KY abbreviation for Kentucky
TN abbreviation for Tennessee
My guess.
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Edit: see above @RedOverTheWater. I am just really shitty at coming up with creative names
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Is it about me, Kopstar? Or Mascot?
Oh I have no clue. I like all 3 of you to be honest.
I just wanted to be one of those random posters jumping in mid argument having no idea what the hell Iâm talking about. Think @Redbj talked about us above in the good old fashioned forum arguments.
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Haha, heâs had years of it, pretty sure he was the longest serving TIA member.
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Dude, we Americans donât even know what shape a football is.
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some of us are just better at it than othersâŠ
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shouldnt you be debating the benefits of lateral movement by a trequartista somewhere else?
Soccer balls are round, arenât they?
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We missed a huge opportunity to kick on with the squad the summer we won the CL. Build from a position of strength. The squad was good, and it dominated the first two thirds of the following season before starting to stutter. First 2 thirds of the season we had only dropped 2 points in 26 games. Final 3rd we dropped 18 points in 12 games and were 5th during that period. Part of that was âholidayâ mode after winning the league but not all of it we just ran out of steam. If weâd recruited properly the summer before those new recruits would have been acclimatised into the squad and up and running by then and would have given us more umpth and energy to keep us going for rest of the season. Obviously there are mitigating factors as to why things didnât go so well this summer and winter. Although I still think more could have been done. FSG have decided we should be limited in ways. But they own a ÂŁ2 billion club after injecting less than a quarter of that and some of that was in loans that have been/are being repaid. FSG want the benefit of owning this ever increasing in value club that usually takes very little effort from them then, when itâs most needed, they should be willing to help prod it along.
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Didnât we also lose fans from the stadium in like March last year? So combined with the fact we had won the league it ended up in a series of pre-season friendly level games for us.
Wondering what stats you have to back up your theory that we âran out of steamâ.
Also you say FSG put in little effort into running the club, isnât Mike Gordon a direct FSG owner and is one of our key people in the club? From most articles its suggested he, Klopp, Edwards talk on a daily basis.
A good article on Gordon;
"The 55-year-old Gordon remains based with his family in Boston, where he moved from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as a student and made his name and fortune as a financial investor. Yet his involvement in the day-to-day running of Liverpool is forensic. Gordon speaks with Edwards, the chief executive, Peter Moore, club officials and Klopp on a daily basis.
It is several times a day to Klopp, with whom he has developed a close friendship and working relationship. Contrasting personalities but a meeting of minds. Gordon stayed at Kloppâs home after flying in to seal the managerâs new five-year contract in December. Attempts to do so incognito were derailed when his private jet skidded off the runway at Liverpool John Lennon airport.
Klopp wants lucrative pre-season tours kept to a minimum to maximise what little time is available for a training camp. Thanks to Gordonâs sway with fellow investors in FSG, Klopp gets his way. Not every manager of a global club has that luxury.
The FSG president, the second-largest shareholder after Henry with 12%, insists everyone at Liverpool speak their mind. Less internal politics and paranoia that way, and the club has been riven by both in the past.
It was Gordon who smoothed relations at boardroom level between Liverpool and Southampton following the formerâs aborted move for Van Dijk in the summer of 2017. Klopp, Edwards and Gordon agreed not to sign an alternative central defender despite Southampton refusing to negotiate over their primary target and reporting Liverpool to the Premier League over an alleged illegal approach. Six months on, and communication reopened with St Maryâs, the three were more than happy to meet the ÂŁ75m price for a player who would transform Liverpool."
You might want to think when you say FSG do you mean John Henry who I agree is not involved in the day to day operations of the club.
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Iâm hardly one of their biggest supporters but I find myself defending FSG more and more because this sort of criticism is excessive and with the benefit of hindsight. This unchanged team after winning the CL, steamrolled the league to an unassailable lead. Covid emerges, everything shuts down for months, it wins the league sooner than ever before and the complaint almost a year after is that it needed reinforcing in the summer after all, because it didnât continue a run that was unsustainable in the first place.
People look at current performances and automatically jump to the conclusion that a rebuild is required, that this team is done etc, etc. This team has had everything go against it since pretty much the beginning. In a normal season, it would have wiped the floor with the competition even harder that it did a year ago because this team with Jota and Thiago is actually stronger than ever.
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To be fair, I think the owners have kept their noses out of playing matters and leaving it to the professionals and soâŠthey are professionals when it comes to keeping a business/club financially viableâŠso maybe we should let them do their job. I donât think the owners, together with Klopp and the team, are any less pissed than us when we are not winning.
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I think some people donât understand the concept of building from a position of strength.
Youâre at your current strongest, youâre doing well. Amazing even. Better than ever because youâre at your strongest point.
Our strongest point was after weâd just won the CL. We then didnât strengthen. A year later, after winning the league with that team we did a bit more strengthening to the side but it had limitations based on the pandemic. We addressed some of our long term issues but realistically what did we do this summer thar wasnât at least 12 months overdue?
How long had people been asking for cover at left back, better cover/options in attack after the main 3 and creativity in the middle of the park?
Last summers recruitment was creative in a challenging situation but showed what could have been done all along with backing.
We are a very reactive club. We react to obvious and predictable problems after theyâve manifested and started harming us.
If people donât agree with me thatâs fine but FSG appear to me to hold LFC under extremely tight financial restrictions. In good years thatâs fine but those good years donât seem to then translate to freedom to act in bad years.
All I can say is thank god weâve got Klopp. Maybe 80-90% of the work FSG have done with us has been absolutely fine and that one appoint was magical, stellar work. But make no mistake no other manager could hope to successfully operate under this current way of operating. When Klopp goes we are back to hopeful runs at top 4 finishes unless FSG change their way of working.
God I hope Klopp is here for another 10⊠15 years. I worry for the future.
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I was feeling a little bit down this morning and decided to watch footage of the last two seasons. Tell you what, I had a lump in my throat; Anfield in full voice, Wijnaldum slumping to the ground after the final whistle at Barcelona, the scenes in Madrid, the incredible start to the PL winning again in full cry, the explosion of emotion after Salah scored against UnitedâŠ
This team had it all and it had it all in spades and to top that off they had the fans united in a way they never had been since the 80âs. It was the perfect culmination of years of work and a perfect symbiotic relationship between the team and supporters. Watching all that back it makes you realise how much we actually have lost through Covid. Yes, it might be argued that all teams have fans but City, for example, can play their football in a lab. They simply do not feed off the crowd the way we do.
There is no way, in my opinion, that this team with Thiago, Jota, Tsmikas and an emerging Jones added to the ranks in a normal season does not wipe the floor with everyone again. Some things we can blame the owners on but I donât think anyone has much on them at this point.
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But thatâs the strong point weâve built on. You donât get to the top and go âoh well that was successfulâ you get to the top of the pyramid and you strengthen to keep yourself there. Thatâs the opportunity that we missed the summer before after winning the CL. What we did this summer under difficult circumstances is what should have been done that summer. Then this summer could have been kicking on instead of addressing problems that were at least a couple of years overdue.
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We did sustained and considerable amount of squad building.
If the likes of Matip, Keita (less than 4000 mins), AOC (barely 4500 mins), Shaqiri (slightly over 2000 mins) and Origi (Over 6000 mins) fucked us (no disrespect to them) we would have been fine, better than anyone else.
Not with you on this one bud. Covid was completely unexpected. We were wiping the floor with everyone and had no serious glaring gaps in the squad. Milner, bless his socks, amongst others like Henderson, Wijnalduma and Fabinho provided plenty of depth in various positions even if they did not actually end up being needed in them. The manner our team was put together was almost like a cricket team loaded with Jacques Kallisâ and Andrew Flintoffâs and so any gap that developed in specialist positions could easily be filled and so it proved when we did have injuries (this seasonâs injuries have been anything but normal) as it never broke our stride all that much.
GK - Alisson, Adrian
LB - Robbo, Milner
CB - VVD, Matip, Gomez, Lovren
RB - Trent, Fabinho, Henderson, Milner, Neco
MF - Henderson, Milner, Wijnaldum, Fabinho, Keita, Ox, Jones
Forwards - Mané, Firmino, Salah, Origi, Shaqiri
The versatility of our players makes this virtually a complete squad. We then added to the goalkeepers by keeping Kelleher, gave Robbo a back up, added world class quality to midfield and more up front with the addition of Jota. Keeping only 3 CBâs was a risk, and in hindsight, too much of one but losing all three of our CBâs is just ridiculous but I will give you that and say that this area might have been strengthened. We had just won the League having won the CL, Super Cup and CWC along the way. This team was at the peak of their powers, how exactly can you say we did not strengthen when on top?
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You stole my heart there 
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