News, views and opinion on Liverpool FC
WHETHER new boy Daniel Sturridge and Luis Suarez can play alongside each other has yet to be proven, but they did enough damage here as two solo acts.
A news article on 2013-01-07 00:01:00 from: The Express
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A MUCH-CHANGED Liverpool Under-18s side lost 3-1 away to Middlesbrough in their final Premier Academy League fixture of 2012.
A news article on 2012-12-06 01:00:00 from: Liverpool Echo
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Tottenham are said to be considering a move for striker Ricky Van Wolfswinkel as he continues to drag his feet over signing a new deal at Sporting Lisbon.Van Wolfswinkel, who joined Sporting from Dutch side Utrecht in June 2011, has scored 29 goals in 53 matches since moving to Portugal, and has consistently been linked with a move to the Premier League. Ricky Van Wolfswinkel (below) has been linked with a move to Tottenham (Picture: Getty) Arsenal, Liverpool and Sunderland have all been mentioned as possible destinations for the 23-year-old, but he dismissed speculation during the summer, by revealing that he is in negotiations with Sporting over a new three-year-deal at the Jose Alvalade stadium. However, those talks have since dragged and Van Wolfswinkel is now willing to consider other options, unless the club meet his wage demands by the new year. According to Portuguese newspaper Abola, Van Wolfswinkel’s agent Louis Laros will sit down with Sporting president Godinho Lopes next week in a bid to find an agreement, and Laros is ready to demand a transfer in the January window if a compromise can’t be reached. It’s news that will suit Spurs boss Andre Villas-Boas, who twice tried to sign Van Wolfswinkel while at former club Porto, and would be interested in bringing him to White Hart Lane if the price is right. Sporting still believe they can keep the all-action centre forward, but an offer in the region of £8million would be difficult to turn down.
A news article on 2012-11-27 15:21:00 from: The Metro
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Louis Saha’s appearance as a substitute for Sunderland against Newcastle last Sunday gave him a claim to be the player who has appeared in the most major local derbies in English football. His previous tally included playing for Fulham against Chelsea, Manchester United against City, Everton against Liverpool and Tottenham against Arsenal, scoring in all those except the Merseyside match.
A news article on 2012-10-27 23:00:00 from: The Independent
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Louis Blom-Cooper QC writes that at the Hillsborough Independent Panel’s press conference on 12 September I stated that because of its unique status the panel was “able to get close to the victims”, thereby giving this unprecedented process an advantage over a public inquiry (Letters, 18 September). He infers it was a claim “no doubt prompted by the traditional lawyer’s assumption that a public inquiry is limited to listening to voices inside the inquiry forum”.
The transcript shows that I made no such statement. Further, I would never use the term “victims” in this context and I am certainly not a “traditional lawyer”! Regrettably, Mr Blom-Cooper misrepresents my well-established position on public inquiries to make an unrelated point that during his inquiry Lord Scarman used his discretion to seek out “experiences” informally within the community.
Given the panel’s in-depth, meticulous research and painstaking analysis of the mass of disclosed documents relating to the investigations, inquiries and legal processes following Hillsborough, it is an irony that Mr Blom-Cooper mistakenly attributes to me a statement I never uttered.
Professor Phil Scraton
Queen’s University Belfast
A news article on 2012-09-25 21:00:00 from: The Guardian
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The Northern Irishman faces up against his compatriot Martin O’Neill and will hope for a victory which could ignite the Merseyside season after a poor start
A news article on 2012-09-14 07:30:00 from: Goal
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When he took the job the former Swansea manager thought he had established that he was ‘in charge of football matters’. The events of the transfer window suggest otherwise
Arguably the greater concern for Brendan Rodgers in his thwarted pursuit of Clint Dempsey was not the lack of money shown by Liverpool’s owners but their lack of trust. Its absence before the third Premier League game of Rodgers’s reign as manager is the principal reason the Anfield soap opera has started even earlier this season.
When Rodgers was unveiled as Kenny Dalglish’s successor on 1 June he had successfully, after three rounds of talks with John W Henry and Tom Werner, ensured he would be a manager left to manage. So he thought. Plans for a sporting director had been shelved, there would be no ominous figure such as Louis van Gaal for the rising young coach to contend with and he “would be in charge of football matters”.
Prophetically, in light of Friday’s nonevent of a transfer deadline day at Liverpool, he elaborated on that optimistic day: “I am better when I have control. I am not a power freak. But my point is that I need to feel that I can manage in terms of the team and I have a direct, clear line through to the owners. Once that becomes hazed and grey, for me there is a problem.” It was hardly the radical overhaul of English football management that Fenway Sports Group had envisaged for Liverpool but a sensible compromise by owners wanting a clean slate under Rodgers nonetheless.
Fast forward to last Thursday night. The Liverpool manager has let Andy Carroll join West Ham United on loan with no replacement secured and, having negotiated a passage into the Europa League group stage with an aggregate victory over Hearts, makes a late night phone-call to Boston to outline the case for Dempsey again. Rodgers was well aware of FSG’s preference, to use the contents of Henry’s letter of appeasement to Liverpool supporters, for “a self-sustaining pool of youngsters imbued in the club’s traditions” and not “expensive, short-term quick fixes that will only contribute for a couple of years”. He was also conscious of the owners’ fears, having squandered a fortune on Carroll, Stewart Downing, Jordan Henderson and Charlie Adam under Dalglish and Damien Comolli. Hence, for example, his refusal to bow to Gylfi Sigurdsson’s wage demands before the Icelandic midfielder ended up at White Hart Lane.
But having slashed the wage bill and recouped roughly a third of his £29m transfer spend through transfer and loan fees, and with only Luis Suárez and Fabio Borini left as a strike force, he had reason to believe FSG would deliver a 29-year-old scorer of 23 goals last season who was desperate to join Liverpool. They responded by offering Fulham less than the fee already agreed with Aston Villa – whether it was £3m as Fulham claim or Liverpool’s £4m, it was still less than Villa’s £5m plus add-ons – and undermined Rodgers’s judgment at a stroke. It once again raises the question of who is advising FSG?
Given that Henry’s first appointment as Liverpool’s principal owner was Comolli, whom he quickly promoted to director of football, it is clear the advice has been questionable from the start of FSG’s reign almost two years ago. “There are operational things we need to sort out,” said Rodgers after Sunday’s defeat by Arsenal.
The club’s transfer dealings this summer were not helped by Manchester City placing Dave Fallows on gardening leave once he had accepted the job of Liverpool’s head of scouting and recruitment and some suspect FSG pays more heed to the data provided by the head of analytics, Michael Edwards, than the opinions of the club’s manager.
Henry’s open letter reads like a check list of the criticisms he has received on Twitter since Friday and demonstrated the acute sensitivity of the Liverpool hierarchy. The rift between owners and manager is not irreparable, far from it, but taking flak via social media in Boston is nothing compared to what could befall Rodgers on the touchline at Anfield should Friday’s inaction take its toll.
A news article on 2012-09-03 21:34:00 from: The Guardian
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Sunderland have made contact with Michael Owen to try and lure the striker back to the north-east but face strong competition from Stoke and possibly Liverpool. Michael Owen is wanted by both Sunderland and Stoke (Picture: Getty Images) Owen is a free agent since leaving Manchester United at the end of last season and has received an initial approach from the Black Cats with manager Martin O’Neill keen to bolster his forward line. However, the 32-year-old looks more likely to sign for Stoke, who have expressed an interest in the former England front-man ever since he left Old Trafford.Owen played in the north-east for Newcastle for four years when he signed for a club record fee of £16.8million, before joining United in 2009 making just 31 appearances and returning five goals. Michael Owen signed for Newcastle for a club record £16.8million in 2005 (Picture: Graham Chadwick) Despite coming towards the end of his career and being injured for the majority of last season, both Sunderland and Stoke believe he can still play a role in their Premier League campaigns. Sunderland invested heavily in attacking options over the summer with Adam Johnson, Steven Fletcher and Louis Saha all bought in by O’Neill.But the northern Irishman is expected to want to bring in some experience to his forward line for the likes of Conor Wickham, Fraizer Campbell, Ji Dong-won and Ryan Noble to learn from Owen. Owen could even make a return to former club Liverpool, where he spent 13 years as a youngster and senior player. A move back to Anfield, while considered unlikely, is not completely out of the question after manager Brendan Rodgers admitted there was a chance he could sign an out of contract player like Owen. When asked if he would consider a move for a free agent such as Owen, Rodgers said: ‘Any player that I believe can improve the squad I will look at. ‘We have got a very, very small squad with some very young players in it, so I can’t say no.’However, Stoke have failed to secure the services of a striker this season and manager Tony Pulis still appears the favourite to sign Owen. The Potters boss is keen to bring Owen to the Britannia and build on a partnership with Peter Crouch.
A news article on 2012-09-02 15:23:00 from: The Metro
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Elsewhere, Gary Lineker looks to combat his grey hair, Matt Jarvis thanks Wolves fans as he moves to West Ham United and James Vaughan dines out… alone
A news article on 2012-08-24 20:54:00 from: Goal
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Today’s fluff is back to being jaunty. Take that knee!
After Robin van Persie promised to write every day and was waved off at the station by a teary-eyed Arsène Wenger, the Mill thought it could dust down its hands, swing them in a somnolent style to the back of its gulliver, place its ouched leg and then its un-ouched leg on to the desk and wallow in the fact that there is no work to be done. The Mill is like a shark, you know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And with the enormity of that story suffocating every back page from the Romney Marsh Herald to the Bracknell & Ascot Times, the Mill thought it had a dead fish on its hands. Unfortunately, the boss don’t see it that way yo. He has peered into those doll-like eyes of the beast and has spied some leftovers of life. And so, after a clip around the ear and stern talking to, another specimen of transfer tribulations has been caught, skinned, cooked and served for your 100%, guaranteed enjoyment*.
Speaking of Van Persie and Manchester United, not everyone in the redder half of Manchester is whooping and/or hollering at the striker’s impending arrival. It seems said transfer has put Javier Hernández‘s nose more out of joint than something that is very out of joint as it leaves him 18th in line at the club for a spot leading Sir Alex Ferguson’s frontline, behind the tea lady, one of the programme sellers and the stadium announcer. And so Hernández has apparently told the Scot that he wants to move on to bigger and better things but if that doesn’t happen, Juventus will do. Expect the striker to be kissing the badge of the Italian champs once they cough up around £20m smackeroos, a sum which should cover the interest on the Glazers’ debt for approximately 0.00000005 nanoseconds.
Liverpool may not like Charlie Adam any more but Charlie Adam sure does like Liverpool. So when Brendan Rodgers told the midfielder to rack off, Adam got his Mr 15% to have a chat with the manager of the Merseyside’s club’s beloved neighbours. Oooooooooh. Conveniently enough for the former Ross County star, his Mr 15% is the brother of the Everton supremo, David Moyes, who will be forced into doing something he really doesn’t want to by the undefeatable I’m-telling-mum-if-you-don’t-do-this threat. The alleged midfielder will cost around £4m more than he is really worth.
In other Liverpool news, having pledged his undying, tattooed love for Liverpool and stuck two digits in the direction of Manchester City, Daniel Agger has “stunned” Liverpool by admitting that said undying, tattooed love for Liverpool was really just a six-season-long ship in the night and that he now goes weak at the knees when the Catalan cutie that is Barcelona looks him in the eyes and sings sweet nothings in his ear.
“There is one club who would make it very difficult for me to stay at Anfield. Barcelona would be great because they are the best in the world,” he panted heavily, before regaining composure, redoing his shirt, fixing his hair and saying that he is “happy to be a Liverpool player”, you know, just in case he is not allowed go play with the older boys.
With all that out of the way, we now get to that part of the day when the Mill has run out of stories and just lumps in a load of tittle-tattle to fill out the space and make it look like the Mill has been doing some research when in actual fact they have been playing with the new DJ app on their phone wondering how things could have been so different/better if their parents had just bought them a freakin’ set of decks that Christmas rather than that brobdingnagian Christmas cracker that didn’t even had a decent surprise in it.
Barcelona are in town with a case stuffed to the brim with £5 notes and are hoping to leave town without that case but with Alex Song. Louis Saha could be getting injured, sitting on the bench and occasionally showing what a talent he could have been for Sunderland next season. Diamond earrings’ Ricardo Fuller will be sparkling for a large town situated on the south bank of the River Tees in the north east next season doing his best to get them promoted. And England hero of Wednesday night, Jermain Defoe, will be the second best striker at either QPR, Aston Villa or Sunderland next season. Or maybe he’ll just stay at White Hart Lane. Who knows?
Oh, the Mill almost forgot. Milan plan to fill the Zlatan-Ibrahimovic-shaped hole in the their attack by signing Nicklas Bendtner. No, that’s not a typo.
*Not a guarantee
A news article on 2012-08-16 07:50:00 from: The Guardian
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