Ex-Saints under fire

Two of our players have the rather dubious honour of turning up in a Football365 article, entitled “Five players who make us wonder what they do”.

Lallana is in line for special criticism, and this is before you consider Carragher’s comments about him being a nearly man.

On a similar theme, what is Adam Lallana?

Is he a chance creator? Because he has created them at a slower rate than 84 other Premier League players this season.

Is he a goalscorer? Because he has scored once since December 2014, during a home defeat to Crystal Palace in May.

Is he a tackl… okay, he’s definitely not a tackler.

As far as I can tell, the bedrock of Lallana’s Liverpool career has been his ability to run down a touchline, do a Cruyff turn to stop the ball and then lay it back either to a right-back or central midfielder.

In fairness, he’s got that down to a tee. Just a shame he’ll be 28 by the end of the season and cost £25million.

The departees have done so badly that I’m reminded of the old Titanic / McMenemy joke.

Ouch.

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that’s all fair comment s far as lallana goes. He seems to have got worse since he left us rather than better.

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Crying shame that the pair of them were so blinded by big team cash that they failed to see that staying put would have worked out better for them. Ox should have moved later on but left with dignity at least. Liellana can do one.

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Christ, that really is rather damning, isn’t it.

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I’m surprised, while it is cool to watch the likes of Lovren struggle I expected Lallana to do okay.

Maybe he will win something with them, and along with the money that would justify the move, but I thought he would progress as a player rather than stand still.

Lovren has clearly struggled, I’m not sure what is happening with Clyne, from highlights he seemed to be on the scene everytime they concede, and Chambers isn’t pulling up trees.

Even the quality of Morgan isn’t shining through, but I think he will be okay, despite his manager.

The best hope for improvement is probably with Shaw, IF he can return as the same player who was starting to impress this season - but for that money he should be world class for a decade.

All in all we have done some pretty shrewd selling.

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there’s a lot to be said for being revered at a club and feeling loved. And when you’re a big fish in a small pond that’s going to happen. Lots of players move to bigger clubs and stall /fail. Part of me is sad about that and part of me laughs at their arrogance and greed. Part of the problem is that in todays football these people move for big money so the pressure is on them and there’s a culture of expecting immediate results. Lovren has improved at Liverpool but the damage has been done.

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A lot of truth to that, Fatso. If you search for Lallana’s name on Twitter, the vast majority of it is negative. He’s becoming a proper boo boy and it’s only because the team has so many crap players that he doesn’t catch a lot more shit. Mignolet is also getting some special attention today for having the cheek to sign a five year contract.

Revered here and utterly burned all of his bridges. I don’t think he’s going to have a long Liverpool career, and now that his limitations are all too apparent to the league at large, I don’t think he’ll move to a bigger club. He is now the ultimate cautionary tale for other Saints players considering similar shenanigans.

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Anyone remember Beattie? He was 26 when he went to Everton. I know everton isn’t a ‘big’ club, but it is certainly bigger than the Saints. Here, he was king kiddie, banging in circa 20 goals a season, leading the line. There?

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You would think so wouldn’t you but how much of playing top-flight football is about securing you and your family’s future prosperity. Playing for the love of the game is a thing of the past, along with club loyalty.

he’ll be gone in the summer when Liverpool have their clearout. I would not be surprised if lovren goes as well. Kolo toure will retire/be fucked off. Bogdan will go. And by the look of it, benteke will go as well, but I imagine that lallana is joint favourite with him to leave.

I was on youtube on Sunday looking to see if I could find Adkins’ interview after we won promotion to the Premier. I did find it and but also watched saints fc #flashbacks videos from games from that season. I watched the highlights of the 4-0 win over Coventry and also the 5-2 win over Ipswich. What I was surprised to see was lallana scoring and making goals, I forgot he did that. That said, most of his goals were lucky or shit goalkeeping. Hoovield scored 8 goals that season we went up. Suck on that Virgil!

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Originally posted by @lifeintheslowlane

You would think so wouldn’t you but how much of playing top-flight football is about securing you and your family’s future prosperity. Playing for the love of the game is a thing of the past, along with club loyalty.

True, but I was referring more to the way his career is probably going to dwindle. Barring an incredible run of form, no team is ever going to have the faith that Saints had in him, Saints will never forgive him and his next English club probably won’t be a Champions League one.

Well, let’s not forget that he also had two spells where he didn’t score for 6 months whilst at saints.

Part of being a professional athlete is a rock solid confidence in your own ability.

The reality must be difficult to take when you find yourself at the level where you cannot compete.

Seeing the Title of this thread, I was worried it was some attack on our charity raising former players. Phew!

As it’s about Nivea-Fuck face. My heart bleeds.

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Originally posted by @Fatso

Well, let’s not forget that he also had two spells where he didn’t score for 6 months whilst at saints.

Comes back to what you were talking about earlier; price tag and expectation. While we’ve had our pants pulled down with big money buys like Osvaldo and Ramirez, they’re exceptions. I’m not one of these people that think we overpaid for Shane Long; Hull did not want to sell, so we had to pay a slight premium. With the benefit of hindsight, we’re probably happier with that deal.

The vast majority of our players arrive for relatively modest sums or through the academy, so expectation levels are different. We’re always willing them to adapt or improve. For the majority of moves, fans at Big Club United are asking “why isn’t he better?”

They don’t understand it. “He’s in a better team with better players”. We’d all disagree, of course :lou_sunglasses:

Originally posted by @pap

Two of our players have the rather dubious honour of turning up in a Football365 article, entitled “Five players who make us wonder what they do”.

http://www.football365.com/news/five-players-who-make-us-wonder-what-do-they-do

Lallana is in line for special criticism, and this is before you consider Carragher’s comments about him being a nearly man.

On a similar theme, what is Adam Lallana?

Is he a chance creator? Because he has created them at a slower rate than 84 other Premier League players this season.

Is he a goalscorer? Because he has scored once since December 2014, during a home defeat to Crystal Palace in May.

Is he a tackl… okay, he’s definitely not a tackler.

As far as I can tell, the bedrock of Lallana’s Liverpool career has been his ability to run down a touchline, do a Cruyff turn to stop the ball and then lay it back either to a right-back or central midfielder.

In fairness, he’s got that down to a tee. Just a shame he’ll be 28 by the end of the season and cost £25million.

The departees have done so badly that I’m reminded of the old Titanic / McMenemy joke.

Ouch.

There are only a handful that have made the move and really been great. Shearer, Bale and maybe Walcott.

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Off the top of my head, in the same time period as Shearer: Tim Flowers, Jeff Kenna and Wayne Bridge also did pretty well.

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Lallana has certainly regressed since being at the dippers. Next stop for him will be somewhere like Sunderland.

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Think that should maybe be , ‘‘better players yes, but better team?’’ Its no surprize that we did well the second season up and even last season … because the spirit was so good that second year and alot of players improved together as a unit, and last year, I think we had a bit spirit against adversity - desire to show taht thsoe left could still do it… I do think however, the next set of departures and then the Mane and Vic rumours, we lost our way a bit… we shall see I guess.

I’m probably going to get some stick here, but fuck it - here I go.

I’m not really arsed about players earning money. I don’t really hold it against players moving because they can get their money doubled.

The example I often use is Scott Sinclair. I’m one day older than him. At 23, if a club like City came in and offered to double my money, and pay me £70k p/w or whatever he was offered I’d be a fucking liar if I said that wouldn’t interest me. Of course it would. Heck, a company coming to me now and offering to double my wages would give me something to think about. I think for most people that would be the same.

I think it’s a bit easy to throw around the greedy tag, when it comes to footballers. Not to say that aren’t greedy footballers, of course there are. But even then, if people are willing to throw money at them, why shouldn’t they take it?

The thing that rankles with people like Lallana is the way he handled everything. Kisses the shirt, thumping the badge. Giving interviews just months before leaving “I’m not interested in moving, I want to be the next MLT”, then spitting his dummy out and apparently refusing to play for the club again.

Even players who are solely motivated by money, I don’t have that big an issue with. Someone like Carlos Tevez, for example, who said when he came to England he planned to come here til his late 20’s earn lots of money then go home and finish at Boca. Considering where he came from, I don’t really blame the bloke for that (granted, he did act like a prat on occassion and some of his behaviour is pretty indefensible).

Contrast Adam to Morgan, who for all intents and purposes was one of our own as well, and it’s a different story. I’m sure he took a decent pay bump to go to United. But he isn’t called greedy. After his little mini-tantrum he got his head down and treated the club with respect until the end. Much as we don’t like to admit it, Lallana is probably right in that Loloerpool are more likely to win things and play in Europe. He isn’t a youngster anymore, he’s supposedly at his peak. So, in many ways I understand why he left. The thing that makes me dislike the guy, and enjoy his struggles is the way he went about it. So long may it continue.

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