Make-or-break season for Nathaniel Clyne?
I love a solid player - someone you know will never set the world alight and sell millions of shirts, but who will diligently get on with his job and not leave you tearing your hair out.
Nathaniel Clyne has been exactly that for the majority of his Liverpool career, filling the error-strewn void left by Glen Johnson in functional but consistent fashion.
He is not as flamboyant as some wrongly predicted when he made the switch from Southampton two …
The Natural Solution to the Left-Back Problem
The transfer merry-go-round continues to spin into summer, and Liverpool continue to be linked with names both familiar and outlandish. One position that Klopp is reportedly keen to strengthen for the coming season is left-back, and we all know why. It's because James Milner is not a natural left-back. Right? Erm, Mr. Lahm, a moment of your time, please.
While it's 'natural' to think of Philippe Coutinho doing step-overs in the womb and Simon Mignolet coming into this world with …
Diouf and Gerrard: The Spat That Kept Spitting
"'Stevie G' was a very good player, people like him in Liverpool but he never did anything for his country. I am Mr. El Hadji Diouf, Mr. Senegal, but he is Mr. Liverpool and Senegal is bigger than Liverpool and he has to know that."Well, somebody let Diouf near a microphone again and he just can’t resist gabbing on about his favourite topic. He’s brought up his, ahem, ‘spat’ with Steven Gerrard. The above quote amuses me. …
How To Survive The Liverpool FC Transfer Season
Jürgen Klopp Looking To Get Business Done Early screamed one newspaper headline. Klopp Strikes Pessimistic Note On Early Signings, squawked another. Welcome, officially, to Silly Season at it's most histrionic, idiotic and clueless. Between now and the close of the summer transfer window, you will be exposed to such a barrage of contradictory, attention-seeking lunacy, that you would be wise to have a plan for the retention of your mental health - something into which you can completely invest yourself …
Stand And Deliver: Coutinho Back For Final Push
Following the announcement yesterday that the Centenary Stand will soon bear the exalted name of Kenny Dalglish, it was interesting to note the response from some fans. For many of an older vintage, like your columnist, there was an understandably emotional reaction to the honouring of a man we had worshipped on the field and in the dugout, a man as vital to our identification with Liverpool Football Club as Bill Shankly would have been for the generation before us.
I …
Carragher, Neville And The Cult Of The Pundit
Regular visitors to these paragraphs will know that profound analytical breakdowns of systems and tactics are anathema to this columnist. It's not that I don't appreciate the folk who do that sort of thing, you understand. They provide us all with a valuable service, bless 'em. How many times have you drunkenly thrown out a stat or tactical observation that had been painstakingly compiled by one such hard-working analyst - their slaving over a hot laptop serving only to earn …
Inconsistency Of Emre Can Mirrors Inconsistency Of Liverpool
Irritation was the name of the game yesterday at Latest News Towers. Irritation with life's vicissitudes (which is not the fodder for these paragraphs), irritation with the media, irritation with the Redmen and, finally, seeing that irritation gloriously manifested in the exasperated form of Jamie Carragher (himself a regular source of irritation to this columnist, of late) as he reacted with remarkable impatience to the interruption of his analysis by the permanently gibbering Sky-candy that is Jamie Redknapp.
Amidst the post-match …
Desert Island Reds: My Dream Liverpool XI
My Desert Island Line-Up is made up of players who have represented Liverpool from 1989, when I first started supporting the club, to the present day. The formation is 4-3-3:
GK Pepe Reina
Liverpool have had some truly dodgy goalkeepers in the past 28 years (David James, Sander Westerveld, Jerzy Dudek to name but three) so any who was even half consistent would get into this team. Reina was more than that. Not only a hugely reliable presence for the …
Are the Kids All Right for Liverpool?
Steve McManaman, Robbie Fowler, Michael Owen, Jamie Carragher, Steven Gerrard and Raheem Sterling. Six names that invoke differing opinions amongst Liverpool fans, but whatever their legacy, those six names are the only ones to have come through the youth academy system and successfully establish themselves as first team regulars during the Premier League era.
There have been others, such as Dominic Matteo, Martin Kelly and Jon Flanagan who have had spells in the first team, but never really established themselves …
Liverpool: 2017. Don't Give Up
Well, this is not good.
Good is the thing it is not.
On a good/bad ratio the numbers are stacked in the latter camp.
The opening seven games of 2017 have seen the Reds win one, draw three and lose three. Only at Home Park did Liverpool leave the pitch a goal in credit and that was with a predominantly second string in a pretty average game. We’re just not playing well what with the first team slowing down and …