MFletcher

Allen cost £15M. It's quite difficult to work out what's happened to him, other than the fact he's starting to be exposed as not being very good.

Our complete inability to defend properly for 90 minutes needs to be solved first. Without a proper defensive foundation, you're fighting a losing battle.

That's my main concern. We went from this new structure to binning it all for Brendan Rodgers. If he turns out to be a bit of a chancer, we're left with nothing. And to be honest, it looks more like it's not going to work than it's going to come good at the minute. Our results this season haven't been good enough, we haven't beaten a decent side in the league all season, we're only got 22 points and we've just been taken apart at Anfield by a crap team after a rather misjudged media statement about finishing second. It's grim.

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He's constantly exposed by the non-existent defence we're supposed to have in front of him.

The quality isn't there in terms of squad depth, but the first XI is better than this. The tactics simply aren't right for the team being put onto the pitch.

Needs to recognise the players don't suit the system and create one to get results this season. Imposing a system on players who can't play it well is a waste of everyone's time. He's trying the footballing equivalent of alchemy and it's not going to work.

Results have to improve. I don't really care about what happens on the pitch to get them. Nice football is something that comes alongside results, not in lieu of it. Big decisions, tactical and personnel, must be made to prevent the season from disintegrating before January. Felt we needed the run before January so that we could go in there, possibly sitting in the top four, and able to say to prospective players "come here, play well and you'll be in the CL next year".

I posted here last night.

Downing and Carroll remain the two big mistakes. Henderson was expensive, but if he's here for ten years then it's worth the money rather than buying someone, selling them and buying someone else three times over in the intervening period. But the shambles that is Downing for £20M and the clear panic buying of Carroll for £35M, effectively squandering every penny of the Torres money and more, overrides every other deal, good or bad, on Comolli's record. You simply can't spend £55M like that and expect to keep your job.

I post here during and after games and prefer to avoid the forum at other times because there's not very much to talk about that hasn't been talked about before. Your opening offensive action of descrying the poster's attendance record and accusing them of "only turning up to whinge" is stale and laughable.

There's a difference between optimism and nonsense. Top two implies we're going to beat one of the Manchester clubs and thus effectively be in a title challenge. You can't say something like that with 22 points from 16 games after only two consecutive wins against crap teams and then go out and do this. It makes us look stupid.

You beat a couple of s*** teams, start talking about the top two and wind up 2-0 down to Villa at home at half-time.

Comolli is clearly a chancer, and he's probably none more harm than good with this attempt to explain away his various failures during his tenure here. The f***ing mug has cost us tens of millions.

Michu scored 15 goals in La Liga last year for a s*** team. He's not really a find for Swansea, although it's an amazing deal to get him for £2M.

I think that's unfair. He clearly wants to do well and will work hard to get there, I just don't know if he will or not. There's just not that sense of 'inevitability'.

I mean he's very clearly learning on the job in the sense that he barely knows how to manage at Premier League level, never mind at a club with this sort of pressure and this sort of profile.

Rodgers might well become as good as Rafa. I don't think he will, but he might. I'd rather he wasn't learning on the job with us though, which he very clearly is.

Are you suggesting I'd be somehow dissatisfied if we finished the season with 88 points? Because I'd be f***ing ecstatic. No-one wants the team to do s*** just so they can "look right", you know.

About as kind a fixture as we could possibly hope for. Southampton are dogs*** really, so I'd expect a comfortable enough win.

I'm happy enough to play Enrique on the wing, but not if it means Stewart Downing at left back. I can't really understand why you f*** up the defence when you have a perfectly serviceable left back playing on the wing ahead of someone who can kindly be described as "not very good".

This is the crux of it. Fourteen league games with 18 goals scored, only three games won and only sixteen points obtained. Sixteen points from fourteen games which leaves us on the same points total as a Norwich team managed by Chris Hughton, three ahead of a dire Aston Villa and three ahead of a Sunderland team who have been dire (and if they win their game in hand they're level with us). We can also cite "big games already played", but we still have to go to Arsenal, Man City and Man Utd in the next few months. And the really blunt truth is that despite talk of needing someone to "put the ball in the net", we have the league's top goalscorer in the team and we'd probably be second bottom without him.

As below. He shouldn't have been the priority.

Lucas was £6.2M though. Not £15M. Fifteen million. f***ing hell.

I don't have a problem with Allen as such. He's an alright player, he'll probably "do a job" for years. The big problem I have with the deal is that he cost £15M and that was fifteen million that meant fifteen million less was available to fill the huge massive f*** off hole we had in the team which needed to be filled with someone who could score some f***ing goals. It's not as if we're only learning this now, we'd known it for a year and it was ignored to buy Joe Allen for fifteen million pounds.