Lionel Messi - Greatest Ever? Probably not.. yet anyway.

What is the internet for if not for having random pub conversations with as many people as possible, but with less in the way of actual beer, or having to go outside for a cig...

In this internet age, where most of the old skool pub arguments are over in seconds following the invention of google, where you can no longer have protracted arguments about actual facts which can be checked in seconds, it is reassuring that there are still questions that you can have arguments about, because there isn't an answer.. only opinions.

In the light of the recent Maradona and Pele row.. which is curious in itself, that they are arguing over whether Lionel Messi is among the greatest  players ever. And lets get this straight, this isn't a random pub conversation.. this is between the two guys that are at the top of that particular tree.. none of your inane Andy Townsend nonsense here.

Actually what started this was (among other things) Pele comparing his record in big tournaments to that of Messi.. "When Messi's scored 1,283 goals like me, when he's won 3 World Cups, we can talk about it." which to be fair he has a point.

Although, if you start to pull at those threads it starts to look less impressive.. well a bit anyway. Pele barely featured in the 1962 World Cup through injury, and playing for Brazil in teams littered with star players (there is still debate in Brazil of whether Garrincha or Pele was their best player), the burden of responsibility is lifted a little.

And when you look at the goals.. In a time when the concept of defending bordered on the Kevin Keegan "sod it, we'll just try and outscore them" school of thought and a lot of the games Pele played were exhibition games around Europe because that's how Brazilian sides funded themselves.

Personally I lean more towards the Maradona camp.. now this is partly due to this being who I grew up watching. the man who pretty much won the World Cup on his own in 1986.. When the star names don't spring so easily to mind.. there was a guy called Brown who I remember because it didn't sound right him playing for Argentina. Jorge Burruchaga who I probably remember for scoring in the final. But these aren't Rivelino or Jairzinho we're talking about here.

Also when you look at Maradona I think his time in Italy stands out..Napoli have won the Scudetto twice in their history (1987 and 1990) and is probably not a coincidence who happened to be on their books at the time.

When you start to look at Messi, his record at club level isn't too shabby.. I remember hearing a stat that in a season and a half he'd scored more La Liga goals than Deportivo La Coruna, at least I think it was them. But, when you look at the team he has round him, then I think it's fair to say he's not exactly dragging the rest of them along with him.. Playing in front of Xavi and Iniesta must make life a little easier, but Messi is the stand out player, but only just.

Personally I would like to throw Zidane into the mix.. winning the World Cup with a side whose main point of attack was Stephane Guivarch was no mean feat.. and just watching Zidane play was one of the reasons why I love football - when it's that good, sometimes all you can do is sit back and enjoy the show.

When it come's to who is the greatest, there is no right answer, (although it's Maradona) but it isn't Messi.. yet.
But let's get this straight.. this lad is 24. He's already won the same amount of European Cups as Manchester United - at time of writing. And while he stays at Barca, he'll keep picking up trophies - along with the Ballon D'Or awards - for the past 3 years on the trot - (and the very fact that he's already playing against Maradona and Pele speaks for itself.)

The crunch will come in 2 years time.. the 2014 World Cup will be his chance to step up. If Argentina win that one (in Brazil) and Messi steps up in a similar fashion to Maradona in 1986 then I think it's fair to say we'll be hearing less from any viagra salesmen about who's the greatest.

Bolton vs Liverpool

Matchday for Liverpool, and it's already started off quite well with Chelsea dropping points at Norwich which you would have probably expected them to win in all fairness - even taking into account the Torres drag factor they should really have had enough to deal with Norwich - but it opens the door to make up some ground on them.

Also, we have Arsenal vs Man Utd tomorrow - which given the 8-2 spanking Arsenal received earlier in the season would suggest the possibility of more points being dropped for the teams we're chasing. Not that I'll be wanting the scum to pick up anything tomorrow, although the squad coming down with rickets would be quite entertaining - if they do take any points off Arsenal then it would do our cause no harm at all.

It is kind of set up for us to take advantage on current form.. Bolton have dipped alarmingly this season, which is something of a surprise as under Owen Coyle they actually started playing actual football - passing the ball to each other and everything.

Maybe they are suffering a kind of second season (under Coyle) syndrome that promoted teams like Ipswich and Reading are examples of. Play quite well in first season, until the more established teams get used to them and figure them out - at which point they get relegated. Blackpool managed this in just the one season last year, which was something of an achievement.

Bolton's home form this season has been appalling - In the last 12 home league games they have lost 10 - although weirdly the one game they did win was 5-0 against Stoke, which does put our result last week into perspective (although this was the Sunday after Stoke had been playing in Israel).

Our away form recently has wobbled a little in the league - 1 win in 4 in the league, but one of those was at Man City, which was rectified in the Carling Cup performance recently. They away form generally this season has been encouraging - 6 wins on the spin earlier this season, which was unheard of in our more recent past as away wins were at something of a premium, especially under Hodgson.

Also, Bolton have recently lost Gary Cahill to Chelsea, which isn't going to help their chances any today.

All this, plus Liverpool's recent record of 6 wins on the trot against Bolton, and you would hope we turn in a performance and get the points required to get in the right frame of mind, for the more than likely stiffer challenge on Wednesday.

But that is getting ahead of ourselves, if we keep focus we should have enough to pick up all 3 points - but you could say that about many of our performances this season where we have not really capitalised (although mainly at home.)

Also, I am quite confident about today, which is usually quite a bad sign - but on the plus side I'm bricking it about Man City on Wednesday so that one should be much easier.

Luis Suarez + Steven Gerrard = Champions League?

Right then, we're getting towards the pointy end and Liverpool's season so far has been distinctly unpointy so far.. that is to say sharp in terms of scoring enough goals to be taken seriously anyway.

I'm not going to bang on about dropping embarrassing points at home, because frankly that would be labouring the point. We're past halfway in the league and although we're the only team in England to remain unbeaten at home in all competitions, that isn't much good if we'd have been better off losing 4 and winning 3 of the 7 we've drawn so far.

Let's look forward and at what needs to happen to get up to where we need to be.

From the title of this blog, you can perhaps see where I am going with this, but it has been frustrating that since Luis Suarez signed for Liverpool, Steven Gerrard has been a virtual spectator though injury and there is a degree of irony in that we get Gerrard back at the same time as we lose Suarez for 8 games.

Now in terms of league games, Suarez only has two to go before he can return and hopefully he won't take too much time to get back up to speed - probably lost a bit of match sharpness, but it's not as if he's been out injured so hopefully he'll hit the ground running.

The prospect of a fully match fit (by that time) Steven Gerrard and Luis Suarez tearing it up will give Liverpool  an undoubted added dimension and it will be good to see the two players who we apparently can't function without actually on the same pitch. It's been said repeatedly that we rely too much on Gerrard over the years - which is probably true for a lot of those years - and the same has been said of Suarez. The prospect of them both together and of worrying about which one we should be relying on most should be interesting.

It will also come at a vital point in the season.. Suarez should return against Spurs (h), which is followed by Man Utd (a), Everton (h) and possibly most significantly in terms of finishing 4th Arsenal (h). If we can start to pick up 3 points regularly at home, which we may possibly find easier against stronger opposition then when it gets towards March / April we may be in with a shout - especially if we mange to pick up the League Cup along the way... Man City will probably have something to say about that obviously, but we are in a stronger position than I expected us to be at this stage in that tie - and winning a trophy at Wembley certainly wouldn't do our confidence any harm - although having said that, it didn't really do Birmingham any favours.

There are obviously a lot of if's, but's and maybe's involved in all that lot.. but there always are. But one thing that I am pretty confident of  is that if we do finish up in the Champions League next season it'll be due largely to the efforts Gerrard and Suarez.

Suarez - The Aftermath

Liverpool have had, it has to be said have had an awkward few weeks.. and the past weekend hasn't really helped matters.

Accusations made by Patrice Evra, which have now been conjured into fact by the FA's decision to agree with his word rather than that of Luis Suarez which has made by extension, Luis Suarez and anyone who doubts the word of Patrice Evra also racist.

I'm perhaps going a little over the top here.. and I don't particularly want to get into the details of the Suarez case, but I do find it quite odd that a case that seems to hang on the nuances of the Spanish language - the FA have sided with the guy who speaks French and never actually played in Spain, never mind South America - and also has a history of lying about this kind of thing.

Liverpool's reaction to the Suarez case has been criticized by the media as they decided to support their player.. as by extension if Suarez is found to be racist, then Liverpool FC and now it seems all their fans are all racist. This is clearly gibberish, but it seems to sell newspapers and as we have previously discovered they are not particularly concerned with facts either - even today Kelvin McKenzie was telling the Leveson inquiry that he would quite happily would publish most things without troubling himself too much over whether they were actually true or not... with subsequent sales of the S*n in Liverpool a reasonable argument for maybe not printing any old bullshit that springs to mind.

I'm ranting a little, you may have noticed.

Things took an unexpected turn on Friday in the FA Cup against Oldham with the racial abuse suffered by Tom Adeyemi. I was frankly shocked that this happened and also disgusted. Liverpool have apologised to Adeyemi. The person in question has been arrested and will most likely be banned for life from every ground in the country - and he deserves everything he gets.

Now Liverpool's response to the Suarez case has been blamed for this.. that we are not taking a tough enough stance against racism. Perhaps this is not a coincidence that the first arrest of a Liverpool fan for the past 2 years for racial abuse (I couldn't find the stats for any earlier) comes after this issue has been highlighted. Incidentally Bolton and Blackburn are top of this particular league, I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Maybe it isn't.. you can't be held responsible for every idiot who walks through a turnstile, but you can react accordingly and it looks as though the club will take every step possible in dealing with this, frankly as harshly as possible.

And lets get this straight.. not only is this idiot stupid enough to :
a. hold these opinions in the first place.
b. broadcast them, with a thousand or so witnesses in earshot and surrounded by cameras.
c. at a club that would throw the book at him anyway, but now have even more reason to with all the recent events.

Hopefully this will all be resolved quickly, and it does seem to be progressing at pace.

So with this ratcheting up the media attention directed at Liverpool for the wrong reasons we now have the delightful prospect of the guy who started all this in the first place returning to Anfield in the FA Cup.

I wonder whether Patrice Evra will even play in the 4th round game, and if he does Liverpool fans will again be accused of being racist, because let's get this straight, this is not a man that we are happy with at the moment. It will be similar to the FA Cup game in 2006 when Gary Neville (what is it with Man Utd full backs) was the target of our anger and that was only for running the length of the pitch to celebrate in front of the away fans at Old Trafford a month or so before.. The general perception is the Evra lied to get Suarez banned, coincidentally this is also my perception. The reception Evra receives will be... heated, shall we say.

It will also be heated should he play in France's friendly with Uruguay in August as Suarez's Uruguay team mate Alvaro Pereira suggesting that Evra will require body armour for that possibly not so friendly encounter... again I suspect he may develop a bout of the sniffles for that game and probably the one at Anfield as well. 

Luis Suarez - bit of a nutcase, but probably not a racist.

Now this is a tricky one to get your teeth into.. much more than who you'd be the best option starting down the right hand side of midfield for Liverpool and a problem that will hopefully not be too much of a problem in the near future.. when we sign some young tricky winger of Barca who solves our problems and also sorts that thorny racism issue problem out as well.

Racism and the associated issues make the problems of football in general pale into insignificance.

I do find it interesting though that the Suarez case seems to have crystalised opinion, based not particularly around any facts (of which at this time seem a little thin on the ground) but around the colour of your shirt, rather than the colour of your skin.

I'm a Liverpool fan.. this is probably apparent... and whilst say Patrice Evra might make me sick. This is to do entirely with the colour of his shirt which I can tell because I hold Wayne Rooney in similar levels of contempt.One thing that is worth pointing out at this stage is that when I say Man Utd players make me sick it is on one level - in the kind of football banter - (all your players are shit, were the best etc etc) nonsense that it seems football was designed to generate, and is part of the reason we all spend our time following it I suppose.

Now we are talking degrees of sick here.. or possibly textures. I don't particularly want to follow that train of thought.

When were talking about people that are actually racist.. Nick Griffin, East Europeans with their monkey chants, whoever really. That does actually make me sick - the kind with bits of carrott in it. When it's all a bit more real and about problems have existed for as long as there have been people, as opposed to as long as there has been an FA.

I don't particularly want to get into the specifics of the Evra / Suarez case (but I probably will).. largely because there don't appear to be any. Patrice Evra says Luis Suarez said something to him.. actually Suarez hasn't denied saying it - but rather that what he has said has been taken out of context. There's been a lot of reference to this word "Negrito" which is apparently commonly used in South America. If this is what all the issue surrounds then an 8 game ban seems insane and ironically an issue based around cultural misunderstanding.

If.. there's probably a lot of "if's" going on here.. this is what Suarez said and he could see it niggled Evra, which given that Evra says Suarez repeated it a few times seems possible, if players can see an opportunity to wind up their opponent then they will more than likely take it.

Patrice Evra then reports - "Luis Suarez said a bad word, it refers to the colour of my skin. I'm personally offended."

Luis Suarez then gets hauled before the FA says - "yes I said that, but where I come from that's not a bad word."

Luis Suarez wanders into this at just the wrong time.. possibly naively, when you've got the "Kick it Out" campaign and possibly more relevant Sepp Blatter's comments about racism on the pitch being sorted out with a hand-shake - and the FA not particularly getting on with FIFA at the moment and possibly wanting to take some kind of moral high ground.

They slap an 8 game ban on Suarez.. Liverpool will appeal this because it seems over the top.. especially when you consider going over the top in football means possibly breaking someones leg and getting a 3 game ban. Liverpool appeal, the FA have given themselves sufficient wiggle room. So on appeal Suarez gets maybe a 4 game ban and told not to say anything to anyone in future an keep up the "no biting" thing as well if you could.  

This is what I think will happen.. as most parties involved will be able to deal with it.

Liverpool FC because a 4 game ban is better than 8.

The FA because they have shown that they are dealing with the racism issue.

Patrice Evra because Suarez gets a ban, which I suspect was he was after in the first place.

I might be wrong.. Suarez may have said something completely indefensible and he might deserve everything he gets. But I think the most telling point is in Patrice Evra's written statement it states : "I don't think that Luis Suarez is racist." The FA accepted that he wasn't racist in their opening remarks of this case.

We'll see how it all pans out.. I know what I want to happen, based largely on my own prejudices it must be said. It also must be said that if there was actual proof that Suarez had said or done something that actually was racist - than frankly he gets everything he deserves. But that doesn't seem to be the case here.  
 

    

Does Kenny Dalglish know what he's doing?

Here we are again boys and girls.. my weekly musings on the world, or more accurately which particular Mighty Reds should run about on the pitch and how things would be far better if I was in charge and probably would be if my career path had differed slightly and I'd been one of the greatest players in history rather than colouring in spreadsheets for a living.

Not for one minute am I suggesting that Kenny Dalglish isn't the right man to be in charge of Liverpool FC as I am not an idiot and I am not insane.. I even have the documentation to prove it.

Having said that I'm going to try and pick holes in things because I'm a bit bored and have nothing better to do...

One of the things I do find curious is Dalglish's reluctance to change things round during games. We don't seem to make many substitutions during games.. as opposed to substitutions after games which tend to just confuse matters.

Over the past 10 games we have scored a grand total of 4 goals after we've made any changes.. this is including 2 from Luis Suarez at Stoke after Jamie Carragher had gone off injured at half time.. so only 2 goals after unforced changes in 10 games really. Doesn't sound like a lot to me, although I didn't see how this compares with other sides to be honest for the sake of my sanity.. I'm going to assume this is pretty low.

It also seems that we don't make many changes and when we do they tend to be too late to really change anything - whether this 2 goals in 10 games backs this up I'm not sure.

Also, it seems rarely that we make all 3 subs and often just the one.. and this isn't really in games when we haven't needed to change things. Especially when you look at home games against weaker opposition.

It's something I've noticed anyway.. quite whether we've got the back-up to be making radical changes is something to consider. I would suggest that it ought to be given the amount of money we've spent populating it this season. It would be helpful for Andy Carroll to be given longer in games as an 'impact' player.. particularly when Plan A doesn't seem to be working.

Whether £35m should be a plan B amount of money is something that we can't really do much about now, unless Carroll scores against Chelsea and they want to buy him for £50m. Perhaps 25 minutes here and there and a few goals from the bench would help his confidence which I think is all that's really missing from Andy Carroll... and then he will hopefully start banging them in with all the finesse of a night out on the Bigg Market.

#LFC and our fast disappearing midfield.

Tomorrow we play QPR at Anfield.. you know this already.
I am a little bit worried about this one.. to be fair I'm usually a little bit worried and this is usually a good thing.

It's the games where I assume we're going to win that usually blow up in my and indeed your face.

I'm worried though about our home form.. against teams that we should be able to assume we're going win. We've dropped 6 points so far this season against Swansea, Norwich and Sunderland. Two of those teams being the promoted teams of which we play the last one tomorrow. and our form last season was well.. appalling - defeats to Wolves and Blackpool I seem to remember - I could double check this but it's something I'm trying to forget. That whole Hodgson period in general was one long nightmare.

We need to get a grip if we're going to even be involved in the fight for the top 4.. which we would be if we didn't keep spunking points away like this.

This isn't helped by the midfield situation.. Lucas is out for the season and bringing in Jay Spearing to replace him ended abruptly on Monday with a harsh red card and 3 game ban.

I think we should be OK with Adam and Henderson in their.. might even be the making of them, especially Henderson. Kenny has not really been that sure what to do with Henderson exactly so far.. and I'm not sure Henderson has been entirely sure himself.

He has a tendency to drift into the middle when he's playing on the right which unbalances things a litte.. that's clearly where he sees himself and this could be the opportunity he needs. Time to step up etc. etc.

It should be said that this time last week it was Jay Spearing's time to step up and that didn't exactly end in glory.. but this should be different.

The run of games we have coming up now looks as though we should get a decent haul of points.. QPR, Blackburn and Newcastle at home and Villa and Wigan away left for 2011.

Realistically to get back involved we need to be taking 13-15 points from those, especially when you see Spurs disappearing into the distance.

If we do that then we can go into 2012 with a bit of momentum.. and given how we clicked into gear from January last year things could start to get interesting.