Glen Johnson.
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Well, it was RM rather than RW, but he did have a few games there.
What those who want to move Magic further forward have yet to explain is why they imagine no previous manager of his has ever played him there for any length of time. Have we not, have we really not had enough over the years of players being picked out of position?
What those who want to move Magic further forward have yet to explain is why they imagine no previous manager of his has ever played him there for any length of time. Have we not, have we really not had enough over the years of players being picked out of position?
I just mean it's mildly surprising in a season when Enrique has been tried on the left wing and Downing at left back and Wisdom at right back and Shelvey as ("false") centre forward, Johnson hasn't been given a run out on the right. As we've got a few RBs at present it didn't seem outrageous to push him forward for once, tell him to enjoy himself in attacking positions and see how he does. No big deal.
Don't know if it applies to Johnson, but the marauding type of fullback often becomes lost when put on the right wing, as they're usually used to running into space on the overlap or running with the ball from deep with teams standing off.
They tend to not know what to do when receiving the ball with with their back to goal and two defenders on them.
Johnson to me is at his best in the attacking sense precisely because he plays as a fullback.
They tend to not know what to do when receiving the ball with with their back to goal and two defenders on them.
Johnson to me is at his best in the attacking sense precisely because he plays as a fullback.
Heh, it's also true that we've had a few managers who've not managed to see the blatantly obvious.
Is there a need for pushing him up to a RWF position though?
He's been very effective as a right back and plays much further up the pitch under Rodgers.
We dont need to push him forward and tbh I think he'd be wasted there compared to how he has been playing this season.
Set up the players in their natural positions, that usually works the best.
Enrique in a forward position was always going to be just a temporary thing.
He's been very effective as a right back and plays much further up the pitch under Rodgers.
We dont need to push him forward and tbh I think he'd be wasted there compared to how he has been playing this season.
Set up the players in their natural positions, that usually works the best.
Enrique in a forward position was always going to be just a temporary thing.
Nobody's attacking you Macca. It's an interesting debate with regards to Johnson, even if it's been repeated a million times!
It's worth saying aswell, he's playing higher up the pitch under Rodgers, and performing better, so moving him forward HAS had an effect. So maybe it's not such a stupid idea after all!
Say's the very man who took years to realise what a cracking player he is.
Respectfully disagree with that. I think his defending is largely very good. Sure, he has his moments - Carra was being buried years ago for the horrendous errors he was making. He went on to be a rock in our run to the CL final.
For mine, Johnson has the one flaw of providing his opponent a yard too much room to put in a cross. Not sure why - maybe he's intent on not being beaten.
Having a shot at him for the Spurs game is a bit much; he was clearly under direction to get forward and pin Bale back. Didn't work in first 20 but Bale was running at express - I think he took the risk and it paid off. Had nought to do with being a poor defender IMO.
I think youre thinking of someone else Ryan. I wanted to sign him before we did for years. Ive ALWAYS loved him as a player and defended him against all comers on here.
Very different to playing as a right winger.
Mark, I don't think I've disagreed as much with one of your posts for a long time, if ever. That's a caricature of the debate about Magic. In addition to what you mention there (which - without meaning to irritate you - is a perfectly tenable argument given that it covers a whole string of different managers), there are also points about fullbacks playing further forward, about our history as a club of tinkering with players' positions and about Magic's defensive play in the first place.
That's because it's not a "fact" in either respect. Johnson's inflated value came about because Portsmouth ramped up the fee and we were willing to pay, besides which he didn't spend a whole season at RM.
It's worth noting that Portsmouth were on the slide that season, he wouldn't have been alone in having a bad game considering he was playing in a poor, struggling side who were shipping goals and eventually finished 14th before going into administration months later.
Just as people seem keen to dismiss the notion of him being tried there, it's seems a bit daft to then dismiss it because it was tried a few years ago for a side that were just above relegation.
They also owed us money, and there was a fear of losing that money altogether due to their financial difficulties. Also, Chelsea wanted him as well.
I agree with whoever talked about some attacking fullbacks needing space in front of them. Dani Alves started at RW in Sevilla when he came over from Brazil and didn't really impress massively. It was only when he got moved to RB due to the emergence of a young Jesus Navas that he began to dominate games.
Johnson is an interesting case though because he looks so adept in the oppositions half. He does a lot of good work in tight spaces so I'm not so sure that he'd struggle at RW at all. I'd quite like to see him tested there - particularly during a run of good form.
Johnson is an interesting case though because he looks so adept in the oppositions half. He does a lot of good work in tight spaces so I'm not so sure that he'd struggle at RW at all. I'd quite like to see him tested there - particularly during a run of good form.
Apologies if it's been posted elsewhere, but I thought this was quite interesting:
“I’m doing a mathematics degree,” he says. “I was good at maths at school but I didn’t really think of anything else but football.”
As he talks he rubs his left wrist. Above it is a tattoo. “Tell me I can’t and I will show you I can,” it reads.
“It was a spur of the moment thing,” he said, shrugging, of the tattoo. “My teachers at school used to say ‘you ain’t going to do anything, you ain’t going to achieve anything’. So I was thinking ‘I’ll show you’.
“Now the last thing they’d be expecting me to do is a maths degree but then until they saw me become a footballer they thought I couldn’t do that either.
"I’m a firm believer that anyone can do anything if they put their minds to it. If you get the opportunity take it – more importantly you have to want to take it.”
Johnson is now slightly embarrassed at the angry tone of the tattoo because he’s far from angry. Another tattoo – “everything happens for a reason” – means more to him.
“I always try and be positive and challenge myself to the limit.”
The Liverpool and England defender is halfway through the second year of his Open University degree, having passed his first year.
“I love the planning and problem solving, equations, working out, for example, how much fuel a plane needs,” Johnson, whose other passions include Formula One and MotoGP — he might one day get involved in the sports — says.
“They have tutorials at the weekend. But, of course, I’m busy at the weekends.”
Johnson does a nice line in humour. At times both self-deprecating and forthright, he is an engaging interviewee and readily offers up his thoughts on what it is like to be a Premier League defender and the criticism he has had, his friendship with Luis Suárez, the social network site Twitter, Chelsea – where he became the first signing of the Roman Abramovich era – Brendan Rodgers and Jose Mourinho.
It helps that Johnson, now 28, is in the form of his life. Suárez has grabbed the goals and the headlines but inside Anfield the consensus is that, so far, Johnson is probably the player of the season.
Now into his fourth campaign at the club, life at Liverpool is good. There is, Johnson says, a real sense of “direction”, of “foundations being put in place to get back to the top” under Rodgers even if he is, astonishingly, the fourth manager he has worked under in just over three years.
Johnson has great belief in him — helped by the fact the two were “friends” from their time at Chelsea together where Rodgers was reserve team coach.
“Coley [Joe Cole] knew him as well and I remember him saying that Brendan would be a Premier League manager one day,” Johnson says. “And I could definitely see that.”
Nevertheless, Liverpool lie in the bottom half in the Premier League table, a position Johnson can barely believe.
“If you got points for performances then we’d probably be top of the league. With a killer instinct we’d have 12, 15 more points.”
Suárez provides some of that killer instinct. Johnson is close to the Uruguayan and fiercely defended him in the Patrice Evra race row. And does so now as he discusses the power of Twitter, which he is on — so that he can “get my point across”.
“All I put on there was that I work with him every day and he’s one of the best lads I get on with that this club and there’s no way he’s a racist,” Johnson says.
“I can speak a bit of Spanish and there are cultural differences. I supported him on Twitter and I’ve supported him every time I’ve spoken about it. It wasn’t good for Luis, his family or, of course, for Patrice Evra. So it’s good it’s over now.”
Although he has not been through anything like the scrutiny Suárez and Evra faced there have been some, frankly, weird as well as irritating, bogus headlines – ‘stolen’ B&Q toilet seats and allegedly lost passports – and also a welter of criticism over the year.
“You have to be mentally strong in most walks of life but football is so opinionated. You can be sitting in the pub and there are 10 people — some will hate you, some will think you are the best in the world. A lot of people want to kill you, want you to fail. It’s the way it is. You have to be thick-skinned.
“You have to agree that the way stories are — a bad story is better than a good story, isn’t it? If someone’s naughty it’s more of a talking point. On the front and back pages you don’t tend to get ‘good’ stories. It’s criticising a manager for taking someone off or saying he’s under pressure of losing his job.”
Johnson is now one of the “senior pros” at Liverpool, something he can, frankly, scarcely believe.
“I’ve got Raheem [Sterling, still just 17] to thank for making me feel old! We were messing about today, playing ‘toros’, piggy in the middle and the two youngest go in the middle.
“It wasn’t that long ago that it was always me but looking around — I was the oldest in that group. That was the first time that had happened. Time goes so fast.”
Indeed Johnson’s mind flicks back to when he was 17, 18 and making his breakthrough at West Ham United – who Liverpool face away on Sunday – only to be sold, after just a handful of appearances, for £6 million to Chelsea.
Abramovich’s Chelsea. And in July 2003 18-year-old right-back Glen Johnson was the Russian billionaire’s first signing.
“No one had a clue,” Johnson says of the subsequent spending spree. “I was going to Chelsea but I didn’t know what would follow.”
He had not wanted to leave West Ham – “it never entered my head” – but only for one specific reason.
“It wasn’t because I didn’t want to go to Chelsea, but I’d worked for eight years, since I was 10, with the one goal. To get in that West Ham first-team and then to leave after just 15 games was a bit, well, premature.”
However, Claudio Ranieri, the then Chelsea manager, loved him.
“Roman came in and wanted to win straight away,” Johnson says. Instead Chelsea finished second — second in the league and in the semi-finals of the Champions League and Ranieri was out, Mourinho in.
“It was harsh but what Mourinho brought to Chelsea was priceless,” Johnson says. “Although it was harsh, Roman produced.”
But Johnson suffered. “When I first went to Chelsea I was playing, it couldn’t be any better and Claudio believed in me. I was learning the game, I was a baby.
"Then Claudio left and Jose brought his players in, which is fair enough, but from there I didn’t really get a fair opportunity. I knew deep down I was good enough to be given a chance but I was never really given that chance. I’d come in and play well – and knew I wouldn’t play the next game.”
He recalls finally getting a small run of matches, performing and then being discarded before a big Champions League tie.
“I just thought ‘what can I do? I’m running into a brick wall every day’. Eventually I just said ‘enough’s enough, I have to go’.
Maybe others might not have said that and sat their contracts out just to say they are at Chelsea. No disrespect to Paulo Ferreira, who’s a lovely guy, but he’s sat there for about six years and played about 10 games and I couldn’t do that.”
Johnson went to Portsmouth, first on loan, then permanently for £4 million and got his career back on track – to such an extent that when it came time for him to leave, Chelsea were one of the bidders.
“I could have gone back. When I left Chelsea I said to myself ‘I’m going to make them want me’. I told myself that just to give myself a bit of motivation. So for them to then offer Portsmouth six times more than what they sold me for two years before was very satisfying.”
He joined Liverpool, for £18 million, in June 2009. Now Johnson’s never been happier.
“I live in a quiet little town, we have some good neighbours and when I’m away from football I don’t talk about football. I will even forget that games are on. I come in and the lads say ‘did you see that game last night?’ and they find it funny that I
didn’t.”
Instead, there is his family, friends – and his studies. Not that he’s lost his passion for the game. Far from it.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love football, I love playing the game, I love playing for Liverpool but sometimes it’s good to switch off and be a normal bloke.”
“I’m doing a mathematics degree,” he says. “I was good at maths at school but I didn’t really think of anything else but football.”
As he talks he rubs his left wrist. Above it is a tattoo. “Tell me I can’t and I will show you I can,” it reads.
“It was a spur of the moment thing,” he said, shrugging, of the tattoo. “My teachers at school used to say ‘you ain’t going to do anything, you ain’t going to achieve anything’. So I was thinking ‘I’ll show you’.
“Now the last thing they’d be expecting me to do is a maths degree but then until they saw me become a footballer they thought I couldn’t do that either.
"I’m a firm believer that anyone can do anything if they put their minds to it. If you get the opportunity take it – more importantly you have to want to take it.”
Johnson is now slightly embarrassed at the angry tone of the tattoo because he’s far from angry. Another tattoo – “everything happens for a reason” – means more to him.
“I always try and be positive and challenge myself to the limit.”
The Liverpool and England defender is halfway through the second year of his Open University degree, having passed his first year.
“I love the planning and problem solving, equations, working out, for example, how much fuel a plane needs,” Johnson, whose other passions include Formula One and MotoGP — he might one day get involved in the sports — says.
“They have tutorials at the weekend. But, of course, I’m busy at the weekends.”
Johnson does a nice line in humour. At times both self-deprecating and forthright, he is an engaging interviewee and readily offers up his thoughts on what it is like to be a Premier League defender and the criticism he has had, his friendship with Luis Suárez, the social network site Twitter, Chelsea – where he became the first signing of the Roman Abramovich era – Brendan Rodgers and Jose Mourinho.
It helps that Johnson, now 28, is in the form of his life. Suárez has grabbed the goals and the headlines but inside Anfield the consensus is that, so far, Johnson is probably the player of the season.
Now into his fourth campaign at the club, life at Liverpool is good. There is, Johnson says, a real sense of “direction”, of “foundations being put in place to get back to the top” under Rodgers even if he is, astonishingly, the fourth manager he has worked under in just over three years.
Johnson has great belief in him — helped by the fact the two were “friends” from their time at Chelsea together where Rodgers was reserve team coach.
“Coley [Joe Cole] knew him as well and I remember him saying that Brendan would be a Premier League manager one day,” Johnson says. “And I could definitely see that.”
Nevertheless, Liverpool lie in the bottom half in the Premier League table, a position Johnson can barely believe.
“If you got points for performances then we’d probably be top of the league. With a killer instinct we’d have 12, 15 more points.”
Suárez provides some of that killer instinct. Johnson is close to the Uruguayan and fiercely defended him in the Patrice Evra race row. And does so now as he discusses the power of Twitter, which he is on — so that he can “get my point across”.
“All I put on there was that I work with him every day and he’s one of the best lads I get on with that this club and there’s no way he’s a racist,” Johnson says.
“I can speak a bit of Spanish and there are cultural differences. I supported him on Twitter and I’ve supported him every time I’ve spoken about it. It wasn’t good for Luis, his family or, of course, for Patrice Evra. So it’s good it’s over now.”
Although he has not been through anything like the scrutiny Suárez and Evra faced there have been some, frankly, weird as well as irritating, bogus headlines – ‘stolen’ B&Q toilet seats and allegedly lost passports – and also a welter of criticism over the year.
“You have to be mentally strong in most walks of life but football is so opinionated. You can be sitting in the pub and there are 10 people — some will hate you, some will think you are the best in the world. A lot of people want to kill you, want you to fail. It’s the way it is. You have to be thick-skinned.
“You have to agree that the way stories are — a bad story is better than a good story, isn’t it? If someone’s naughty it’s more of a talking point. On the front and back pages you don’t tend to get ‘good’ stories. It’s criticising a manager for taking someone off or saying he’s under pressure of losing his job.”
Johnson is now one of the “senior pros” at Liverpool, something he can, frankly, scarcely believe.
“I’ve got Raheem [Sterling, still just 17] to thank for making me feel old! We were messing about today, playing ‘toros’, piggy in the middle and the two youngest go in the middle.
“It wasn’t that long ago that it was always me but looking around — I was the oldest in that group. That was the first time that had happened. Time goes so fast.”
Indeed Johnson’s mind flicks back to when he was 17, 18 and making his breakthrough at West Ham United – who Liverpool face away on Sunday – only to be sold, after just a handful of appearances, for £6 million to Chelsea.
Abramovich’s Chelsea. And in July 2003 18-year-old right-back Glen Johnson was the Russian billionaire’s first signing.
“No one had a clue,” Johnson says of the subsequent spending spree. “I was going to Chelsea but I didn’t know what would follow.”
He had not wanted to leave West Ham – “it never entered my head” – but only for one specific reason.
“It wasn’t because I didn’t want to go to Chelsea, but I’d worked for eight years, since I was 10, with the one goal. To get in that West Ham first-team and then to leave after just 15 games was a bit, well, premature.”
However, Claudio Ranieri, the then Chelsea manager, loved him.
“Roman came in and wanted to win straight away,” Johnson says. Instead Chelsea finished second — second in the league and in the semi-finals of the Champions League and Ranieri was out, Mourinho in.
“It was harsh but what Mourinho brought to Chelsea was priceless,” Johnson says. “Although it was harsh, Roman produced.”
But Johnson suffered. “When I first went to Chelsea I was playing, it couldn’t be any better and Claudio believed in me. I was learning the game, I was a baby.
"Then Claudio left and Jose brought his players in, which is fair enough, but from there I didn’t really get a fair opportunity. I knew deep down I was good enough to be given a chance but I was never really given that chance. I’d come in and play well – and knew I wouldn’t play the next game.”
He recalls finally getting a small run of matches, performing and then being discarded before a big Champions League tie.
“I just thought ‘what can I do? I’m running into a brick wall every day’. Eventually I just said ‘enough’s enough, I have to go’.
Maybe others might not have said that and sat their contracts out just to say they are at Chelsea. No disrespect to Paulo Ferreira, who’s a lovely guy, but he’s sat there for about six years and played about 10 games and I couldn’t do that.”
Johnson went to Portsmouth, first on loan, then permanently for £4 million and got his career back on track – to such an extent that when it came time for him to leave, Chelsea were one of the bidders.
“I could have gone back. When I left Chelsea I said to myself ‘I’m going to make them want me’. I told myself that just to give myself a bit of motivation. So for them to then offer Portsmouth six times more than what they sold me for two years before was very satisfying.”
He joined Liverpool, for £18 million, in June 2009. Now Johnson’s never been happier.
“I live in a quiet little town, we have some good neighbours and when I’m away from football I don’t talk about football. I will even forget that games are on. I come in and the lads say ‘did you see that game last night?’ and they find it funny that I
didn’t.”
Instead, there is his family, friends – and his studies. Not that he’s lost his passion for the game. Far from it.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love football, I love playing the game, I love playing for Liverpool but sometimes it’s good to switch off and be a normal bloke.”
Apologies if this has been posted elsewhere, but I thnk Glen is the best RB in the PL and Im so delighted he's ours.
He's so hunky too.
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