Gerard's gaffes

[Rip Van We Go Again]

According to the Daily Mirror, he can't sort out the defence till the end of the season.
He blames O'Neill's zonal marking system for the endless cock ups.

A bit rich that, it's akin to the Tories continually blaming Labour every time they shaft us.

How many more terrible PR gaffes is Houllier going to make?

Is he trying to be the new O'Leary?

[Nev]

DOL was a spitefull egotist who seemed to have developed and extreme dislike of the club that paid his wages.

Ged appears to be a good intentioned but ultimatley ill-equipped manager who would gain more credibility if he kept his mouth shut and concentrated on winning games, or at least trying to.

[WarszaVillan]

It's all getting very worrying. I've tried my best to like Houllier - to move on from the MON era and embrace his new more fluent football. But he continually seems to shoot himself in the foot. We are not better than Man City - but we can beat them in a one off game. We had one of the best defences in the league over the last couple of seasons - now its a shambles but its the fault of the last management team and we can't do anything about it till next season. We are now in a relegation scrap and all the signals coming out of the club are wrong. I've tried Gerard I really have and I'll try again - but your making it real fucking hard to accept you.

[brian green]

Perhaps one of the problems is that Houllier is too proud of his trendy english and says a hundred words when ten would do.   He should take lessons in english from someone like Ferguson who uses his utterances like weapons to achieve the desired effect, usually the silencing of all other views.

Houllier is bound to get rubbished in the Mirror MON's bum hygienist Oliver Holt will see to that.

[Shrek]

I seem to be liking Houllier more more each game.

He has brought loads to the club so far an will sort the defence in the summer. That's good isnt it? It's pretty obvious he has tried to change the defensive methods but it isn't working, so needs to wait till the summer to change the players.

[Risso]

I seem to be liking Houllier more more each game.

He has brought loads to the club so far an will sort the defence in the summer. That's good isnt it?

It would be good if it was true.  The bloke's a clown.

[Mazrim]

He will sort the defence out in the summer. He has to, it's obvious.
And when he does we'll be considerably more effective.

However, the defence needs to get its shit together right now or we'll be in trouble.
I still think we could do with a specialist defensive coach. Set pieces are killing us at the moment. And injuries, of course.

[villarob]

I would of thought the first thing he would have done was get rid of zonal marking.  In previous games the defence have seemed confused as to whether to mark a player or a zone. We should concentrate on it for the next two weeks.

Interestingly on Saturday only Luke Young was a MON player, and that was in a different position. Lame excuse if you ask me.

[Mister E]

He will sort the defence out in the summer. He has to, it's obvious.
And when he does we'll be considerably more effective.

However, the defence needs to get its shit together right now or we'll be in trouble.
I still think we could do with a specialist defensive coach. Set pieces are killing us at the moment. And injuries, of course.

And it's reprehensible that they have not had one to date. This is the one thing that has really lit me up; the fact that for a relatively small cash outlay they could have had a specialist coach for a position that is bleedin' fundamental.
Bear in mind, though, that it is keeper plus defence that needs sorting out: the keeper is the voice in cahrge for corners ... Friedel has not covered himself in glory.

[Merv]

Seems to me our defence performs considerably better when we have our first choice players in there. Last season we practically played Dunne and Collins together right the way through - this season's been a different story. A patched-up defence was always going to be a worry on Saturday, and so it proved.

[Concrete John]

It's not any technical issues with the defence that worries me, although there obviously are some, but the mentality and attitude.  Under MON it was a real 'they shall not pass' approach and that translates no matter who's playing.  We've lost that and become a soft touch, which I blame the manager for.

[Mazrim]

I was suggesting Friedel had had it a few months ago. Unfortunately there's no credible alternative until the summer.
His unwillingness to come off his line is putting pressure on a very young defence and it's quite annoying. Oh well, this is the situation we're in until the summer.

We'll win enough home games from now on and opposition teams won't always score from the few chance they have like poxy Bolton did. We'll be comfortable in midtable come the end of the season, we wont be relegated or even close. Then it's time for Houllier to make sure we dont go into next season letting in so many silly goals.

We need a defender who would rather sell his children into slavery than let a ball come into the box without his bonce on it. He'll also need to be able to play and not hoof it away ad nauseum. Houllier knows these types of player and where to find them.
Then we need an agile keeper who isnt cemented to his line and will come and collect crosses.
A quality left back of course and then see what's happening with Walker.

Do these things and we'll win far more games than we draw or lose and we'll be at the right end of the table again where we should be.

[damon loves JT]

If I could make one suggestion to GH, it would be this: decide *today* who will be playing in the back four in the next game.

Then, have them practice defending corners and free kicks all day, every day.

Bollocks to running. Bollocks to 5-a-side. Do it until they are absolutely crying with boredom, and then keep doing it.

[supertom]

Blaming O Neill, who gave us one of the best defences in the league last season, just makes Houllier look like a blithering fool. He's not had a very good week at all in this regard.

Frankly, I'm fed up with Ged. He's most certainly not gonna take us forward. That's blatantly obvious sadly. We need fresh thinking in the summer, to get the best out of a good set of players. Houllier can certainly spot talent, but he's managerial judgement and motivation seems to be lacking. If he stays, it should be as DOF. Personally though, we should cut our ties.

The tail end of this season is well in the process of fizzling out very disappointingly indeed, which after the 3 previous seasons of always having something to play for, even just Europa, is very uninspiring.

[Bosco81]

If I could make one suggestion to GH, it would be this: decide *today* who will be playing in the back four in the next game.

Then, have them practice defending corners and free kicks all day, every day.

Bollocks to running. Bollocks to 5-a-side. Do it until they are absolutely crying with boredom, and then keep doing it.

People I think we've found our new defensive coach.

Is 2 weeks not long enough to work it out.

Perhaps the defence has been practising against our forwards, but when it comes to playing other teams we're surprised by the fact that other team's forwards actually move, which is foxing us a little.