By Chris Rowland and Daniel Rhodes.
W/c Monday April 6th 2015.
Welcome to our weekly round-up, a diary of news and events on the site, matters relating to LFC and the world of football generally.
The Week in Football – Liverpool FC:
Monday:
The Mirror claim Brendan Rodgers is facing a dressing-room crisis after accusing several players of not playing for him. The Reds were thrashed 4-1 by Arsenal on Saturday, leaving them with a difficult task to finish in the Premier League top four.
But Rodgers insisted there was nothing out of the ordinary in the post-match debrief, as posted by Chardo 34 here:
We have lots of meetings here in terms of analysing performance and it was no different to a whole host of meetings we have all year.
“Those meetings helped us recover from the bad start we had to win 10 games out of 13.
It was nothing really; it was just analysing performance, analysing where we are at and then feeding forward to the players.
With seven games to go and an FA Cup quarter-final the objectives we can clearly achieve between now and the end of the season.
It is just unfortunate something else was made up.
And Rodgers defended the “commitment and focus” of his players after Saturday’s defeat at Arsenal here (BBC Sport video interview).
“The team might be short of certain elements but in terms of commitment and focus, it’s pretty clear.”
“After the game I gave an answer which was logical in terms of the difficulty we have but it is not certainly a mindset,” he said.
“Our attitude is to go right to the end. We would have to win our seven games but it is certainly something we will go into in order to do that.”
And Rodgers says Wednesday’s FA Cup quarter-final replay against Blackburn provides the perfect opportunity for Liverpool to get back to winning ways.
“It’s important to have a game quickly when you lose,” he said. “The group’s very committed to winning this trophy.
But Rodgers did concede that Liverpool will struggle to attract big names in the summer after giving up on Champions League qualification. (Daily Telegraph)
“Liverpool is a phenomenal club players want to play for, but players want to play at the top level,” said Rodgers.
“If you are not in the Champions League it makes it difficult for you.”
Again from the Daily Telegraph: Chelsea are on course to spoil Steven Gerrard‘s farewell season at Liverpool by clinching the Premier League title against the Reds at Stamford Bridge.
What bearing Chelsea clinching the title in their match against us would have on Steven Gerard is not exactly clear. And how does the Telegraph know all the results between now and then that would lead to that conclusion anyway? But if you click on the link there’s barely anything to justify that line above, other than a story about Mourinho claiming five more wins will seal the title – and their fifth game from now is Liverpool. No mention of Gerrard at all.
So we must conclude that once again the muck-raking comes from BBC Sport Salford, which is carrying the ‘story’ in its Gossip pages.
Philippe Coutinho says that the pursuit of FA Cup glory is now all the more important for Liverpool. (LiverpoolFC.com):
“Winning the cup would save our season,” the Reds’ No.10 commented. “It is very important for us to have that as an objective.
“We have to pick ourselves up after what happened against Arsenal to get the results that we need. We want to be in the Champions League. That is our primary objective. We have seven games left and we have to see what happens.”
Tuesday:
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