Pre-season Football 2011/2012 Season

We didn't lose to the 'two crap asian sides'. We lost to a Hull side that is a lot further ahead of us in their pre-season and to a much improved Galatasaray side, again a lot further ahead of us in their pre-season. Both better than the part-time sides other teams have played so far in their pre-season.

Sorry, where did I say we played 4th choice players? I said we were without the majority of our first team for those 2 games, which we were.

Thankfully the likes of Reina, Skrtel and Johnson (and I believe Agger and Meireles) are back in training and Lucas will be joining them on Monday. Throw in Henderson (who only just started pre-season which might explain why he didn't play today), Downing (who possibly wasn't eligible), Adam and hopefully Suarez, and come the start of the season I doubt we'll see more than 3 players that featured today.
 
Liverpool haven't had a brilliant pre season; given the player absences (for whatever reason; injured, unavailable) but does pre season really matter?

I don't think pre season has too much effect on the Season, Liverpool fans literally have nothing really to worry about, the only thing that would bug me (if I were them) is being unable to see the new signing play together. I suppose someone would argue this highlighting their "lack of depth" but really? I mean these aren't even fringe players are they? They're third choice players playing most of these games and they've played two pretty decent sides?

Dalglish is a good manager and knows how to get sides to play together the back end of last season was proof enough of this.
 
Scorelines in pre-season count for little; I remember in Houllier's 2nd to last season we played the likes of Lazio and hammered them and went on to have a terrible season, then the other season we had a terrible pre-season, losing 1 game 5-0 to a German 2nd division side but we went on to finish 2nd in the league.

What is worrying though is the lack of playing time that a lot of our first team squad will have had come 13th August. We've only got 2 more pre-season games left and the likes of Reina, Johnson, Skrtel and Gerrard haven't even played a game yet (at least Lucas and Suarez will still be fairly sharp thanks to the Copa America).
 
Hmm. I mentioned the lack of seeing new players play together, and I suppose you'd be worried with a first team that's had a few additions to it that have been unable to play a few games together, and under most other side's I'd agree.

However, this is a Dalglish side, and he's a pretty good manager in my book, They'll train together and I'm right in thinking that the majority of the players Liverpool have bought in speak English and know other players at the club, Suarez came in last January and looked like he'd always been part of the Liverpool side too.

Wouldn't worry *too* much about it imho, at least you've got bloody strikers Baz :p

Wednesday are about to kick off next weekend with two strikers for the season! One's mid 30's and well past it and the other is 19/20 years old and has a fondness for setting fire to things.
 
Tummy said:
Hmm. I mentioned the lack of seeing new players play together, and I suppose you'd be worried with a first team that's had a few additions to it that have been unable to play a few games together, and under most other side's I'd agree.

However, this is a Dalglish side, and he's a pretty good manager in my book, They'll train together and I'm right in thinking that the majority of the players Liverpool have bought in speak English and know other players at the club, Suarez came in last January and looked like he'd always been part of the Liverpool side too. Don't underestimate Dalglish (I'm sure you don't anyway :p) but he's a top manager, and he'll I'm sure be on top of this situation and will no doubt probably play a few games behind closed doors (Wednesday did a similar thing a few seasons ago) and make sure they're all comfortable in training.

Wouldn't worry *too* much about it imho, at least you've got bloody strikers Baz :p

Wednesday are about to kick off next weekend with two strikers for the season! One's mid 30's and well past it and the other is 19/20 years old and has a fondness for setting fire to things.
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No idea why I quoted this instead of editing. Failure.
 
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Like with the scorelines, I'm not too worried about the new players having match time playing together as such. A lot of the familiarisation and link-up work can be done during training.

My main concern is simply the lack of match fitness. As above, what is quite possibly 6 of our first 11 haven't played a single minute of pre-season yet. On top of that Henderson and Meireles have only played 45 mins each and Agger's had two lots of 45 minutes.

At this rate we're either going to have to start the season with either under-cooked first team players or youngsters/squad players.
 
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Ah sorry, probably missed your point if it was about fitness and match sharpness :p

Maybe, I do see where you're coming from, but you might be surprised they could be wheeled out for the last couple of official pre season games and then play a couple more behind closed doors so to speak.

Again, given it's Liverpool, the staff and manager I'd be less concerned then if it were another side.

What's happening with Cole btw? He's **** and is an expensive **** now, can't you find a home? Do a deal with Spurs 'cause 'Arry will have anyone.
 
Hopefully the likes of Reina, Johnson, Skrtel, Agger, Meireles, Henderson and Downing will all feature in the last 2 games and then possibly Gerrard and Lucas in the last game. It still won't be enough though.

As for Cole, I'm not really sure what's happening there. There's no getting away from the fact he's had a shocking 12 months (a lot of bad luck too) but he's a talented player. Had he not been on so much money I would imagine the club would be inclined to give him another season to prove his worth but it's difficult to justify keeping a bit part player on ~£100k per week. Equally because of what he's earning it's making it very difficult to get rid of him.

I suspect it will all rest on how much we have to pay to get rid of him. If we can get away with not having to pay him anything or a relatively small percentage of his wages then he'll go but if we end up having to pay £40-50k of his wages then I suspect the club would rather pay the full ~£100k, keep him and hope he comes good.
 
4-1
7-0
3-1
4-0

All away games. Now bring that to away games in the league.

All the other top teams have been poor this pre season... Liverpool and Arsenal being the worst.
 
One More Solo said:
Chelsea had a shocking pre-season last year and came out flying in the league, I wouldn't read much into it.
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Still good for morale... and its good to see so many different UTD players getting goals, not just the strikers... and then theres the not in form Torres for them to worry about.
 
First game of Dublin tour tomorrow for us.
On Sky Sports 2 if people are interested. Aguero not likely to play but probable to feature against Milan.
 
BaZ87 said:
We didn't lose to the 'two crap asian sides'. We lost to a Hull side that is a lot further ahead of us in their pre-season and to a much improved Galatasaray side, again a lot further ahead of us in their pre-season. Both better than the part-time sides other teams have played so far in their pre-season.

Sorry, where did I say we played 4th choice players? I said we were without the majority of our first team for those 2 games, which we were.

Thankfully the likes of Reina, Skrtel and Johnson (and I believe Agger and Meireles) are back in training and Lucas will be joining them on Monday. Throw in Henderson (who only just started pre-season which might explain why he didn't play today), Downing (who possibly wasn't eligible), Adam and hopefully Suarez, and come the start of the season I doubt we'll see more than 3 players that featured today.
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Where did I say you lost to two crap asian sides, I just said the part time sides apparently everyone else is playing(who exactly?) aren't disimilar to the two crap asian teams you managed to beat, while conceding heavily, with a lot more of your first team performers.

It was admittedly Tombstone that said 4th choice keepers but the general feeling from the Pool fans was "meh, its only our 2/3rd string players, it doesn't matter".

Yes, preseason doesn't count for much, unless of course, your first team aren't on course to be fit for the start of the season, in which case the form and performances against not very good teams is pretty important. Sure you will almost certainly have more than 3 of your "first team" starters, but you didn't play particularly well, and certainly not defensively, with far far stronger line ups earlier in preseason.

Hull might be further along(no idea if thats true) but that doesn't stop them being mostly completely crap, Galatasaray afaik, have lost Kewell who has been one of if not the best player they've had for two years, new coach and a rubbish season, midtable Turkish team at the moment.

As for Arsenal doing also badly, they haven't, one team has one team hasn't. Basically our Wilshire/Ramsey/Ryo/Verm/Kos/Chamakh team has been pretty awesome, our usually second half Nasri/RVP/Djourou/Squillaci/Sagna team has been ruddy awful. A huge part of that is Wilshire has been excellent in Cesc's role and our attacking has worked, with Nasri in we've looked utterly disjointed and relied in RVP/Arshavin to play well and almost everything has gone through those two.

One thing worrying me like you is, we've basically not played more than a couple of players for more than 45mins at a time, with only 2 preseason games left thats damn late to try to give players more than 45minutes.

Problem is as always Wenger, I can't see him dropping Nasri(if he's still here) for the start of the season, nor giving Ryo a chance, nor Jenkinson over Sagna. If you watched previous seasons doing well in preseason has never led to starts in the league. Wilshire was awesome 2 years ago then benched for 6 months, Jet was awesome last preseason, Vela for 3 years has been absolutely awesome with impeccable finishing then gets benched, its a joke.
 
What are you going on about now? You quote me talking about the Hull and Galatasaray games and you bring up the 2 games in Asia so I pointed out we won those games.

You know what your biggest problem is DM? You have an opinion on quite literally everything even when it's clear you have no idea what you're talking about.

You talk about us not playing well defensively earlier in pre-season when we had more first team players playing? I'm sure you realise that all 3 goals conceded from our opening game were concded when Agger was the only first team defender playing and that 2 were individual mistakes from what is now our 5th choice keeper? Equally I'm sure you knew that 2 of the 3 goals conceded in the 2nd game were scored after both Carra and Agger came off?

Your understanding of the situation at Galatasaray is very wrong too. Kewell was never one of their best players and since last January they've improved no end and bought some useful players.

I think I have a better idea as to who is going to be available to us come the start of the season and which players pre-season performances I should worry about, than you do. And as I said to Tummy last night, my only concern is he lack of matches that the majority of our first team defenders are going to have played come 13th August. I'm not going to worry about Poulsen, Wilson, Degen et al putting in **** performances in pre-season as they're not going to be playing come 13th August.
 
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BaZ87 said:
I think I have a better idea as to who is going to be available to us come the start of the season and which players pre-season performances I should worry about, than you do. And as I said to Tummy last night, my only concern is he lack of matches that the majority of our first team defenders are going to have played come 13th August. I'm not going to worry about Poulsen, Wilson, Degen et al putting in **** performances in pre-season as they're not going to be playing come 13th August.
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Id agree with that in terms of the last sentences. Pre-season results are meaningless in many ways - they are a means to an end. However with Liverpool this year ive seen a lot of "its fine, these guys wont every play together" and that type of stuff. When do you roll out the first XI (copa America players aside) for a bit of a practice before the season starts??

Its also seems to me you are inadvertantly justifying having a crap squad cos the reasoning for the poor performances is that they are squad players rather than fIrst team. Obviously you would hope to never have to play 11 squad players in a PL game but with injuries its easy to imagine a scenario where 4/5/6 could have to play and no one seems to have much faith in them?
 
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