KopTalk.com Forums Football Liverpool FC Forum Have we regressed?

Think back. Before BR came in, we had Dalglish and comolli in charge. The team had a spine of Reina, Skittles, Agger, Carra, Gerrard, Hendo, Carroll, Kuyt and Suarez.

Now 3 years later and after spending close to 200m, we now have a team with a spine of Miggy, Skittles, Sakho, Can, Hendo, Coutinho, Sterling, lallana and Sturridge.

Is the team better than the one that FSG deemed a disaster and cost comolli and dalglish the sack?

IMO, we have definitely regressed. I can't remember a LFC so average, we hardly have a match winner. That was quite obvious in our last most important game of the season, ie against Villa in the FA cup, there was nobody who could take charge. Coutinho sometimes gets it right, but I don't think he has the character to lead as SG did a few years back or as Terry continues to do it for Chelsea.

Man for man it is the limpest Liverpool lineup I have ever seen.

In Kenny's last season, we had to beat Chelsea and Man City to win the League Cup, in the FA cup we had to beat Man Utd and Everton, there was none of this replay [oops] against lowly sides, in fact we smashed 6 past Brighton, 5 past Oldham. In the League, we beat Chelsea home and away, got good results against the other top 4 sides, our downfall was sloppy 1-0 losses, which we could have easily won.

In terms of the actual team, we didnt have any 30 goal strikers, but the whole team chipped in. Suarez improved to score 17 goals, even with missing a lot of games via his ban, Gerrard, Carroll and Bellamy hit 9 goals, Maxi had 6, Kuyt scored 5. Charlie Adam led the assist table with 11.

Defensively we were very sound, with Agger and Skrtel said to have been the defensive partnership of the season.

Kenny had started a policy of promoting from within and favouring British players over their foreign equals. Kelly, Shelvey, Spearing, Robinson and Flanagan had broken in to the first team from the Youth squad.

When Kenny left, Clarke said that we would have finished in the top 4 the following season and a plan was already in place to do so, with Diame already set to join on a free to help out when Lucas isn't available, Sturridge was being scouted since the season before, but FSG wanted to wait until the following January before making the deal. Apparently we made a 16m offer for Gaston Ramirez, Clint Dempsey was being monitered, Kenny was in France several times watching Belhanda and Giroud at Montpellier, we apparently agreed to sign Elm for 8m.

Instead we ended up sacking Kenny,cancelling all deals, signing Joe Allen for 15m and finishing 7th.

Looking at the squad then and the squad now. Remember that Sterling would have broken through anyway with Kenny in charge, both Sturridge and Coutinho would have been signed as they were FSG deals. Kenny's side after 18 months was a lot stronger than Rodgers' after 3 years.

There's no real sense of progression at the moment, a master plan doesnt really seem to be in place. Rodgers said he had a 180 page dossier and a 5 year plan for this club, heading in to year 4, I can't see it at all.

Rodgers ripped out the soul of the academy, filled it with foreign duds and installed a bunch of low league coaches, following his so called plan of tiki taka, there's no progress to be made in the academy as Rodgers simply buys more players which end up pushing our homegrown stars further back in their development and now people say after Stevie, there's no Liverpool heart and soul in this team. By now; we should have Robinson, Flanagan, McLaughlin, Kelly, Wisdom, Spearing, Coady, Suso, Sterling in our first team squad, with Rossiter, Ibe and Sinclair joining them next season. Instead nearly all of them have been sold, Sinclair is on his way out, Sterling has had enough also.

I would say yes we have defo regressed and lack match winners or game changers in the team

Remind me where Kenny finished?

8th and back in to Europe via winning the League Cup

I'd say the team looks to have regressed but in terms of league position we've gone forward. Kenny left us in 8th and now we're up to the dizzy heights of 5th (assuming we stay there).

Hardly a great improvement or anything to shout about but all things considered, where else can we expect to be with who is in front of us? Yes you can bang on about missed opportunities with Utd having a couple of bad seasons but the way they're going to spend, we would never have stayed above them anyway.

Is 8th better than 7th then?

Depends I think if your not going to finish top 4 then you should go for trophies so under Kenny league form wasn't great but we did win a trophy and the final in the other.

Yes I think compared to Kenny's reign we have bought even worse since so maybe comolli should not be be treated so harshly.

But I don't kenny was the right fit either the last time we had a decent world class manager was rafa (not advocating him back) We regularly had more points and always finished top 4 apart from the last season under the cowboys.