English Bias

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by Bhaskar Upadhyay

Mr. Hodgson has been the manager of our beloved club for one third of the season now. It’s been a strange season with the highs and lows we have experienced. Mr. Hodgson, in his time as the LFC gaffer, has not impressed many fans and their have been PR gaffes almost every week since the start of the season. I will try and focus on some of mr. Hodgson’s transfers and youth policies that i have observed in the one third season gone by.

The first thing that strikes me is a decidedly more english approach to squad consolidation. Bringing in more english players while this has been partially done to meet the home grown players requirement but there is a definate leaning towards more british players. In this more british approach some of the better foreign players have been given the short stick by Mr. Hodgson. Take the interesting case of Alberto Aquilani, who has been loaned out to Juve when he was ready and fit again to give his best for LFC. There has been till date no logical explanation given by Mr. Hodgson on sending Aquilani on loan to Juve, on top of that juve have an option to purchase him in the summer transfer window at a very cheap price which will most definitely result in a loss to LFC. From whatever i have been able to gather from AA’s interviews he was prepared to stay at LFC till the penultimate day of his loan and after featuring regularly for Juve AA doesn’t want to come back to LFC. was there any logical reason for making such a loan or was it just Mr. Hodgson’s bias towards foreign players.

Another example of Mr. Hodgson’s bias towards foreign player was the virtual freezing out of Emiliano Insua from the squad before being sent on loan to Galatasary, again there was no logical reasoning to the loan move and his replacement is Paul Konchesky an englishman. Other such instances have been the continuous promotion of Jonjo, jay spearing and nathan ecclestone to the first time over one of our most talented youngster Dani Pacheco. In fact he has been asked to play on the right side of the midfield so that he can be accommodated in the first team. To make matters worse he has not seen much action at all in the europa league also. Again yes jonjo is a good player but that still does not justify dani nat being given even one opportunity to prove himself. The other such instances are not giving ryan babel proper opportunities after promising him so and his reportedly fragile relationship with peep rein.

So what do you fellow reds think, does Hodgson have an English bias and is it good or bad for the club?

YNWA

16 Comments

  1. I agree! Dani is definitely more ready than eccleston and jonjo who are no doubt good players. If dani was at arsenal or man utd, he would played a few games by now!

    Even Chelsea are giving kakuta opportunities in the first team now! I hope we don’t lose dani – the youth player of the year nominee.

  2. Erm well AA is sh1te. Babel is sh1te. Insua is sh1te. Pacheco is decent but is a massive ball hog. So if it comes to choosing between English sh1te and foreign sh1te, for quota’s sake I would go with English sh1te too.

  3. I’m tempted to ask Hodgson what happened to good, form players being selected for the XI? That question is profound going by the continous omission of Pacheco, minus any injury, injury history, but continued playing of the English lads. Nothing at all wrong playing the English players, but why not Pacheco or Insua before him?

    Why should LFC lose such talent, Pacheco’s particularly painful and WILL come back to bite us in the arse, while Insua was a homegrown player in the first!

    My chief area of worry with Hodgson is his “upgrading” youth with old journeymen like Konchesky. I don’t doubt Konch’s usefulness to the team. His cross for Maxi’s third against West Ham is a highlight of the season, but he’s more of a backup for Aurelio (when uninjured) and Insua, than a replacement. Honestly.

    We’ve also lost the promise of youth to acquire Konchesky, in total variance with NESV’s policy of youth first. Granted, Konchesky’s signing was before the loss of Dalla Valle and Alex Kacaniklic.

    There seems to be a pro-English bias for Hodgson and some of his decisions seem not based on objectivity e.g. Pacheco’s undisputed, game-changing talent, but on other factors (won’t go as far as spelling out xenophobic bias).

    While lacking more empirical evidence of such lack of objectivity, I would still largely agree with the article’s spirit.

  4. Great Read, You just conveyed what i was thinking for so long. Jonjo gets a break into the first team, when Pacheco does not even get the bench. Sure Roy favors english players :\

  5. Roy needs to step down if he doesn’t then he will be sacked after the Spurs, game i just can’t see us going to Spurs and beating them with Roys away record. Although id love Hiddink to replace him i think he wouldn’t leave his job as Turkey manager and has said he doesn’t want to go back to club football. I recon Reijkaard would be a wise choice, with his style of football similar to that of our very own pass n move style, plus when he was at Barce he gave the youngsters with talent a run in the 1st team, we need to give these youngsters we have a run now to experience 1st team football with the likes of Gerrard, Joe Cole, Carraghers and Torres so that when the older players move on or retire these youngsters can just fit in. Theres no point letting Roy spend the transfer money because everyone knows Roy isnt going to be a longterm manager for the club so why waste the money on his signings then get a new manager who may not like his choice of players so we will have to sell at a loss and pay more for more signings. NESV or UKSV as they are now called need to make a bold decision on the managerial saga, do whats best for the club in the longterm and thats replace Roy……YNWA……SACK ROY BRING, BACK THE JOY

  6. To be fair, Pacheco has been underwhelming when he’s played first team football, he reminds me of N’gog, struggling to find his way in the team. Jonjo looked comfortable from the kick off, and so deserves to be given more chances. I have no doubt Dani will be blooded into the first team, he wouldn’t have been given a better number at the start of the season if Woy didn’t plan to use him this season.

    I’m not convinced on Eccleston, he looks good for the reserves, but again is not comfortable in the first team, a matter of time maybe. I’m not convinced he has what it takes to become a star at LFC, I have no doubt he’ll do well at a decent club, but I don’t think he’ll do it here.

    As for Aquaman leaving, I was gutted at first, I was really looking forward to seeing his performances this season hoping that his injury problems would be behind him, but alas it wasn’t to be, the reported fee we bought him for is between 18 and 20 million, but this reported fee was not paid in full, fees are rarely paid all at once, we’ll probably be breaking even or only making a very slight loss at his sale to Juve, and that is justifiable considering we bought him at a price which was never truly justified, and we’ve brought in Raul Meireles for around the fee that Juve reportedly have the option of buying Aquaman for, and Raul has certainly shown him self to be much more reliable than Alberto. I do think Aquilani, on his day, is a better player, but his days are few and far between and winning the league (Woy’s main goal) isn’t won on the odd days, it’s won by grinding out results all season, something Aquilani never will have been able to do. He’s a fragile little Italian.

    I haven’t lost faith in Woy. We’re 9 points behind the league leaders sure, but we certainly are not out of the running for Top 4 positions. The league’s very tight and we’ve been overly critical of Woy. I believe in him still, I’ll give him the season, to prove himself, it’s the least we can do, I actually think he’s been doing a pretty good job. Rafa would’ve never played Jonjo, Pacheco and Eccleston so much already, and playing Martin Kelly at right back has proven to be an inspirational move, he’s doing very very well, wouldn’t surprise me to see him in the england set up within a couple years at this rate.

    Also Roy’s doing well to keep Jova outta the side, he hasn’t performed and so the youngsters (like Pacheco and Eccleston!) are getting their chance on the left wing, where Jova would’ve been playing under Rafa. I like Jova as a person, he’s trying and undoubtedly has the right mindset, but is yet to prove himself worthy of a spot in the first team, and to the guy’s credit, he knows this, I’d love for him to be a decent player for us, but I can’t see it happening sadly.

    Food for thought.

  7. Aqualini had a very poor season with us and even back in his homeland he isn’t pulling up trees enough though he’s fit and playing all the time. Insua is you’d care to remember wanted out before we hired RH, so he dug his own grave.

    There is however some truth about the academy kids, and most seem to concentrate on on Paceheco, undestandable but totally off the mark. Pacheco has very poor timekeeping, hes late for training and has been punished for it, once his punishment is served and he gets his head back into the game he’ll be considered again.

    The truth bit comes in from elsewhere. Mavinga has actually stated RH has informed them all he wants to promote English talent in the reserves. Also Damien Comolli was recently interviewed and basically said we need more English throughout the club. This isn’t anything new, it’s not something RH dreamt up, its been going on for years and even Benitez was working towards it.

  8. Some truth in what you all say, however Tyler, he hasn’t pkayed pacheo at all. By the way the xenophobia is a fear of foreigners not a dislike. Its an important distiction. That said i fear we will lose Pacheo.

  9. According to the article I can even add something weird,Roy has always a friendly attitude towards SAF but he’s a bit harsh on Rafa. Still I don’t buy this point of view. For me,Roy is a joke, dropping Aquilani who began to shine in the latter stages of last term and replacing him by Poulsen was an insane move. Doing the same with Kontchesky over Insua wasn’t smart either.

    The bias here ain’t domestic players vs foreign ones,it’s Roy’s love children against the other ones.During his long career Roy hasn’t achieved big stuff,and to be honest History won’t remind him as a great man manager either.At LFC he is out his league,he must go.

    But what hurts me more is the fact people are praising him for introducing Shelvey and Spearing,that must be a joke.None of them is a ball chaser nor a box to box player,not to mention their inability to tackle whether smartly or ruthlessly, in one word they’re not Liverpool quality.Send them on loan elsewhere and bring back Aquilani,stop this insanity Roy or leave us alone.LFC are bigger than your ego.

  10. AreH, you are obviously completely unaware how Aquilani is doing in Italy, he has been a revelation they are talking about him as one of the best players so far in Seria this season and he has regained his place in the Italian national team, so stop talking out through your hole.

    Nonsense post by you.

  11. And if I was jovanovic I’d be mightily fucked off being behind babbel, ngog and ecclestone !!! Do one Woy !

  12. Ryan Babel has had enough opportunity over the years to show something, and quite frankly he’s rarely taken the opportunity. He’s not particularly hard working, doesn’t have a good first touch, dribbles adequately but without real threat and is not a particularly great passer or goal scorer. He’ll be 24 at the end of the year and while I believe that there is too much pressure on players to be brilliant from too early an age, for my mind Babel has not made one step of progress since we bought him.

    Pacheco has apparently been out of form and faced some disciplinary issues. He’s also being retrained into a wide midfielder. Those reasons keep him from making a first team appearance at the moment. I don’t agree with the decision to change his position, mostly because I think he’ll offer exactly what all our other ‘wide players’ do but I can’t fault the coaching staff for taking the decision not to play him just now.

    I find the accusation of bias to be somewhat strange. Most of our first team squad were foreign. Gerrard, Carragher and Johnson were our three regular starters out of a possible 18 spots for a match. Obviously if changes were made it was more likely that a foreign player would miss out, and as you say, we do actually need to up the home grown contingent. Cole hasn’t been great but it was hard to pass up a free transfer, and he brought in Konchesky as someone he’d worked with and who could potentially tighten up at the back.

    Kelly is a great prospect. Shelvey is a great prospect. Eccleston is probably a touch below Pacheco in the pecking order but perhaps he’s displaying more in practice and games, both technically and mentally? If we gave both Pacheco and Eccleston a spot, we’d have 3 striker’s sitting on the bench! I’d rather that we had 2 and the rest of the spots were designated for those other positions.

    I liked Insua. I can safely tell you that a big portion of LFC fans have spent the last two years doing nothing but criticize him for defensive liability.
    Aquilani is injury prone and a lightly built player on top of it. He was a poor match for the EPL in the first place and while I’ve never disputed his talent, I do think he’d spend far too much time on the recovery table to be worthwhile.

  13. English manager, English bias and not a whiff of criticism from the English press or English pundits. oh, lots of admiration from English managers. now I know what rafa did wrong, he was not English!!!!

    is combat 18 running football in England?

  14. The quicker that idiot gets the sack the better for all of us and our beloved LFC. He’s the worst manager we could’ve had. Why can’t he just go and be Taggarts assistant at m utd. YNWA

  15. Thank you all for the wonderful response to the article and as was the intention it started a debate on the issue. I would just like to clear a few points though,
    1. All those saying Aquilani’s not good enough just look at wat he is doing in Juve, i admit we bought him at a wrong time and may be at wrong price but to not give him a chance when he is fully fit was criminal on part of Mr. Hodgson.

    2. Dani pacheco has made name for himself playing for spain in central midfield so i see no reason to ask him to change his position and i fully agree he should be punished for his indiscipline but after all the pre season talk about from roy he should have had more chance of playing in the first team or atleast make the bench more often.

    3. Yes the home grown player rule has made it mandatory to have more home grown players in the team and the club through various representatives has made it clear that there will be more british players in the team the point i was making was playing english kids over more talented foreign kinds solely because they are english is Mr. Hodgson guilty of that.

    YNWA ALL

  16. Short answer, no, or at least it’s far too early to tell yet. We’ve currently got one or two talented English youth who have warranted a spot in the side. We also have the likes of the French N’gog getting more time than any of the others.

    You simply cannot jump to a conclusion about English bias based almost entirely on the fact that he isn’t playing one non-English player who you think he should.

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