We are all Villans now - FA Cup semi-finals

[RobW]

We are all Villans now - FA Cup semi-finals

Oh God, I lost it Mr. Blobby. Then I saw the advertising hoarding with 'piss weak beer', and pissed myself laughing at Brendan's 'fine mist'.

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

We are all Villans now - FA Cup semi-finals

Mumpo wrote: Excellent. BDG does for pictorial football-based humour what Ernest Hemingway did for great literature.

Don't compare BDG with Hemingway. E is tedious crap.

[Sash08]

We are all Villans now - FA Cup semi-finals

Couple of observations re: Sunday:

1. I don't like the way Markovic is so often the fall guy at h/t when Liverpool are poo. Especially, when the game was so obviously passing by Gerrard.

2. The Grealish-Delph-Benteke overload of Liverpool's right flank was obvious from very early on. Rodgers was unable to counter it. Having Lucas would've helped. Once Gerrard was moved deep, Liverpool were f*cked.

3. The Liverpool fans were rather... hmmm... poor. Much anger afterwards about the support going to pot, etc and so on.

[Ray de Galles]

We are all Villans now - FA Cup semi-finals

Did you mean "...when Liverpool are poo"?

[garcia]

We are all Villans now - FA Cup semi-finals

it's four half-time substitutions for markovic now, which is surely a club record for one season. he must be a chilled out sort of guy to put up with that. steven gerrard was substituted at half-time against basel thirteen years ago and still hasn't quite calmed down about it.

i see there are a few stories saying that for now, brendan rodgers is still the man to lead liverpool fc into the future. i imagine that is just for the sake of decorum because right now rodgers is not just a mediocre coach - he might get away with that - he's also a massive pain in the hole.

the thing last month with the two big non-interview interviews was, in my opinion, the defining episode of his time in charge. that showed you what brendan rodgers was all about.

this is a guy who has presided over a spectacular, almighty fuck-up of a season. out of the title race by september. out of the champions league to basel. shamefully surrendering a match at real madrid like they were bryan robson's west brom away to chelsea.

having comprehensively fucked up on all fronts, his team finally gets it together, wins a few games in a row against mediocre opposition, and moves up to fifth in the table. if they beat manchester united and arsenal, they will probably qualify for the champions league again, and in the context of their terrible start that would be an acceptable salvage job.

this is the moment rodgers chooses to invite a couple of big-name sportswriters to hear the inside story of how he personally took the initiative in the resurrection of the club. step by painstaking step he explains the miracle of the mersey. it's a story of coaching genius yes, but also of unique personal resilience. with the club prostrate in the smoking, ashen aftermath of defeat to basel, tender green shoots of recovery were already sprouting from the fertile alluvial soils of rodgers' nile valley-sized coaching brain.

even for him it wasn't easy - command never is. there were long, lonely nights lost in pure thought, like leibniz in his garret, a lonely wanderer in the fog-shrouded outlands of footballing possibility, questing in the eternal twilight for a solution only he believed existed. lonely because he knew he had to do this alone, he knew that where he had to go none could follow, especially not his staff, even to the extent that he had to make his own tea and toast. and through his strength, his courage, indefatigability, eventually came salvation. what if we went three at the back?

by the valedictory tone of these articles you'd swear he'd fucking cured cancer rather than steered the team with the fifth-biggest wage bill in the league back to fifth position. fifth, with the difficult games still to come. maybe he just wanted to be sure he could bask a little while the going was good. but in hindsight, it might have been better to postpone the lap of honour until he'd actually achieved something. rodgers will never learn though, and that's why in the long run he'll never succeed.

[EIM]

We are all Villans now - FA Cup semi-finals

Sounds like a plea for the return of Dalglish, that.

[Ray de Galles]

We are all Villans now - FA Cup semi-finals

Garcia, what were the two interviews? I must have missed them and they sound well worth hunting out.

[G-Man]

We are all Villans now - FA Cup semi-finals

garcia, that was beautifully written.

[garcia]

We are all Villans now - FA Cup semi-finals

cheers g-man -

harry there was this in the mail and this in the times. these came out the day before liverpool lost at home to manchester united.

you can see that both articles, while they include no direct quotes, are very similar (including some identical phrases) and plainly they're both based on the same extensive briefing from a source extremely close to brendan rodgers.

selected highlights

He took an expensive gamble on Balotelli, and lost.

Before signing the former Manchester City and Inter Milan striker he spent three and a half hours with him in his office, explaining both to Balotelli and his agent what would be expected of him.

He talked him through what Rodgers describes as his CORE principles. Commitment, Ownership, Responsibilities, Excellence. He explained in more detail what each one means. How a player had to take ownership of his role and responsibility for his own destiny.

He scribbled a picture of a man with a crown on his head; because everyone is the king of their own destiny. He explained that the application of these four principles was the way to achieve consistency, comparing it to the role of a neuro surgeon whose fifth operation of the day needed to be every bit as good as his first.

But Balotelli wasn’t listening...

The nadir for Rodgers would nevertheless come in Balotelli’s absence. The 3-1 defeat at Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park in late November. Lambert would lead the attack but his team remained desperately poor. Defensively they were awful. Rodgers was starting to come under serious pressure, and he was embarrassed that his team was so far removed from what he felt he represented.

He locked himself away in his office for the next few days, occasionally calling his staff in to discuss what he was thinking but essentially working through the problem on his own. One night he was up at 3am, making himself tea and toast before scribbling down his thoughts.

The plan he came up with needed to be executed in two stages...

...the decision to put Emre Can – a player essentially signed as a midfielder – into his three-man defence one Rodgers felt would address certain flaws that remained at the back.

Now reflecting on a six straight games without conceding a goal, it has proved something of a masterstroke but one that was not as ambitious as some might have thought. When they were scouting Can both Rodgers and his staff had seen the German play in defence; indeed Rodgers had even seen reference to it in Pep Guardiola’s book.

And he is so focused on delivering that elusive first Premier League title for Liverpool that an offer from Manchester City this season would almost certainly be rejected. Only if he thought the title was beyond Liverpool’s reach would he even contemplate leaving.

He dreams of one day managing at a World Cup. Perhaps even for England. But not at 42. Not for another 20 years. Not when he is enjoying the job he has as much as he does.

there's also a line about how he is a student of the game who admires johan cruyff and rinus michels. i mean wtf. "a student of 1960s pop music, he admires the beatles and the rolling stones."

[Janik]

We are all Villans now - FA Cup semi-finals

I would have bolded this bit as well

"Rodgers was starting to come under serious pressure, and he was embarrassed that his team was so far removed from what he felt he represented."

Another WTF?!? I can see why the players might think 'fuck him! Lets get him sacked'.

[Guy Profumo]

We are all Villans now - FA Cup semi-finals

ad hoc wrote: In case anyone missed the games, Big Dave's Gusset has managed to provide a perfect summary here http://www.theguardian.com/football/picture/2015/apr/21/david-squires-on-the-fa-cup-semi-finals?CMP=share_btn_tw

"Not now".

Comedy gold!