Unai Emery

[London Villan]

Two fortunate wins at the end of houllier’s season papered over the cracks of some dismal performances.

What about the rest of the top six form after January? And what was fortunate about winning comfortably at Arsenal (fourth) then beating Liverpool (sixth)?

Both were in their final places, couldn’t go up or down a position when we played them from what i remember. It was a very average season with 48 points.

[dave.woodhall]

Two fortunate wins at the end of houllier’s season papered over the cracks of some dismal performances.

What about the rest of the top six form after January? And what was fortunate about winning comfortably at Arsenal (fourth) then beating Liverpool (sixth)?

Both were in their final places, couldn’t go up or down a position when we played them from what i remember. It was a very average season with 48 points.

Arsenal could have finished third, Liverpool could have got into Europe if Spurs had lost. If I could only remember how Spurs got on that day...

[PeterWithesShin]

If Arsenal had beaten us they would have finished 3rd and avoided the CL play-off round.

[paul_e]

As Paul says we had a load of injuries under Houlier. In the 2-2 at home to ManU we had Albrighton, Hogg and Bannan start, and the bench was Lichaj, Lowry, Herd, Osbourne, Johnson and Fonz as another example.

And we finished 9th because we only lost 4 of the last 17, not because we 'jammed' two wins.

I knew there was a game with a bench like that but just couldn't remember which one it was.

There's probably a fair argument that coming in and massively changing the intensity of training to try to increase fitness levels after the season was statred is why we got so many injuries but that also reinforces the idea that our squad were appalling unfit after that summer, and it was a known thing in the league at the time that we were fucked by March and teams could just outrun us, I seem to remember Terry commenting about it at the time.

[London Villan]

Arguably we did better without houllier in the dugout too.

[dave.woodhall]

If Arsenal had beaten us they would have finished 3rd and avoided the CL play-off round.

I think that was the one where they had a protest march outside the ground complaining about their lack of success.

[eamonn]

Arguably we did better without houllier in the dugout too.

You really dislike the dead man!

[Percy McCarthy]

We went from the best team in the country at defending set pieces in MON’s last season, to the worst team in the country at defending set-pieces under GH.

I think the goals conceded from them went from 1 to 28. GH abandoned our successful zonal system, and then when questioned about our disastrous record, just straight up lied and said he didn’t have time to change the way we defended set-pieces so left it the same as the previous season. Much to my annoyance, no journo had the balls to point out this blatant bullshit.

[London Villan]

Arguably we did better without houllier in the dugout too.

You really dislike the dead man!

Well no, but i didn’t rate him as our manager.

One of the first baffling decisions by our incompetent owner, which only got worse.