Liverpool Banter 4

08 Jan 2026 18:41:17
{Ed's Note - Ed001 has posted a new article entitled, Matchday 20 - Quick Round Up

09 Jan 2026 05:16:44
That's for the round up Ed. Much appreciated.

08 Jan 2026 17:32:35
ED001, I was talking to my mates about players who were good enough but for some reason that never did make the grade at Liverpool. But remember Adam Hamill, I seen him play and he had plenty of skill n was quick, seemed to be a knocker to play for us .

Do you know why it never happened, I saw his stats of who he'd played for afterwards but nothing looked like he was the player who id thought he'd be.

{Ed001's Note - he wasn't very good mate. Was fine at youth level, but couldn't make the step up.}

08 Jan 2026 18:04:23
Yeah, I remember a bit of buzz around him. If football is at all like cricket, there are lots of young players with innate talent and promise - but few of them have that other-wordly drive and self-belief to make the step up, and the application to keep improving every day.

This is by no means a criticism of those who don't "make it". I just think elite sportsmen/ women are more obsessively driven than most mortals.

I do also think sports science has some way to go in handling young players. Too many pick up a destructive series of injuries when playing in their late teens and early 20s. Robbie, Owen and even Heskey saw their fitness issues hobble their careers way too early on.

We got lucky with Stevie G. Maybe he played less games as a teen for us?

08 Jan 2026 18:06:38
Thats when I watched him . he looked a lot better than most, just shows you the difference in the step up between youth n first team . did he have a attitude or fall out with people aswel.

{Ed001's Note - there is a huge difference. He just didn't have that will or desire to succeed that you need to keep driving you on. It often works like that when they stand out at any level, they can lose their way as they are better than their peers and lose their targets to better. Often players get their drive from trying to beat someone else, whether it be the player currently occupying the position they want or an opponent. He just seemed to think he was there and ready but still had a lot to do.}

08 Jan 2026 18:40:02
ED001, shame really, I get what you mean with the drive and desire, Jordan Henderson and James Milner are the perfect examples of that. thanks for the feedback Ed.

{Ed001's Note - Michael Jordan is probably the best example though. As he said in that documentary about himself, he would literally make up reasons in his head to start a beef with an opponent to drive himself on. That is another level of competitiveness.}

08 Jan 2026 18:58:45
A guy I knew was genuinely a brilliant young player. He joined the youth team at a top League 1, then Premiership club at the time. He spent a couple of days there with someone who went on to become one of our best 90s midfielders, and very quickly realised he could not compete with that singular vision, and drive to succeed.

These guys are just on a different level. Personally, I think Man U has put too much faith in youth players who show the talent, but not the application.

08 Jan 2026 19:01:43
They recently asked MJ if his Bulls would beat the current LA Lakers. Jordan's response was that the Bulls would win by a few points. When pressed on why a "few points", he said, "because we're in our 60s now. " 🤣. Born winner.

08 Jan 2026 19:05:03
It's also why most top sports players are not easy people to get on with: in normal life, stubbornness is a nasty personal quality, but it's a key factor in sporting success.

08 Jan 2026 19:17:57
Any other past promising Liverpool players that stand out? I remember watching Richie Partridge and Jordan Rossiter and thought they'll make it but never did unfortunately.

08 Jan 2026 19:20:09
As a youngster I played high level cricket. I was captaining the mens county team when I was 15. I was approached by the England setup and asked if I would come train at the academy, at which point I said no. I then discovered going out with mates and girls!
I think I had so much pressure and expectation at such a young age I ended up just getting fed up with it all.


Do I regret it, absolutely! But never mind, still had a good innings so far!

{Ed025's Note - love it Stuie..

08 Jan 2026 20:00:33
I know Adams brother, Leigh, very well.

08 Jan 2026 22:12:00
I know his brother Mark extremely well. The force is strong in him!

08 Jan 2026 22:46:50
Love it S2 😂.

08 Jan 2026 23:15:57
From my experience in sport younger siblings often make it, as they spend their lives battling against a rival with a size, strength and maturity advantage, they learn to win against the odds.

09 Jan 2026 00:36:48
I think the player I was genuinely most excited about for the longest time was Harry Wilson. Ripped up the youth leagues and is currently showing his potential. I know he might not ever have been top level, but I love seeing great players come through the ranks.

08 Jan 2026 16:58:41
Mane of Wolves looks like one who's going to be commanding a ridiculous fee at some point.

{Ed025's Note - thats MOTD fever Bob, hes only starting out just yet mate and while he has been quite impressive he is still very young, a lot of things can happen to a lad of his age...like birds, hanger on mates and booze...well it did for me.. :)

08 Jan 2026 17:51:44
The fact his surname is Mane is a big plus.

08 Jan 2026 18:05:27
I'm always wary of signing a young winger who skins us in a game. Remember Mark Kennedy?

08 Jan 2026 19:05:24
Thought he looked miles away against us recently. Never passed the ball and kept losing it trying to beat his man.

Obviously very young a plenty of room for growth, but I saw nothing exciting personally.

08 Jan 2026 20:51:07
Kroupi of Bournemouth?

08 Jan 2026 22:07:17
Kroupi is very good still a baby but I honestly think he will be a great player in time.

08 Jan 2026 16:13:11
Have a feeling we win tonight to throw the cat amongst the pigeons.

Be hilarious if Arsenal still manage to finish second in a one horse race.

08 Jan 2026 16:52:21
Fingers crossed mate.

08 Jan 2026 17:00:57
I've seen stranger things in football.
Wouldn't be surprised at all to see Arsenal bottle it.

08 Jan 2026 17:05:47
It kind of would make sense for us to utterly thump Arsenal, then go and lose the two following games, against Barnsley then Burnley.

We're having that kind of season it seems.

08 Jan 2026 17:28:59
We don't even have a Centre Forward do we?

It'll be like 99% of all our other games this season. Absolutely Boring.

08 Jan 2026 17:41:01
I can see Arsenal scoring within the first five minutes.
Hope I'm wrong because if they do we will be in serious trouble.

08 Jan 2026 17:46:27
A performance would be nice. thump arsenal though. not so sure.

08 Jan 2026 17:51:23
We should have another bore fest and then win by a controversial goal which should have been ruled out by VAR, but didn't.

It will be so much fun if that happened!

08 Jan 2026 19:10:53
I've seen posts like this go tits up too many times this season to have any hope in this being the case, the best we can hope for imo is a narrow loss 2-1 or 1-0, otherwise it can be embarrassing, personally think it'll end 3-1, with them dominating us for large parts.

08 Jan 2026 16:12:22
Ned/ Victor any info on Nico Sch now Bayern are out the equation?

08 Jan 2026 16:49:47
Great ball carrying player, decent passing range too, a unit.

08 Jan 2026 14:13:55
First Ndukwe (17) from Vienna,
then Adekoya (19) from Burney (although he is a scouser)
and now it looks like possibly Ndiaye (18) from Amitie.

All young CBs for the U21s. Clearly we don't have a lot of faith in what we have there at the moment. All we need now is a similar approach to the first team CB setup.

08 Jan 2026 17:00:22
And we'll still end up signing somebody else who is 18 right now for 75million from a redbull when they are 24.

08 Jan 2026 12:55:20
Scumbag Coote avoids a red card.

08 Jan 2026 13:09:05
It's absolutely disgusting, but nothing surprises me anymore with this shameful so called justice system. There is no punishment too severe for sick animals like Coote.

08 Jan 2026 14:00:12
I'm sure he claimed it was Klopp's fault he had that grot on his laptop.

08 Jan 2026 14:04:00
Funny how the law doesn't apply to those who have money.

No justice in justice. Just injustice.

08 Jan 2026 17:02:14
Not sure he's got any money to be honest. I remember seeing he was destitute and working for just eat or something like that recently.
Shame eh.

08 Jan 2026 17:32:25
The law in this country is as corrupt as him.

Protects monsters. And locks others up for Facebook comments.

08 Jan 2026 12:18:39
Looks like Bournemouth have unearthed another diamond in 19 year old Eli Junior Kroupi who now has seven goals in only seven league starts, we'll probably be chasing his signature in a couple of years time.

08 Jan 2026 13:05:09
He looks a special talent indeed, he's only started 7 games and bagged 7 goals, first teenager to do it since Dele Alli, hopefully his career doesn't go that way.

08 Jan 2026 15:04:15
Watched his dad (Elie Kroupi) play in French second division during my time living in the country. Pretty good player.

Read an article about him and his dad advised him to go to B'mouth as a youngster even tho, Elie Junior he had better offers. Seems to be a good decision as he is getting game time and proving himself.

08 Jan 2026 12:10:56
Semeymo £62 million trick missed in all fairness him and Geuhi would have made a huge difference to that 1st 11 ah well hopefully we get a CB in before the window closes 🤞.

08 Jan 2026 13:12:13
Doubt we'll be signing a centre back either. We're well and truly in limp home mode.

08 Jan 2026 15:05:52
@NOT, Im not even sure if we wanted him for real cos based on the info out there, Slot and Hughes had disagreements about signing Semenyo who actually wanted to come to us, really.

08 Jan 2026 17:37:03
Not sure I'd be paying £40 million for Guehi, when we could potentially get him for nothing in the summer.

08 Jan 2026 11:43:25
So I saw the incident with Frank drinking from an Arsenhole cup.

Whilst I see the funny side, I also wonder how it was possible that the manager of Spurs, is totally oblivious to the fact that he is drinking from an Arsenhole cup.

The fans must be livid. and rightly so given the rivalry.

08 Jan 2026 12:58:29
Surely Spurs fans aren't that petty, it's just a cup.

08 Jan 2026 13:44:29
But they are though AAR91. All football fans are.

They want unwavering loyalty from all players, managers, coaches, owners whilst they slag them all off on social media and ask for them to be replaced.

I agree, the cup shouldn't matter but it's a huge cock up by Frank given the form of the team. He doesn't want to give the fans any more excuses to dislike him and drinking from an Arsenal cup will wind some of them up.

If they were top of the league they'd all laugh it off. Football fans are fickle that way.

08 Jan 2026 14:06:17
To be fair, if we saw Slot drinking from an Everton or United cup people wouldn't be very happy and it'd go mental on here. I agree, it's just a cup lol but I understand why people would be pee'd off about it.

08 Jan 2026 14:33:33
Frank has already come out and said along the lines of Arsenal were the last team in the away dressing room.

One of his team made him an espresso before the pitch walk as they always do and just used a cup which was available. Turns out Arsenal had left some in there.

He gets the issue but it is not his biggest issue right now. Spurs fans need not make more of it that it is.

08 Jan 2026 15:06:56
JLC, no way. He did that? The guy is really trying to get his fans' bad side.

08 Jan 2026 15:57:16
Out of all the things going on in the world, if any spurs fan has any reaction to that other then "meh" then they need to get their heads checked.
If Slot was drinking out of an Everton mug I'd laugh and assume someone's played a joke on him or there's been a mix up.

08 Jan 2026 17:07:02
It's a cup, grow up.

08 Jan 2026 17:39:49
When Ronald Koeman was manager of Everton, he had a red decorations on his Christmas tree and the blue noses lost the plot, saying his tree should be blue. petty I know but we're still tribal.

08 Jan 2026 18:31:11
He's clearly been stitched up by whoever greets the opposing manager with coffee at Bournemouth.

08 Jan 2026 19:58:55
It's just a storm in a teacup.

08 Jan 2026 11:37:09
We signed Tommy Hilfiger up with the club today. The ITK's never mentioned him previously!

08 Jan 2026 12:49:05
Endo, do you reckon he'll figure in the team.

08 Jan 2026 12:59:52
He might fit in somewhere.

08 Jan 2026 15:07:36
Will we leave Adidas and have "Tommy" do our kits now?

08 Jan 2026 10:00:13
Mad how we are attempting to
Go through the season with two fit CBs

Two players that change this team are Guehi and Semenyo, both better than Konate and then gakpo.

The quicker hughes and slot leave the better.

08 Jan 2026 10:10:55
Maybe just maybe Semenyo prefers city.

08 Jan 2026 10:24:34
Well we started with four, one injury prone and the other young lad injured. So you aren't entirely correct but we do need another for sure 👍.

08 Jan 2026 10:50:44
We have options at CB but Slot is just unwilling to use his squad options. Gomez and Endo barely get a sniff no matter how bad Konate's performances get. Endo is injured now and not even an option. The injury to Leoni was unfortunate but we went into this season with 4 CB's, Endo who has played more games at CB in his career than he has anywhere else and a youth academy.

Lucky is actually standing out with the u21's as far too good for that level, and Slot's still refusing to give any chances to him. United gave Heaven a go (same age as Lucky) and he outperformed all their senior players. There is absolutely no excuse not to give Lucky his chance. And I don't just mean in a Cup game where there's 10 other changes to the team and he's basically thrown to the wolves. Slot seems to have no idea how to integrate squad or youth players, he plays them in a team where the whole side is changed and then seemingly decides they're all not good enough when they fail to gel instantly. On the outside looking in, it appears as though he has a core 14 or 15 players who he relies on to play nearly every minute of every game, and to try and make that possible he has them playing at half pace so they don't get over worked. It's backfiring though because now his core group are dropping like flies with injuries because they're not fit enough and the squad players aren't match fit either because they never get a kick. We got away with it the first 6-8 months of Slot's tenure because the players were still fit from the previous regime.

It would've been nice to replace Konate in the summer but we didn't need an extra CB (again, we had 4 senior CB's, plus the academy and Endo as a multi-tool) . The Leoni injury was unfortunate and it should now accelerate our plans to replace Konate as a priority this January before he actually leaves. But we're not short at CB numbers wise, we're just lacking a real top quality starter to play with Virgil. On top of that Slot's refusal to utilise Gomez, Endo and Lucky (and theseason ending injury to Leoni to be fair) has been an issue as Konate has no pressure on his place in the team and he knows it.

Gomez, Leoni and Endo as the back up options was not a problem for me going into the season. Going forward, maybe Bajcetic can phase out Endo as the versatile CM/ CB option going forward or someone else from the academy might (Ayman is also this mould of player) . I also think Lucky could phase out Gomez as he's a CB who can also play RB. Replacing Konate with a starter is the priority and then next summer or January we should start to think about the long term replacement for Virgil, or whether we think Virgil can play beyond the end of this current contract as a starter. I don't think you need 4 CB's of equal quality. It isn't a position you should rotate. Only in the event of a form or injury crisis should you need to turn to back up CB's.

To summarise, the problem (in my opinion) is that Slot's not turned to the options he has during the form crisis. He's just let Konate fester and stink the place out.

08 Jan 2026 11:07:48
What's with some fans, who think Liverpool has a bottomless money pit, wanting this player and that player. Don't they realise how much was paid out in the summer for the players brought in. We all know what is needed, but I doubt we will get then before the summer.

08 Jan 2026 11:10:20
We just have to get on with it as much as some of us don't like it. Just take a mental note of who said it's fine it's a transitional season for future reference.

08 Jan 2026 11:35:45
It's a bit worrying to think we have had only 2 fit centre backs all season and we look
No closer to signing one.

08 Jan 2026 12:01:25
Who says we won't go in for Guehi towards the end of the window when palace realise the bluff of £40m has been called? Gomez for me should have been gone outa the club two years ago. Not good or robust enough, already been injured a couple of times this season.

Im all for the academy players getting chances but unless Lucky has improved immeasurably since the last time i seen him he is not good enough at this stage in his career.

08 Jan 2026 13:16:20
We've two very injury prone centre backs, both of whom are out of form, one long term injury in Leoni and Van Dijk as our only reliable one. I don't want to hear nonsense about midfielders playing there as it's always a disaster.

There's no one at under 23 remotely capable of stepping up. This is the thing that may absolutely cost us a champions league place.

08 Jan 2026 14:41:04
Guehi is no better than Konate. Guehi will also struggle badly in a defense setup like ours.

08 Jan 2026 15:11:05
Thiagos Mate, change what team? The team that is playing a crap system to the point of putting many of the fans to sleep or checking their Instagram? Mate, it doesn't matter who we have or sign, the way we play is paralysing the team as a whole. Any player coming in will become paralysed as well, btw.

Change the system to one that suits the players we have (and sign) and maybe we can start seeing things change. Till then? No individual player is coming to change anything here, Im sorry.