Liverpool FC Forum

[Penguins]

There comes a point where you have to say WE HAVE SPENT MORE THAN THE MANCS NET since Rafa took over. That was 6 fecking years ago. In twenty fecking years are you still going to be moaning that the mancs outspent us in the year 2000 ?

We finished 3 points behind them last year we are 17 points behind them now. That is not because they have spent a fortune in 2000 its because our team has not played to the standard it should be able to. That is because Rafa has not got the best out of our players...... not because the mancs have spent £300million this fecking year, last fecking year ot 10 fecking years ago.

C'mon. We were so damn lucky last season, if the team had participated in a lottery they had won every single price.
How many last minute winners?
Record vs top 3?
Red cards in our favour?

We have had none of that luck this season.
Sell Torres like Manure did Ronaldo and our net spend would be much less than Manure.

Look at the cost of their starting lineup compared to our ffs.
Just their 2 strikers cost around 60 MILLION!

[account deleted by request]

So we were cr@p and lucky to win the CL, we were cr@p and lucky to come second last season ...... what the feck are we still doing with the same manager then? The only time he has done anything he was fecking lucky!

Sell Torres like Manure did Ronaldo and our net spend would be much less than Manure.

Yeah and we would be fighting for 10 or 11th place now.

[Penguins]

So we were cr@p and lucky to win the CL, we were cr@p and lucky to come second last season ...... what the feck are we still doing with the same manager then? The only time he has done anything he was fecking lucky!

Sell Torres like Manure did Ronaldo and our net spend would be much less than Manure.

Yeah and we would be fighting for 10 or 11th place now.

But that is exactly the difference.

They sell Ronaldo and have still Rooney, Berbatov

We sell Torres and we still have...... jack ****


I wasn't saying that. But what would you say would best reflect the quality of a squad?
Getting 5th place after a league campaign of 38 games or winning a cup competition where 1 result in a certain game makes all the difference?

And you really think it is normal to get 10 red cards in you favour?
Or score 10 goals in extra time or get 14 points vs the top 3?
Those things are exceptions and will never happen regularly.

If we had the same record this season vs the top 3 as last season the difference isn't that big anymore.

[shawnk]

you know what... I give up on this place... I don't even care if Rafa walks or gets sacked and we get a new manager anymore... let's just see what this new manager can do with the current squad under our current situation next season, shall we?

I am sure that whoever we get (even fat sam) will do better in the league than we have achieved this season. Heimdall on a bad day could have got more out of this squad in the league mate 

The problem is not can we improve (because I have no doubts that we can), the problem is how much will our rivals improve BECAUSE they have CL FOOTBALL the money it generates and the prestige it brings to attract better players.

and our rivals improve because they can spend money... we have to look for new investors/ buyers, refinancing the loan or whatever that's happening. The owners have really screwed us big time... not only have they not provided the funds, they are now only interested to make a profit by the sale of our club... God knows what kind of new owners we will end up with... so yeah please go ahead and practice blaming the manager because you guys will be doing that alot from now on for years to come...

How much did the mancs spend this season?

How much did Arsenal spend this season ?

How much did Chelsea spend this season?

They are still all up there challenging, we spent more NET as all the rafapologists seem to want to talk about, than the Mancs or Arsenal. 

Chelsea bought one player
The mancs lost Ronaldo and Tevez and replaced them with a winger off Wigan and a freeby.

Arsenal lost their star striker and Toure

We lost Alonso and Arbeloa, replaced them with a £20million  player and a £18million player ...... and we are now 15 points BEHIND Arsenal, a team we finished 14 points INFRONT of last season.  Thats a 29 point swing in one season! Feck all to do with money and ALL to do with the manager not getting the best out of the team.

Nothing to do with the manager my ar$e. When Hicks or Gillett start picking the team, training them and  deciding on the tactics I will blame them ..... until then I blame the manager.

The fecking truth is that its not Citeh/Villa/Spurs that have come up to our level, but that we have slipped down to their level.

Truth

[parchpea]

Its ironic that it is only the flakey nature of the situation at Liverpool that has kept Benitez in a job. Had the club been on firmer ground there would have been no problem getting him out of there and recruting someone else. Though he is fond of bemoaning his plight its that, and only that, that sees him still on the Anfield payroll. At any other club in Europe he would certainly have been replaced by now.

[account deleted by request]

But that is exactly the difference.

They sell Ronaldo and have still Rooney, Berbatov

We sell Torres and we still have...... jack ****

The point is we finished 3 points behind them when they HAD Ronaldo and Tevez . We have still got Torres ..... we DIDN'T SELL HIM yet we are now 17 points behind them . That is not down to money , that is down to one team playing to their best level and the other team playing poorly.

There is a reason WHY no English club has progressed to the semi's of the CL this year , that's because most of the top clubs have sold top players and haven't replaced them with similar quality. The league is weaker this season but we can't even compete this season in a weakened league.

That is because our players are not playing to their best level and our team is not performing as it should. Problems are being allowed to dominate our results rather than something to be overcome.

Sell Gerrard sell Torres and replace them with bit part players and I would agree you have an arguement, until then we have spent more than the mancs under Rafa, and should be competing with them for titles, not worrying if Everton will catch us.

[Penguins]

But that is exactly the difference.

They sell Ronaldo and have still Rooney, Berbatov

We sell Torres and we still have...... jack ****

The point is we finished 3 points behind them when they HAD Ronaldo and Tevez . We have still got Torres ..... we DIDN'T SELL HIM yet we are now 17 points behind them . That is not down to money , that is down to one team playing to their best level and the other team playing poorly.

There is a reason WHY no English club has progressed to the semi's of the CL this year , that's because most of the top clubs have sold top players and haven't replaced them with similar quality. The league is weaker this season but we can't even compete this season in a weakened league.

That is because our players are not playing to their best level and our team is not performing as it should. Problems are being allowed to dominate our results rather than something to be overcome.

Sell Gerrard sell Torres and replace them with bit part players and I would agree you have an arguement, until then we have spent more than the mancs under Rafa, and should be competing with them for titles, not worrying if Everton will catch us.

And my point is we were lucky as **** last season and on paper we were 3 points back but everything that could have gone our way went our way. 12 pts vs Chelski and Manure, like that is happening often.

We started actually pretty poorly last season, but got like 10 wins in 1 goal games in our favour, several last minute goals etc.

We overachieved last season making it look like that squad was that much better than it actually was.
This season we have 1 win vs the top 3, got almost no red cards in our favour and has had almost no last minute goals to save our a****.

[Sir Roger]

But that is exactly the difference.

They sell Ronaldo and have still Rooney, Berbatov

We sell Torres and we still have...... jack ****

The point is we finished 3 points behind them when they HAD Ronaldo and Tevez . We have still got Torres ..... we DIDN'T SELL HIM yet we are now 17 points behind them . That is not down to money , that is down to one team playing to their best level and the other team playing poorly.

There is a reason WHY no English club has progressed to the semi's of the CL this year , that's because most of the top clubs have sold top players and haven't replaced them with similar quality. The league is weaker this season but we can't even compete this season in a weakened league.

That is because our players are not playing to their best level and our team is not performing as it should. Problems are being allowed to dominate our results rather than something to be overcome.

Sell Gerrard sell Torres and replace them with bit part players and I would agree you have an arguement, until then we have spent more than the mancs under Rafa, and should be competing with them for titles, not worrying if Everton will catch us.

And my point is we were lucky as **** last season and on paper we were 3 points back but everything that could have gone our way went our way. 12 pts vs Chelski and Manure, like that is happening often.

We started actually pretty poorly last season, but got like 10 wins in 1 goal games in our favour, several last minute goals etc.

We overachieved last season making it look like that squad was that much better than it actually was.
This season we have 1 win vs the top 3, got almost no red cards in our favour and has had almost no last minute goals to save our a****.

I wont disagree that luck plays a major part in games. Matches can be won with unbelievable refereeing fu'ck ups and jammy deflections etc. But they can also be lost due to the same things.
I have to disagree that we overachieved last season. If anything, we UNDER achieved by not winning the Fu*king league. We had a swagger and a belief in ourselves that knocked the stuffing out of teams who have took the pi'ss out of us this season. We played well and won games on merit because we were the better team. We attacked and defended and played most teams off the park. In effect we played as well as we could and it nearly paid off. And although we only came second we did it with style and passion
And we had a bit of luck

[Zidane]

If there is one thing Rafa is certainly doing a 100% fantastic job is in the ground level of the club.  He is making the reserves much, much better and is trying to build a team for the future from within.  All the while extending the contracts of our current core of young players in order to secure a better future for Liverpool.  I'm not even gonna go into this season because reading the constant bickering on here gives me a headache so please don't respond with something I just wanted to post my thoughts on something Rafa deserves credit for.

Who knows if Rafa can actually build something great here but there are always rough times in the process of entirely restructuring a club from the ground up.

[maguskwt]

Not getting emotional mate, just trying to knock some sense into you.

We finished 3 points behind the mancs last season, since when they have lost two of their best players (one was World player of the year) so talking about things that happened TEN FECKING YEARS AGO isn't quite as relevant as what has happened this season imo.

You see this is always what happens on here with people who refuses to see things in perspective and only wants to blame the manager. I proved a point about how Man U has continuously improved their squad until recently by saying they have spent 100 million from 2000-2006. And the point picked up was 'who the feck cares about what they spent 10 years ago'. My point was the importance of continuous team building EVERY YEAR. I'm not talking about just feckin 10 years ago what man u have spent. What I'm saying is that during this period, the mancs bought the likes of Ferdinand, Wayne Rooney, Ronaldo, Carrick, Vidic, Evra, Park Ji Sun, all of whom have become important players now in the last 4 years. After this they bought Nani, Hargreaves, Anderson, Valencia, Tevez, Berbatov. They have also bought other players who were not successful and moved them on. Not every manager is flawless in the transfer market. FACT. Only recently have they stopped buying probably also because of their debt. So then you get some anti LFC journalist writing an article about how Rafa has outspent Ferguson with some twisted interpretation of transfers and you get the anti's using that as a bible and criticizing Rafa. We on the other hand never had a title winning squad and already for 2 years we have been selling to buy. This season is the result of that it's as simple as that.

[Owzat]

Erm, four points back last season and if you count the doubles over the mancs and Chelsea as difficult to repeat there's another 0-12 points easily wiped off. Then take into account the volume of red cards our opponents saw and a fairly charmed but unconvincing opening 10 games and it's easy to see why our position last season was false whereas the mancs are in line for maybe four titles in a row.

The mancs had Ronaldo, he cost 'only' £12.24m when they signed him and they sold him for £80m because he was fantastic, most of our signings cost a lot more than they end up looking worth and the only real bargain in there was Torres who was a steal at £21m. Bottom line is regardless what the mancs spent, we spent or the whole of China spent, can we look at the results below and say that's down to money?!?!

Wolves (a) D0-0
Portsmouth (a) L0-2
Fulham (a) L1-3
A Villa (h) L1-3
Birmingham (h) D2-2
Wigan (a) L0-1
Blackburn (a) D0-0
Fulham (h) D0-0

I could throw in Man City home and Sunderland, Birmingham and Stoke away as poor results, but should we not have been winning most of those games or are we going to dig deep and find a reason why we shouldn't have?!?! That's 8-12 games where we should take a long hard look and say why can the manager not win those kind of games? They're far from unwinnable, either home advantage or modest (spending) opposition. Is that down to selling Alonso, not buying a striker or other teams spending more? No, they are all irrelevant. Buck stops with the manager, don't care if some don't like it, but there is no excuse for some of those results and you could throw in Fiorentina and Lyon at home to boot, not world beaters by any means.

[account deleted by request]

Not getting emotional mate, just trying to knock some sense into you.

We finished 3 points behind the mancs last season, since when they have lost two of their best players (one was World player of the year) so talking about things that happened TEN FECKING YEARS AGO isn't quite as relevant as what has happened this season imo.

You see this is always what happens on here with people who refuses to see things in perspective and only wants to blame the manager. I proved a point about how Man U has continuously improved their squad until recently by saying they have spent 100 million from 2000-2006. And the point picked up was 'who the feck cares about what they spent 10 years ago'. My point was the importance of continuous team building EVERY YEAR. I'm not talking about just feckin 10 years ago what man u have spent. What I'm saying is that during this period, the mancs bought the likes of Ferdinand, Wayne Rooney, Ronaldo, Carrick, Vidic, Evra, Park Ji Sun, all of whom have become important players now in the last 4 years. After this they bought Nani, Hargreaves, Anderson, Valencia, Tevez, Berbatov. They have also bought other players who were not successful and moved them on. Not every manager is flawless in the transfer market. FACT. Only recently have they stopped buying probably also because of their debt. So then you get some anti LFC journalist writing an article about how Rafa has outspent Ferguson with some twisted interpretation of transfers and you get the anti's using that as a bible and criticizing Rafa. We on the other hand never had a title winning squad and already for 2 years we have been selling to buy. This season is the result of that it's as simple as that.

We have continuously team built just as much as the mancs, in fact WE HAVE SPENT MORE THAN THEM , we just haven't been as successful as they have.

We were 3 points in front of the mancs in 2002 (with most of that cr@p team that went on to win the CL.)
and we finished 1 point behind the mancs in 2006 AFTER THEY HAD DONE ALL THEIR HUGE SPENDING. Since then we have spent much more than them and we are now 17 points behind them.

You can cry and bleat all you want about money mate, WE HAVE SPENT MORE THAN THEM OVER THE PAST 6 YEARS since Rafa came, yet we are supposedly ANOTHER £60-£80million pounds short of being able to mount a title challenge.

If you can't do a job, just make demands that can't be met ....then you have a good excuse for failure.

The failure this season is down to Benitez not getting the players and the team performing to the level they are capable of.... not the owners...not the mancs spending, not a beachball, not because of some conspiracy by the refs , not because the mancs spent more than us. FACT

[Maickito]

The failure this season is down to Benitez not getting the players and the team performing to the level they are capable of.... not the owners...not the mancs spending, not a beachball, not because of some conspiracy by the refs , not because the mancs spent more than us. FACT

HEAR HEAR !

Every club gets injuries but not every club last summer (in our league) were given license to spend in the Region of 40 million pounds on 2 players; I just think that we must have one of the worst scouting squads in the Champions league........
Its incredible how we've been incapable of getting any truly promising young players in the 6-10 million bracket in the last few yrs

[maguskwt]

We have continuously team built just as much as the mancs, in fact WE HAVE SPENT MORE THAN THEM , we just haven't been as successful as they have.

We were 3 points in front of the mancs in 2002 (with most of that cr@p team that went on to win the CL.)
and we finished 1 point behind the mancs in 2006 AFTER THEY HAD DONE ALL THEIR HUGE SPENDING. Since then we have spent much more than them and we are now 17 points behind them.

You can cry and bleat all you want about money mate, WE HAVE SPENT MORE THAN THEM OVER THE PAST 6 YEARS since Rafa came, yet we are supposedly ANOTHER £60-£80million pounds short of being able to mount a title challenge.

If you can't do a job, just make demands that can't be met ....then you have a good excuse for failure.

The failure this season is down to Benitez not getting the players and the team performing to the level they are capable of.... not the owners...not the mancs spending, not a beachball, not because of some conspiracy by the refs , not because the mancs spent more than us. FACT

From The Times March 21, 2009

Alex Ferguson and Rafael Benitez at loggerheads over spending

Rafael Benítez has hit back at Sir Alex Ferguson and told him to “check his figures” after the Manchester United manager dismissed his Liverpool counterpart’s claims that the Merseyside club have spent less money than the Barclays Premier League champions over the past five years.

Ferguson claimed yesterday that Liverpool were “well ahead of us in spending in the last five years”, but the statistics appear to support Benítez. United’s gross spending since June 2004, when the Spaniard arrived at Anfield, totals £221.95 million compared with £212.6 million by Liverpool. Ferguson’s net spending over that period is £147.90 million compared with Benítez’s £111.39 million.

The row marks the latest chapter in the escalating tension between the pair, whose rivalry is fast becoming the fiercest in English football. Ferguson branded Benítez “disturbed” after the Liverpool manager accused him in January of wielding an unfair influence over referees during a calculated attack, and on the eve of United’s 4-1 defeat by Liverpool at Old Trafford a week ago Ferguson resumed the spat by claiming that he would need to “read up on Freud” to make sense of the Spaniard’s remarks.

“Check the figures,” Benítez said. “It doesn’t matter what Ferguson says about money. They [Manchester United] have more money and can spend more than us, so we have to manage and do our best in every single deal.”

Ferguson had sparked the debate when he claimed that he had instructed United’s staff to survey the statistics after growing tired of listening to Benítez reiterating that Liverpool had spent less. “I was amazed when I saw that [],” Ferguson said. “I talked to some of the people in the sports technology department and said, ‘Check that out.’

“I am sure I have not spent that much money. I worked out in the last five years that Liverpool have spent £24 million more than Manchester United. The most amazing fact about them is that they have used 60 players in the reserves this season.”

Ferguson is under no illusions, though, that Benítez will spend big in the summer after signing a new five-year contract. As revealed by The Times yesterday, he is expected to have at least £30 million plus whatever he can recoup in sales to spend.

“You will see Rafa produce an incredible spending spree — that is an absolute certainty now he has signed a new contract,” the United manager said. “They talk of a recession, but there will not be one at Liverpool.”

Ferguson is more concerned about returning to winning ways away to Fulham in the league this afternoon, however, and believes that the embarrassing defeat by Liverpool last weekend could serve as a wake-up call to his players, whom he fears were becoming distracted by all the talk of an unprecedented quintuple.

Jonny Evans, the defender, will replace Nemanja Vidic, who is suspended after being sent off against Liverpool, and Gary Neville, the captain, is available after injury.

“The club has to recover from a defeat and travelling away to Fulham represents a good challenge,” Ferguson said. “It is hard to defend a 4-1 defeat. We suffered from self-inflicted wounds and mistakes you don’t expect. For weeks we had to listen to eulogies and compliments about how good this side of ours was. I kept deflecting that and saying how tough this league was and this \ was just a reminder to us. In a way, it will help us because we realise there is a lot of work to be done. You have to answer tough questions every time Manchester United lose a game. There were no lives lost last week.”

Facts in figures

£221.95m: Manchester United’s gross spend on transfers (£147.90 million net) since June 2004, when Rafael Benítez was appointed Liverpool manager, up to and including January 2009 transfer window

£212.60m: Liverpool’s spending (£111.39 million net) during same period

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol....946.ece

[account deleted by request]

And since then they have sold Ronaldo for £80million and Campbell for £3.5million

While we have broken even

Add it up WE HAVE SPENT MORE