Useful Idiot

Isn't he just a taller, younger Shane Long with slightly better ball control? He's only had one season in his career when he's got into double figures for goals, the rest of the time he's been pretty mediocre.

Is the correct answer.

That's much better. You sound far more like yourself again. I'm glad you're no longer posting using the same opinions, syntax and sentence structure that a certain other golf-playing poster uses. I thought your copying of his style and ideas must have been intentional, but it was obviously just a bizarre, one-in-a-million coincidence. I'm actually a bit surprised that he didn't post on here in your support at your original statement. He normally jumps all over anything related to a certain short person's departure from the club. Personally, I think it's just better to leave things in the past rather than dwelling on them ad infinitum. That sort of thing rarely does anybody any good.

Are you parodying Glasgow Saint? You seem to be copying his posting style. You should have kept going with your original, unique manner of writing, it brought a wonderfully authentic international flavour to the forum.

Who would win a sneakiest foul to deliberately injure an opponent contest, Vardy or Ramos?

What's this I hear? It must be the sound of the world's smallest violin. Damn, my mistake, it's Gerrard's *$%£ing annoying voice. 'Former Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard speaking on BT Sport: "Out of the six [final defeats] this will be Jurgen Klopp's toughest - just the way it's happened. He's done everything right, the manager. "He's prepared his team well throughout the campaign and he set them up well tonight. Tactically they were very good, they looked dangerous, they were full of energy and he loses his best player who has been phenomenal all season. "That goes against them and for the keeper to make the two mistakes that he did - everything went against Liverpool that could."'

The analysis of the Heysel attack suggested that the wall collapsing actually saved lives as it allowed space for the Juventus fans to escape the crush caused by the press of the Liverpool charge. "Contrary to reports at the time, and what is still assumed by many, the collapse of the wall did not cause the 39 deaths. Instead, the collapse relieved pressure and allowed fans to escape. Most died of suffocation after tripping or being crushed against the wall before the collapse. A further 600 fans were also injured. Bodies were carried out from the stadium on sections of iron fencing and laid outside, covered with giant football flags. As police and medical helicopters flew in, the down-draught blew away the modest coverings."

I agree, I am quite useful. Thank you for the compliment. I love the way Liverpool fans always welcome other teams, like the way that they warmly welcomed Man City this year. https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/man-city-liverpool-bus-attack-14495615 Classy bunch.

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/uefa-brands-liverpool-fans-worst-3509127 Uefa spokesman William Gaillard said: “The incidents involving Liverpool fans have been well known to us before the trouble at the Champions League final. “That was just the latest example. What other set of fans steal tickets from their fellow supporters or out of the hands of children? “We know what happened in Athens, and Liverpool fans were the cause of most of the trouble there. “There have been 25 incidents involving Liverpool fans away from home since 2003 and these are in the report – most teams’ supporters do not cause any trouble at all. “You must ask yourself why at the same match, with the same conditions, there was no trouble with the Milan fans – only the Liverpool fans.” From 2007, but equally true today.

Hughes always tried to play attacking football with QPR and Man City when he was there. He was tasked with trying to make Stoke into a footballing side, but had no footballing defenders to work with and very little pace out wide. I don't think it's really fair to compare him to BFS' and Moyes rigid counter-attacking styles. Whether or not you rate him as a manager, I think he prefers to play football on the deck. He's also not naive enough to try to do that when he doesn't have the players for it, or when the players he does have are lacking composure.

I think he'd do alright in Scotland.

At least Mike Dean didn't totally screw us again like he normally does. Oh, hang on...

I'd like to see the whole squad sold. I can't think of one of them that's worth the shirt.

This 100%. I genuinely hate this squad of players. They always seem to look for excuses instead of shouldering any responsibility and fold under the slightest hint of pressure.

I'd say that we don't really have the personnel to play a traditional 4-4-2 with wingers. I think we were actually trying to play more of an Athletico 4-2-2-2 yesterday, with two 'free' attacking midfielders in Tadic and Boufal. Both of them had the freedom to drift in off of their wing and only really stayed wide when defending. It didn't work first half, but formations take a while to get used to, especially when you've not played in them before. I think that the only real way we could play a 4-Diamond-2 is if we have Redmond/Sims and Gabbiadini playing as the strikers. I don't think this system suits our other forwards though, as you need technical strikers who can also fill in out wide for it to work. That said, Carrillo might have the energy for it and could possibly function as a wide target man as an out ball if he pulls onto a fullback. We could possibly play a 3-5-2/5-3-2 with the personnel we have. Probably a midfield 3 out of Rom/Hoj/Lem/(maybe JWP?) against better teams, and drop one of them for Tadic/Boufal against teams around our level. Back 3 could be Bertrand/Hoedt/Stephens or Yoshida in for Bertrand and him going to left wing back. Something like: -----------------McCarthy----------------- -------Stephens---Hoedt---Bertrand------- Cedric------------Romeu----------McQueen --------Hojbjerg----------Lemina----------- ------------------------------------------- --------Gabbiadini---------Long------------ Could conceivably work against a good side where we're going to be without the ball for long periods of time. If we do go for 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-2-1 then Tadic should always play wide left. He links well with Bertrand and gets in lots of good crosses. Wide right, any of Redmond/Sims/JWP depending upon who we're playing. JWP if we're likely to have a lot of the ball, one of the others if not. Boufal should only play as a central attacking midfielder. He's not all that good wide left. Saying that, it seems that Tadic will always play centrally or wide right for some reason, and the rest of the team will fit in around that. Still not sure why, he's not been great in either position for us.

Nice to see us working hard to preserve the 0-1 loss. Nothing like slowly passing the ball across the back four to help you get back into games.

Weak cowardly players playing like weak cowards. Unsurprising.

1. Any league win would feel like winning a cup final 2. We still have things to play for and the end of the season promises excitement 3. Top of the net spend profit table 4. Steve Davis isn't playing 5. Shane Long doesn't start

Originally, from his highlights videos I thought he was a box striker like Austin. He's not. He's not really able to win many high balls, doesn't really hold the ball up, isn't very fast, and never seems to be in position to have a shot. I don't hate him as a player, I'm just unsure what he's actually good at.

Crouch is on.

I disagree. Apart from fullback and central midfield our squad looks bang average. Problem being we're weak in both boxes, and that's where you win games. Brighton have a better goalie, central defenders and a limited but reliable goal scorer. Bournemouth have plenty of goals in their forward line and defenders who actually defend. We should be well ahead of both in quality but, quite simply, we aren't. I'd say we're about on par with Newcastle or Huddersfield when it comes to the ability to actually win games, which is just plain shocking. I'd say, as a whole, our squad is probably good for 12th-18th if we play 4-2-3-1. We still don't have the right players for it as although individually they're talented enough we lack attributes throughout the team to actually win games. Our forwards don't score enough and our defense is easily bullied and has mistakes in it. We also lack pace throughout the side. Our last few managers since Poch have all implemented a more rigid attacking structure than he advocated. That's part of the problem when it comes to goals, it's pretty easy to predict what we're trying to do going forward. However, even his team struggled when we lost JRod to injury and had no pace left in the team. We dropped down the table like a stone. We don't need a team full of fast attacking players, we only really need a couple, but with 4-2-3-1 whoever it is has to be able to play as one of the 3 behind the striker, and the front man has to be able to hold the ball up and link play. I'm still not entirely sure that Carrillo is the right man for that job, his first touch is almost as erratic as Long's and he's nowhere close to being as good technically as Pelle was, let alone Lambert. Long isn't good enough technically to play as one of the 3. Sims looks as if he is, but it's still early days for him and ideally we'd need another player with a similar set of attributes to challenge for the spot. I think we might be more effective as a 5-3-2/3-5-2 as the squad looks as if it would suit those formations better, with Bertrand and Stephens playing on either side of Hoedt and Carrillo and Gabbiadini playing up front together. Even then, I think we might struggle to break into the top ten with the players we have in the squad.

We're making Burnley look like Barca.

Lallana, the lying, badge-kissing ring piece. Couldn't stand the way he acted to force through his move, signing Liverpool fan shirts while he was still supposedly our captain.

Because he's the only pundit who shares a first name with a major character from Wayne's World, and is on the BBC payroll to provide comedy of a similar level.

Redmond was descent under Puel, especially up to the cup final, think he actually got pretty close to the best out of him. After that he really went of the boil. He's been shocking for MoPe though. Picks the ball up from out wide, level with the top of the box, then runs back in a semi circle and shoots from about 30 yards, normally slicing the ball into the crowd. Not sure if it's tactical or just a complete lack of confidence. Might be a bit of both, to be fair.