verlaine1979

Shaw doesn't strike the ball well enough to ever be worth that much. He's pretty much the inverse of Bale actually, insofar as Bale had a world class left foot from the start, but lacked the physical side. Shaw on the other hand is fairly average in terms of delivery and shooting, but incredibly strong and quick. Unfortunately, Bale's technique is rarer than Shaw's physicality, and more likely to be the result of natural talent rather than hard work or training. Shaw will be this generation's Ashley Cole, so £34m seems pretty good money.

It's nonsense even if you just compare the way they both run. Pirlo is older, but nimble - he's constantly moving to find pockets of space in which to receive the ball. Gerrard lumbers about, occasionally working up the momentum to have a burst forward, but mostly picking up the ball just off the back four and then whacking in into the attacking third so he doesn't have to run. I suspect the media decided he was playing the 'Pirlo role' merely by virtue of the fact that Gerrard is old and a decent (if over-confident) long-range passer of the ball.

Yup, didn't see too much of the ball, but a couple of very powerful runs, and the pass he clipped in to Fellaini towards the end showed great awareness and technique.

I think Monaco paid just under £40m for JR, making him a fairly unlikely recruit...

We might before the summer is through. He looked very good indeed.

Suarez stayed because it was only Arsenal coming in for him. If a bigger club had tried to trigger that clause, the outcome probably would've been different. As it was, why get the lawyers involved just to finish fourth again? Liverpool keeping Suarez wasn't so much a show of strength from the Liverpool board, as a show of weakness in the market's interest in Suarez with all the controversy he'd attracted at that time.

This happens to any club who find a decent crop of players when they aren't at the top of the Deloitte money list. The great Ajax team of the early 90s was torn apart, the great Leverkusen team of the early 2000s was torn apart, and I think it's a foregone conclusion that the current Atletico team is going to be torn apart, as Dortmund have been over the past two summers. So, if these league winning/CL final contending clubs have been unable to resist when the big beasts come to take their best players/coaches, what on earth gives anyone the idea that we'll be able to resist?

After the start of the premier league, the only clubs to win the title without having a minimum of 8 league titles already in the bag were Blackburn, Chelsea & Man City, and I don't really need to labour the point about what those three clubs had in common at the time of their rise to dominance. Anyway, I'm not disagreeing with you, looking back at league winners and runners up you have to go back to the late 60s and early 70s to find names that aren't still there or there-abouts at the top of the league. All I'm saying is that it's become even more expensive to break into the clique, to the point where in a couple of years you'll probably need to be backed by a sovereign wealth fund from an oil-rich state to compete in the CL.

We can't compete, no one can these days without the assistance of an owner prepared to sink hundreds of millions into the playing squad. Then again, that's been the case pretty much since the advent of the Premier League - when was the last time a club won the premier league (or equivalent) without either being an historically huge club (i.e. previously being a Champion of Europe) or the sudden appearance of an owner prepared to radically outspend everyone else?

Is there a more self-evidently idiotic statistic than this one? If the words themselves only made up 7% of the content of communication, they'd be largely arbitrary, and complex ideas could be communicated primarily through shrugs and grimaces.

Our midfield is just a bit too indecisive. Same story all season, not quite got the balance between retaining possession at all costs, and moving the ball forward. And on a day like today when we seem physically outmatched, the hesitation results in losing cheap possession too close to our own goal. Conservatism isn't always the most secure approach.

Indecisive defending sure, but both of those challenges on Lovren would've been given as fouls on Kaboul or Vertonghen.

Maybe it's just the TV not showing enough of the pitch, but quite often when we play the ball across the back, there is a player in midfield under no more pressure than the CB or FB. Surely even if the pressure is equal on both players, you should always play the more progressive ball, simply because it's better to lose the ball further from your own goal?

Gaston according to the BBC

I hate to break it to you, but £50m over 2 years is peanuts in the modern game, especially when the purchase price of the squad prior to that was pretty much nothing. If you thought we were buying anything other than mid-table security with that level of investment, you were simply mistaken.

Lambert's touch and short passing has been woeful so far. I hope after committing to this opinion, he'll now get an assist.

The article actually makes a point that JRod's 'chance conversion' is pretty rubbish, at only 17%.

It's not the manager's fault that Lallana and JRod are weak finishers.

Don't agree with you at all. Effort dropped to zero after the second goal went in, which was the result not of ineffective pressing, but a basic error by Lovren. Ramirez was wasteful in the last 20 minutes, but he made plenty of challenges throughout the second half and seemed to contribute as much to the fabled press as David did in the first half, with the major difference being that while Ramirez performance was a combination of good and bad (I wont bother to articulate the proportions) David was just bad.

Difference in class unfortunately pretty obvious. Liverpool key players superior in pace, technique & decision-making compared to our key players.

Davis pretty wasteful so far.

I agree about Cork - he wouldn't be in my England squad. superb player for us, but as you say, to win the WC these days you need 'complete' midfielders rather than the water-carriers of old.

I've not seen Mavuba, so I cede to your knowledge there, but my point was mostly that whoever is 4th choice for CM in France is going to be so far behind Cabaye/Pogba/Matuidi that the only way they'll get any game time is if France end up in the third place play-off.

Morgan is an excellent player (though his defensive stats look less impressive now we spend more time with the ball and less time trying to get it back) but if France start the World Cup with a midfield two from Cabaye, Pogba & Matuidi, I think you'd be very hard pressed to argue that he warrants a place above any of those. That leaves one spare, with the remaining squad CM probably just along for the scenery.

Yup, lovely bit of composure and skill to start the move.