Roy Hodgson’s first match under the watchful eye of Liverpool’s new Director of Football Strategy Damien Comolli is tonight’s Group K Europa League tie against Napoli.
Glen Johnson makes his comeback from injury, meaning Martin Kelly misses out with Jamie Carragher moving back into the centre alongside one of Liverpool’s biggest goal threats this season, Soto Kyrgiakos. Roy’s own signing Paul Konchesky retains his place at left-back.
In midfield the under-fire boss has selected another of his signings, Christian Poulsen, to play alongside academy graduate Jay Spearing. Raul Meireles is likely to start on the right, Milan Jovanovic on the left, with Jonjo Shelvey expected to play off lone striker David Ngog.
With one eye on the upcoming game against Chelsea, Fernando Torres is rested.
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Teams:
Liverpool: Reina, Johnson, Carragher, Kyrgiakos, Konchesky, Poulsen, Spearing, Meireles, Shelvey, Jovanovic, Ngog.
Subs: Hansen, Eccleston, Gerrard, Kelly, Lucas, Skrtel, Wilson.
Napoli: TBC
Another poor first half performance with defensive tactics that had me screaming at the TV! We were sitting too deep in defence and hardly ever closed down the man on the ball. We weren’t playing Barcelona or Real Madrid for pete’s sake. This was a very ordinary Italian team who bossed much of the first half and that was down to our tactics. Poor, Mr Hodgson.
The second half showed how much we should cherish Stevie’s loyalty to this club. He picked up that team single-handledly and gave them the confidence Roy couldn’t. Mr Henry will have that performance imprinted on his mind and the importance of investing in quality players will have been proven to him.
We won despite Roy’s tactics, not because of them.
Bad news for those who want Pellegrini. He has just been appointed Malaga coach. Thats one quality manager gone! Here’s to sitting and waitng for Roy to leave “gracefully”.
Link:
http://www.goal.com/en/news/12/spain/2010/11/04/2199150/manuel-pellegrini-appointed-new-malaga-coach
On the match itself. Ray said it all for me. But I got to add kudos for Lucas on the 3rd goal, His tackle created the chance for Stevie G to produce that lovely chip. This also proves Gerrard is most dangerous playing opposition half in the free-role than in midfield. Let Meireles and Lucas play that role in midfield and allow Gerrard to roam free. But we still lack an “Alonso” like player. It would be great if we had signed either Evar Banega or Javi Martinez whom Rafa wanted ironically since last season.
Pellegrini has offered the Director of Football role at Malaga to LFC’s Eduardo Macia, according to Christian Machowski.
Oh no. Eduardo was responsible for getting players like Pacheco,Ayala and Mavinga if memory serves. I don’t like the way things are going on this end. Has not the 2008 Euro Cup and 2010 World Cup proven that Spain’s talent pool is huge and should be exploited accordingly? Why are we moving away from this?
I hope we don’t loose our youth stars.