More clap-trap from Redknapp

Even though I knew it would be infuriating garbage, I couldn’t resist reading Jamie Redknapp’s half-term report on Liverpool on the SKY Sports website. Here it is...

HALF-TERM REPORT: Back in August when we had just seen them get beaten at Man City, Robbie Fowler - who was working for us on Sky Sports that day - turned to me and said the Leeds team he got relegated with was better than Liverpool. They have picked up since then and it doesn't look like they're going to go down, but they're not going to finish top four either. Roy Hodgson will probably be glad events at other clubs have taken them off the back pages, but he's a top manager who just needs to get his own players.

STAR MAN: Steven Gerrard - It always is isn't it? And the fact that he has had a quiet season by his own standards pretty much sums up Liverpool's season so far really. They need him to get better because Fernando Torres looks like he just doesn't want to be there.

NEW YEAR'S NEED: Hodgson just needs to be able to get his own players in and I hope funds are made available in the window. At the moment, too many are leftovers from Rafa Benitez - and too many of them are just not good enough to be at Liverpool Football Club, I'm afraid.”

This 'report' is so unbelievably stupid, it probably doesn’t need comment but because it will make me feel better, I’m going to anyway.

Firstly, Robbie Fowler didn’t get relegated with Leeds – they’d sold him along with all of their best and most of their decent players before being relegated so it’s therefore hard to see how the Leeds team that eventually went down was better than Liverpool's current team. That Liverpool were as bad as they were at City was not down to personnel but the result of foolhardy and outdated tactics that were so bad, Andy Gray thought they were a good idea. Had the manager tried to win the game instead of trying to avoid a 6-0 defeat by only losing 3-0, we might have seen a very different performance and outcome. If anything, Fowler's alleged comment only further disparages the architect of that performance rather than the team itself.

Secondly, “STAR MAN: Steven Gerrard – It always is isn’t it?” Could there be a better example of lazy punditry? In how many games in the last 2 seasons has Gerrard been the ‘star man’? In how many has he even been above average? In this season, I could pick out his second half performances against Man Ure, Napoli and Bolton the other day as being top quality performances. I would also have picked him out as one of the better players away to Birmingham and Burnley last year. Those aside? His recent performance against Wolves and his performance away at Wigan last season were amongst some of the worst I have ever seen by any player in a Liverpool shirt while his selection in central midfield against City this season was a key reason for the abysmal team performance criticised by Redknapp in the first paragraph. Personally, I feel Gerrard has become a player who undermines the team more often than he inspires it.

In fairness, it’s not easy to find other contenders for the title of ‘Star Man’ but, as someone who, unlike Redknapp, has watched every minute of every Liverpool game this and last season, I would vote for Reina and Lucas without hesitation, and probably Kuyt ahead of Gerrard. This season, I’d even go for Meireles and Ngog before him. Some of those players lack Gerrard’s ability but my observations are that they serve the team better and at least give their all constantly rather than just giving the opposition the ball constantly.

Thirdly, the whole final paragraph is just nonsense. Who are these “leftovers from Rafa Benitez” that are “just not good enough to be at Liverpool Football Club”? Reina? Johnson? Carragher? Agger? Skrtel? Kyrgiakos? Gerrard? Lucas? Maxi? Kuyt? Torres? Ngog? Ryan Babel, I will accept but who else of the established first teamers can be labelled too poor, not just for the first XI but to even be at the club? Bear in mind this is the view of a man who, in his time at the club played alongside Torben Piechnik, Neil Ruddock, Nigel Clough, Julian Dicks, Phil Babb, Bjorn Tore Kvarme, Oyvind Leonhardsen and Erik Meijer to name but a few? Surely, Redknapp can’t be comparing the current crop against the standards of the teams he played in so he must be comparing them with the infinitely higher standards of the Benitez teams from 2005 to 2009 that, as a player, he would have struggled to get a place in.

And Poulsen, Konchesky, Aurelio, Brad Jones and Joke Cole were not Benitez leftovers – they were Hodgson’s 'own' players and apparently his own players are what Hodgson needs. Interestingly, Redknapp doesn’t state what Hodgson needs his own players for? To help Dad keep Spurs in the top four or five, perhaps?

Redknapp may have once captained our club (albeit from the treatment table) but I no longer associate him with our club. To me, he is another Paul Merson and I can think of few things worse to say about someone.