his style of play to the club's former captain, Yet Fagan had noticed the number of passes he delivered and saw that it was a talent from which it the whole team could benefit.

Ultimately McDonald never played that many games of Fagan who decided to retire at the end of his second season in charge. We're never told why that was but the feeling is that he felt the pressure from having to tell players that they weren't in the tam

Whatever the reason Fagan certainly didn't deserve to bow out of football on that dark night in Belgium and the scenes he witnessed that night clearly left their mark on him. What he does deserve is a book like this that helps minute the life of one of the game's greats.

Full Disclosure: a review copy of this book was provided by the publisher.

A Degree of Progress Will Be Enough: Liverpool FC 2011/12 Preview

2011-08-10T11:24:00.000+02:00

When Paul Konchesky was sold to Leicester City earlier this summer, one of the strangest and most stressful periods of the past two decades in Liverpool’s history came to a close. Seen as the embodiment of the mediocrity that had somehow become the norm at the club, Konchesky’s departure was deemed as confirmation that the standards that had been allowed to drop were now being pushed upwards again.

For all the criticism that was directed his way – a lot of which, let’s be clear, were deserved – the dignity that the player himself displayed was laudable. He was man enough to admit that he hadn’t been good enough when Liverpool lost to a last minute goal at Tottenham, never reacted to the criticism (something that, sadly, his mother failed to emulate) and agreed to go down a division rather than stick around in Liverpool’s reserves for another season. Yet, likeable and honourable as he was, it is undeniable that Konchesky just wasn’t a good enough player for Liverpool – much like the man who had brought him there.

The basis that apparently underpinned Hodgson’s appointment – the nonsensical perceived need to go for an English manager – made him the best person for the job. Which is rather different than saying that he was the right man for it. Despite some exceptional achievements – taking Switzerland to the World Cup and leading Fulham to the Europa League final in particular – there was little in a career of over four decades to indicate that he could cope with a job which carries the expectations of the Liverpool job. His successes in Nordic countries were achieved thanks to the exploitation of those countries’ lack of tactical development whilst his time at Inter was seen significantly less favourably in Italy than it was in England. Most worrying was his failure at Blackburn, a club where he wasted a fortune and arguably set it on its way to relegation.

And, at times, that seemed to be Liverpool’s fate as well. Hodgson can point to a number of justifiable alibis for his failure: owners who were bleeding the club dry, players who wanted to leave and a botched transfer policy where the Managing Director seemed to have as much say (if not more) than the manager. Yet he was the man who set out his teams to play defensively at home, who bowed to Alex Ferguson when he criticised Torres, who considered anything more than a point away from home as ‘a bonus’ and who judged a defeat at Everton – when Liverpool were played off the park – as the best game his team had played.

As his team’s performances worsened and he became more defensive, Hodgson came out with a famous remark that whoever replaced him couldn’t do a better job and that there wasn’t a magic wand.

Only that it turned out that there was. Using largely the same squad, Kenny Dalglish managed to revive the club’s fortunes and produce some excellent football along the way. On his side he had not only the fans – who rightly revere the man – but also the club’s change of ownership that swept away much of the negativity around it. Still, to take the club from depressing talking of possible relegation to the verge of European qualification whilst trashing both Manchester sides and ruining Fernando Torres’ Chelsea debut along the way was nothing short of exceptional.

Inevitably, Dalglish was given the job on a permanent basis and now things could get trickier. Last season there was very little to lose and, consequently, almost no pressure. That will change this time round especially after having spent some £43 million on three players this summer.

There is also a degree of scepticism over the players on whom that money has been spent. Already, there was perplexity at the £35 million that Liverpool paid for Andy Carroll last January, especially given his off the pitch problems, but John W. Henry had already explained that fee as being down to Chelsea’s late bid to sign Fernando Torres. Yet Liverpool have followed it up by paying excessively for Jordan Henderson and Stewart Downing, which puts both players in the firing line for criticism should either one of them fail to settle in immediately.

The amounts spent on those players has somewhat ridiculed the notion that Liverpool would going predominantly for players who represented good value for money; that they would be adopting what has lazily been tagged as the Moneyball approach. Yet, whilst it has been quoted often enough, little is yet understood about how this works. Sure enough, not overpaying for a player is a tenet but so is paying what is needed to fill the gaps, which is what Liverpool have done with the left-footed Downing. Equally it isn’t merely coincidental that all of these players are British, something that ensures that Liverpool will recover a good part of the fees paid should any one of these fail to live up to the hype. And that too is a ‘Moneyball’ consideration.

What is more interesting than the money paid is how Dalglish decides to line up his players. With so many central midfielders available – excluding the departing Alberto Aquilani and the immobile Cristian Poulsen, Liverpool have five who can justifiably expect to play fairly regularly – it seems improbable that they will adopt the 4-4-2 that Dalglish has traditionally employed. Much more likely is the 4-2-3-1 that mirrors the system that Liverpool have been implementing at an academy level for the past two years and which Dalglish knows fully well due to his involvement in the academy before he got his promotion.

This system should allow him to play Lucas alongside Charlie Adam in a withdrawn midfield position with the first primarily looking to defend and the other to create. It would also see Downing, Gerrard and Suarez working behind Carroll who will be the focus of attack. With Dirk Kuyt, Maxi Rodriguez, Jordan Henderson and Jay Spearing also available, Dalgish seems to have built a midfield in which every player has a good alternative.

If this is truly is the system to be adopted, then it will be an interesting experiment to watch. Even if it isn’t, however, Dalglish has the ability to innovate tactically so as to mould the team into playing as he wants it, something that he showed at times last year when Liverpool switched to three players at the back to deal with certain teams.

Part of that innovation could be down to Steve Clarke. Since he joined Dalglish last January, the profile of Mourinho’s former assistant has been steadily growing as has his influence. There’s nothing to indicate that he had anything to do with the removal of Sammy Lee from first team coach but it is telling that the man chosen to replace him was Kevin Keen, someone who Clarke clearly recommended, having played and worked with him at West Ham. With another of Mourinho’s former aides now in charge at Chelsea, it could be that Clarke is working his way into eventually being given the job at Anfield.

That, however, is something that at the moment seems to lie far ahead in the future. But, after a bleak couple of years, Liverpool’s future does indeed seem to be brightening up. Not least because the academy – which Rafa Benitez revolutionised in what could turn out to be his most important act as Liverpool manager – is suddenly churning out a number of talents. There were six Liverpool players in the England squad that took on the U17 World Cup in Mexico (plus another – Tom King – in the Australian team) and seven were called up for England’s U19 European Championship squad. More importantly, Dalglish has shown faith in Martin Kelly, John Flanagan, Jack Robinson and Jay Spearing with each one showing that they deserve it.

All of these positives raise expectations but, even so, going from sixth to fourth will require a significant effort. Manchester United, Chelsea and Manchester City should take three spots meaning that there’s one available for Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham. Even if Dalglish does manage to get the players that consolidate a defence which is lacking a left back and needs a commanding central defender, there still seems to be a work in progress feel about a squad that lacks the depth of quality of others. What could favour Liverpool is the absence of European football – that’s assuming that Tottenham pay any attention to the Europa League – whilst the Premier League experience of all of their major additions is another plus point.

Publicly, Dalglish has been very cautious not to put pressure on his players by setting any targets but this is not to mean that others won’t do so for him. Nor should it be read that he himself is lowering the standards because Dalglish knows more than anyone that the fans are aching for a league title and that is what, ultimately, he will be working towards. Not this season, though, where a degree of progress should be enough.

This article originally appeared as one of the Premier League previews on the excellent TwoHundredPercent football site.

You can follow A Liverpool Thing on twitter.

Setting the Philosophy

2011-08-09T11:16:00.000+02:00

He might not appreciate it much as he starts looking for a new job but Sergio Batista's dismal failure as Argentina coach at the Copa America delivered a very important message.

In the run up to the competition, Batista had expressed his intention to impose Barcelona's tactical approach on his side. And it seemed an understandable enough decision. Although, in Lionel Messi, Argentina have Barcelona's star player the forward has never managed to replicate his club form for his country.

The reason for that, Batista must have reasoned, was the way the team played and the best way to solve it was by getting that team to adopt the 4-3-3 system that Barcelona have used with so much success.

Batista might have argued that he wasn't expecting his central midfielders to perfectly mimic Xavi and Andres Iniesta but the way that Ever Banega and Esteban Cambiasso moved on the pitch hinted otherwise. Yet, although both are excellent players, they failed to shape the game in the same manner as the Barca duo.

And therein lies the lesson. Xavi and Iniesta have been playing in the same system, making the same sort of passes and looking for the same space to move into since they were eleven. They've got a level of expertise that you can't simply transplant into a team, regardless of how good the players are.

There is another lesson to be had here, one of a more philosophical nature. A club playing culture has to take that specific circumstances. An English team can play in the same manner as a Spanish team for the simple reason that the weather is so different. For the Spanish it makes sense to adopt a system where the ball does most of the running but for an English team, where the weather is much colder, running around is actually a way for players to warm up.

This is something that Pep Segura immediately understood when he was given the job of setting a strategic direction at Liverpool's academy. His long history at Barcelona meant that he had a natural inclination for their 4-3-3 system. Yet he realised that this would be hard to implement in England where the general style of play was much more physical than in Spain.

So instead he - along with the others at the academy - decided upon a 4-2-3-1 system that is a hybrid of Barcelona's but which also takes into consideration England's traditional favouring of the 4-4-2 and also the greater dynamism of English players.

In doing so he had confirmed what former Liverpool assistant manager Pako Ayesteran had said on Revista de La Liga earlier this year. “Every success story leaves clues behind, but as well as identifying them, you also have to be able to adapt them to your own philosophy and culture. So right now, English football needs to be faithful to its own culture, whilst being recognising htat there are different ways of playing football.”

“The great thing about La Masia - the concept that I’d like to try and bring to Liverpool - is this. Barcelona’s La Masia represents the club’s policy," Segura said on the same show. For him "it’s a symbol of the club’s philosophy. When your policies keep changing when one day you say black, the next day white, then there will always be a problem in trying to establish a clearly defined concept of player development.”

That faith in one central ideology of how to play the game is at the heart of Barcelona's success. It has taken years for that faith to prove to be worthwhile at Barcelona and, for all the upturn the immediate results, it will take a similar amount of time for it to be fully functional at Liverpool

Barca's New Kind of Loan

2011-08-03T14:00:00.001+02:00

Having talented players progress till they're good enough to play regular top level Premiership football is still an art that very few - if any - have perfected. The traditional route of letting them develop in the reserves no longer seems to apply given the dilution of quality in this league whilst the more recent solution of having the players go out on loan is a bit hit and miss.

As discussed recently a better solution would be that of having an agreement with a number of clubs with a matching football philosophy and that can be trusted to develop these players well.

But Barcelona seem to have come across a solution that is an improvement on this variation.

That comes from the transfer that took Bojan Krkic to Roma. Krkic has long been considered a great prospect but with the emergence of Pedro and the presence of David Villa chances for him at the Nou Camp were limited. And there would have been even less chance of him getting to play with the arrival of Alexis Sanchez.

Barcelona could have sent him out on a season's loan but that would have solved very little: within twelve months they would be facing the same problem. Or they could hsve sold him, knowing fully well that they would be letting go a player with the potential to be great.

So they opted for a middle road. Krkic has gone to Roma for €12million with an agreement that Barcelona will buy him back in two years' time for €13million.

This is quite an intelligent move. Barcelona are sending their player to a team with a coach - Luis Enrique - they know (and knows then) well. They know that he will get a lot of playing time in a tough league and with a side that will be pressing for the title. And they know that in two years they will get the player back at a time when presumably they would be looking to replace Villa. Even if Krkic doesn't develop, they will only be €1million out of pocket, a figure that they could easily recover by selling him. To boot, Barcelona are getting a decent amount of money that will go towards boosting their Financial Fair Play status.

There are few clubs who have such a reputation so as to be able to set up such a deal and fewer players of such high potential that clubs would be willing to agree to the deal as Roma have. Yet Barcelona have shown not only what is possible but also that you should be willing to redetermine the boundaries if you really want to develop a special talent.

Family Honouring Shankly’s Legacy

2011-07-20T11:00:00.000+02:00

When talks were first being held for the formation of the supporter's union that eventually came to be known as Spirit of Shankly, it was to Karen Gill that they turned. From her, the grand daughter of Bill Shankly, they wanted confirmation that they could refer to the great man in the name of this union that was being set up to help save the club that he himself had transformed in the sixties.

When the reply was delivered, it didn't simply contain the confirmation they were looking for but also an inspirational message that gave the Shankly family's wholehearted support to the union. "My grandad had a dream for Liverpool Football Club and you are all helping to keep that dream alive," she wrote. "It's the people with dreams who achieve things in the end because they have a vision which drives them on. We know Bill Shankly 'made the people happy' but I know that you would have all made him happy were he alive to see this legendary support today."

As Brian Reade noted in his book an Epic Swindle, "Karen is a marvelous woman who has inherited many of her grandad's traits, not least his fight and his passion."

Considering the relationship that Shankly had with the fans, Karen's reaction was always something of a foregone conclusion. "They literally meant everything to him," she says when the question of what the fans meant to her grandfather is put to her. "The club and the fans were his life. No exaggeration."

"He’d be shocked and appalled at football today in general and he would be devastated
at the terrible damage that Hicks and Gillette did to his beloved club," she continues, looking back at the past three years. Yet it is also reasonable to assume that he, given his Socialist ideology, would have been immensely proud to see the fans working so hard together to get rid of those who were destroying the club.

Typically, Karen's favourite memory of here grandfather in a football context includes the fans. "I like all the stories about him taking time out to visit sick children at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and I’ve had messages from adults who say they remember his kindness to them to this day."

As for Karen herself, what she remembers is a kindly and playful man. " I have many recollections of my grandfather. Firstly I spent most of my childhood with him. We would always eat together on a Sunday at his house or sometimes he would take us to a nice hotel in the centre of Liverpool for a special meal. My favourite times though were when he would take us to Anfield and we’d run around and sometimes get to sit on our favourite player’s knee!”
At the time, however, she didn't fully realise who he was and why he was so important."I always knew he was important as from an early age I saw that he was followed around by people wherever we would go. People were always coming up to him and talking football. Journalists were always on the phone to him etc. But it wasn’t until I came to Greece that I realised the extent to which he is admired, literally all over the world."

In time, this sparked off her desire to write a book about him with the result being the excellent The Real Bill Shankly that came out a couple of years back. "That was one of the best experiences of my life. I’d wanted to write a book about my granddad for a while but it was when I met the supporters from the official Liverpool Supporters Hellenic Branch that I realised that I should do it. I talked about the idea with Stephen Done (the curator of the Liverpool Museum) and he put me in touch with Ken Rogers from Trinity Mirror and he thought it was a great idea. I just wanted in some way to help keep my granddad’s memory alive"

If that was her aim, then she has done her job to perfection. Just as, with her determination and inspiration at the birth of SOS, she was more than honouring the legacy of her family's surname. Bill Shankly would most certainly have approved.

This article was originally published in Issue 8 of Well Red magazine.

The Delicate Next Step

2011-07-13T11:00:00.000+02:00

When Martin Kelly joined Huddersfield for a couple of months towards the end of the 2008–09 season, it was the perfect move. This was a team that played football the way that it should be played – ball on the ground and with a thoughtful passing game – and a manger who had confidence in the player he’d just gotten.

Unsurprisingly, it was a setting in which Kelly excelled. He played in all of Huddersfield’s games, scored a goal and proved that he more than had the talent to play at a higher level. When the call came for him to play for Liverpool he had that little bit of experience needed not to be overwhelmed by it all; the kind of experience that players don’t get playing sporadically for the sadly devalued reserves football.

Yet Kelly’s experience was an exceptional one. More common are the instances where a player is sent out on loan to gain experience but ends up spending his time on the bench, with the manager being more interested in having someone of good quality as back up. And, in truth, it is hard not to understand their lack of inclination to take any risks for someone else’s benefit.

Not that this makes it any less frustrating. The loan system provides a crucial bridge for players who aren’t getting anything from playing in the reserves but either aren’t ready for the first team or else have to compete with someone who is better than them to get there. In theory, a loan move should help them continue developing by playing at a higher standard, against tougher – at least physically – players in games in which the outcome is actually important.

In reality, far too often they end up frustrating and alienating players.

It is something that Damien Comolli admitted to recently. “I think that the step between the first team and the reserves is a challenge for every single club in Europe and the bigger the football club the more difficult it is,” he said in an interview with Leaders in Performance. “We haven’t found the right, or perfect path or the right balance and I still think we’ve still got a lot of improvements to make from 18 to 20, 21. Those 3 years are a bit touch and go in football at the moment.”

Benitez's View
His views are shared by Rafael Benítez. “It is clear that the reserve system doesn't work, the reserve league is nothing," he said back in March 2007. "You can see youngsters playing just 18 games a season, that is nothing. Certainly not enough for the development of these players. It is something that we can improve in this country. I do not want to see reserve teams with four or five senior men playing without passion. These games are for young players.”

“Between 18 and 21 years old in this country, the players do not know what to do. If they are good enough at 18 they are with the first team but they are sitting on the bench all the time.”

Benitez’s solution to this problem was a highly controversial one. “I used to be the manager of Castilla, Real Madrid's reserve side, and I had players who were 18, 19 years old playing in the Spanish Second Division. They were playing against men and we finished sixth and fourth.”

Given the attitude towards Benitez inevitably it was an opinion that was turned into a stick with which to beat him. Whilst the pride that comes from the continued existence of more than 100 professional clubs in the league and non-league system in England is understandable and it would be wrong to undermine the value of the lower leagues, the criticism focused on Benitez wanting to impose his nasty foreign views rather than on what he was saying.

No one really answered his criticism of reserve league football and how it was doing very little to help in the development of players. There was little appreciation of what he was arguing and a lot of focus on the possible solution that he was proposing.

Admittedly, as possible solutions go it wasn’t a particularly feasible one, but there are variants to it that very few clubs seem to have looked into, that of building partnerships with particular clubs.

The Value of Partnerships
There are clubs across England who share Liverpool’s ideology of playing a passing game. Some of these clubs also operate on budgets that limit their chances of development. Such clubs are the ones that should be looked at for they are a perfect fit for Liverpool who could help fill gaps in their squad safe in the knowledge that these players are going to be schooled properly.

The aim isn’t to turn them into feeder clubs but rather that of matching what both sides need; good players on one part and a place where to develop players on the other.

Encouragingly it is a solution that, perhaps, is already on Liverpool’s radar. “The loan system is managed by myself and the Academy Director. It’s crucial to the player’s development. It is managed properly and thoughtfully,” Comolli said in that same interview with Leaders in Sport. “We speak to the player after every game, the local scouts pay a visit to the player to ensure everything is fine and then we kind of have a list of clubs that we are keen to send the players to because we know the type of football they will play, the way they train, we know they will look after the player. We don’t want to be in a situation where a loan will be dictated to us, we prefer to be proactive.”

Those are heartening words that hint to an end of the haphazard nature and destination chosen for players in the past.

Increasing Value
One of the clubs on Comolli’s list could be the Belgian champions of Genk. Even though talks of setting up a link with them began before he joined the club, the channel of discussion has clearly remained as evidenced by the presence of Liverpool defender Chris Mavinga in their title winning squad.

And Mavinga is a perfect example of a kind of loaned player that is different to the ones discussed so far: those who are sent out purely so that their value can increase.

It is a system of which Manchester United are the masters. They send a player on loan, he does well, generates interest and is then sold on the back of that interest. Which in turn alerts other clubs – possibly ones higher up the league structure - that United is a great place to look for players to take on loan. And so the cycle continues.

Of course, there are players who are sent on loan because they need to be tested to see whether they can handle playing for United but the reality is that most won’t be good enough.

Liverpool have never managed to do this but reports of bids in the region of £1 million for Mavinga show just how much potential there is. In the grand scheme of things, these aren’t huge figures but if they are re-invested in the academy, they would help improve the flow of talent meaning a higher probability of players good enough for Liverpool FC coming through.

There is, of course, the risk that Mavinga is sold and then turns out to be much better than anyone had realised; that Liverpool made a mistake in letting him go. That risk can never go away but it highlights the importance of having a well managed loan system, one that allows Liverpool to learn how that player is training and how he is reacting to his new environment. Such feedback provides a better way to gauge how a player is developing and determine how far he can develop making any eventual decision a more informed one.

And that is the crucial factor. Does a player have the potential in him to play for Liverpool FC? Does he have the character and desire to work hard to achieve this? Is he up to it physically? Is he improving and learning from his mistakes? They are all questions that a club hopes to be in a better position to answer when a player is sent out on loan.

And they are the kind of questions that make a system of partnerships the ideal one for the English game because it offers the best way for players to make that delicate step between youth and senior football.

A Guide to Twitter: Non-LFC Edition

2011-07-08T11:00:00.001+02:00

With everybody now seemingly on Twitter, it is difficult to know who is worth following especially if you're looking for decent football opinions. So it is that I've tried to compile a list of the best people out there who are well worth following. Be warned, however that as a rule I tend not to follow player - do they ever have anything really of interest to say? - nor do I have any of the major media outlets so you won't find anything like that on here. Also, if you're looking at Liverpool related Tweeters, there's another list that groups those together.

Jonathan Wilson
One of the finest football writers out there and the editor (as well as brains behind) of the fantastic magazine Blizzard, connecting to Wilson is useful because, if nothing, it ensures that you hear of his latest articles.

Gabriele Marcotti
There are few people as knowledgeable and as eloquent as Gabriele Marcotti, and that somehow manages to come through despite the 140 character restriction.

David Conn
A new addition to Twitter, Conn is the best writer on football finance out there.

Ian Macintosh
No one can take an off-beat topic and make it work as well as Macintosh. Funny but also geniunely insightful, follow him and enjoy.

Zach Slaton
There has been a gradual rise in the phenomenon of statistical analysis in football but few do it as well Zach Slaton.

In Bed With Maradona
When there are sites that offer content as good as In Bed With Maradona, it is difficult to justify paying for content. Following them on Twitter means that you'll never miss a new piece.

Tomasz Mortimer
One of the great beauties of Twitter is that you can come across people who are interested in football from all over the world. One of these is Tomasz Mortimer, whose particular focus is Hungarian football and the fortunes of Hungarian footballers all over Europe.

James Eastham
A freelance journalist who focuses on French football, he's always more than willing to answer any queries.

John Sinnott
A writer with the BBC, Sinnott revels in articles about the development of young athletes which also happens to be an area which fascinates me. So the interest in what he writes is obvious.

The Equaliser
This is a hidden gem of a blog, particularly the series focusing on specific decades over the past century, and the equaliser's thoughts are always worth reading.

John Chapman
The man to follow if you want to know how Standard Liege, Genk and co are doing, he'll answer any queries that you might have on Eden Hazard and Romana Lukaku.

Dan Roan
Really came to prominence during the Liverpool takeover when he was among the key people to follow if you wanted to know what was going on.

Ernst Bouwes
The main writer of Dutch football for Soccernet, Ernst is the man to follow if you want to keep informed about what's happening in Holland.

Christian Larrson
If transfers are your thing - and, let's face it, who doesn't like to know who you're going to sign? - then Christian is the man to follow. With the added benefit that most of what he says is reliable.

Michal Zachodny
Another of the foreign football brigade, Michal is the man to follow to see how Jerzy Dudek's compatriots are doing.

Rocco Cammisola
It would be easy to classify Rocco Cammisola as someone who follows and writes about Italian football. In reality, he does that and more; providing an interesting and insightful commentary about what's happening in the Serie A.

Daniel Richardson
Slovakia is Martin Skrtel's homeland, and also the country that Daniel Richardson likes to focus on.

Swiss Rambler
For all of David Conn's talents in looking at football finance, he does not have the freedom to write analysis as detailed and varied as the ones that Swiss Rambler prepares.

Zonal Marking
Michael Cox, the man behind Zonal Marking, is perhaps the author of the most significant developments in football blogging of the past twelve months and has almost singlehandedly made talking about tactics fashionable. It follows that his tweets are equally insightful.

Tom Williams
Tom Williams is the man who covers French football for Agence France-Presse (AFP) so it is easy to guess why he is worth following.

Ben Lyttleton
Another expert on French football, Lyttleton writes in a number of outlets and is always more than willing to answer any queries.

Radu Baicu
As with many others, Radu makes it onto this list because of his country specific focus which, in his case, is Romania.

James Horncastle
A great writer for a whole series of publications, Horncastle's main patch is Italian football.

Tor-Kristian Karlsen
One of the most famous football people on Twitter, certainly among those who aren't players, Tor-Kristian is a football scout who has an incredible knowledge on players across the globe and offers a genuine insight into the workings of football clubs.

Raphael Honigstein
Honigstein has built a strong reputation over his coverage of German football so should be on of the people you follow if you want to keep up to date with what's happening in the Bundesliga.

Andy Brassell
Regular contributor to what is probably the finest podcast around - the World Football Phone In - Brassell is an expert in all things concerning European football

James Appell
An expert on Russian football, but also a close follower of the English game, Appell is the man if you want to distinguish your Voronins from your Arshavins.

Sid Lowe
Sid Lowe has long been considered a fine writer on Spanish football and has recently enhanced his reputation with a series of excellent interviews with leading Spanish players. His Twitter timeline is filled with excellent observations on the Spanish game and, occasionally, a rant against those who are too prickly against alledged criticisms for their clubs.

Joel Richards & Sam Kelly
Argentine football is blessed with a number of excellent reporters two of which, Joel Richards and Sam Kelly, both are very active on Twitter.

Paolo Bandini
The Guardian's correspondent on Italian football (and American gridiron), he's another who's always good to follow to know what's happening in another part of Europe.

Remember our guide to Liverpool FC people to follow on Twitter can be found here.

Pep Segura Explains Strategy Behind Liverpool's Academy

2011-07-05T11:00:00.000+02:00

Much has been said about the excellent job that Pep Segura and Rodolfo Borrell have been doing at the Liverpool academy yet, at the same time, very little is known about the actual strategy behind their work. Everyone has been saying that they've brought over Barcelona's model without knowing what that model is about outside of vague concepts.

Yet there is now more clarity thanks largely to a presentation made by Pep Segura at a football conference organised by the Catalun INEF (a physical education programme) and RCD Espanyol.

What follows is a summary of Segura's talk, translated from the blog of well known Catalan writer Martin Perarnau and presented with his permission.

The 'target' of the Liverpool Academy is twofold: to implement a common style of play in teams through all categories, and to provide players for the first team. When Rafa Benitez hired Pep Segura as head of the academy, Liverpool FC had three areas that were working completely seperately from each other:

- Scouting
- Technical Staff
- Sports Science (doctors, physios, trainers)

The target was to implement an integrated model of the style that currently exists in many Spanish clubs, so that all departments work in the same direction.

The Liverpool training centre consists of four large age groups:

1) Year 1 > Playing games, technical skills
2) Year 2 + Children + Cadets > technical skills, tactical work starts, physical work starts
3) Youth + Amateur Year 1 > technical skills, tactical work, physical work, psychological work
4) Amateur + Reserves > technical skills, tactical work, physical work, psychological work

The second group participates in the Under-15 Championship, the third group includes the U-17s and U-18s, and the fourth group plays in the Under-20s tournament and the Reserves. This team has been included in Pep Segura's area of responsiblity during the season just ended. The Academy focuses on organising the boys' training, education, and family accommodation in Liverpool.

Pep Segura's Academy work is divided into five major areas:

1) Facilities
2) Selection of players
3) Coaches
4) Program (Syllabus)
5) Management of the player

For reasons of time, he could not detail each of these areas, but he did mention aspects of several of them.

Facilities
LFC have twelve training camps, ten on natural grass and two with artificial turf, plus one indoor for winter work. The facilities, according to Segura, are excellent, and not more physical infrastructure is needed.

Selection of players
Scouting is the responsibility of the department. Keep in mind that English law is very strict. Some examples:

- Players up to 14 years can't be signed beyond a radius of 150 kilometers from the club (Liverpool competing in the same environment as Manchester United, City, Everton, and so forth)
- The player is owned by the player’s home club /first club forever, this is the main reason why any price tag rises up.
- You can't sign players outside the community (150km) until they are 16 years old
- All games U-16 and U-18 are played on Saturdays at 11 am and from other categories, Sundays at 11 am This avoids the coaches come to watch opposing players of interest. Another peculiarity: the U-15 takes place on Wednesdays, which is almost unfeasible to train more than two days a week

Liverpool work the Academy for sporting and economic necessity and because "we want to work with our players, but do so with our style of play." Segura found, after some time, Liverpool was repeating a pattern that he had already lived in the Barcelona: "Most youth players came from a particular geographical area and, especially, of a particular school."

For scouting the club uses three essential parameters: selection from very young age, constant monitoring of all of them, and determining the precise moment of joining the club. The relevant department raises three questions: a) What is the player profile? B) Is player for Liverpool; c) will he make us grow as a team?

We analyze four factors:
- Technical: We appreciate the passing game (passing game)
- Tactical: Your ability to play without the ball
- Psychological: Your willingness to be professional
- Physical: We value speed, strength and size (English football)

Teams from different categories are structured in the form of a double pyramid

- Between 8 and 11: 3 teams per category
- Between 12 and 14 years: 2 teams per category
- After 15 years: 1 team per category

In the two years since Pep Segura as technical director, the Academy has doubled the number of players at his disposal. In the selection process, all are subject to a battery of physical and technical tests. These tests are also done to those at the Academy itself at sever instances each year to establish internal and external comparisons.

Liverpool FC have identified three types of targets in the catchment:
- Focus A: 14. Local Players
- Focus B: 16. The 2 best in England plus 2 best foreign
- Focus C: 18. Best English and / or foreign to compensate for the shortcomings identified in the Academy

Program
"The program is a great tool to implement and not just having a good criteria for selection of players. It's the idea and style that make an organization strong." Segura says an idea of strategic thinking is needed and from then on a basic understanding of principles of play and style, and an idea to work efficiently and consistent with the philosophy of the club.

Segura says in this regard that the success of Spanish football are based on working with the Academy, which has created an excellent selection pool of players and it has put Spain at the top of European youth football, followed by France. However, he also believes that there si something wrong with Spanish football since that success does not correspond with the actual number of youth players who are actually getting a chance at senior level.

The technical program of the Academy is based on a 4-2-3-1 system of play implemented by Rafa Benitez "although I would have preferred a 4-3-3, but England has historically used the 4-4-2 and we had to adapt." In the case of Liverpool, "using it as a key tool because our style is the passing game, where os our greatest impact".

Stratification of training is as follows:
- 8 to 12 years: 35 weeks of competition / weekly sessions 3
- 13 to 15 years: 35 weeks of competition / weekly sessions 4-5
- 16 to 18 years: 40 weeks of competition / weekly sessions 7-8
- 19 to 21 years: 42 weeks of competition / weekly sessions 7-8

The structure of a typical training session is as follows:
1) Warm up
2) Technical skills: especially in the passing game and to be offered before the pass
3) Tactical skills: Automating offensive and defensive work, possession, Gale Related (reduced situations: from 1 to 1-5 against 5)
4) Part games: Application of the stuff they've worked on
5) End section: Gym, pitch work and stretching

Automation: Work in all phases, from starting to move the ball in defense to the last pass, creating a meaning and order of play. "The small details are the ones that make them grow as players: body position, speed when striking the ball, the timing of his move at the right time ...." Games of position, with special incidence in the circulation at high speed, knowing the positions of the companions are defined and known.

Recordings: The Academy records every game and every practice session with a very interesting point added: they also record the coaches' voices giving advice during sessions. It was a research conducted by the Liverpool University who took up the oral communication, which has yielded great results: "We have seen the deficiencies of the coaches and have corrected the messages. Some always corrected the same concepts and not others more important, or were fixated with some players."

Finally, for Pep Segura the criteria to improve tactics are:
- Everyone must do the same work
- We must be inspired by street football
- Street football is gone and we have to work hard to make up for it
- We must use rectangular surfaces to work on depth and breadth
- We must always breathe offensive spirit
- Explain to children the meaning of 4-2-3-1 to understand it
- Develop the game from the defensive line
- Teaching the collective game based on our system
- Emphasize creativity: the English player is disciplined and easy to learn automation and order, but Spanish is more creative and we must move in this direction
- The Game Related is difficult to apply to players and coaches because they are awaiting orders. When they do receive it, they work hard, but they suffer when they have to bring own creativity

Although centered around Barcelona (and in Spanish), it is highly recommended that people follow Martin Perarnau's blog even if through Google Translate as it is a mine of thoughtful pieces about football. There is a good discussion about this topic going on over at the Red And White Kop forum or, alternatively, you can let me know of your thoughts both through the comments on this blog and on Twitter.

The Value of Buying British

2011-06-28T11:00:00.001+02:00

When Kenny Dalglish took over in January, there were many eager to portray him as a footballing dinosaur who had lost touch with the game after a decade out. This was a sentimental choice, we were told, and he would soon be found out.

As Liverpool improved beyond recognition in the following months, those who had been critical slunk away. Yet the doubts haven't died out but merely replaced by new ones.

The sad part of this is that whilst those initial doubts had largely emanated from those who had hailed Roy Hodgson's appointment and were now looking for a way to vent their frustration following the dismal failure of their man, the source for this new wave of doubt is closer to home: the club's fans.

Not that too many have been overly critical - and the presence of Damien Comolli does provide them with an easy alternative target - but you can still feel a growing undercurrent of discontent.

The reason is that Dalglish seems to favour English based players. Why go for Stewart Downing when Juan Mata is available? What's the attraction of Charlie Adam when Javi Martinez is available? And why Scott Dann when there's Simon Kjaer?

Those are questions that keep getting asked, usually in a rhetorical mode. Because the implied answer is that Dalglish is a footballing dinosaur still stuck in an era where you could only buy from other English teams.

What is being missed is that there are significant benefits in buying players who already know the league. Sure, you pay more for them but you also get players who don't need time to settle and get to know the style of play. And, for Liverpool, having the new players settle in quickly could play a crucial role in the coming season.

With competition for a top four place being tougher than ever before, Liverpool need to be on top from the start of the season. Which wouldn't be likely if there were one or two crucial players trying to get to grips with the speed and aggression of the English game. Because for haevery Luis Suarez that there is - players who quickly find their feet - you will find others like Edin Dzeko or Marouanne Chamakh who struggle to adapt despite their obvious talent.

There is no debating that a player like Stewart Downing isn't as exciting as Juan Mata. Yet Downing excelled at Villa last year and clearly is a player who will always do well in the Premiership, especially if supported by better player than the ones he has at Villa. Mata might be the kind of player Liverpool look at in a year or two when the team is more settled and, hopefully, more successful which always makes it easier for someone to settle in. At this point in time, however, Liverpool don't have that luxury.

Is this enough to justify Liverpool's apparent strategy of making most of their signings from the English game? That's difficult to determine - ultimately it depends on the success of the players signed - but it does at least show that there is a reason behind such moves.

Spreading the Word: Blasted French

2011-06-24T14:00:00.000+02:00

Perhaps it is because I was never any good at drawing but I'm always in awe of people who are capable to create visually stimulating pieces of art. There are a couple of excellent designers who combine such a talent with their passion for Liverpool FC, Kitster being one; the people at LoveConquerFollow others.

Recently a new name has popped up. Dan Leydon, who goes on Twitter with the handle Blasted French, has been putting his unique designs on-line. A Liverpool fan, most of these look at the club's icons like Bill Shankly and Kenny Dalglish. Dan also has a (understandable) fascination with Barcelona, who also feature in his designs.

A Liverpool Thing caught up with Dan as he spoke about his inspiration and future plans.

How did you start doing these pieces?

In a fairly routine move, I started my blog as a homage to Heat magazine. Football has basically turned into a soap opera and I thought that gossipy cheap way of examining it would provide a hefty wedge of funny material. If you look at the first blog posts on the site they are done in the form of a Heat magazine cover and feature outlandish stories such as Messi becoming player manger of QPR and Neil Warnock having a breakdown due to it. From there I began to think of more ways to comment on football and one day I did the Xavi poster that depicted him as a carnival show passing machine. From there I just started doing more and more.

Which is your favourite piece?
My favourite piece is probably not a poster itself but my character Chavi who is Xavi but with a burberry cap. He tours council estates getting ASBO's and playing long ball football. If I had to pick one poster I'd say the King Kenny one. It just seems the most balanced.

What has the feedback been like?

I've had the full range of feedback from in depth emails showing appreciation to comments on new posters that consist of nothing but 'POSTER FAIL'. It's fun hearing peoples opinions on them though. That's why I love designing football related art. So many people love football and people are visual creatures. To have football culture presented in a slightly different or thought provoking way is a great thing and there is so many profound and unique types of art out there on the net.

From where do you get inspirations? And what is the creative process like?

I get my inspirations from everything. I carry a notebook with me and write down whatever pops into my head. I also practice exercises from Edward de Bono books on how to exercise your creativity. They're great for generating piles of ideas. I buy and read a lot of football related books too. Usually I can pick up around 5 or 6 books second hand for the best part of 25 euro. I'll read anything though. And I pour through a lot of graphic design books to figure out how certain artists come up with different types of results. Luckily though graphic design is everywhere you look nowadays so you can learn wherever you are.

As for the design process it won't take long if I have a clear idea on what I want to do. For example the last poster I designed, the Liverbird European Cup, didn't take too long but arranging the liverbirds took up 99% of the design time. I'm happy with how it turned out though.

What next for you? What are you looking to achieve and what will you be doing with the designs?

Next for me? I'm clueless as to what I'll be doing next. A few months ago I didn't even have a website so in the next few months who knows. Ultimately I'd love a job in design with some connection to football. Nowadays I think if you want to be completely happy in your work life you have to go out and make a job for yourself. That's far more fun than looking for one that already exists. It's what I'm trying to do. I'm looking at setting up the website in a more professional way and getting posters and shirts for sale through it. I'd have to say my immediate ambition is to play right midfield for Liverpool though. That's what I'm aiming for.

Too Early for High Expectations

2011-06-22T12:50:00.001+02:00

As it always is whenever England take on an international tournament, there is bound to be a fair degree of hype over the Under 17 team taking part in the World Cup in Mexico. And with six Liverpool players in the English squad, expectations will inevitably rise especially if England do well.

Yet the reality of this tournament is that it doesn’t really provide a gauge for future success. You can look at a player like Cesc Fabregas, who won the Golden Ball as the tournament’s top player (and finished as top scorer) in 2003, and see this as justification for it’s predictive capacity. But then you look to two years earlier and see that Florent Sinama Pongolle won the same honour.

By that time, Sinama Pongolle was already (virtually) a Liverpool player and the ease with which he dominated the tournament – the nine goals that he scored remains a record total - was seen as confirmation of his world class potential. Eight years later, however, and he’s just spent a season on loan at a mid-table Spanish side where he scored just four goals. Sinama Pongolle has turned out to be a decent player but nothing more than that; certainly not the kind of player that so many had predicted he would become.

What happened to him was injuries and lack of playing time at a crucial stage in his career stunted his development. Also, nature happened as he failed to develop enough physically which that he wasn’t suited to play as a striker where he had initially impressed whilst he lacked the skill to really make a mark as a winger.

There have been as many players who have turned out like Sinama Pongolle (Sergio Santamaria from the 1999 edition) as there are those who have gone on to excel (Anderson from 2005). And that’s simply by looking at the Golden Ball winners. Dig deeper and many more such stories emerge.

In 2003, the Spanish team containing Cesc Fabregas lost in the final to Brazil. Apart from Fabregas, out of the twenty-two who began the final only Brazilian midfielder Sandro has really made much of an impact. Move forward to the next final and only Anderson has emerged as a top class player and he was on the losing side. Carlos Vela and Giovanni dos Santos, on the other hand, were outstanding as Mexico won yet neither one has delivered on that promise.

All of this has to be kept in mind this summer. Regardless of whatever England do, other than added experience that helps in their development, it means very little for the players’ futures.

The (Transfer) Judgement Days

2011-06-15T11:00:00.001+02:00

There's nothing as brutal as a football forum during the summer.

Sign Brad Friedel as a back-up to Pepe Reina? Well, why bother, he was "garbage the first time round"? A promising midfielder like Jordan Henderson? "£13M ++ for a youngster who can 'do a job' sounds a bit steep.." Or someone like Connor Wickham? "Seen him play twice. Did f**k all in both games." Scott Dann? "FFS. What is it about managers trying to show us how clever they are in the transfer market. Is he better than Agger or Kelly?" As for Stewart Downing,well he's "average, one paced, very little ability to beat a full back". Yes, those are actual quotes picked off a couple of fora. And, no, they weren't the most viscous.

It goes on and on. Invariably there are those for whom nothing bar players of established repute are good enough. Anything else is immediately criticized and hacked to pieces. As are those who express diverging views, particularly anyone trying to inject a dose of realism.

Whilst the underlying sentiment might be reasonable enough - far too often in recent seasons Liverpool fans have tried to reassure themselves that the players being bought were good enough (Paul Konchesky was portrayed as being a good option) - it is the vehemency and absoluteness with which the verdicts are delivered that amuses. Players of whom, realistically, only occasional games have been seen are nevertheless criticised because they failed to win the game singlehandedly. Or because they weren't as involved as anticipated. Or because, quite simply, they failed to control a pass or two.

Factors like the level of opposition faced, the atmosphere round the game or whether the player was fully fit don't even register.

Strangely, foreign players seem to be excluded by this viscous criticism. Juan Mata or Mahmadou Sakho are praised and deemed as being potentially excellent buys which is reasonable enough because both are exceptional prospects. But then you add in someone like Roma goalkeeper Alexandre Doni, who is far less reliable than Friedel, and barely a peep.

Regardless of nationality issues, this is a mentality that is partly a by-product of Football Manager and other management simulation games. There the qualities of a player are nicely laid out with numbers that determine whether he is good or not. Easy as that. So why should real life be any different? A player is either good or crap; no in-betweens or exceptions.

Of course that isn't the case. You have to see where each player fits in and not just what his play is like. Is he going to accept being a squad player, what sort of impact will his wages make, is there potential for him to develop, how does he fit in with the style of play that the club wants to develop, does he bring to the side an element of play that others haven't?

These are all questions that have to be asked before a player is bought. They are all points that those close to the deal will have reflected on. The real objective for them is to build a squad that has the right blend of talent, tactical intelligence, patience and determination. And they try to do this by working within certain parameters such as which players actually want to join the club, whether their club is willing to sell and how much money is available.

It is nice for fans to fantasize a bit about which players they'd like to see. Yet there is a big difference between dreaming of players you'd like to see and presenting them as the only acceptable option.

You can now follow A Liverpool Thing on Twitter.

The Twisted Logic of Bad Support

2011-04-21T11:00:00.002+02:00

Some of the qualities that mark a great player are rather obvious and are largely centred on how he uses the ball when it is in his feet. Other qualities, however, are not that apparent. Strength of character, for instance, falls into this category. With the first, one can achieve some success but that won’t be lasting if there isn’t also the latter.

It might be too much – or perhaps too early – to call Lucas Leiva a great player but, even so, he is perhaps the ideal player to put forward as an example that proves such a claim. No player can be voted as being the best in Brazilian football if there isn’t some obvious talent but for two years Lucas struggled to show that at Liverpool.

It was hardly surprising. This was a young player who had not only moved from a completely different culture but was playing a style of football that was alien to him. The speed with which the ball got moved around along with the little time afforded to anyone having possession of the ball was a shock to his system. What he went through was understandable.

Yet not everyone understood. Shamefully, there were many who constantly picked on Lucas. Good games would be pushed aside whilst bad ones – or even bad spells in otherwise decent performances – would be used as a stick with which to beat him.

Others would have given up and pushed so that one of the many offers that came in for him from across Europe would be accepted. Most would have hidden behind the criticism to claim that any lack of progress was down to the unnecessary pressure being put on him. But, rather than take the easy option Lucas stuck it out, worked hard and has emerged as a fine midfielder; perhaps even more than that.

That much is recognised by the fact that the criticism has stopped. Although, in truth, that’s not the case: it has merely been shifted on to others.

Last summer, Liverpool signed Danny Wilson. A central defender who had impressed hugely at Rangers, he had won the league playing fairly regularly despite being just eighteen years old. There was an acceptance that he would need some time to develop but little doubt about his potential.

Yet, at least there seemed to be that acceptance because patience with him seems to be running low. Little does it matter that when he has been called to play for Liverpool this has been out of position at left back. Much less that, defensively, he has shown that he can play at this level. What matters is his apparent inability to offer anything going forward.

That is where the attention has focused and that is what has led to criticism. So far they haven’t been too audible but the groans that used to welcome Lucas every time he got on to the pitch are now being heard when Wilson gets near the ball.

Not that he’s alone to get this treatment. Up till a couple of months back, there were plenty willing to write off Jay Spearing. This despite him excelling in the reserves and doing reasonably well when given a chance in the first team. No one complained as vociferously as they did with Lucas but that was because he didn’t play anywhere as near much as the Brazilian and also because he was a local player which obviously granted him added leeway.

Now Spearing is proving that what he needed was games to show what he could do. He, like Lucas, had the mental fortitude to keep on working hard to improve despite the criticism that was coming his way. The hope is that Wilson is made of similar stuff.

Yet it shouldn’t be like that. This apparent need to classify a player as good or bad within a handful of games is not only illogical; it is harmful. Some players just aren’t good enough to play for certain clubs but that’s not what’s in play here but rather a perverse desire to find villains to blame. And once they’re identified, there’s hardly anything that they can do to get out of it. From then on they become a very comfortable commodity for those who can then condense every defeat or bad performance to that player’s perceived failing.

Such a failure to recognise that players need time to settle and, much worse, that they are working hard to improve is a myopic attitude that makes a mockery of the phrase supporters, people who’s sole purpose should be that of giving encouragement to their own players and not sucking it out.

Spreading the Word: Blizzard

2011-04-04T11:00:00.001+02:00

I was around twelve the first time I saw a copy of When Saturday Comes. I still remember the front cover – it included a jubilant Stig Inge Bjornebye after Norway had beaten England – but what really impressed me were the articles that it featured. This was no Match or Shoot but something more grown up.

From that day on, I kept on buying the magazine fairly regularly until I received the latest notification a few weeks ago that my subscription was about to expire*. It was at that point that I realized: I haven’t read any of it for quite some months. In fact, apart from the book reviews, I rarely bother with anything else.

The reason is the internet. Whereas the articles featured in it used to represent a point of view or a story that I never knew of, now you can find articles that are equally as good if you know where to look for. It no longer contained anything special enough to get me reading it from cover to cover.

It has been the same for many other publications. World Soccer stopped being of interest years ago** and my FourFourTwo subscription could easily go the next time it is due. And, going by the constant reports of the challenges faced by the publishing industry, I’m guessing that I’m not the only one.

So what is it that gives Blizzard, the recently launched football publication, anything of a chance? Well, for one thing, it isn’t a magazine. In the editorial, it is described as neither a book nor a magazine. Indeed, the best possible description is that it is an anthology of football writing (or, as Swiss Ramble put it to me on Twitter, an anthology of mighty fine football writing).

But, before we go any further, perhaps it best to give a little bit of background to Blizzard. This is effectively the brainchild of Jonathan Wilson – author of Behind the Curtain and Inverting the Pyramid – who felt that writers were being stymied in what they write by the inherent limitations of the publication they work for.

His feelings were shared by many others so he decided to provide a solution in the form of a publication that would give writers practically a free hand in what (and to what length) they write.

The end result is a collection of stories by some of the best writers around all of whom are clearly writing about subjects they enjoy and reveling in the freedom to write as much as they want. Inevitably some are better than others – and I’m not going to name which (although the St. Pauli one by Uli Hesse is a favourite) – but the quality never drops below great.

With Issue Zero adopting the pay as much as you want model, there’s really nothing to stop anyone from downloading a copy. Subsequent issues will be more expensive - €10 excluding postage seems to be the set price – but if they’re of the same quality of this, they’re well worth it.

Indeed, in my mind they’re so worth it that I’ve subscribed for a full year. And you can’t be more complimentary than that.

More information on Blizzard can be found on their website or by following them on Twitter. If you like this review, or would like to share an opinion about it, you can do so by leaving a comment below or else by following A Liverpool Thing on Twitter.

* In fairness, the quality of articles on When Saturday Comes is quite good (although it is just as good – and free – on sites like Two Hundred Percent and In Bed With Maradona). My problems with them are others: it isn’t distributed where I live (Malta), shipping costs are high and there’s no Kindle version meaning that if I have to read the electronic format I have to watch it on my computer which doesn’t fit my lifestyle. I suspect that if they were to produce it in Kindle format, I would re-subscribe.

**I’ve still to recheck World Soccer after their recent re-design which could possibly make me change my mind.

Anfield Forever

2011-03-15T11:02:00.000+01:00

It was the fear that did it. When it was first mentioned that Liverpool were looking to move away from Anfield a group called Anfield 4 Ever (A4E) set about presenting the opposing view, one that argued that Anfield should be redeveloped rather than demolished.

Yet theirs was a lost battle. Not because of any forceful argument that highlighted the unfeasibility of their position but simply because of fear. What did it for Anfield was the fear of being left behind and financially edged out without a home that could seat more people. Those who said otherwise were labelled as antiquated sentimentalists who still hankered for an era that had long gone. Their views were pushed aside - not only by the owners but also but the vast majority of fans - and, eventually, forgotten. Not even the website that presented their case remains: www.anfield4ever.co.uk is now a rumour site (and one that hasn't been updated for years).

The original, un-imaginative, design for the new Anfield

Never mind that the first plans were for the construction of a soul-less bowl that showed no vision and had nothing to set it apart or show that it was to be the home of a special club. The most important thing was that it could contain more people and, therefore, make the club more money which would result in success on the pitch. That is all that mattered.

The rationale of this argument is easy to follow but that does not mean that it is right, at least not completely. What was not being said at the time was that building a new stadium would result in onerous loans that would take years to be repaid. Perhaps it was because that there was still the hope and belief that new owners, ones rich enough to undertake such a project from their own finances, would be found. Again, a simplistic line of thought but not one as ingenious as had been made out to be. Indeed, it is a plan that nearly killed the club.

Yet, despite so many promises going unfulfilled, strangely, the wisdom of leaving Anfield was never been debated. It was considered a given truth, one that no liar's words could taint. Largely fuelled by the desire to match Manchester United and Arsenal on game day revenues, the decision was made and wasn't about to change.

But it can (and should) change, at least enough to look at possible alternatives to increase capacity. And these plans have to be bold and imaginative as they to try and offer a solution, because surely there have to be ways to increase revenue without leaving everything behind.

The memories of great days and nights at Anfield
are part of what makes Liverpool special

Indeed, what is most surprising in this whole story, is how easily a departure from Anfield has been accepted. What makes Liverpool FC great is, in part, down to Anfield and the memories that it holds. There is a special feeling about this place, as if the collective shouts from great moments at this stadium still resonate. Teams come and buckle under the pressure of playing in front of this crowd, they fear Anfield, its history and what it represents. Opposing fans, especially continental ones on European nights, leave the ground happy even in defeat because they can boast to having experienced the Anfield atmosphere. That is what would be lost, that is what the fear would lead to.

But that would be wrong. Anfield is Liverpool's home and everyone should be working to keep it this way, not casually throwing.

Any views can be shared with A Liverpool Thing on Twitter

Positives From A Youth Cup Defeat

2011-03-14T11:00:00.002+01:00

It is said that true winners are seen not in victory but in how they react to defeat. By that truism, it will be interesting to see what happens next after Liverpool’s defeat in the quarter final of the FA Youth Cup.

This was a disappointing game for Liverpool; disappointing not because of the nature of the defeat or the name of the opponents but because of the way that the team played. There were too many long balls, too many wayward passes and too many players making wrong decisions for anyone to be happy with how it progressed. After all this is a side that in previous games had dominated through its ability to move the ball around with accuracy and speed.

Not on this occasion, however. Merit, of course, goes to Manchester United who showed the kind of strength, pressing and tactical intelligence that Liverpool hadn’t faced in any of the earlier rounds. It forced the Liverpool players to have to think harder about what they did and, often, the solutions they came up with were lacking. Punting the ball towards Raheem Sterling in the hope of him creating something far too often became the default option as did giving the ball to Suso without other players moving to support him.

This is why it is so difficult to judge players of this age. Or, rather, why it is always wise not to rush into judgements. Many were disappointed when Raheem Sterling wasn’t given some playing time in the Europa League after he had helped tear Southend apart in the previous round of this competition. Others would have picked the Spanish midfielder Suso for the first team within the first month of his joining the club, so impressive was he whenever he played for the reserves.

The reality is that there is a huge gap between the level of football they are used to playing and that which they would be facing in the first team. The strength of players they would be playing against, their experience and the speed with which they would punish any mistake or hesitation is far greater than what they’ve ever come against.

That is why ensuring that these talented teenagers make the progression from youth team to senior football is the biggest challenge out there. It is why the Spanish model of having a second team playing in the lower leagues – giving young players the opportunity to come up against older, more experienced ones – is favoured by some.

In some respects, the Youth Cup defeat can even be a positive thing. There was so much hype around some of these players that they were bound to start thinking ahead of themselves, that they were good enough. This shows them that they’ve still got a way to go and it will make them listen closer to what their coaches have to say. Learn from it and they will improve; dismiss it as bad luck or bad refereeing and the next time a similar occasion comes around the same mistakes will be made.

Any views can be shared with A Liverpool Thing on Twitter.

The Right Attitude

2011-03-09T11:00:00.002+01:00

There have been few, if any, managers in the history of the British game who could match Bob Paisley’s genius in spotting players. The man who built three Champions’ Cup winning teams did so not by outspending others but by identifying before anyone else players with the talent to play in his sides.

Few instances illustrate this better then what happened when Ray Clemence decided to move to Tottenham in 1981. The act of replacing arguably Europe’s finest goalkeeper with Bruce Grobbelaar, someone who had only fleetingly played league football, seemed utter folly to most yet Paisley felt that it was the right move.

Grobbelaar’s success in a Liverpool shirt over the next decade proved the wisdom of Paisley’s judgement. As did Ian Rush, Steve Nicol, Alan Hansen and Ronnie Whelan; all of whom came to Liverpool when they were complete unknowns.

Yet there was more to their success than just talent. Each of those players spent months playing for the reserves, a period that is often described as being fundamental in their development. Those months helped determine not only whether they were good enough to play for Liverpool but also whether they had the character to do so.

Rush’s case was typical. He had become English football’s most expensive teenager when he joined Liverpool so probably expected to be involved in the first team from the off. Instead he found himself in the reserves and famously went to ask for a transfer after a number of months so disillusioned was he with his lack of progress.

It was at this point that Paisley suggested that Rush be a more selfish finisher. More than anything, this was a subtle test, a way to see how the striker would react. Petulance on his part would have certainly seen his wish for a transfer being granted. Instead, however, it got the reaction that was required and soon Rush started getting the opportunities he wanted.

To Paisley, Rush had proven that not only did he handle criticism but could react positively to it. And it was at that point that there really was the conviction that he could do it, that not only did he have skill to play for Liverpool but also the temperament.

Further proof of the important role a player’s character had in the determining a player’s ability to play for Liverpool comes from Alan Kennedy. “Paisley knew my family as he was from the same village as my mother,” Kennedy says of what led t his transfer to the club. “He knew what he was getting; he knew that I was a hard worker.”

As he would go on to show, there was more to Kennedy than that yet that insight into his character provided added comfort to Paisley.

In time, the importance of such attributes seemed to diminish. At least, they did in the minds of those charged with making the decisions. Graeme Souness felt that a player with as questionable a disciplinary record as Julian Dicks was Liverpool material whilst Roy Evans allowed players to dictate when they were willing to attend training.

There cannot be a better example of the laxity in this regard then El Hadj Diouf. Blessed as he is with talent and skill, Diouf should have gone on to become one of the finest players in his generation but instead he’s spent most of his career bouncing between middling clubs. He’s also managed a feat that no one in living memory has: become a hated figure among Liverpool fans.

Not that it should have been difficult to predict. His reputation in France was as an egotistical player more interested in his own personal position rather than of his team. Liverpool were concerned about this – Houllier apparently enquired with former assistant Patrice Bergues who by then had become sporting director at Lens – but still pressed ahead.

It was a huge mistake, the biggest in a disastrous summer (Salif Diao and Bruno Cheyrou were also signed that year) that ultimately killed off Gerard Houllier. Jamie Carragher would, much to Diouf’s apparent irritation, later comment that he’d never come across a player as disinterested in winning as the Senegal striker.

Sadly, Diouf is far too typical in modern day Liverpool. The club has struggled because there have been too many average players in the side. Yet that doesn’t completely explain it: there have also been far too many who didn’t have the right attitude. How can any player justify playing pass the pound during games? Or the ‘win or lose first to the booze’ mentality of the nineties?

Character isn’t something that a scout can easily pick up on. Then again, far too often warning signs have been ignored. Players have been bought despite the blemishes in the personal history with the vain hope that they will change. Others have been brought in and been overwhelmed by what was expected of them. And Liverpool continue to struggle as they will until this negative circle of not looking beyond a player’s technical abilities is broken.

This article initially appeared in Well Red magazine. Any views can be shared with A Liverpool Thing on Twitter.

The Lad Can Play: John Flanagan

2011-01-20T11:00:00.001+01:00

The talent of some players is easy to spot. They have the passing ability or the fancy tricks that catch the eye and stand in memory. For them, everything seems to come easily; perhaps too easily considering how many ultimately fail to progress when it starts getting difficult.

Other players know that there they have limitations but that knowledge helps make them better. They realise that they must train harder and give everything during games because otherwise they'll have nothing to behind which to take cover; they can't point to some amazing goal scored as their contribution. These players tend to be overlooked with their impact on a game being considered as irrelevant. Yet players with such a character are as important to teams as those who can put through a match winning pass. For these are the players who can pull a team through when others are struggling and they are the ones who really shine in difficult moments.

It is such determination that marks out John Flanagan. Nothing that he does gets anything other than his full commitment. He throws himself in every tackle, every pass, every run he makes. Comparisons can be ruinous for those of his age but it is impossible not to see similarities between him and Jamie Carragher. It is hardly surprising to learn that it is on the Champions' League winning defender that he tries to model his game.

Those who have been following Carragher for some time, however, know that there is more to him than commitment. And so too with Flanagan. His tackles might be hard but his awareness of what is happening around him allows Flanagan to anticpate passes most of the time rather than having to dive in to get the ball. When he does have to tackle, there is an impressive maturity to him because very rarely does he concede what can be considered as silly fouls, the kind which senselessly result in free kicks from dangerous areas. As with some of his most illustrious predecessors, his tackles might be hard but they're also fair.

A defender's role today, however, isn't simply limited to stopping play but also being able to play the ball and support attack, a need that is even more pressing for full-backs. It is an aspect of his game that needs improvement and, typically, he has been working hard to do just that. The progress he has made since stepping up to the reserves has been astounding. Few knew of Flanagan when he first joined up that set-up but since then he has consistently been one of the best players. From an unknown he has become someone being spoken about as having a chance of making a further step up.

For that to come about there is still some time ago - and perhaps a loan period elsewhere to gain experience - but if he keeps improving as he has that is a gap that should be bridged.

A Scout's World

2011-01-14T11:00:00.001+01:00

Book Review: Scouting for Moyes by Les Padfield

If nausea happens to be your initial reaction upon seeing what this book is about, then it would be understandable. These days everyone remotely involved in the game of football seems all too eager to write down his life story irrespective of what comes out. So it is that you have players writing two or three biographies before they're in their mid-twenties, managers willing to say who they've fallen out with and why, fans believing that their passion outstrips that of anyone else and hooligans boasting how many heads they smashed in. A handful of these books have been memorable, the rest considerably less so.

So, it is only natural to fear the worst when you realise that a scout has now gotten in on the act.

Football scouts are everywhere, from kids' games to internationals, yet they might as well be invisible for all the attention they receive. And, in all honesty, that's how it should be. There might be one or two who are exceptions in that they spotted a talent that others had missed but most simply form part of a network and no decision is made exclusively on what they say.

This is something that Padfield proves in this book. Working at Bolton, he can name some players whom he had spoken highly of - Klasnic being the one he mentions most frequently - but given the time that goes by his recommendation and the actual transfer, he is honest enough to admit that others had also been asked to look at those same players before a decision was made. Not to mention that players he had warned against signing joined the club regardless of what he said.

And that is what elavates this book; Padfield's honesty. His opinion of managers doesn't seem to be particularly high while his lack of affection to the clubs he works for is slightly disturbing.

Nothing, however, beats the shock of realising the amateurish way scouts are picked up. Quite possibly, Padfield's experience was atypical but what got him in the world of scouting is simply a chance encounter with a former team-mate. No interviews to gauge his knowledge, or long talks about tactics; just the fact that he lived in London which is an area where a northern club happened to need someone to look at teams and players. Ultimately, you get to realise that scouts - or, at least, those who are similar to Padfield - are simply fans like the rest of us. They have no magic formula or keener sense of observation; they only have a little bit more experience.

His honesty is also what got him in trouble. A few weeks after this book was issued, Padfield was told that his services at Bolton were no longer required. Hardly surprising, given his constant (and justified) criticism of Zat Knight, Fabrice Muamba and Johann Elmander. At one point in the book he wonders that probably he hasn't got long at Bolton; words that turn out to be prophetic. Yet, if indeed it was this book that cost him his job, then it probably was worth it.

Scouting for Moyes could have benefitted from tighter editing: it would have been nice, for instance, if someone would have pointed out to Padfield that it is the Swiss who are famous for their neutrality rather than the Swedes before he embarks on a rant about Johan Elmander's inability to score. And the final few chapters, devoted as they are to the couple of weeks he spent in South Africa watching the World Cup, seem artificial when put in the context of the rest of the book and could (perhaps should) have been left out.

These faults and, let's admit it, the lack of any really notable players spotted by him mean that this book is neither memorable enough nor insightful to have any ambitions of being a classic. What it certainly is, however, is an enjoyable read and there aren't many football books coming out these days that can claim that.

PS: For those wondering, the title of the book is a joke by the author. To find exactly why that is, I'm afraid you'll have to read it.

What I Learned About Liverpool’s Owners (By Reading About Them)

2011-01-12T11:00:00.003+01:00

Once bitten twice shy.

When Tom Hicks and George Gillett bought Liverpool FC back in 2007 there were many who looked at their track record, didn’t like what came up and promptly dismissed it.

It is easy to blame David Moores for not looking enough at how they carried out their business – and, indeed, he had the responsibility to do that part of his job better – but the truth is that most of us had heard about how Gillett had gone into bankruptcy because he had over extended himself with loans or of the mismanagement at the Texas Rangers but no one was willing to put the pressure on. The warning signs were there for all to see. Yet the over-riding argument at the time was that these were businessmen who had made millions so they obviously knew what they were doing.

Now it is lesson learned and, for better or for worse, any new owner was going to be looked at with a fair degree of skepticism. The thing is so far it has been virtually impossible to find anything bad said about NESV. It isn’t that they haven’t made any mistakes but that they’ve always tried to act on them; to ensure that lessons have been learned.

If anything, what has come out strongly so far is the consistency with which they handle similar issues meaning that it is easy to trace an outline of their managerial philosophy.

It is this thought of using what they have done at the Red Sox to predict how they may handle issues at Anfield that drove me to buy a 2005 book by Steve Goldman called ‘Mind Game: How The Boston Red Sox Got Smart, Won a World Series, and Created a New Blueprint for Winning’.

For over eighty years the Red Sox had hidden behind a series of myths – the curse of the bambino being the main one - to excuse their failures. In truth it was mismanagement at all levels of the organization that were at the root of their problems.

It is the same at Liverpool. We quickly dismiss Manchester United’s success as being exclusively down to their spending power when it is clear that, although it is a great help, it is not the sole reason. And that’s only one example.

It seems unlikely that FSG will hide behind any such excuses. As an average, the New York Yankees spend 30% more on salaries then the second highest spender in American baseball (which happens to be the Red Sox) yet Boston have won two World Series during the past decade. Such a sustained degree of success, especially in a sporting culture designed to avoid having a single dominant team, can only be the result of a philosophy that has an edge on the rest of the league.

This is something that comes out clearly in Mind Games. And, if you read carefully, you can make out the main tenants of NESV’s philosophy and link them to what they might do at Liverpool. Which is what the rest of this piece will be dealing about.

They Won’t Use Anfield as an Excuse
“John Harrington, the last ruler of the Red Sox before the Yawkey Trust finally sold out called the team a small-market ballclub whose efforts to compete were handicapped by their small ballpark. There were no magic spells at work, only failures of intelligence, concentration and imagination”

Many have drawn parallels between the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool FC with good reason: it is uncanny how many situations the two clubs share.

One of the more pronounced is the stadium issue.

When NESV took over at the Boston Red Sox, the popular perception was that they would push to move out of Fenway Park so as to be able to command greater gameday revenue. Yet they did nothing of the sort, opting to redevelop Fenway Park and increase revenue in other ways.

There’s no guarantee that they will do the same at Liverpool but at least there should be the awareness that they won’t hide behind the size of Anfield (and the resulting shortfall with other clubs) to justify any form of failure. Any decision made will rest purely on its merits and not because the rest of the world expects them to make it.

They Know Value of Building a Squad
“The loss of any one player, no matter how great, is not enough to derail a competently run franchise.”

Although Curt Schilling played a huge role, the 2005 World Series wasn’t won because of the talent of any one individual but rather because there was a good unit with players of different abilities capable of slotting in when their time came.

For years, Liverpool have been almost entirely dependent of two or three players. If anything happens to any one of them, then the team struggles to cope. Although star players obviously help success can only be achieved if the rest are, as a team, capable of playing on their own if need be.

They Won’t Buy Players Just for the Sake of It

“The shopping spree mentality one might expect of a new owner was conspicuously absent. Henry’s good judgement sharpened by many years in the financial trenches, had helped him evolve a prudent, measured approach.”

Although it would be unfair to deny that his signing generated a fair degree of excitement when it was announced, it is becoming all too clear that Joe Cole was signed largely to placate the fans. Whatever the intentions, Cole is a player who isn’t adding anything to the side other than greatly burdening the pay roll. He might turn out to be a very good player for Liverpool, but he wasn't bought for his playing abilities. There will be no repeats of such signings.

They’ll take their time deciding on management
Upon taking over at the Red Sox they removed the unpopular GM Dan Duquette. But it was the off-season (although too late to start hassling other owners about their GM). For the first season they made do with Mike Port, who knew the industry very well even if he wasn’t their first choice, not because they really believed in him but because they wanted to take their time and get someone they really wanted.

At LFC they have made quick decisions where they had to (chairman, removing Purslow, appointing Comolli) whereas in other areas they wanted make a step backwards to ensure they made the right decision.

The same applies to the club’s coach. Grady Little was allowed to stay at the club but when he proved to lack the imagination and share the strategy that the club was trying to follow, he too was removed and this despite a not too shabby record. This greatly echoes what they tried to do with Roy Hodgson even if, ultimately, they were forced by circumstances to get rid of him.

The situation with Theo Epstein (the Boston Red Sox’s highly regarded GM) is also indicative. Initially, Epstein was tasked with finding the man capable of being the organisation’s GM (Billy Beane of Moneyball fame was one of the three main candidates) but when none of the people they wanted were willing to join, they turned to Epstein himself to take the role. Shades of what Kenny Dalglish’s situation perhaps?

Once Right Structure is In Place Things Will Really Kick Off
"After moving into the office which he had been trying to find an occupant, Epstein was given free rein to aggressively solve the team’s roster problems"

Already, there have been one or two impatient calls enquiring why they are taking so long to appoint a CEO. Yet the truth is that this isn’t a position that is easily filled or that can easily be changed if the wrong person is appointed.

It is only once such an appointment is readied that they will be able to define a strategy and act on it.

They’ll Spend Money If Needed
Although they try to be intelligent in the who they get and how they build their roster, there is the realization that you need to spend money to get the players that help add another dimension to the team’s play. When they identified Curt Schilling as a pitcher they wanted to get, they had to compete with the New York Yankees to get him. On this occasion flexed their financial muscle and won. It was a decision that paid rich dividends in key games.

They Learn From Their Mistakes.
The failure (to sign Alex Rodriguez)had a powerful positive effect as well: A-Rod’s non arrival proved to the club that the front office had built a team robust enough to withstand the loss, to its sworn enemy no less, of the league’s very best player.

There is an added reason why Tom Hicks was so hacked off at seeing his club ‘stolen’ by NESV and it had its root in their previous dealings. In 2003 they had been negotiating over Alex Rodriguez whom Hicks had famously overpaid (without providing a good supporting cast) at the Texas Rangers. Negotiations were difficult not least because they needed to get the approval of the Players’ Association since it meant renegotiating Rodriguez’s contract.

After weeks of working on the deal and being frustrated when progress seemed to be getting made, Larry Lucchino (one of the owners of NESV) went public in blaming the Players Association and claiming the deal as dead.

Negotiations went on but the deal eventually fell through and Lucchino’s comments were seen as having played a key role. A few weeks later, A-Rod moved to the New York Yankees with very little mentioned in the media.

It was a bitter defeat but one that taught them some important lessons:

Keep a Unified Front
There will be no repeat of Hicks and Gillett who fell out very publicly and left a power vacuum at Anfield;

Don’t Burn Your Bridges
Even if things aren’t going your way, at least leave alive the hope and possibility of turning everything around.

Don’t Do Your Negotiating in the Media
For all the informed sources, how many people knew of the deal to buy Liverpool before it was announced on the club website? Practically no one. Same goes to the appointment of Damien Comolli. And, probably, the same will go as far as the CEO is concerned with everyone learning who it is when it is officially announced and not earlier.

You can follow A Liverpool Thing on Twitter.

Decision Time Has Come

2011-01-05T23:52:00.002+01:00

A club that exists to win trophies. Remember when that used to said about Liverpool? And remember when people actually believed it because that is what happened every year?

The way things have unfolded this season, saying such a thing about the club at this present time isn’t even funny. Slowly the realisation that mid-table mediocrity is the best that can be expected has filtered through. True, there’s still the FA Cup and Europa League at stake but is there really the belief that either one can be won?

Yet, strangely enough, the Liverpool fans won’t accept it. And they won’t accept a manager who seems to believe that it isn’t so bad.

That much has been evident for quite some time but only recently have such feelings been made public. Funnily, though, the reaction by those reporting this – or at least some of them who hate admitting they were wrong in backing Hodgson so strongly last summer and ever since - has been somewhat bitter. It is as if it is the fans who are dishonouring the club’s history rather than the results and quality of football that has been played out on the pitch.

This is a group of players that Hodgson inherited is the mantra among those who supported his appointment; a group of players that finished seventh last year. Not to mention that a manager needs time to impose his beliefs and mentality. Of course both are fair points, but much like a magician who draws attention to one hand so as to hide what he’s doing with the other, they’re also arguments aimed at perpetrating the illusion that it isn’t Hodgson’s fault.

Because, if that wasn’t the case they would be able to explain why two out of the three players that Hodgson bought – Konchesky and Poulsen – aren’t even close to being good enough for Liverpool.

Nor do Hodgson’s defenders explain his tactics; the long balls raining towards Fernando Torres, why Liverpool defend so deep, why the defence can’t seem to grasp what they should be doing, why there doesn’t seem to be any conviction about the importance of imposing yourself rather than letting others dictate the game.

Those are questions that go unanswered or else, inevitably, blamed on the players who aren’t good enough. Which, come to think of it, doesn’t stack up as most of these players formed part of the side that got so close to winning the league two years ago. And yes, last season Liverpool finished seventh and played horrendously at times but they were always towards the top end of the league table, not looking worriedly backwards at the relegation zone as has become the norm this year.

The truth is that Hodgson has retained the same mindset that he had at Fulham. Clearly he is of the firm belief that the tactics which worked at a club that traditionally considered a mid-table finish as an achievement are good enough for one that aims to be challenging to win things. After all, he said so himself. It is seen in the players he feels are good enough for Liverpool, not just Konchesky and Poulsen but also Carlton Cole, whom he has publicly admitted to be interested in. He still believes that getting turned over at Stoke or Blackburn isn’t that bad. But that isn’t good enough for Liverpool

For Fenway Sports Group, the time has come to make a very important decision. It might be one that they hoped they wouldn’t have to take – more because it didn’t fit with their immediate strategy rather than any particular belief in Hodgson - but one that they have to take nevertheless. Accepting the situation as it stands today is tantamount to lowering the high standards that used to be set for Liverpool FC, which also equates to an insult to the club’s history and those who worked so hard to make it so great.

If that’s the case, then it’s probably unfortunate for them that the fans won’t be accepting that any time soon.

Mining the Lower Leagues

2010-12-29T11:00:00.002+01:00

When at the start of October 1974 Phil Neal lined up for Northampton Town to face Workington in the old Fourth Division, little did he have imagine that in just over a week he would be joining the then Football League champions, making his debut for them in the Merseyside derby within five weeks and scoring a penalty in the European Cup final three years later.

These days, stories of players making a jump of four divisions sound as quaint as the ₤65,000 that Liverpool paid for Neal. According to Delloite’s transfer analysis of spending, during the last two transfer windows Premier League clubs spent ₤21 million on players from the Football League, just 6% of their total outlay and the lowest since 2003. Transfer fees paid for players from other leagues amounted to more then ten times that figure.

Whilst the magnitude of those amounts might be surprising, it could hardly be said that they are revealing. The shift to buy players from abroad has been a constant one since the formation of the Premier League and the subsequent removal of barriers on fielding foreign players accelerated it. Managers are now more likely to go watch a player in Belgium or France then at a lower league club down the road.

Whether that is because the quality of football outside of the Premier League has regressed, as many seem to infer, or not is debateable. The impact that players like Tim Cahill, Scott Dann, Aaron Ramsey, and even Joe Hart have made would indicate that there is still talent out there; it is just that fewer are willing to take a risk on them.

In that respect, Liverpool are as guilty as most. Dann, a self declared Liverpool fan, has been immense since joining Birmingham from Coventry yet it would be highly surprising to find that Liverpool had given serious thought to signing him when he was still playing in the Championship.

The flip side to that argument would be that at Liverpool he wouldn’t have played anywhere near as much as he has for Birmingham and, as a result, wouldn’t have made the improvement that he has.

Proof of this lies in Danny Wilson who was a regular squad member for Rangers and played in the Champions League yet at Liverpool he doesn’t make it on the bench. Wilson has to make do with the reserves and whilst this once used to provide a good foundation for young players, now it is largely a waste of time. What used to be a crucial element in the development of players has been left to rot.

Talking about the limitations that reserve football poses cannot but lead to Jack Hobbs, a player who’s progress stalled after making a very good early impression. It was only once he had gone on a semi-permanent basis to Leicester that his true worth started to emerge; he matured when faced the challenge of playing against stronger players in a competition where each game mattered.

It could be argued that Liverpool got rid of Hobbs too quickly but, for all the good things he has done at Leicester these past three years, he is still playing in the Championship. It is debateable how strong of an argument that is, however, as Hobbs seems like another victim of the reluctance to play take a risk with a lower league player.

Yet the Football League isn’t being completely ignored, it is just that the focus has shifted to younger players. Andre Wisdom, European U17 champion and one of the most promising players at the club, was signed from Bradford when he was 14. Other England youth internationals like Tyrell Belford (Coventry), David Moli (Luton), Michael Ngoo (Southend) and the much publicised Raheem Sterling (QPR) have followed a similar route. Even Jonjo Shelvey was only eighteen when he joined from Charlton in the summer.

Much as clubs are said to value experience, the possibility of bringing players early on and forming them within the club seems to be much more attractive. Why let them develop any bad habits seems to be the mantra.

It is, perhaps, among such players that one might find the heir to Phil Neal. And an indication that the traditions of old aren’t being put aside but merely modified to fit the modern needs.

This article was published in the December 2010 issue of Well Red magazine. Have you bought a copy yet? No? What are you waiting for?

Well Read: Top Books from 2010

2010-12-27T11:00:00.001+01:00

It could be my impression but 2010 hasn’t been a particularly good one as far as football books are concerned; especially if like me you don’t happen to be particularly fond of biographies. Meaning that selecting what has become my annual roundup of best books read during the year was a bit tricky. But, having jogged my memory a bit to see which books I’ve read over the past twelve months, I’ve managed to draw up a list of four must read books.

Top of the list has to be Pay as You Play. Paul Tomkins is someone I’ve known for quite some time; initially through his articles and subsequently through e-mail conversations. He is, by all accounts, among the most prolific Liverpool FC writers around and even if you don’t agree with his writing it is hard to argue that whatever he says isn’t backed up.

Indeed, over the years that desire to have some form of proof over what he’s saying has apparently increased to the extent that he is now looking for solid ways to gauge the true worth of a manager’s signings. That quest is at the basis of Pay as You Play where he evaluates any manger who has spent at least two seasons working in the Premiership.

It is in many ways a ground breaking piece of work because it sees three people who are, essentially, fans offering a real contribution to the world of football in the form of a way through which you can essentially judge the quality of a manager.

Pay as You Play is the last (football related) book I’ve read this year, Outcasts United the first. And, if pressed, I’d probably point at this one as being the best one of the year. Here I have to make a relatively important qualification in that although I read it this year, this book was published last year. But that shouldn’t stop me from recommending Warren St. John’s story about a woman’s quest to set up and keep going a kids’ football team from a refugee community.

It is a powerful and inspirational story brilliantly relayed by St. John, one that won’t fail to impress on the ability of sport to bridge gaps and build character. On a less positive note, it also shows how racism doesn’t look at the age of those who are being discriminated.

A much lighter read is Will You Manage by Musa Okwonga. As the name hints, this book deals with football management and what are the core ingredients for one to be successful at this. There isn’t any deep analysis of tactics but instead the focus is largely on character considerations which still makes for an interesting and thought provoking read.

Finally a book that isn’t strictly about football but one that really impressed me. Bounce by Matthew Syed deals with the myth that there is regarding talent and how this is handed through some form of divine intervention.

In a highly intelligent – and controversial – book, Syed argues that there are a number of factors behind the most successful sportspeople such as opportunities early on in life, motivation and good coaching. There will be many who won’t agree with Syed’s claims – and the response to a recent article by him on Four Four Two magazine proved as much – but my personal views on the development of good sports people mirror Syed’s so it was impossible for me not to get excited whilst reading it.

So that’s it for the year. There are a couple more which I should probably include (Kenny Dalglish’s biography for instance) but as I already hinted, I only rarely read so can’t really comment on them. In the meantime there are a couple of books I’m looking at such as ‘Scouting for Moyes’ by Less standfest but again there isn’t much quality coming through. In any case, here’s hoping that 2011 provides plenty (and better quality) reading material

The Director’s Role

2010-12-23T11:00:00.018+01:00

The road that led to the manager’s position as it is currently understood – the man who is in charge of practically everything – has been a difficult and tortuous one.

So domineering is the manager today that it is difficult to reconcile with the knowledge that it is a position that was born of the need to put a buffer between the team and those who owned it, one that was originally routinely carried out by the club secretary.

It is equally hard to accept that it was only in the early sixties that the England manager could actually chose the players who played in his teams. As much as the notion seems alien now, up till Alf Ramsey’s appointment in 1963 England managers had to defer to an FA committee that had the ultimate say on who played and who didn’t. Tactical issues often had less of say then political ones, with each committee member angling for his own club’s players to play until a consensus was reached.

Even though the cult of the manager as the man who controls most aspect of his team had been established by Herbert Chapman’s success at Arsenal, and the resulting desire to emulate that success by copying what Chapman had done, it was only when the likes of Bill Shankly arrived at Anfield and started to claw away the power from the board room that the supposed power became a real one.

Across the continent, the role evolved in a different manner. The demarcation line between taking care of the team and running the club remained a very clear one. From the early days, coaches commanded great respect – not least because most of them came from Britain which, as the birthplace of the game, afforded them significant regard - but that was never seen as a reason to give them much of a say away from the football pitch. In Italy for instance, the word used to refer to the man managing the team is allenatore which literally means trainer. Same goes for Spain with entranador. Even in language, their role was cemented on the training grounds.

In both of those countries, and practically everywhere else, it is the director of football who has always held most power. He is the one who decides who gets bought or sold, just as he is the one who maps out the strategy that should guide the club. Coaches come and go, strategies remain.

Gerard Houllier: one of many at Lyon

One of the finest examples of how this system works is at Lyon. The French side won seven consecutive league titles and did exceptionally well in the Champions League despite going through four managers (Jacques Santini, Paul Le Guen, Gérard Houllier and Alain Perrin).

Their success wasn’t down to being lucky in appointing for managers capable of picking up where the previous one had left. Decisions of which players are brought in isn’t taken by one man but rather a team of people (one of whom is the manager) with the director of football playing a key role.

More emphatically, the recent success of German football in developing players is founded in a shared ideology among directors of football who realized that, giving the financial limitations of the Bundesliga, investing in young players was the only way they could compete.

Left on their own, managers tend to opt for experienced players who are more likely to help them get the points they need to survive. It is human nature for them to do so. It takes someone with an overall vision, someone who can understand both the long term benefit and the short term risks, to dream up and allow such a strategy to come to fruition.

Yet such examples seem to bear little weight for those arguing against the utility of a director of football in the English game. Such belief is generally shielded by two major arguments: that there has never been such a role in British football and that the success of the likes of Alex Ferguson proves that you don’t need a director of football to succeed but, rather, a very good manager.

The first of those two is fairly typical. Change is rarely welcomed, especially if it challenges conventional wisdom. It took the humiliations suffered at the hands of Austria and Hungary in the fifties to shatter the arrogant belief that the no one outside the British isles was as good as the English were, to focus on what is perhaps the most glaring example of this. Yet those who, like coach Jimmy Hogan, had tried to warn of this were derided and shunned.

It would have been too hopeful to expect an easy acceptance of a role that, in the mind of many, undermines the historically established power of the manager regardless of the fact that in itself this is not a good enough reason to reject the utility of the role.

The second argument is perhaps harder to argue against. Ferguson hasn’t had a director of football at United yet they’ve done well enough. Neither did others like Matt Busby, Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley or Brian Clough.

Those names, however, span five decades which more than anything highlights just how rare it is to find a manager who is capable of constantly delivering success. Those managers were the exception, with the rule being the countless others who took similar roles and failed to deliver anything near the same level of results. Choosing the right manager, and getting some success, seems almost to be an act of chance.

It is equally legitimate to wonder what happens when they leave. The reply isn’t too comforting. Nottingham Forest went into meltdown once Clough resigned and haven’t recovered up till this day. United imploded once Busby retired to the extent that they were even relegated. At Liverpool, the ethos of the bootroom – as well as the presence of Paisley giving his advice in the background when Kenny Dalglish was in charge – kept the success coming but eventually even that lost its power.

The point is that truly great managers, those who have a strong vision of what has to be done in every aspect of the club in order to achieve success, are a rarity. And it is virtually impossible to ensure that someone as good takes over once they leave. Therein lies the problem of relying on one man.


Ruddock, Diouf and Josemi: Can Comolli Avoid Such Mistakes?

Liverpool over the past two decades provides the ideal test case. First there was Roy Evans who built up a squad of players that achieved moderate success. Then came Gerard Houllier who decided that the players he inherited weren’t good enough so set about re

placing practically all of them. Rafa Benitez eventually took over from him and he too concluded that the players he had weren’t up to the task.

So over the years millions have been wasted on players purely because the power to do so was in the hands of the managers. Throw into the mix the senseless feud between the academy and the first team that literally wasted two generations of players and you have a perfect mess on your hands.

There is no guarantee that it would have resulted in different outcomes, but it is hard to believe that Liverpool couldn’t have done better with someone to oversee that the players bought fitted in not only with the manager’s view of how the game should be played but also with the club’s philosophy.

Someone who could have avoided mistakes like Neil Ruddock, El Hadj Diouf and Josemi. Not to mention someone who could have helped preserve Liverpool’s pass and move trademark that seems to have been eroded along the way.

There will always be the need to identify someone who is exceptionally good in this role, as well as put agreed limits to what the role itself involves. It is equally crucial to have a manager that is comfortable working with that director of football and who shares the overall strategy.

Otherwise, and this is what has often happened in the past in England, it ends up being a clash of personalities. It is not an easy balance to reach especially as fans will typically push for the most popular manager rather than the one who is the best fit for the club and the way it is run.

But, then again, that of choosing a manager is a decision that is better taken by someone who knows the game and who has a feel of what the club believes in – the director of football - rather than people – the club directors - more used to hiring fund managers.

The key argument here isn’t that a Director of Football is a guarantee to success but rather an element that could help achieve it and, just as importantly, sustain it over a long period of time. It may not be what, historically, was done in England but that does not mean that it isn’t a system that could work as well there as it has done elsewhere.

This article was originally published on the Tomkins Times.

The True Price of Success

2010-11-19T08:57:00.001+01:00

Pay As You Play by Tomkins, Riley and Fulcher - Book Review by Roy Henderson

Before We Start - Full Disclosure
It’s only right to disclose that I had a small involvement in the book, having been one of the many bloggers and writers who contributed to its second part. I would hopefully have been more involved too, had I not been involved in a few other extra-curricular activities over the last few months. My contribution is listed here, so feel free to tear it to shreds. All feedback is good feedback.

To the Review
As Liverpool fans, we all know who Paul Tomkins is. There’s a thread on RAWK where week in, week out, we to and fro over the merits, demerits and alleged subtext of his standard fayre - or a great part of it - his regular blogs. But as even the most committed detractor would concede, the man is as prolific as he is talented. As well as a mammoth online output, Tomkins has since 2005 published a series of books almost unprecedented in their attention to detail and depth of analysis. Having also been the key columnist on the official club site for several years, it’s fair to say we all know who Paul Tomkins is.

But three questions:
- Do you know who Graeme Riley is?
- Do you know who Gary Fulcher is?
- Do you think fans of other clubs know who any of these three are?

The Three Wise Men
I’d suggest that, not too long from now, the answer to all three of those questions will increasingly be ‘Yes’. At least amongst a certain cadre of football fan, that is. The reason? They’re at the forefront of a movement, and that movement is as inclusive as it is intriguing.

Last month, Tomkins, Riley and Fulcher published “Pay As You Play” after a six-month project led by Tomkins. You might think that’s a natural gestation for any standard book project, particularly one where several people are collaborating. But the term “standard book project” doesn’t apply - this isn’t a standard book. When the postie pops your cardboard package through your letterbox, you’ll hear a thunderous crash, because this is a work of almost unprecedented weight. Flick through its pages, and you’ll gain access to a repository of data so rich that you wonder how a monster like this could have been borne within those six months. It’s a veritable beast.

The Premise
The premise of Pay As You Play (PAYP) is simple - it’s been hitherto impossible to achieve genuine like-for-like comparison between clubs, managers, and players. That’s true of a static analysis based on the present moment alone, let alone comparison between managers, clubs, and players of different eras. The tools we’ve thus far used haven’t been fit for purpose in that regard. So why not invent better tools?

That’s what Tomkins, Riley, Fulcher et al have made a start on here. PAYP represents something fundamentally different to tools like the Guardian Chalkboards, or heat maps, or the various statistical corpora provided by companies like Opta or Actim. These are tools used to provide rudimentary match analyis and assess the microcosmos of a football match. PAYP instead thinks of football clubs and their managers as market operators. Clubs, and the managers at their helm, buy and sell things in what’s essentially an open market. Sure, it’s an unregulated market plagued with sharks and sheisters, but for the most part clubs are subject to the same advantages and disadvantages faced by companies generally when trading in any market. Some have bigger bargaining power and greater resources to allocate. But what’s key is that all of those companies are subjected, either internally or externally, to constant scrutiny of their performance in their chosen markets. The tools developed to perform that scrutiny objectively have, over centuries, become incredibly sophisticated.

In football, on the other hand, we get Messrs Merson, Redknapp and Lawrenson schooling the average football fan on what being ‘effective’ means in the football transfer market. That is to say, we had no insight into what ‘effective’ means whatsoever.

In light of that fact, PAYP should have football fans rejoicing the world over. While it’s restricted to the English game, and for the moment only to the Premier League and those who have participated in it since its inception in 1992 (they only had six months mind), the principles applied here would apply in exactly the same way in any league, and in any country.

The Transfer Price Index
So - to the tools of their trade. Those who read Tomkins’ earlier works “Dynasty” and “Red Race” will be familiar with his “Transfer Price Index”. Simply put, this applies a Retail Price Index-type analysis to prices in the football transfer market. As Tomkins himself says:

“In everyday life, most people are familiar with the concept of the Retail Price Index (RPI) as a measure of inflation. A basket of goods is identified and every month the same items are checked to see what the value would be if these were to be purchased. The difference between the current value and that from the previous month is calculated and termed the RPI. By comparing the value this month with the corresponding value for the same month last year, we obtain the RPI.

The same methodology applies to the TPI, except that the “basket” contains every single footballer bought and sold each season, rather than grocery produce (although a few rotten eggs remain).”

Dynasty used this approach to try and assess Liverpool managers, sides and players from different eras on a fair footing, taking their financial and competitive context into account along the way. Red Race took this a step further, comparing Liverpool’s market performance in recent seasons against what were then its direct rivals at the top of the table.

PAYP is the next logical extension of this approach. It’s the Transfer Price Index approach writ a little larger.

So How Effective Is The Analysis?
It’s important in any review not to give too much away, so I won’t. All I’ll say is that, like any good analysis, it’s nice and transparent. It’s the underlying data that shines through, and it isn’t clouded by spin or agenda. I’ll expand on why that’s crucial below.

The authors acknowledge that their approach is not without its flaws, and it’s that overall acceptance and openness that rings true with the statistical tradition for me. It’s split into four parts as follows.

Part 1: introduces the methods used, and identifies the key trends and points of debate from 1992 to the present day.

Part 2: delves into the detail for each of the clubs involved in the Premier League since 1992.

Part 3: switches focus to each of the 18 seasons in turn.

Part 4: assesses the performance of the big managerial names involved.

How effective it is will ultimately be judged by each reader themselves, so all I can do is offer my personal take on things. For me, while there are obvious areas you’d like to see explored further, the book clearly demonstrates both the correlation between financial muscle and success, and the value of this kind of data in comparative assessment. It’s a big step in the right direction.

Is It Balanced?
There will inevitably be those who disagree - that always seems to be the case when it comes to Paul Tomkins’ work - but for me, balance is baked into this book, and to the entire movement that it’s built upon. What would be the point otherwise? Central to the development of this book, (and you would hope of many later books) were Graeme Riley and Dan Kennett, both experts in commercial data analysis. Their expertise enabled constant tweaking to the underlying database, and to the number crunching methods used to read the overall trends. Being experts in what constitutes competitive balance, their reputations depend on their objectivity. How can you make informed decisisons if any kind of agenda skews your representation of your data of the analysis that flows from it?

It’s likely that many others talented in these fields will get involved with later developments. That bodes well for us, if not for Messrs Merson, Redknapp and Lawrenson.

A Better Mousetrap?
In comparing the relative merits of analysis based on transfer fees versus analysis based on wages, the book’s introduction states: “Neither method is perfect… but as we will outline in this book, we feel that we’ve found the strongest-ever link between transfer spending and success.”

I think that’s a fair assertion. The data presented is compelling in itself. But the book’s about more than that for me. What’s possibly more important is that a. these guys have developed a way to produce and self-publish a book of phenomenal quality in only six months, and b. they’ve demonstrated a commitment to openness, transparency, challenge, and constant refinement, and that commitment is built into the very fabric of their approach.

It’s that spirit that will, you hope, eventually help build the kind of mousetrap we need.

Hopes For The Future
One thing that’s clear about Paul Tomkins is that he’s a man who responds positively to a challenge. So it’s with that spirit in mind that I hope he truly pushes the power of this idea and helps reinforce and build on the genuinely enlightened thinking that currently goes into our analysis of the game. Ex players and media hacks serve us up the same old nonsense week in and week out, and have done for years. In the process we never really get much insight into what makes the game tick. And while this isn’t the only front on which fans need to take the game back, it’s one front where we can really make inroads into ‘enemy’ lines. All we need is access to the data, a few clever heads to knock together, and a few more with the ability to present the insight it creates in a way that’s accessible to the day-to-day fan.

People are excited about the idea. Only three weeks ago I spoke to an illustrator for a well-known children’s comic and he started to wonder how you could make this kind of information accessible to school kids. It’s quite a challenge when you think about it like that. But ultimately it should be the aim if this movement’s really going to change things.

PAYP makes an excellent start in that direction. The writing is clear and direct, making a subject that could be dry and intractable both engaging and intuitive to understand. The use of standard graphs and infographics is intriguing to me, as it’s an area I’m fascinated in. I remember suggesting a few months ago that by applying the principles of Edward Tufte, Tomkins and his compadres could really bring the findings of this work home to your average fan. Taking one look at the heat map graphic from PAYP, which plots the trends in competitive balance since 1992, you realise that this spirit is central to the group’s work. To be honest, it makes you want to throw yourself in there and get involved.

Along with developing better tools for genuinely insighful and objective analysis, you can only hope as much effort goes into keeping the information engaging for users. On that front, I’ll be reporting for duty - but then it’s my hobby anyway.

I guess the best way to sum up my hopes is this: I’ll meet you all for a pint at the close of the 15th annual International TPI Convention in 2028.

Conclusion
This book represents the fish in the penguin’s mouth on the top of a very large iceberg indeed. It’s an intriguing insight into how managers and clubs have performed since 1992, and it will refresh those expect balance and fairness in books of this type. These “Three Wise Men” deliver objective praise to people you might not expect during the course of the book. I’d highly recommend that you add it to your Xmas list and pop it up the chimney for an early delivery. Or, if you don’t believe in Setanta, just rock it up on a Kindle reader app.

Pretty soon, people throughout the game are going to be well aware of who these Three Wise Men are. Tomkins, Riley, and Fulcher had best brush up on their public speaking skills, because they’re going to be in demand.

Roy Henderson, or royhendo as he is most commontly know in internet circles, is a regular contributor to the Red and White Kop website and has his own site at royhendo.com. He can also be found on Twitter. More information about Pay as You Play can be found on the official website.

The Lad Can Play: Michael Ngoo

2010-11-02T14:00:00.001+01:00

It is impossible not to notice Michael Ngoo. During games he sticks out as an adult playing with a bunch of kids would, such is the gap in height between the 6 ft 4 tall striker and the rest of the players. The difference is so marked that it is difficult not to presume, even if fleetingly, that his inclusion might be purely to leverage on his height and get the team some easy goals.

Watch Ngoo play, however, and such notions would quickly disappear. His height is an obvious advantage but what he truly brings to the side is the ability to run with the ball, to get past people and create goals just as much as score them

When Ngoo joined Liverpool from Southend midway through last season, such instances were sporadic. There would be one or two moves hinting that the player had something about him but there would also be miscontrolled passes or instances where possession was lost far too cheaply. It was as if his eagerness to prove that he was a player with the technique worthy of playing for Liverpool, and not someone who was only good enough to act as a target man, was getting in the way of him showing what he really could do.

It is easy to understand Ngoo’s state of mind. The previous summer, he had been invited for a trial by Manchester United where he had joined their academy side for a tournament in Ireland. There he had done well enough to be judged as one of the best players on show and United were interested in making the deal permanent. Yet there was also some reluctance from their part to pay what Southend were asking and ultimately nothing came out of it.

Mentally it must have been tough on him to get over such a disappointment and, when the chance to play for Liverpool came about, the pressure to justify his place must have been immense.

With games and time, his confidence started to grow and so it is that this season we are seeing an almost completely different player, one who is a menace every time he gets the ball at his feet.

Yet there is more to Ngoo’s progress than just belief. Over the summer he seems to have bulked up a fair bit which has made him not only more imposing as a player but also much more difficult to bully physically. From a player who struggled to handle a full game last season, he now looks more than ready to take on the next challenge which is that of showing his ability with the reserves.

In truth, that this hasn’t happened already because of his call ups to the England U19s. It would be easy to view the frequency and timing of those games as a hindrance but they are anything but. Tactically, he is learning by facing different styles of players and also by coming across different systems to those that he is used to at Liverpool. Noel Blake, who is the English U19s manager, has experimented with Ngoo playing him both in a central role and as a support striker in a three man attack.

His ability has shone through in both roles yet it would appear that his impact is much more significant in the latter system. Defenders quite simply aren’t expecting such a big player to be so good with the ball at his feet. And, even when they know what to expect, they often can’t deal with it.

Follow Him. And Him. And Him

2010-10-29T08:47:00.009+02:00

Updated on 09/06/11

Earlier this week I was hit by a somewhat curious realisation: I hadn’t visited a forum for quite a number of days. Up till a few months back, logging on to see what was being said on RAWK or The Liverpool Way to catch up with the latest rumours was a daily (and, occasionally, hourly) habit. But now I rarely bother to check in.

The reason for this drastic change in attitude is Twitter. On a forum you have to wade through post after post of inane drivel before you get to some thought that is worth reading. There’s no danger of that happening on Twitter where you can listen to who you want and switch off all the rest.

There are many out there who are worth listening to but those listed below are, in my opinion, the ones that no Liverpool fan should miss out on (presented in no particular order).

Liverpool FC Greats

@kennethdalglish The King. And the greatest of them all. Kenny Dalglish doesn't tweet very often but rest assured that every time that he does it is worth listening.

@realjohnaldo Another legend and recent convert to Twitter, John Aldridge is very much like Dalglish in that he doesn't tweet very often but his views are always interesting.

The Owners

@John_W_Henry The new overlord at Anfield, John W Henry’s use of Twitter is quite sporadic but it is always nice to know that you can vent your frustration by sending a message to the club’s owner.

@Linda_Pizzuti Wife of the aforementioned overlord, apparently it was Ms Pizzuti who urged Henry to enquire with Tom Hicks about the possibility of buy Liverpool FC. For that reason alone, she’s worth following.

Media

@TonyBarretTimes Widely considered the finest Liverpool FC writer around, Tony Barrett is a recent convert to Twitter but it shows how highly regarded he is that he picked almost 10,000 followers in a few hours. Full of informative snippets, it is a pity that his Times articles are hidden behind the paywall.

@TonyEvansTimes Another new addition and a great Red to boot, when he gets going 140 characters clearly aren't enough for Tony Evans (cue a series of interlinked tweets) but that is what makes his views worth listening to.

@dionobanion The man who, on Rafa's dismissal, predicted that within six month's the Benitez era would seem like a golden age. Oh, how right he was. If that isn't enough to convince you to follow him just read a couple of his brilliant articles. Great Red; brilliant writer.

@rorysmith_tel Officially, Rory Smith covers the North West for the Telegraph but, in reality, all he writes about is Liverpool FC. At least that the impression he gives on Twitter. Not that we mind because he is someone who (often) knows what he’s talking about.

@ianherbs Perhaps not as well known as other Liverpool FC specific writers but Ian Herbert is another who has excellent contacts at the club and, as such, someone who is to be believed when he says anything.

@neiljjones Occasional contributor to the Liverpool Echo and, more recently, close follower of the lower leagues, Jones offers a good mixture of tweets about what's happening at Liverpool and elsewhere.

@Simon_Hughes__ Writer on the LFC Weekly and author of the excellent book Secret Diary of a Liverpool Scout, it is worth following Hughes if only to know when he has posted another one of his normally very good interviews on his own blog.

@RBuxton_LFC The Liverpool FC correspondent for Click Liverpool, there’s rarely a story that he doesn’t cover.

@SiClancy

Simon writes for a wide range of outlets and on a number of sports but most of his tweets are on one subject: Liverpool FC. Often funny, always interesting he is well worth a follow.

@JenChang88

At Sports Illustrated, where he is football (soccer) editor, Chang has brought together some of the finest football writers around. More importantly, however, he is a Liverpool fan and his opinions on the club are both measured and insightful.

Bloggers & the Rest

@empireofthekop If there are over 50,000 people following you, then you must be doing something right.

@royhendo Well known to anyone who has been frequenting the RAWK forum for some time, royhendo is not only a fan but someone who thinks a lot about the game. His Level 3 articles, for instance, are must reads.

@paul_tomkins The most popular – and probably most respected – Liverpool FC blogger around, Tomkins is as prolific on Twitter as he is elsewhere.

@robbohuyton Editor at the excellent Well Red magazine, Roberts is never one to shirk from expressing his opinion even if it isn’t what most to hear.

@TheKopMagazine The twitter handle for the unofficial Liverpool magazine, its tweets offer a good mixture of humour and insight.

@Maldini An excellent source if you want to know what’s happening with Liverpool’s youths and reserves.

@JimBoardman Writer on Anfield Road site, Boardman’s tweets are a mix of the insightful and the revealing.

@pauldalglish The former manager of the Tampa Bay Rowdies, Paul’s tweets are often hilarious. Oh, and his father’s royalty.

@mcdonladtaf His experience and knowledge of finance allows Taf to offer a unique insight into what is happening at Liverpool.

@jd77 The editor of Anfield Online, John Dowling clearly has some very good contacts at the club and is always a reliable source for the latest rumours.

@milankakabaros
The author of most Liverpool themed Youtube videos, it is worth following Milan Kaka Baros purely to know every time he prepares something new.

ALiverpoolThing Well, we have to plug our own twitter handle, don't we?

A Word on Chairman Broughton

2010-10-19T11:18:00.000+02:00

Football loyalties – and enmities – are very difficult to quell which perhaps explains why my own initial reaction to Martin Broughton wasn’t of the most positive. Professional or not, there was no way that a Chelsea fan could work for the benefit of one of its fiercest rivals.

That Broughton himself had been highly supportive of those who wanted to get rid of Rafa Benitez didn’t help ingratiate particularly as he later admitted (indirectly) that his decision was formed on what the media was saying.

Over the past few days, however, opinion of him has changed dramatically. Football wise he might not be up to speed (after all, he supports Chelsea) but when it comes to business decisions his outflanking of the previous owners, was quite simply majestic in its conception and execution.

As always, caution has to be exercised. It would be stupid to repeat the mistakes of the recent past, particularly the ‘Thanks DM & RP’ mosaic when the club was sold to Hicks and Gillett. How good a job Broughton has actually done in selling Liverpool FC to NESV will only become apparent within the next three to five years.

At this point in time, however, what counts is what he has done. By forcing both Tom Hicks and George Gillett out he had already won over most skeptics.

So it has to be well done to Mr Broughton. And sorry for doubting you.

Book Review: Will You Manage?

2010-09-14T14:00:00.003+02:00

Will You Manage?: The Necessary Skills to be a Top Gaffer by Musa Okwonga

Everyone thinks he's a coach these days. There's no way you can watch a game without coming across someone overly eager to instruct the manager what he should do and tell all those who will listen that he got hs tactics wrong. Opinions that are too often shaped by something as flimsy as playing a management simulation game.

Managing a football club is, in reality, much more complex and difficult than is widely believed especially if you want to be succesful as well. It is not simply a case of having the best players but rather one of getting the players that you have to play as well (and more) as they possibly can. And that's only a starting point.

The truth is that management is quite a tough job and showing this lies at the heart of Musa Okwonga's book 'Will You Manage?". It is the result of a personal journey that started when he found himself wondering whether he could do a better job than Arsene Wenger (haven't we all?) and the stunted perception of management that exists which is based on what is seen during games.

Somewhere along the line, and most probably brought about by the proliferation of management simulation games where anyone can ultimately be successful (and usually is, thanks also to the ability to save and reboot games if results don't go your way), that has been lost and instead replaced by the belief that it is an easy task which anyone can do.

Those who have read Okwonga's previous book, 'A Cultured Left Foot', will be familiar with his style seeing that he replicates what he did there. Each chapter is dedicated to a particular component that is vital for the object of his attention: physical and technical in his previous work, mental and tactical in this. As an approach, it is quite effective as it breaks down the complexity that is football management into bite size thoughts that can easily be absorbed and understood.

Although a skilled writter (Okwonga also has something of a reputation for his poetry), he doesn't rely exclusively on his own thoughts to argue his way through. Indeed, it could be said that the whole book is built around thoughts and ideas that Okwonga has managed to gather. Some of these - largely those that come from the heavy hitters in the management world - are obtained through articles or biographies, others by talking to those concerned.

That most of his interviews are with people who aren't exactly household names (the non-league specialist George Borg is perhaps the most typical example) could make this book look like a second rate piece of work yet, in truth, they work really well as they add depth along with genuine insight into the world of football managers.

And that is effectively what 'Will You Manage' is all about. It does not have the pretentions of being as detailed and technical as John Wilson's bible that is 'Inverting the Pyramid' but it does shed more light into football management and breaks the illusion that this is an easy job that turns around buying the right players and chosing the correct eleven to play each weekend.

Note: A review copy of this book was provided by the publisher.

The Lads Can Play

2010-08-26T14:00:00.001+02:00

Not Golden, Just Promising

As England proved so emphatically this summer, there is no such thing as a golden generation that can guarantee success. Yet there's little doubt that there is currently a better group of talented individuals then there has been for a long time.

Jack Robinson (pictured left)
Playing him for a few minutes in last season's final game at Stoke was a bit of a publicity stunt by Rafa Benitez but there's no doubting that this player has talent. Combines strength and speed with good use of the ball, he has the makings of a great left-back.

Tony Silva
A supremely talented winger who was signed from Benfica, Silva started the season playing for the Under 16 but by the end he was a regular in the Under 18s and had made his debut for the reserves. Needs time to develop his tactical awareness but technically he's as good a player as there has ever been at the academy.

Connor Coady
The captain of the England Under 17 side that won the European championship this summer, Coady isn't a spectacular player who catches the eye unless you happen to be focusing on him. It is only then that you notice how much work he puts in, how much ground he covers and the precision as well as intelligence of his passing.

Andre Wisdom (pictured right)
Brought to Liverpool from Bradford, it says a lot of his ability that despite being a central defender he rarely looked out of place when used as a right midfielder for the Under 18s last year. Another member of the English side that won the European championship - indeed he scored at both end in the final - this central defender should be a regular for the reserves this coming season.

Tom Ince
There was always a hint that Ince was a talented player but it wasn't until the latter half of last season that he really started showing it with consistency. Whether it was working with Rodolfo Borell or simply down to the added maturity, he seemed a totally different player and a much better one at that.

Raheem Sterling
The club's self-serving publicity with which his arrival was marked won't do Sterling any favours as it needlessly raises expectations and the pressure will be on him to deliver in every game. Even so, this kid has talent and speed in equal measures. The talent to become a top player is there, now it needs to be seen whether the same can be said for his attitude.

This piece was featured in the last issue of Well Red magazine.

Looking for a Brighter Future

2010-08-25T14:00:00.001+02:00

Neil Mellor left Preston to join Sheffield Wednesday on year's loan deal this summer. It isn't the sort of transfer many Liverpool fans will have picked on but it is significant for one particular reason: Mellor is one of the most successful graduates to emerge from Liverpool's academy over the past ten years.

Indeed, apart from Stephen Warnock, no player from the club's academy who made his senior debut during the past decade currently plays in the Premiership. There are a handful - David Raven, Jon Otsemobor, Stephen Wright, Darren Potter - who have all gone on to establish themselves as good players in the lower leagues but none who have shown that they could have made it at the club.

Pinpointing a reason for that is tricky. It is far too easy to get bogged down in arguments involving Gerard Houllier and Rafa Benitez's reluctance to give younger players an opportunity. Inevitably, these arguments would turn into a debate about whether this was down to players not being good enough or rather the players themselves not developing because their progress was stalling through lack of opportunites.

The truth is, of course, that there isn't one single reason just as it isn’t only talent that is needed for a player to make it in professional football.

Indeed, there are a number of factors - luck, injuries, physical strength, mental resilience, tactical awareness - that always have to be kept in the forefront of any discussion about young players. The temptation to build them up as potential stars is often hard to resist when in reality, sad and cynical though this might seem, it takes much more than talent to be able to get a chance in the game.

The nineties witnessed the largest number of home grown players in the modern history of the club – Mike Marsh, Dominic Matteo, Steve McManaman, Robbie Fowler, David Thompson, Michael Owen, Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard. Yet this was also the worst decade in the modern history of the club as far as results were concerned something that played a factor in all of those players getting their opportunities as early as they did.

Of course, most of those players were fantastically talented individuals who would have made it in any case. Then again, the injuries that plagued Gerrard early on in the first team could have easily ruined his career. It was Carragher’s mental strength rather than his playing talent that saw him carve out a space for him in the team despite the number of supposedly better players brought in.

Such factors are often overlooked, yet they are what really makes a difference.

This doesn’t answer the question as to why an academy such as Liverpool’s that had been so successful stopped churning out players. The methods certainly didn’t change and the talent pool available remained the same. So what happened?

The most probable reason, strange as this might seem, is that success happened. When Gerard Houllier arrived at Liverpool and started overhauling the first team to bring it in line with his view of the game, results improved markedly. By the time his first season came to an end, expectations had risen considerably and so too the pressure on him to succeed.

Houllier, of course, was a great believer in young talent. One of the reasons that he had been chosen for the Liverpool job was the success of the French youth system which he was credited with shaping. In his first months at the club, he had picked two young players from the reserves and included them in his first team.

The first one, Steven Gerrard, went on to become the club’s finest player in recent history. But, for the sake of this piece, it is the second of those players who is most important.

That player was Stephen Wright, a good right back who seemed to have everything needed to make the grade: strength, speed, willingness to work hard and knowledge of what to do with the ball. What he lacked, obviously enough, was experience and that was the root of the problem.

By the time Wright came to play for the side, Liverpool were on the rise and Houllier probably felt that he needed someone more experienced to rely on if his hopes of success were to be realised. So he turned to Abel Xavier. The move for Everton’s defender was a controversial one and not only because of the club from which he was joining. Xavier was seen as something of a joke and his playing skills weren’t exactly overly admired. But he knew how to deal with the pressure of playing in big games which is what Houllier was looking for at the time.

The manager was more than justified to reason this way but it meant that, all of a sudden, Wright had vanished off the radar. Within months, he was sold to Sunderland where he went on to prove to be a good player – with the potential to be even more than that – until his career was curtailed by a series of injuries that greatly limited his progression.

That move for Xavier didn’t only kill off Wright’s Liverpool career, it also sent the wrong message to the academy. And it wasn’t the only one.

It has long been rumoured that Houllier was irked by the lack of say he had in the running of the academy and although that was never really confirmed, the fact that he chose to turn to young French players (remember Patrice Luzi and Carl Medjani?) in order to fill his reserves was a clear indication of his lack of faith.

Once Houllier left, the hope was that the issues between Melwood and the academy would be sorted out. They weren’t and, if anything, the situation worsened.

Like his predecessor, Benitez wanted a say in how the academy was run but he too was rebuffed. So he set about building his own mini-academy with the reserves. A host of players (most of them from Spain) were brought in and these seemed to be guaranteed starting slots whilst players were left at the academy regardless of whether they were better than those ahead of them.

At that point the club needed to be strong and impose its mentality. Benitez shouldn’t have been allowed to stock up so many young players but, at the same time, he should have been given some say in matters involving the academy.

Sadly, that didn’t happend. Instead the academy became the focus of the standoff between Benitez and Rick Parry so much that when Steven Heighway left in 2007, Benitez wasn’t even consulted about the choice of his replacement in Piet Hamberg. In turn, his stance against the players coming out of the academy hardened amid rumours that Gary Ablett was allowed to pick players from the Under 18s for his reserves.

Ironically during all this, the Academy was apparently prospering. The FA Youth Cup was won twice in a row and, as far as results were concerned, everything seemed fine. Yet, at this level, results tell only half the story.

Potential players looked at their prospects of making it through the system and concluded that their prospects were probably better served elsewhere. It is, for instance, what led to Liverpool fan Jack Rodwell to opt for Everton. Liverpool no longer was the focus for the area’s best talent as it had been in the past when its reputation was enough to convince former blues like Carragher, McManaman and Fowler to join. So, whilst youth cup winning teams were being produced, this was down to the presence of a good group of players rather than that of a couple of exceptionally talented individuals.

Nevertheless, those successes raised expectations that a handful of those players would make it into Benitez’s plans. That didn’t happen and whilst the political in-fighting certainly didn’t help, it wasn’t the only reason that prevented any of Liverpool’s double FA Youth Cup winners from 2006 and 2007 from getting an opportunity.

In fact, success in the FA Youth Cup rarely equates to progression to the first team. When one looks at the Manchester United team that was beaten in the second of those finals, only Danny Welbeck has got a look-in and even he doesn’t seem to be developing as well as had been anticipated.

As for the City team that was beaten a year earlier – a club that, until recently, had limited funds and therefore youth was more likely to be given a chance – the only player that got through was Micah Richards.

Indeed, that City team provides another case in point: Michael Johnson. The midfielder was said to have the dynamism of Steven Gerrard after making an impression in the Premier League as an eighteen year old. Four years down the line, however, and injuries have limited him to just four appearances in the past two seasons. Once again a reminder that talent by itself isn’t enough.

Of course, not all that was happening at Liverpool’s academy was wrong. The appointment of Malcolm Ellias as head scout was particularly inspired as he started to transfer the knowledge that had seen him spot Theo Walcott at Southampton. If Andre Wisdom, one of the trio of Liverpool players that this summer won the European Under 17 championship, fulfils his early promise it is Elias that Liverpool will have to thank for spotting him in Bradford’s youth team.

Sadly, Ellias left when Benitez finally won his battle and got control of the academy and his was one of the few truly disappointing departures of the purge that happened over the last summer.

Yet the academy also gained the likes Pep Segura and Rodolfo Borell, people with a track record of success at a club as famous as Barcellona. By the end of the season, their imprint could easily be seen as the Under 18 side coached by Borell was technically and tactically much better than the one that had started the season. Things, once again, were looking up.

And this was one of the biggest worries when Benitez left: would Borell be leaving as well? Would all the progress shown over the previous twelve months be washed away?

These doubts quickly brought to the fore the problem of having the first team manager in charge of the academy. Because that system works when you have people like Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger in charge, whose job is virtually theirs for life. Benitez may have been given a five year deal when he was given control over the academy but the feeling was always that he was one bad season away from being dismissed.

Until Liverpool have a manager who is in such an unsackable position, therefore, it doesn’t make sense to give them any control over the academy. After all, that doesn’t happen at Ajax or Barcellona where the club have thought up and live by pretty visionary ideals for their youth sector. Any manager coming in has to buy into that philosophy if they want the job.

Of course, that these systems continuously produce some pretty amazing players helps. And that is the other part of the equation. Houllier and Benitez became frustrated with the youth system not because their desires to control every aspect of the club were being thwarted (much as there are those out there willing to see it this way) but because the players that were coming out of the system weren’t good enough.

The real building blocks, therefore, have to be at the academy itself. This must continuously try for develop the best coaches (which, by targeting the likes of Borell, is what Benitez did), have the best facilities as well as adopt the best approaches.

At Manchester United, for instance, they have done research to see what ages the kids should be playing on full size pitches with full size goals. The message here isn’t that Liverpool have to copy what is out there but, rather, the opposite: Liverpool have to be at the forefront of innovation. Every step of the process has to be analysed to determine what can be done to help these kids become better players.

Above all there must be a philosophy to which the club holds and which got lost amid all the political in-fighting. And, at Liverpool, that philosophy has to based on the pass and move system.

That is why it is vital to have at the academy someone like Kenny Dalglish. In that respect, Roy Hodgson got it right when he said that Dalglish has a vital role to play linking the academy with the first team. Somewhere along the line that link was lost and instead it became an ‘us versus them’ mentality.

Dalglish can bridge all that as he is the perfect link between the club’s past, its present and the future. He knows how the club’s academy teams should be playing and can ensure that everything is done with the ideal of getting them to play that way.

All of this, however, doesn’t solve the problem facing every manager at Liverpool FC which is that of constantly being under pressure to attain success. Going back to Stephen Wright, in the long term he was the better option but at that stage Houllier needed immediate results so, for him, Xavier’s experience increased his chances of achieving that.

And it will always be that way unless a way is found to give players the experience that they need. Sweeping statements like ‘if you’re good enough you’re old enough’ simply aren’t true. Players have to make their mistakes elsewhere, where they can learn from them rather than be castigated as happens at a top club like Liverpool.

You only have to look at someone like Emiliano Insua who was the standout player for the reserves for a long time but who has suffered badly from playing constantly for Liverpool. Quite simply, his rapid progression to first team regular – that was brought about by the lack of alternatives – has potentially burnt him out.

It would probably have been better for him to spend some time at a Premiership club with lower ambitions. That, however, was never going to happen. One of Benitez’s main problems was that he had very few contacts in the British game meaning that there were always limited outlets when sending out players on loan. Whereas someone like Ferguson, who knows most of the managers out there, can easily pick a Championship or even a Premiership club to send someone who needs games at Liverpool the destination was often a League One or League Two club.

Again the need is for someone like Dalglish who has the contacts and the charisma to get players the moves that they need at that particular stage in their career. With reserves football being the shambles that it currently is, that need is likely to become more pronounced in the future.

The good thing is that, fortunately, that future seems to be quite bright for Liverpool because there is a core of very good players in the Under 18s who seem good enough to keep on progressing.

It would be foolhardy to try and predict which players will actually make it because who knows what might happen to them. The important thing is that they are handled in the right manner and given the opportunities that they need to progress.

More important, however, is the need to ensure the direction in which the academy is going. At this point in time it might be too much to ask for the club to have a real vision for the academy rather than simply the notion that it is there to produce players but, given the direction football is heading, it might be the best hope for future success.

This article was published in the last issue of Well Red magazine.

Good Game Bad Game [vs Manchester City]

2010-08-24T14:00:00.003+02:00

Out-thought. Out-played. Out-fought. Outclassed. These were all adjectives that sprang to mind after a truly horrendous display by Liverpool that highlighted, if ever this was needed, just how far behind the club has fallen. If the unlucky draw against Arsenal had given the illusion that this side could actually compete at the top, then the reality of where Liverpool stand should now be apparent to all.

Even so, identifying the reasons for this debacle is made difficult by the sheer number of sources. There were some all too familiar scenes such as that of a visibly not-fully-fit Fernando Torres being forced into action far too early in the hope that he might find a spark to bring Liverpool to life. Or that of players who looked beaten before they had even stepped on to the pitch.

That could have been down to Javier Mascherano's apparent refusal to play on the night in order to force through a move to Barcelona. It is impossible to estimate what damage this might have done to the team's morale but it certainly won't have helped any players currently thinking about their future.

It also had a significant impact on the quality out there on the pitch. Mascherano's actions over the past fifteen months have been offensive to the extent that it will be something of a relief to get rid of him. Yet, at the same time, there is no one at the club who can take his place. It is similar to the departure of Alberto Aquilani whose frequent injuries ensured that very few were disappointed at his move to Juventus but, then again, it does mean that there's a little bit less strength in depth within the squad.

Indeed, the squad has actually been weakend from last season. Whilst Joe Cole is a like-for-like replacement for Yossi Benayoun and Milan Jovanovic takes the place of Albert Riera, no one has come in to replace Aquilani or Insua whilst the much talked about striker to back up Torres hasn't yet materialised. This is a team that is playing without a left back or a midfielder that can give shape to its play.

It would be unfair to judge Roy Hodgson on this performance as it is too early in his time here to make any rash judgements. Yet, he surely has to shoulder part of the blame for setting the team out to play with a 4-4-2 formation that allowed City's midfield to boss it's way around. That tactic might have worked if Liverpool had at least one winger capable of getting behind defences. Instead, Hodgson opted for Jovanovic and Kuyt both of whom work hard but neither of which is the sort of players who stretch midfields. Closing LIverpool down was an easy task for City's crowded central midfield whilst Liverpool never reallly had any replies to the attacking verve of Adam JOhnson.

The only bright spots, faint though they were, came from the substitutes where Ryan Babel gave Joe Hart a save to make whilst the brief cameo by Daniel Pacheco saw him eagerly working to win space and use the ball cleverly. If there's anything that Hodgson can take from this game to build on then that is that those two players are probably looking good for more opportunities.

But that's far too little to get excited about: indeed, more than ever, the feeling is that of helplessness which is fuelled by the knowledge that there's barely enough money to keep the club going let alone to invest in strengthening the side.

Good Game Bad Game [vs Arsenal]

2010-08-16T11:00:00.000+02:00

So much for change. After a year filled with ill fortune, Liverpool were looking for better luck with the kick-off to a new season but if the initial signs are anything to go by, that won't be the case. A draw against Arsenal isn't necessarily a bad thing but, given how the game had progressed, this feels like a body blow that is all too similar to the ones suffered last season.

Arsenal, for all their speed and movement, rarely troubled Liverpool and only had three shots at goal two of which came from a set-piece. Merit for this goes to the way that Liverpool defended which restricted Arsenal to sideways passing that got them nowhere. Ultimately, it was a colossal mistake that gifted them with a goal but the nature of this draw will probably boost their confidence. The opposite probably applies to Liverpool and it is now up to Hodgson to lift them up in time for a tricky Europa League game against Trabzonspor next Thursday. At least, he can point at the heart and effor that they put in (which often wasn't the case last season) and indeed most players can be proud of the way they played.

Tactics wise, Liverpool showed little ambition and that was before the sending off of Joe Cole. That the team has barely played together because of the World Cup inevitably played a part but the lack of cohesion and understanding of who was to do what (particularly in midfield) was worrying nevertheless. Again, the game against Trabzonspor should offer a better indication of how Hodgson will set out his players against teams who come to Anfield looking for a draw.

Good Game
I still believe that, had Pepe Reina simply stopped when Chamakh made the first challenge that eventually led to the goal, the referee would have blown for a foul. As it was, his instinctive dive to catch the ball after it rebounded off the post and his subsequent reaction sent out the message that there had been no foul and the official didn't have a decision to make. Regardless of all this, it is undeniable that Reina messed up in the goal but that can't cancel the three world class saves that he pulled off earlier in the game.

In the centre of defence, both Jamie Carragher and Martin Skrtel put in colossal performances and they were ready for everything that Arsenal threw at them. Skrtel, in particular, impressed not only for his defending but also in the way he used the ball showing the kind of form that made him such a favourite two season back. My Man of the Match.

That title should, in all probability, be shared with Daniel Agger. Not because of how the Dane played but rather for his determination to get back on to the pitch and help the team despite the fact that quite clearly he wasn't feeling well. On the right hand side, it was a rather muted game by Glen Johnson but when he moved forward he had Arsenal worried. Could have scored late in the first half but for a fantastic save by Almunia and linked up well in with Kuyt in the second.

Fresh from his heroics in midweek for England, Steven Gerrard was clearly eager to impress. Returned to the central midfield role from which he first made his name, his passing was often spot on but his tackling less so. Lucky not to be shown a yellow card midway through the first half, he walked on a tightrope throughout the whole game.

One of the major plus points of this game was Milan Jovanovic. He might not be a typical left winger but he is intelligent, knows what to do with the ball and has the strength to handle himself in this league. With his effort, he could easily go on to become a cult hero of the Kop.

Dirk Kuyt started the game slowly but found his rythm as the game wore on. Battled hard for every ball and linked up very well with Johnson both when he was going forward as well as when they had to defend.

David N'Gog didn't have the best of first half's - he was guilty of losing posession far too cheaply on a number of occasions and needlessly strayed offside on others - but more than made up for it with a brilliantly taken goal at the start of the second half. No one is saying that he is the best striker around but, with goals like that, you have to feel confident that he will develop into someone who as a minimum can act as a back-up for Torres.

Bad Game
Perhaps I'm still prejudiced by his apparent eagerness to leave but Javier Mascherano's performance was reminiscent of those with which he started last season when he was still disappointed that his proposed move to Barcelona had fallen through. As for Joe Cole, I'm still not convinced that his foul deserved a red card but irrespective of that, it was foolish to launch himself into such a tackle in that area of the pitch with just a few seconds of the half to go.

Substitutions
It was a joy to see Fernando Torres back and even more to see him sprinting after the ball without any apparent repercussions. If he can stay fit throughout the season, then there is yet hope for the club. Maxi Rodriguez came on and added a bit of energy at a time when those around him were feeling the tiredeness having had to defend for so much with one player less. The same goes for Lucas Leiva who would probably have started if it hadn't been for the midwwek game for Brazil.

Early (Pre) Season Lessons

2010-07-27T13:01:00.002+02:00

So, two games into pre-season with a squad that is nowhere near being finalised and people are already looking for definitive answers as to where Liverpool's fortunes lie.

Too Early To Judge?
Pre-season, we are often told, is a time where gaining full fitness is the key and results mean nothing. That might be the case but experience proves that if the team looks bad in pre-season, then the likelihood is that it will continue that way when the actual games start. One only has to look at last season's abysmall 3-0 trashing at Espanyol where the problems that would haunt Liverpool throughout the season - lack of creativity in particular - were first laid bare.

The thing with this season is that the games played so far have seen largely inexperienced kids taking part so it is impossible to determine what Liverpool's season will be like.

Keep Your Shape
What has been clear from these first two games is what we have been told all along about Hodgson: organisation is paramount. What has been encouraging is that it would appear that his early lessons are already being absorbed. Conceeding one goal in two games with what was a glorified reserve squad was in itself an exceptional result but it didn't come about by accident. All the players worked hard - that much was to be expected particularly with a new manager in charge - but much more encouraging was how they went about their job, keeping their concentration throughout both games. Few, if any, of the players on show

There's Talent but no Experience
The goal conceeded against Kaiserslautern neatly summed up the issue facing Roy Hodgson. Over the two games, Daniel Ayala was pretty impressive and he showed why there is the belief that he is destined for big things. Yet it was his lack of experience that allowed Kaiserslautern the opportunity to score a goal. This is not to say that a more experienced player wouldn't have done a similar mistake but rather that it is more likely that a younger one succumb to it especially when the pressure is on.

There are some very talented players at Liverpool but that doesn't mean that they are ready to play in the Premier League, at least not at Liverpool. Given the state of reserve team football, it would be much better for the likes of David Amoo and Nathan Ecclestone to spend the coming months on loan some where so that they can gain some experience (and make mistakes away from the spotlight along the way).

Some Things Never Change
It might sound harsh to pinpoint any player who did badly at this stage but it is simply impossible to hold back on criticising Philippe Degen. As one of the few senior players in the squad that made it to Switzerland, the expectation was that he would be setting the example. But, going by what he showed in the two games played, let's hope that no one took any notice. Caught far too often out of position when making ill advised runs forward, it was comforting to hear Hodgson confirm that he should be looking for a new club for next season.

What They Say About Roy Hodgson

2010-07-04T11:00:00.000+02:00

Following on from Friday's piece where we took a look at what Roy Hodgson had said over the years, here's what others have said about Roy Hodgson over the years.

"He’s not the best; not by a long way. But is he the best we can realistically expect?"

Paul Tomkins, writer The Tomkins Times

"Roy Hodgson was an important person in the development of Inter Milan to the point we have reached today. “He saved us at the right time. When he came we were in trouble, and things appeared dark. He didn’t panic, he was calm and made us calm. Disaster was averted at the most important time. Everyone at Inter will remember him for that and his contribution. He is considered by us all as an important person in our history. He left an endowment to this club that’s important in our history.”

Massimo Moratti, Inter owner

"E stato la prima rovina del l'Inter" (He was the first to ruin Inter)

Maurizio Mosca, Italian sports journalist

"My problem at Inter was Hodgson, Roy Hodgson. He wanted me to play as a forward when I'm a defender – I prefer to have space ahead of me to run into rather than be a winger already up there; for me it's better to have 80 metres to play in than 20. I didn't like the system or where Hodgson wanted me to play in it. He wanted me further up the pitch, sure, but stopped, still, rigid. The Copa America was coming up and I was playing at left-back for Brazil, so I wanted to play there for Inter too. I had to leave because I didn't want to jeopardise my chances with the national team. If I couldn't play the way I do I wouldn't be able to play for Brazil. I spoke to Massimo Morratti [the Inter president] to see if he could sort things out and it soon became clear that the only solution was to leave."

Brazilian legend Roberto Carlos, sold by Hodgson when he was at Inter.

"Hodgson's philosophy has remained more or less unchanged since he joined Maidstone as Bobby Houghton's assistant coach in 1971. There they implemented the ideas of Allen Wade, the modernising technical director of the FA, who, in a quite literal way, rewrote the coaching manual. Wade saw no point in drills that weren't specifically related to game play, and so formulated a whole theory of coaching based on specific match situations. Houghton and Hodgson moved to Sweden, Houghton at Malmo and Hodgson at Halmstad, and it was there that Wade's ideas took root, as Sweden was divided between the modern, English method – which favoured pressing, zonal marking and counter-attacking with direct passes – and the more traditional German school with a libero and man-marking."

Jonathan Wilson, writer and author of Inverting the Pyramid

"We work on it [the formation] every day. I've been working with the manager three seasons now and every day is team shape. He gets the 11 that he wants and he drills everything in that he wants. We've got the ball - it's never unopposed. It's certain drills, defensive and attacking, and we work very hard at it. There's no diagrams, it's just all on the pitch. We do a lot of work after every game, sorting the bad things out, sorting the good things out. It's nice to know what you work hard on works so well."

Simon Davies, Fulham midfielder

“He changed the whole way we were playing, He made us more of a footballing team than the direct-ball team under Lawrie. His knowledge of the game, his philosophies . . . he has that temperament a manager needs. He never gets too down, and he doesn’t let us get too carried away when we’re having a good spell.”
Danny Murphy, former Liverpool midfielder currently at Fulham FC

"His entire management career has been based on imparting method and discipline into teams. Occasionally, there have been accusations of rigidity, but Hodgson’s sides are never sterile. Fulham seldom deviate from 4-4-2 and the wide players, while expected to track back, are encouraged to be audacious...Mavericks are too temperamental to fit into Hodgson’s conscientious approach, so Jimmy Bullard was sold to Hull for £5m and some of the money spent on Dickson Etuhu, an industrious, hard-running midfielder."
Richard Wilson, writer Scotland Herald

Roy Hodgson In His Own Words

2010-07-02T12:44:00.000+02:00

A lot has been written about Roy Hodgson in recent days so any attempt to do so now would risk repeating what others have already said. So instead here are some comments that the man himself has made over the years which provide insight both into how he sees himself and also what Liverpool are in for.

"Of course, my track record, if people bothered to study it, would put me in the same category as [Sir Alex] Ferguson enjoys today, but people don't talk about what I've done outside England."
The Independent, 24 March 2002

"I think at Blackburn I was very successful in the first year [they finished sixth] but unfortunately that success was wiped out by a bad first half of the second season. I see a lot of things written about that which I don't really know where the stories come from. But after the first season at Blackburn, I was riding high but unfortunately I suppose getting the sack in the second season when the team was near the bottom of the league has wiped all that away."
The Independent, 1 January 2008

"I would like to think that my style could be considered as studied player-orientated, and with an emphasis on preparation and tactics. Because you take on leadership responsibilities, inevitably you have to be somewhat authoritarian. The game of football doesn’t lend itself to true democracy. Certainly as I get older, I have become more aware that you can delegate certain things. For example, the players’ opinion can be useful when discussing training times or deciding travel schedules, etc. Indeed, most things to do with the players’ preparation can be open for discussion.

When it comes down to the major issues, for example, team selection, how you are going to conduct your training sessions, what you will emphasise, and how you will deal with any conflict situation which might arise, I don’t think there is any room for a democratic approach when dealing with these matters. Players expect you to take the lead, because that is what you are paid for. But I think it is good to involve them in things which make a big difference to their life but don’t compromise your position."
The Technician, June 2007

"The fundamentals [of being a good manager] remain: "Can you coach? Can you earn the players' respect?" He adds: "The other things, they are bonuses: the scouting reports, fitness details et cetera. You could do away with a lot of that and be successful as long as you are able to use your time on the pitch wisely, and convince players this is what you have to do."
The Independent, 2 May 2009

"Sometimes choice can be a dangerous thing. No choice can be very good. Quite simply I was not well enough known as a player and I did not have contacts. It wasn't a question of coaching the Arsenal or Birmingham reserves, it was continue playing non-league football or go to Halmstads."
London Evening Standard, 15 December 2009

"Authority gets challenged now. My players challenge me every day. We are developing a thinking group of players. They analyse things. I don't want robots. I'd expect Murphy, Schwarzer, Hughes, Hangeland, Baird, Konchesky and Duff all to chip in. We've got an experienced and good group. I trust them implicitly. There's no one in that group who won't give everything. Those ones have left the club."
The Telegraph, 18 December 2009

"We [Alex Ferguson and Roy Hodgson] have been friends for many years from his early days of United when I was at Malmo. His major strength is retaining the desire to repeat something that has been so good the previous year. His single-mindedness is very important. The number of times Alex and United are written off but he just rides right the way through that. Who's the man who has the last laugh? Alex. Alex has a lot of emotion in him. I certainly have. We both attempt to control that emotion but it's also a blessing. The people who don't have that emotion it eats them up from within. Alex and I can get very angry very quickly but it doesn't lie there and fester for weeks, eating away. There are not many managers at the top level who are not emotional people. The quiet introverted man doesn't get to those levels so often."
The Telegraph, 18 December 2009

"I do not think World Cups are great places to sign players from because World Cup football is often very different from the type of football played in the league that you are looking for players to play in. Of course it is a great showpiece for players and, as a manager, I am always looking at players and trying to assess their qualities. But hopefully if I was watching someone here I would be, if you like, confirming a decision I had made from watching them in their league matches rather than suddenly deciding that player X is a wonder player on the back of one or two games at a World Cup."
BBC, 21 June 2010

"I always tell my players what I want them to bring to the team. Their job then is to interpret the roles they have been given. I would always hope my players are happy because I am a great believer in putting round pegs in round holes. If you move players around and play them out of position, then there is a risk they might react negatively."
BBC, 23 June 2010

There Are Games I Remember: An Unexpected European Comeback

2010-06-29T14:00:00.003+02:00

The decade had begun with Liverpool as champions. It was, admittedly, an ageing side but for the previous two decades Liverpool had carried out such transitions silently with new players being brought slowly in. And it would have been the same this time round as well if Graeme Souness had been of a more patient nature.

Instead, the Scot who had taken over after Kenny Dalglish's resignation concluded that the time had come to revolutionise the side. Souness decided - wrongly, as it turned out - that Peter Beardsley, Steve Staunton and Steve McMahon were no longer good enough. To replace them he went for the likes of Paul Stewart and Michael Thomas, big money transfers who wouldn't have come anywhere near to playing for any Liverpool side of the previous three decades.

The result of his ripping up the previously succesful side coupled with a series of injuries that many blamed on his coaching regime soon started to show. Going into this UEFA Cup game Liverpool had won only two of their previous eleven games, a negative run the likes of which the club had not witnessed since Bill Shankly had led the club back to the First Division thirty years earlier. One of those games had been the away leg in France where Liverpool had been completely outclassed and somewhat lucky to lose by just two goals.

Confidence that the result could be overturned wasn't high and Anfield wasn't even half full as a result. After all, Liverpool had never managed to overturn a two leg result before (although the strength of the previous sides meant that they rarely found themselves finding such a deficit) so what hope was there for this hapless side? That the limit of four foreign players had forced Souness to field a number of young players - Mike Marsh, for instance, started the game at right-back - further strengthened the belief that this was an impossible task.

For all the negativity, however, the atmosphere inside of Anfield more than matched that of other famous European nights. An early Jan Molby penalty helped fuel the hope among the supporters that they were about to witness something special and by half-time the aggregate score stood at two-all after Marsh had headed in a corner.

Auxerre had caused some worries early on and Bruce Grobbelaar had to pull off a good save midway through the first half. In the second, however, they were nowhere to be seen as Liverpool created one chance after another. Extra-time looked to be on the way when, seven minutes from time, Molby played one of his usual defence splitting passes into the path of Mark Walters (pictured) who took the ball between two defenders and then slotted it past the keeper to mark an amazing come-back.

For Walters this was about as good as it was going to get. A decent player who would have done quite well elsewhere in the English first division and indeed had been brilliant at Rangers, the fact was that Liverpool didn't need him given that there was John Barnes filling his favoured position on the right hand side of midfield. Indeed, the fear that he had been brought in to get rid of Barnes made fans wary whilst his middle name of Everton didn't help in the popularity scale.

It was also going to get much worse for Liverpool. There were no more heroics in the next round of the UEFA Cup when Genoa won both in Italy (2-0) and at Anfield (2-1) whilst Souness' horrendous transfer dealings irriversibly weakened the team. But on that night against Auxerre it looked as if it was the Liverpool of old playing out there on the pitch. Sadly, it was to be a rare bright spot in a decade that was to be the worst in Liverpool's modern history.

UEFA Cup second round 2nd leg (November 6 1991)
Liverpool 3 Auxerre 0
Liverpool go through 3-2 on aggregate

The Lad Can Play: Andre Wisdom

2010-06-14T14:00:00.000+02:00

One of the most common pitfalls of youth football lies in the over-reliance on players who have developed physically at a faster rate than the rest of their peers. Stick a big lad up front, another one at the back and you are guaranteed that your side will over-power most of the teams it comes across.

In such teams, it is inevitable that the tall players will look as if they're the special ones. That, however, will only be the case until the rest catch up with them. Once size is no longer an advantage, their superiority vanishes and their lack of skill - often a by-product of such systems that favour brawn over brains - will kill off their progress.

It is why there is so much importance being placed on letting children develop their technical abilities before anything else: it is only once there is a good foundation in place that one can really start to talk about tactics and positions on the pitch. In reality, there isn't a fixed point during a player's development where the focus should shift away from his technique.

Many of those who watched Andre Wisdom at the recent European Under 17 championships were impressed by the confidence with which the central defender played with the ball at his feet. Rather than simply lumping it forward or passing it to the nearest midfielder, Wisdom often moved out of defence with the ball at his feet something that added a different dimension to the side.

Wisdom has always been that sort of defender but these past twelve months have seen a significant development in that part of his game. And it hasn't been accidental. Indeed, for most of the academy season, Wisdom played more often on the right hand side or the centre of midfield than he did at the heart of defence. It was a good move for there were few doubts that, physically, he could more than handle himself at the back. After all, this was a player who had played against players two years his senior in the previous year's run to the final of the FA Youth Cup. The risk was that Wisdom would end up relying too much on his strength and speed to get out of trouble which is why playing in midfield was so important: it allowed him to develop a different side of his game but also one that gave him a better perspective of what happens higher up the pitch. That he never looked out of position was simply an added bonus.

Indeed, it is hard not to be excited with a player like Wisdom. For he is someone who, on the face of it, he has all the ingredients needed to become a huge player. He not only has raw athleticism - pace and physical strength - in abbundance but also knows how to read the game, is very vocal, tactically is very aware and can pick a pass or two.

There is, of course, much that needs to be done. It remains to be seen, for instance, how he reacts when faced by strikers who are as strong - if not stronger - than he is. Or far more experienced and ready to pounce on the little mistakes that remain in his game. But the way he reacted to scoring an own-goal in the final of the European championships was highly indicative: whereas others might have had their confidence shot, Wisdom simply stepped up a gear and went on to score the equaliser. With an attitude like that on top of everything that he has going for him, it is hard to see him failing.

Greatness Does Not Depend on World Cup

2010-06-11T13:04:00.001+02:00

Nowadays, the World Cup is being billed as the event that no one can miss, least of all the players where the pressure to get to play at this stage is today at such a level that not doing so risks getting billed as a failure. Yet a player's greatness is not measured by their appearances in a tournament that comes around every four years. Indeed some of Liverpool's finest players never managed to play in the World Cup

Billy Liddell
As with many other great players in the club's history, Liddell was Scottish. Liddell was, by all account a fantastic striker who should have graced the World Cup. But, despite playing twenty eight times for Scotland - quite a number considering not only that national teams didn't play as many games back then and that the war robbed him of seven years of his career - Scotland didn't qualify for the 1950 World Cup (or, rather, they withdrew) when Liddell was still at his peak whilst he wasn't chosen for the 1954 competition.

Ian Rush
Looking back, it seems incredible that Wales never got to a major championship even when they could count not only on Ian Rush - perhaps the finest striker of his era - but also others of the quality of Neville Southall, Kevin Ratcliffe and Mark Hughes. Unfortunately, they never did make it denying Rush from the ability to show his worth on the highest stage.

Bruce Grobbelaar
As someone who had served in the Rhodesian army, it took a long time for Grobbelaar to become a fixture for the national team of the country of his birth, Zimbabwe. Indeed, it was only when his career was winding down that he got the opportunity to do so. Despite having some good players in the side, notably Peter Ndlovu, Zimbabwe never really managed to maintain a serious challenge to gain qualification.

Sami Hyypia

With hindsight, it was gravely unfounded, but at the time the reasons for the doubts surrounding the purchase of Sami Hyypia were justifiable. After all, not only was he coming from a team no one had heard of (Willem II) but he was also Finnish. And who had ever heard of any half decent Finnish players (Jari Litmannen excepted)? Yet Hyypia turned out to be one of the finest players ever to play for the club although not even he could elevate his nation to make it to the World Cup

Steve Heighway
Heighway was such a brilliant winger that his name is still sung at Anfield today. Sadly for him (well, as far as international football is concerned) he also happened to be Irish in the pre-Jack Charlton days when qualification to major tournaments was still little more than a dream.

Tommy Smith
Much like Jamie Carragher a couple of decades later, Smith was never much appreciated outside of Anfield. Indeed, for a player who won so much both domestically and on the international stage and was such an influential figure for such a long time, he deserved much more attention from his national team. Yet that wasn't forthcoming and Smith only earned one cap.

Ian St. John
These days, St. John comes across as a somewhat vitriolic figure who isn't very keen on foreign managers. His criticism of Gerard Houllier first and more recently of Rafael Benitez has somewhat soured his reputation but this was one of the key players on whom Bill Shankly based his revolution, turning Liverpool from a mid-table Second Division side to English champions in the space of three seasons. Yet, despite a wealth of talent, the Scottish sides of St. John's era found it hard to qualify for the World Cup.

Alan Kennedy
Looking back, it looks astounding that a left back who won so many titles with Liverpool never really made the grade with England but that's what happened with Kennedy. Kenny Sansom was the favoured left-back when he was playing and seeing that he had a fantastic record of never missing games with injuries, opportunities for Kennedy were limited so that he played only twice for England and never in the World Cup.

Emlyn Hughes
Having made his breakthrough for Liverpool, Emlyn Hughes was chosen in the England squad that made it to the World Cup in 1970 but never got to play in what was to be the final hurrah for Alf Ramsey's team. That was to be as close as he would get because England failed to qualify for the next two competitions (1974 and 1978).

Terry McDermott
His story is, in a way, similar to that of Emlyn Huges in that McDermott was a member in the English squad for the 1982 World Cup but couldn't get a look-in in a midfield where Bryan Robson and Peter Reid were the preferred partnership. It reinforces the view that McDermott, a vital member in Liverpool's all-conquering side, was one of the most under-rated players of his generation.

Since the home nations only started paying any attention to the World Cup in the second half of last century, no Liverpool players from the pre-war era have been considered.

What Not To Do With Your Money: Buy a Liverpool Kit

2010-06-07T11:00:00.000+02:00

Whether you thought it was right or wrong, there is one undeniable benefit in the removal of Rafael Benitez which is that there is no longer a smokescreen behind which the club's owners can hide. Over the coming months their failure to properly invest in the club is going to become increasingly clear whilst, at the same time, their inflated asking price seems to be driving away anyone who wants to take over.

This means that it is up to the fans to ensure that they sell up as soon as possible That is something that has been on the agenda for the past two years without them putting much urgency on the process. Indeed, it was an ultimatum by the banks that actually forced them to put the club for sale and, even so, if they don't put forward a realistic asking price no one is going to buy regardless of how much the fans clamour.

The fact is that no matter how many protests Liverpool fans organise, they will not take any notice: they live too far away for that to happen. What they do listen to is the clink of the cash registers and it is here that they have to be hit.

There has been something of an unofficial boycott of club merchandise for quite some time now but there is now the need to step things up. And the first place to start is with the new kit: simply don't buy it. Low sales will not only hit the club's finances - and therefore Hicks' and Gillett's hold on the club - but it will also send messages to Adidas and Standard Chartered, both of whom just signed multi-million deals with the club so probably won't be too happy if certain targets are not met.

Of course, fans will be fans and many feel the need to show their support to Liverpool FC through what they wear. The good thing is that there are plenty of alternatives out there. Last week, Spirit of Shankly announced that they had for sale a series of shirts with the profit made going back to support their campaigns. These shirts seem to have been quite a hit since they are now suspending the sales "due to unexpected and unprecedented exceptional demand". Similarly, the people behind the RAWK forum have produced a Save LFC shirt the profits from which will be used to fund their campaigns.

If you want something classier, then there is the recently produced Liverpool ElevensXI shirt which lists Liverpool's finest ever eleven players. For more of a choice, there is no better place than Sam Dodds. Indeed, the unofficial shirts sold by this Swedish branch of the Liverpool Supporters Club are something of a personal favourite. They might be a bit pricey but there is no denying the quality of their design as well as of the shirts themselves. One thing about Sam Dodds, however, is that you have to avoid the official merchandise that they also sell on there.

If enough people refrain from buying the new kits, if enough people stop giving money to the club then rest assured that the message will get through.

A Liverpool Thing receives no commission from the sales of these unofficial shirts.

You'll Never Walk Alone

2010-06-02T23:42:00.000+02:00

Will the real Milan Jovanovic please stand up?

2010-06-01T13:00:00.000+02:00

Article submitted by James Appell

Uncertainty is currently the watchword at Anfield. Question marks remain over the financial future of Liverpool, with owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett keen to offload the club but thus far failing to find serious buyers. Similarly, after this season’s disappointments on the pitch, the position of manager Rafa Benitez has come under scrutiny.

How fitting, then, that one of the club’s first signings of the summer is also something of a mystery to many football followers in the UK. When Liverpool announced back in February that Standard Liège striker Milan Jovanovic would be joining on a free transfer after the 2010 World Cup, reactions were perhaps less “wow” and more “who?”.

In the months since the English media have attempted – in many cases very ably – to provide Liverpool fans with an insight into the player’s talents. Belgian Footballer of the Year in 2008, Belgian Golden Shoe winner in 2009 and top scorer for Serbia as they qualified for South Africa, Jovanovic’s recent achievements are worthy of acclaim. Those who suggest that trophies in Belgium prove nothing as far as Premier League quality is concerned forget the performances of Marouane Fellaini and Vincent Kompany since their arrival in England.

Jovanovic also leaves Liège to the acclaim of the Standard’s fans and the Belgian press – so much so, indeed, that Belgian novelist Étienne Éthaire has published a book, Jovanovic, La vie en rouche, in praise of the striker’s exploits. “Without Jovanovic, would Standard have been champions in 2008 and 2009?” asks Éthaire in the book’s introduction. “I think not.”

So far, so good then.

There are a couple of potential black marks on his record. Jovanovic is by all accounts a rather controversial character. Dressing-room bust-ups and a willingness to mark himself out from the crowd (he was the only Standard player to publicly speak out against Axel Witsel after his horror challenge on Marcin Wasilewski in August 2009) suggest a man who is prepared to go it alone.

Moreover, no sooner had Jovanovic rubber-stamped his move to Liverpool than he went and spoiled it all – largely unnoticed at Anfield – by immediately touting himself for a move to Greece. “The Greeks and the Serbs get on well,” he told Het Nieuwsblad in March. “I’m thinking about returning to Greece when I’m 31 or 32. Olympiakos or Panathinaikos will certainly give me a contract.”

But the obvious question marks over Jovanovic’s suitability at Liverpool concern one particular period in his career, which has yet to be explored by the vast majority of analyses. Between 2003 and 2006 the Serb spent a season in Ukraine with Shakhtar Donetsk and two at Russian Premier League side Lokomotiv Moscow. In those three seasons he made a total of nine league appearances, scoring just once. What should we make of these ‘lost’ years of Jovanovic’s career?

It ought to be said that a transfer to Eastern Europe, even given Jovanovic’s Slavic roots and the linguistic similarities of Serbian, Ukrainian and Russian, is no easy move. Just ask Birmingham’s Garry O’Connor, who endured a single torrid season as Jovanovic’s replacement at Lokomotiv Moscow in 2006/07.

Then there were the injuries. One in particular, sustained just after having made his debut for Shakhtar, kept him sidelined for nearly a year. Likewise having signed for Lokomotiv, he missed pre-season after sustaining an Achilles injury and thereafter struggled to get into the side. On the treatment for the latter injury Jovanovic commented in an interview for Russian newspaper Sport Express: “The first time, the doctor pressed down on my Achilles with such force that my scream could be heard all along Kutuzovsky Prospekt [a street in Moscow].”

But then, as these interview comments perhaps suggest, Jovanovic is also rather an interesting character. In a frank interview in Russia in 2005 the player admitted that football was less a way of earning money for him, and more a “method of self-expression”.

“I earn money through my businesses. Football is for my soul,” he explained. “In brief, my business is connected with property and the sale of automobiles.” He then smilingly asked the interviewer if he wanted to buy a car, as Jovanovic would be happy to give him a 20% discount.

While such a sense of humour – never mind the option for discounted cars – might go down well on Merseyside, in Russia Jovanovic’s comments were met with scepticism, particularly given how few times he had appeared on the pitch. The rumour, perhaps uncharitably, was that Jovanovic had no reason to be fit and motivated to play football, as he could rely on earnings from his businesses for financial support.

Safe to say that his departure to Standard Liège in the summer of 2006 was met with sighs of relief around Moscow.

Now, though, with his exploits for Standard and his transfer to Anfield hitting the headlines, those in Russia and Ukraine can only rub their eyes in disbelief at the transformation of a man who seemed neither fit nor able enough to make it ‘big’ only five years ago.

The question remains – scorer or sulk: who is the real Milan Jovanovic? Either way, we’ll find out in the coming season.

James Appell writes about Russian football on his own blog, The Cynical Challenge. He can be followed on Twitter.

A Question or Two For Martin Broughton

2010-05-31T11:31:00.000+02:00

So this is the new Liverpool Way; where the fans get to know what the club's chairman thinks about the future of a player through comments he made at a rival club's end of season do.

In reality, there isn't really anything particularly revealing in Martin Broughton's reported comments that he believes that Fernando Torres is at the stage in his career where he had to think about his future before deciding whether to stay at Anfield or not. If we're being honest, it is something that we have all thought ourselves. Indeed it was more interesting to read that he thinks that it will take three years to turn the club around. Given the pessimistic reports coming out of the club over the past couple of weeks, it is perhaps a better outlook than most have dared hope for.

Yet that does not mean that the whole story does not raise any questions. The first and most obvious one centres around what he was doing at Chelsea's Player of the Year award in the first place. For someone who felt the need to publicly claim that he wasn't going to attend the Liverpool v Chelsea game because he didn't think that it was fair on both himself and the club, it was quite a strange and questionable decision to say the least.

For all the lack of class that he showed in making that choice, the fan inside of us can understand his desire to be there. Much less excusable is the fact that he decided to share his opinions with someone who was at the same event. This is a man who publicly said that he didn't feel that it was appropriate for him to meet the Spirit of Shankly or any other suppoter group because it wasn't right to address one particular group privately. Yet apparently it seems that he feels it is right to address one individual at a party. And isn't expressing an opinion like that at an official event of a rival club - one that has publicly expressed an interest in Torres - tantamout to revealing insider information?

It certainly isn't beyond imagination that Chelsea, on hearing those comments, might get in touch with Torres' agent to put pressure on the player to move. Not to mention signalling to them that they can put in a lower offer than they might have thought because the decision about the player's future is out of Liverpool's hands. And that is without speculating what else he might have said to other people there. Either way, it certainly isn't going to help Liverpool.

When Broughton was appointed as chairman, the doubts over having in that role someone who was a fan of such a close rival like Chelsea were shouted down by claims that a professional like him wouldn't let personal allegiances come in the way of doing a good job. Sadly, his actions so far have shown that the faith of those who defended his appointment was misplaced.

Follow Him. And Him. And Him

2010-05-28T14:56:00.003+02:00

Friday is, as anyone who has been on Twitter for any time, the day when people try to tell you who is worth following. Which is what I am going to do here. Whilst reminding everyone to follow aliverpoolthing this, in no particular order, is a list of ten people any Liverpool fan shoud be following on Twitter.

@empireofthekop
Undoubtedly, the most popular Liverpool fan on Twitter, @empireofthekop (aka Antoine Zammit) is a veritable machine when it comes to putting out links to any Liverpool story and answering any query.

@rorysmith_tel
A true revelation since coming on Twitter, it is fair to say that I'd never really noticed Rory Smith before. Yet, in my reckoning, he is probably the finest Liverpool writer with the nationals (bar, perhaps, Tony Barrett) around. As well as the one most likely to chat with those who are following him.

@OliverKayTimes
His tweets often provide the kind of insight that fans crave for, Oliver Kay is also a good source for links to Liverpool related articles, especially those on the Times. The effectiveness of the latter, however, is likely to decline now that this paper has moved into subscription mode (i.e. you have to pay to read them)

@rbuxton87
An up and coming Scouse journalist is how he likes to define himself so that's what we'll echo. Occasionally cranky, there are few out there as dedicated as the Click Liverpool writer.

@paul_tomkins
Perhaps the most prolific Liverpool writer there is, Paul Tomkins is just as good on Twitter as he is in his articles. Somewhat surprisingly, it has to be added, given that he has to limit his thoughts to just 140 characters when most of his articles are the length of a short novel.

@Marcotti
He might be a Chelsea fan, but Gabriele Marcotti is a damn fine writer and his tweets are often as thoughtful as his articles.

@andybrassell
Andy Brassell is a regular at the BBC's World Football Phone In and an all round expert of European football, he's also one of the most affable journalists out there.

@spiritofshankly
Given the current situation at Anfield, following and supporting Sprit of Shankly in any way possible is a must.

@TheKopMagazine
I'm not quite sure who writes their tweets but they're often very funny. Also, pay careful attention to their comments: they know more than they let on.

@robbohuyton
The editor of Well Red magazine, Gareth Roberts provides a biting commentary about all things Liverpool.

Get your twitter mosaic here.

There Are Games I Remember: When The Kids Beat Spurs

2010-05-27T14:06:00.000+02:00

There seem to be those under the impression that the best games are those where your team wins with a fair degree of ease. Anyone who has been watching football for any time will tell you that those are in fact among the least memorable. The fact is that it is in those games where you suffer the most that you end up recalling most fondly.

Indeed the more that the odds are against you, as was this case, the better. At the time, Rafael Benitez was still gauging the quality of his side and for him the cup competitions provided the ideal opportunity to do so. Despite the opportunity of making it to the semi-finals that was on offer for the winner of this tie, he was expected to turn to some of his backup players.

Even so, no one anticipated him to send out a side that was practically the reserve team. David Raven, Zak Whitbread and Darren Potter all started the game having previously featured sporadically, if at all. There was also room for the slightly more experienced Stephen Warnock, Neil Mellor and Florent Sinama Pongolle along with Antonio Nunez, the Spaniard brought from Real Madrid as part of the Michael Owen deal who was making his first team debut. Early in the second half it was the turn of John Welsh to come on and he was followed by Mark Smyth for whom this was the only time hever got near the first team. By the end of the night Liverpool would end up with five players who between them made around 20 appearances in total for the club.

On the other side is was a completely different picture. Spurs lined up with a full strength side that include Michael Carrick, Robbie Keane and Fredi Kanoute. They clearly wanted to win this game and weren't taking any risks. Or so they probably thought. Once the game started, however, it all changed. The young Liverpool players tackled hard, closed down spaces and heckled the Spurs players every time they had the ball. And on the rare occasions that Spurs got through, they found Jerzy Dudek in impeccable form, stopping evertyhing that came his way. It was a night when all played as if they were willing to die for the shirt.

Going forward it was a bit different. Apart from Mellor, there was no real strength - and perhaps not enough conviction - trouble Spurs. For long stretces it looked as if Liverpool were playing for a draw so as to g to penalties. Which, let's face it, wasn't at all shameful considering the players out there.

Then, midway through extra-time, Spurs scored. It was the only time that Jermaine Defoe managed to find some space and he made the most of it to steer in Kanoute's cross. That should have been it for Liverpool but a few minutes later, Kanoute handled in the penalty box to provide Liverpool with a way in. Sinama Pongolle accepted and it was 1-1. From that point on there was only going to be one winner: four of Liverpool's penalties were scored, Spurs missed two of theirs and the celebrations for one of the club's most famous League Cup victories could begin.

The epitath to that game isn't pretty. The prospect of playing Championship side Watford in the semi-finals had raised hopes that Benitez might at least use some, if not all, the players who had done so well at Tottenham. That wasn't the case as the desire of making it to Cardiff won out. Of those players, the only one who went on to brighter things is Stephen Warnock. The rest either settled for lower league sides or else disappeared out of the picture completely.

Match details
League Cup Quarter final (01/12/2004)
Tottenham (0) 1 Liverpool (0) 1
(aet: 0-0 at 90 min, Liverpool win 4-3 on pens)

Tottenham (4-4-2): Robinson; Pamarot, Gardner, King, Atouba; Ricketts (Defoe 66), Brown, Carrick, Ziegler; Kanoute, Keane (Pedro Mendes 85).
Subs: Fulop (g), Naybet, Redknapp.
Booked: Pamarot, Gardner.
Liverpool (4-4-2): Dudek; Raven, Henchoz, Whitbread, Warnock; Nunez (Smyth 70), Diao, Biscan, Potter; Mellor (Welsh 52), Sinama-Pongolle.
Subs: Kirkland (g), Partridge, Foy.
Booked: Welsh.
Referee: N Barry (N Lincolnshire).

There Are Games I Remember is a new feature looking back at personal memories from Liverpool's most memorable games.

Transfer Talk: Diego Tardelli

2010-05-26T11:00:00.000+02:00

A gambler. Playing the odds might not be something that you would normally associate with Rafa Benitez but that what the financial restrictions at Liverpool have often forced him to do. His critics will never acknowledge this but the truth is that he bought Albert Riera because he couldn't afford David Silva, Jermaine Pennant after deals for Simao and Daniel Alves failed to go through. It is the same story over and over again - Craig Bellamy, Soto Kyrgiakos, Antonio Nunez, Jan Kromkamp - where he had to gamble on players who weren't as good as those that he really wanted in the hope that they would turn out to be good enough.

An gambling is what Liverpool would be doing if the interest in Diego Tardelli were to be followed through. The player is talented enough. He was highly rated when he broke through at Sao Paolo, has been scoring regularly for current club Atletico Mineiro and has made it in the Brazil squad flying to South Africa for the World Cup. Yet you don't have to do much research to come to the conclusion that there's something wrong about him for the asking price to be around the £5 million mark.

And so it is. Two spells in Europe, first with Real Betis and then at PSV Eindhoven, failed to show that he was a player worth following up on and both got rid of him within a space of few months. Disciplinary problems also curtailed his experiences at a number of Brazilian sides, not least at Sao Paolo.

Yet, at 25 it would seem that he has matured and calmed down. Most certainly he's been doing an excellent job at Atletico and there's enough class in him to indicate that perhaps he could be a good striker to play either alongside Fernando Torres or instead of him should he be missing.

The question, one that is even bigger than the doubts over whether Tardelli's recent form is a sign of his maturity or merely a temporary good phase, turns around Liverpool's ability to actually find the money to buy him. With Tardelli in the World Cup squad, Atletico Mineiro have all the reasons in the world to decide against selling him now as a couple of goals in South Africa might double the asking price. Tardelli looks like he might be a genuine target but also one that will probably end up being out of Liverpool's reach. The issue for Benitez now isn't that he's being forced to gamble on players like this but that the money to do so is becoming ever less.

Source: Daily Telegraph, Liverpool Echo

Possibility Rating: 2 out of 5

Obligatory Youtube Clip:

Transfer Talk takes a look at all the transfer rumours involving Liverpool, sifting between the crazy and the possible. The authors of this piece have no insider knowledge and the comments made are purely based on what is written elsewhere.

A Closer Look at Jonjo Shelvey

2010-05-25T14:00:00.000+02:00

The following piece by Pedro45 from Charlton Athletic Online was originally left as a comment to a post looking at Jonjo Shelvey. Given the insight that it provides about the midfielder signed from Charlton, I thought that it deserves a post of its own.

This was a funny year for Jonjo, and it really didn’t go as we all hoped or maybe expected. An early problem was the strength in midfield that Phil Parkinson had, and how best to accommodate Shelvey into his side. Most of us I suspect would have loved to see Shelvey playing in central midfield, controlling games in the way that similar home-grown products like Bowyer and Parker did, but that wasn’t to be.

Instead, Shelvey played all the first couple of months of the season in the hole behind the lone striker. It wasn’t that Jonjo did badly - in fact he did quite well – but the issue was that there was no plan B at that stage if the team struggled to break down defences (as happened once or twice).

Another issue was that the third tier teams he came up against gave him little respect, and often got in his face hoping for a reaction., To his credit, Jonjo didn’t get himself sent off at all (although he came close before scoring the winner at Orient), but often after a roughing up he went into his shell and lost any impact on the game.

Either side of Xmas he became a peripheral player (as Charlton went 4-4-2) - sometimes in the team, often not - and despite an opening goal at Wycombe, he was soon back on the bench. Once Liverpool came knocking in April there was only one decision to make – blue or black pen? – and Shelvey was out of the door with a £1.7million cheque coming the other way.

He has such potential, and I really hope he fulfils it at Anfield; the records he holds as the youngest Charlton first-team player ever and also youngest goal scorer ever (in both league and cup) will remind us in years to come that he was once one of ours. I wish him well.

Transfer Talk: Edin Dzeko

2010-05-24T11:00:00.000+02:00

The beauty, from a tabloid perspective, of the possibility of someone like Fernando Torres leaving lies not only in the number of stories about potential destinations that it in itself generates but also in the various side stories regarding who Liverpool might be getting to replace him.

Unfortunately, seeing that the uncertainty regarding Torres' future is real, it would be surprising if Liverpool weren't already looking at possible alternatives. And it is in that back-up plan that this story finds its biggest source for credibility. Because someone like Edin Dzeko is exactly the kind of player you would imagine Liverpool going for in the eventuality that Torres does leave.

Big, strong and with great technique, he seems perfectly built for the Premiership. His scoring record in the Bundesliga is exceptional and he has done well whatever the stage that he has played on. At the same time he has not done enough to get on the radar of the big clubs, something that would automatically take him out of Liverpool's price range. The story sounds and feels credible enough

Where it perhaps strays into a bit of creative writing is when it comes to the transfer fee. Giving a nod to Liverpool's financial straightjacket, it states that apart from cash, such a deal would involve sending Ryan Babel and Lucas Leiva in the opposite direction. And then it tries to make it sound as if that is because Wolfsburg would drive a hard bargain! Indeed, if Wolfsburg were to decide to forgoe the cash part of the deal and ask for David N'Gog then Dzeko wouldn't need to do much to justify his place at Anfield, given how those three seem to be seen by some as the root reasons for Liverpool's ills!

Source: News of the World
Possibility Rating: 3 out of 5

Transfer Talk takes a look at all the transfer rumours involving Liverpool, sifting between the crazy and the possible. The authors of this piece have no insider knowledge and the comments made are purely based on what is written elsewhere.

The Lad Can Play: Jonjo Shelvey

2010-05-17T14:00:00.001+02:00

By his own admission, one of Gerard Houllier's biggest regrets was letting pass the opportunity to buy a young Swedish winger by the name of Freddie Ljungberg. At the time Houllier was looking to rebuild Liverpool's defence and there was little money which he could gamble on Ljungberg's talent. A month later, Arsenal paid £3 million to get him and he went on to become one of the finest players to come to England.

This has been a recurring theme over the past decade. Interest in Cristiano Ronaldo, Theo Walcott and Aaron Ramsey were also not followed up due to lack of finances as Liverpool were forced to focus on the present rather than plan for the future. For a club whose biggest successes were founded on an ability to spot the best talent before others, this was a significant failing.

It is what makes the arrival of Jonjo Shelvey particularly heartening. Not yet eighteen but with almost fifty senior appearances to his name, he posseses the kind of raw potential that could see him develop into a major player.

Of that, however, there is no guarantee. Indeed it could be argued that the reason why Liverpool were able to sign him is that his performances this past season haven't been what was expected.

Shelvey was given his first opporunities before turning seventeen when Charlton were all but relegated from the Championship. By his second game, he was turning man of the match performances, the kind of which promptly caught the attention of the biggest clubs in the area with Chelsea particularly interested in making him one of their players.

Their bid, however, was rejected not just by the club but also by the player who was more interested in gaining experience. And that is what he has done this season although not as much as would have been expected.

Phil Parkinson, the Charlton manager, said that Shelvey had 'lost his way a little' to explain why the teenager wasn't featuring that heavily in his teams of late. That sounds a bit worrying but in reality it isn't (or not that much).

When Charlton went down,the emergence of Shelvey had been one of the few hopes for a brighter future onto which they held. That kind of pressure, however, isn't easy to bear for a kid just out of school. Having played so well in the handful of games that he got in the Championship, the expectation was for him to excel in a lower league. But it doesn't work that way: for all of his talent, Shelvey was still learning his job and was bound to make mistakes.

On top of that, whereas in the previous season he was being used in the centre of midfield,he was being used either on the side of midfield or else as an added strikers, both of which positions that were somewhat new to him. Unsurprising, therefore, that he didn't seem as natural playing there.

Put him in the centre of the park, however, and his qualities start to really shine. Tall and strong with a good vision of the game, he can influence proceedings much in the same manner as his hero, Steven Gerrard. Indeed, his movement is uncannily similar to that of the Liverpool captain as is the way that he plays.

All of which is heartening but very little else. It is now up to Liverpool, just as much as it is his, to ensure that his talent is nurtured in the right manner so that his potential really comes through.

Retaining the Faith in Benitez

2010-05-11T14:00:00.000+02:00

Opinions, in football as in life, depend on one’s perspective. There are those of a positive nature who will instincitively pick up on what’s going well while others of a more negative persuasion quickly point at the empty half of the glass.

Few people in football seem to polarise those two extremes as much as Rafael Benitez. For those who retain their faith, no one other than him can deliver the Premier League title to Liverpool. Yet there are just as many who seem to think that he is wasting both Liverpool’s time and money without making any real progress.

Much as this might come as a surprise, there is actually nothing wrong in that. Indeed, it is this diversity in opinions and the banter that results which makes talking about football so interesting. Where it starts getting annoying is when facts are twisted in order to serve one argument or another.

And there is plenty of that going round when it comes to Benitez. Take a recent favourite of his critics, the one that goes that the squad that Benitez inherited is stronger than the one he has brought together today. This after an injury crisis which forced Benitez to turn to young players like Nathan Eccleston in order to make up numbers. Yet, when the full set of players is available to him then Benitez can point to a substitute’s bench that includes Martin Skrtel, Lucas Leiva, Ryan Babel and David N’Gog: not spectacular but, equally, not at all bad when you take a look at it and certainly better than one which includes Patrice Luzi, Bruno Cheyrou ans Salif Diao? And that without taking into consideration a number of the young players – Dani Pacheco and Daniel Ayala above all - that Benitez has brought in who will eventually develop into first team regulars.

But this doesn’t fit into the half-truths spun about Benitez’s selection of players. Has he wasted money and brought in players who weren’t good enough? Of course he has and that is something that no one can debate. Antonio Nunez, Josemi, Charles Itandje, Andriy Voronin, Andrea Dossena, Gabriel Palleta, Mark Gonzalez...the list of players that he has signed but which aren’t good enough to play for Liverpool is not a short one.

A number of those mistakes were made in his early days at the club when he was still trying to figure out what kind of player is suited to English football. Others were simply gambles, players brought in more because they fitted into the budget available rather than due to complete conviction about their abilities. With such a strategy, it is inevitable that some players won’t be good enough.

Some, however, will and it is equally undeniable that Benitez has also made a number of extremely inspired spots in the transfer market. Raise their hands those who had heard of Pepe Reina, Daniel Agger and Martin Skrtel before they joined Liverpool. No one knew of them but they have proven to be very good – potentially great – players.

Indeed, even Xabi Alonso was an unknown before Benitez decided that he was a player around whom he could build his midfield.

That too is forgotten when talk turns to Alonso. Those who are quick to insinuate that Alonso left because of Benitez’s treatment of the midfielder can’t seem to recall who brought him to Liverpool or gave him a pivotal role in the centre of midfield. Much less are they likely to admit that in the two seasons before Benitez made that move for Gareth Barry, Alonso had been well below par. Yet it could be argued that it was the realization that he could be sold that gave Alonso the jolt that he needed to perform as well as he did last season.

It is, perhaps, much more convenient for some to use Alonso as an argument with which to beat Benitez for his supposed lack of a human touch. It is in such instances that there is a lingering feeling that many out there who are willing him to fail.

This could be because it means that if he isn’t doing well then so too are Liverpool. Perhaps however it has also got to do with his nationality: had Benitez been British it is undeniable that he would have been treated better by the English press. One only has to compare the criticism that he is routinely subjected to with the leniency that is reserved for the likes of Martin O’Neill, Sam Allardyce and Harry Redknapp.

That is the reason for the continuing reference to Benitez’s supposed cold nature and his aloofness. The thing is, if he is so distant from his players how is it that he gets them to perform so regularly? How is it that many have improved under his guidance?

Yossi Benayoun, Emiliano Insua, Jamie Carragher, Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard have all publicly stated that Benitez has been key in their developments. So too players who have left Liverpool like Peter Crouch.

Of course Crouch – who, lest we forget, was considered a freak before he joined Liverpool and that Benitez was roundly criticised for spending £7 million to buy him - has recently been popping up when talk turns to the lack of adequate cover that there is of Fernando Torres. The thing is that Benitez didn’t want to sell Crouch, it was the player who was unwilling to accept being second choice to Torres.

Then again, Benitez never seems to win in some people’s books. When he bought Torres, there were many who were quick to point out that he wasn’t as good as people thought and that Liverpool had overpayed to get him. Not many have since proferred an apology.

The same thing repeated itself this summer when Liverpool signed Glen Johnson. Was the £17 million fee excessive? Without a doubt yet, at the same time, he was a player considered by Benitez as being key to giving the side a different tactical shape: Johnson could help Liverpool use the flanks much better than before. Buying someone else for less would have been besides the point: that someone else wouldn’t have had Johnson attacking drive.

None of this can remove the fact that this is turning out into a massively disappointing season. True, injuries and misfortune have played a huge role but that does not diminish the doubt of what might have been had Alonso stayed or whether it was a good thing to buy Alberto Aquilani when he was going to miss such a significant part of the season.

Yet, frustrating as all of that is, the worst possible reaction is that of blindly blaming the manager for all of this. It would be an insult not only to all that he has achieved but also to spirit that historically makes Liverpool fans superior to others. This month is the fiftieth anniversary of when Bill Shankly took over as Liverpool manager and those who have been following closely will surely have picked up the six year gap between the mid sixties and early seventies during which Shankly didn’t win anything.

Yet during that period he still held the belief of the fans who realised that he was someone truly special and who would deliver them to greatness. And that is what Liverpool fans should keep on doing today.

This piece was written back in November and appeared on the magazine Anfield Island. I still stand by the view expressed on that day.

Good Game Bad Game [vs Hull City]

2010-05-10T14:00:00.000+02:00

Finally, it's over. Liverpool's season began badly with a defeat at Tottenham and never really got any better; indeed it progressively got worse as the team struggled to get any momentum. There were some truly pathetic displays - the defeats at Wigan and Portsmouth stand out - and the squad's lack of quality was laid bare. The worst thing, however, was the lack of investment in the club and the destabilising effect this is having. Whatever the thoughts on Rafael Benitez, surely the priority has to be that of getting rid of the current owners and getting in someone willing to invest in all areas of the club.

Game Overview
This game neatly summed up Liverpool's season: largely apathetic, with some flashes of good play, the unmissable dose of bad fortune that ultimately led to a frustrating result (a win would have led meant sixth place). The usual suspects - Pepe Reina, Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard - had good games whilst Javier Mascherano and Daniel Agger soldered on at full-backs. Soto Kyrgiakos and Lucas Leiva had dependable if unspectacular games. Then there were a whole rank of players - Alberto Aquilani, Dirk Kuyt, Ryan Babel and Nabil El Zhar - who showed occasionally that they might be decent players but probably not good enough for a side looking to win the title.

Substitutes
Dani Pacheco came on, looked lively and was slightly unlucky not to have scored. If it weren't for the constant call-ups witht the Spanish Under 19 side, he surely would have gotten more games. David N'Gog, on the other hand, got more opportunities than many wanted but on this occasion he once again showed his willingness to attack players and try to create something: Liverpool were better with him on.

Then there was Jack Robinson who became Liverpool's youngest ever player. In the eight minutes or so that he was on he barely had two touches but the fact that he was given a chance will be a huge boost to him personally and the rest of the reserves set-up.

Getting Angry at the Right People

2010-05-06T11:00:00.000+02:00

They say that the devil's greatest trick is convincing the world that he doesn't exist. It is a trick that Tom Hicks and George Gillett are pulling off the perfection. By installing Martin Broughton as chairman, putting the club for sale and keeping their mouth shut, they've managed to deflect attention off them. That Rafa Benitez has kindly obliged by putting himself in a position to be criticised - the team's disastrous season and his politicking have seen to that - has helped them even further.

Yet they are the real culprits for the mess that the club finds itself in. And it is towards them that all fans' anger should be directed.

Poster by Kitster29

Talent is Not Enough

2010-05-05T14:00:00.003+02:00

Remember Wayne Harrison? Or Richie Partridge? What about John Welsh? The likelihood is that some, if not all, of those names will sound familiar but certainly not as much as had been expected.

In their youth - and we're talking about when they were just out of school here - all three had been considered certainties to make it. Harrison became the highest paid for English teenager when he signed for Liverpool. After a tournament in Holland, approaches were made by Ajax and Feyenoord to sign Partridge and such was his reputation that Welsh had been earmarked as being as good enough as Steven Gerrard. Yet, for varying reasons, none of the three went on to fulfill what many had predicted to be their future.

And it is those reasons - luck, injuries, physical strength, mental resilience, tactical awareness - that always have to be kept in the forefront of any discussion about young players. It is far too easy to talk about the potential of these players and the temptation to build them up as potential stars is often hard to resist. In reality, sad and cynical though this might seem, it takes much more than talent to be able to get a chance in the game.

The nineties witnessed the largest number of home grown players in the modern history of the club – Mike Marsh, Dominic Matteo, Steve McManaman, Robbie Fowler, David Thompson, Michael Owen, Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard. Yet this was also the worst decade in the modern history of the club as far as results were concerned something that played a factor in all of those players getting their opportunities as early as they did.

Of course, most of those players were fantastically talented individuals who would have made it in any case. Then again, the injuries that plagued Gerrard early on in the first team could have easily ruined his career. It was Carragher’s mental strength rather than his playing talent that saw him carve out a space for him in the team despite the number of supposedly better players brought in.

Such factors are often overlooked, yet they are what really makes a difference. There is, for instance, the belief that it was the political in-fighting that has prevented any of Liverpool’s double FA Youth Cup winners from 2006 and 2007 from getting an opportunity. But when one looks at the Manchester United team that was beaten in the second of those finals, only Danny Welbeck has got a look-in and even he doesn’t seem to be developing as well as had been anticipated.

As for the City team that was beaten a year earlier – a club that, until recently, had limited funds and therefore youth was more likely to be given a chance – the only player that got through was Micah Richards.

Indeed, that City team provides another case in point: Michael Johnson. The midfielder was said to have the dynamism of Steven Gerrard after making an impression in the Premier League as an eighteen year old. Four years down the line, however, and injuries have limited him to just four appearances in the past two seasons.

There is arguably more talent in the current Liverpool youth set-up then there was in those FA Youth Cup winning sides. The Under 16 have lost only once this season whilst an Under 18 side made largely of first year scholars has put together an excellent string of results in the second half of the season.

Lauri Della Valle, Andre Wisdom, Jack Robinson, Connor Coady, Jack Flannagan, Tony Silva, Raheem Sterling, Michael Ngoo and Tom Ince have either played for the reserves or will be doing so in the coming months. And all have the talent to keep on progressing.

Yet it will take more than talent if any of those is to be wearing the Liverpool shirt in the Premiership any time soon.

This piece originally appeared on the Tomkins Times.