Allardyce on... Liverpool

  • by Staff Writer
  • Sunday, 9th December 2012

Big Sam reflects on a game from which his side managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory - and a game that resulted in more injury woes. His post-match press conference exclusively in full...

Sam: I thought we were going to end up with a repeat of the Chelsea game, but perhaps Diame's injury didn't help and was the turning point?

Possibly. For me we had to start the second half the way we finished the first, the way we finished the last 30, 35 minutes. Unfortunately we didn't get to that tempo or that level of quality and started to sit a little bit too deep. I thought we'd seen that out and were going to come strong towards the end like we normally do. Maybe they'd over-extend themselves, we could hit them on the break and maybe get the third [goal].

Momo going off was obviously a blow to the more creative side of our game today. That was lost because he was at the head of most of the attacks that we built. So that was a blow, and then to lose the second goal was a bit of a sickener for us again. At that point I thought "see it out today lads and if it's not going to be, then take the draw and move on". To lose it with a bit of a freaky own goal from Ginge was a little hard to take. It was a bizarre game because I wouldn't have expected five goals today.

Liverpool generally keep it tight and don't concede many, but they don't score many at the other end either - especially when they've lost Suarez who has more than 50 per cent of the goals. You wouldn't expect us to concede three and you wouldn't expect two players who used to be West Ham players to score two goals either, would you? So we've got to take it on the chin.

I think that we've done the best we could and we've played as well as we could. We're disappointed that we haven't got anything from it. More importantly, the biggest disappointment of all is when your most creative player leaves the field with a serious injury - or what looks like a serious injury - on top of all the other injuries we've got at the moment. Today's been even more disappointing because we've lost Mo as well as the game.

What are the signs on his injury?

Not good. It doesn't take a medical expert to know it's a serious hamstring tear when you fall and stop the way he did and the pain that you get from that. I'd expect it to be a Grade 3 in medical terms and that could be anything up to eight, ten or 12 weeks again. We've got far too many of them unfortuantely - not hamstrings but trauma injuries.

Andy Carroll; Yossi Benayoun; Jack Collison; Alou Diarra and now Mo. It's a big blow to us but we'll have to try and continue with what we've got, try and continue our good form and performances and, most importantly, try and continue to get results.

On Diame's injury, every cloud has a silver lining - he won't be passing any medicals in January, will he?

Ha! No, probably not now. Mind you I didn't look at that as a silver lining after it happened; I hadn't thought about that! [laughs]

Or his agent!

Yeah. But I'd sooner have the aggravation of agents, people trying to buy him and him playing for us like he is than do without him, let me tell you that. We've had a really difficult period and whilst we're disappointed that we've lost today, we've picked up some points the last eight games. We've managed to get three points off Chelsea and Newcastle away and we drew here with Man City and Stoke. We played well and might have won that one. So we haven't done too bad in this period with the size of the teams that we've played. Like I said, the most disappointing thing is the injuries that we've collected in this period.

Can you quantify what you're losing with Diame? What sort of a player is he?

For us he's about the start and the build-up of most of the creative side of our game. He'll receive a ball and he'll instinctively know where the opposition player is, turn away from him and get through that barrier of defence that the opposing team put up and then he runs at the back four. He runs at them with pace and ability and that puts then on the backfoot and drives their back four back into their own box. Then it's about the sort of quality we need to find to open the opposition up.

As well as Mo Diame, the service from Matt Jarvis today was key and one of the reasons why we got back in front. Johnson was causing us problems going forward but Matt was causing Liverpool huge problems with his ability and balls into the box which obviously paid dividends for us in the end. So that's what we've lost and what we'll lose for a number of weeks. We'll have to be a bit more dogged and resilient now with the players that we've got having lost that creative side in midfield that we've had from Mo.

I know we're joking about passing medicals but everyone knows about the interest in him. Have you maybe looked to secure him?

We'll he's only got a four-year contract... [laughs] There you go.

But there's a clause in his contract that everyone's talking about?

Well I don't know anything about the clause. Do you?

That's why I'm asking.

Whatever's in his contract, whatever there might be, the most disappointing thing is I'd sooner have that aggravation in January with people trying to get him than lose him for a period of time like eight to 12 weeks. I'm guessing at the moment obviously because I'm not a medical man and the medical lads can't tell. But in my experience - and I had a number of hamstrings myself in my time, so I was quicker than people thought! - when you go down like that you know you've really got one.

That would, for me, be a considerable period of time. You can work as hard as you possibly can and reduce it by maybe seven to ten days or so, but that would be the maximum. We'll wait until it settles down then we'll scan it and find out exactly how big the damage is and move on from there.

We're trying to get the other players back - Yossi Benayoun, Vaz Te, Jack Collison and Alou Diarra who we haven't seen. Andy Carroll as quick as we can now, as well. That's really what the medical staff must focus on - forget about everybody else, just focus on them and get them as fit as we can because we're going to need them.

Are any of them close?

Well Yossi trained yesterday but still felt his knee slightly. George [McCartney] came back yesterday as well so Yossi's probably the closest to starting. Alou Diarra hasn't played a Premier League game yet, he hasn't felt what it's like to play there so that would be difficult for him to go into it in December having come back from a three-month injury lay-off.

To at least have the bodies back and bring them on from the substitutes bench is going to be important to us - and focusing on getting Andy Carroll back as quickly as we can. Jack Collison might be close in the next couple of weeks to actually joining in and starting to be in the squad but he hasn't kicked a ball since being in the play-off Final last year.

And what about Vaz Te?

Another three weeks, I think. Thank you.

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