Liverpool FC Forum

[dawson99]

that wenger who has won the premier league and managed an unbeaten season

history... love in the now, he's rubbish. So is Rafa, we need Ferguson, he's won the league... so obviosuly he must be the best manager in the world right?

[Lando_Griffin]

Why is it people always have to have a reason to pop off at him? Especially with whats going on right now, people need to be a bit more posative. We have a world class striker in Torres and we almost won the league. Enough said. Have some faith people. Rafa is having to compete with the rest with half the budget.

But it didnt take a genius to spot that torres was world class mate, the thanks for signing him should go to the owners for coughing up the cash.

I don't remember the clamour from Chelsea, Man Utd, Arsenal, AC Milan, Barca, Real, Juve, Inter, et al trying to hijack the transfer, though...

Come to think of it, there wasn't a great deal of interest in the lad on here until the armband incident.

I do love your attempts to belittle the gaffer at every turn.

It is HIGHLY amusing...

the gaffer who has won feck all the past three seasons, doesnt take to belittle him really does it

He's won more than you ever will, though, pee. 

[Lando_Griffin]

that wenger who has won the premier league and managed an unbeaten season

Won f*ck all in the past 3 seasons, though...

[Ace Ventura]

He has done pretty well.

What he has always had to do as well is sign players that he more than likely wouldnt have chose if he had a blank cheque book.
I know thats the same for almost every manager but to me it seems that Rafa has had to gamble more than he would have liked due to the amount available.

Signings like Alonso Torres Mascherano Reina are the spine of our team and we are a great side.

To me what he has failed in (so far) is the squad players. The support act so to speak.
Again like i said its often a gamble with these players but too many have failed.
Dossena, Babel Lucas Gonzalez, Pennant etc.

But he has made some signings that in the short term to move us to the next level each time have served there purpose.
Luis Garcia, Crouch, Sissoko even possibly Bellamy.

Overall if we had a load of money to spend this summer i would trust him anyway.

[Fowler_E7]

I voted OK. Rafa hasnt signed enough quality players to be considered excellent in the transfer market IMO, in fact i would say its probably one of his weaker skills. He has had it tough with a fairly small budget, but for the amount of money he's spent and the amount of years he's been at the club the squad should be stronger than it is. Benitez has bought some wonderful players and got some good bargains as well, but he has bought a quite a few donkeys for quite big fees e.g Lucas,Babel,Keane. Where he most disapointed me was in the summer of 2006 where he dismantled a good team from 05/06 and the team went backwards the following season with some poor signings, last summer was awful as well. Overall i would say he has done ok, because i would say he has a pretty even balance of good and poor signings.

[aCe']

Poor at best for me... TOO many average buys who werent even bargains... sold some players who deserved to stay and left us pretty exposed at times in some areas... when it comes to big buys, i think thats to be expected from every manager in a top club.... Doesnt matter if it was him or Mark Hughes managing us, we still would have signed a top striker when we had the 20-25 mill or so to spend on a top striker... What bothers me is all the times we had the 40mill or so to spend and chose to bring in shhit players who didnt improve the side instead...he hasnt spent wisely as some would have you believe... we didnt have to look for bargains instead of buying our first options, Rafa chose to do that... Selling good players only to go out and spend that money and much more on bringing in more and more simply good players... We've spent more than ManUtd and Arsenal but still, we didnt have enough to spend....like fck we didnt !

Lets see how we do this time around...

[tubby]

It all really depends on how much Rafa is allowed to spend on a player. If he can spend what he wants or close to what he wants then he usually delivers right? Torres - 20mil, Masch - 17mil ect....Alonso and Pepe were bargains imo. But when he can only spend 6 Mil or so then he has it becomes a bit riskier because he is buying less proven players.

Robbie Keane was an odd incident. He was proven in the premiership and should have been the missing link for us but it wasn't Rafas fault he missed so many chances on goal which eventually led to him being shipped of after a few months. I thing given the funds at his disposal he has done well. Sure he has made some mistakes but name me 1 manager that always get's it right.

[akumaface]

No one really know exactly how much Rafa has for transfer. It was widely reported to have 20 million plus whatever he can sell. I really doubt that especailly with the level of debt we are in because of the stupid Yanks. Someone please make them go away. Also, even though Parry is gone but is Rafa really in full control of the transfer? From what I see, the yanks are most likely to have the final say on each and every transfer. They are american as they are hands on and love to stick their nose into things that they shouldn't. Really worrying tbh. I hope we will not be ruined by them as we did have a promising campaign this year. Just feeling too damn frustrated right now.....

[Rush Job]

If you get it right more that wrong and continue to improve I think your doing well.

[Alex G.]

The big mistake, clearly Robbie Keane, that player never worth 20 million, his best singing Torres by far.
Anyway Liverpool can´t compete with Man City to sign Barry for 12 million, so it say it all.

[akumaface]

The big mistake, clearly Robbie Keane, that player never worth 20 million, his best singing Torres by far.
Anyway Liverpool can´t compete with Man City to sign Barry for 12 million, so it say it all.

I'm really disappointed for not getting Barry if this was in fact Rafa's plan but the only reason Barry is worth 12million is simply because he is English. To me, i think the fair price would be 8million. 12 million is a bit over priced and if Man City wanted him, so be it. If Rafa is rated being poor if he resist to overpay, then you can say he is poor. It is a fact that we don't have much money to spend to begin with. So, every dollar counts. Just look at last year when Rafa thought he had Malouda signed. We were lucky not to have him as I thought Riera was more effective. I know it is frustrated to lose out on our target but sometimes, there is a silver lining somewhere. We need to trust rafa and I'm sure he will be able to pull some rabbit out of the hat.

One thing I like about Rafa is his willingness to sell or get rid of players that are not performing. He is in fact quite decisive. Just look at robbie keane as the best example. It takes courage to sell him back to Spurs. If it happened in the Houllier times, no way Keane will be sold back to the Spurs.

Nowadays, transfer is getting tougher. For Chelsea and Man U, they will highjack any possible deal even though they don't need the players as they just want to make us weaker as they have no problem letting those player sit on the bench just as long as they don't play for us. The fact that nothing coming out of the Rafa's end suggest that he is working hard and trying to be creative just like the Mascherano deal. Let's wait and judge later. We all know we will at most bring in 2 to 3 players. So, there are still plenty of players and time. Keep our fingers crossed and the ones who meant to be here will be here.

[Number 9]

The big mistake, clearly Robbie Keane, that player never worth 20 million, his best singing Torres by far.
Anyway Liverpool can´t compete with Man City to sign Barry for 12 million, so it say it all.

I'm really disappointed for not getting Barry if this was in fact Rafa's plan but the only reason Barry is worth 12million is simply because he is English. To me, i think the fair price would be 8million. 12 million is a bit over priced and if Man City wanted him, so be it. If Rafa is rated being poor if he resist to overpay, then you can say he is poor. It is a fact that we don't have much money to spend to begin with. So, every dollar counts. Just look at last year when Rafa thought he had Malouda signed. We were lucky not to have him as I thought Riera was more effective. I know it is frustrated to lose out on our target but sometimes, there is a silver lining somewhere. We need to trust rafa and I'm sure he will be able to pull some rabbit out of the hat.

One thing I like about Rafa is his willingness to sell or get rid of players that are not performing. He is in fact quite decisive. Just look at robbie keane as the best example. It takes courage to sell him back to Spurs. If it happened in the Houllier times, no way Keane will be sold back to the Spurs.

Nowadays, transfer is getting tougher. For Chelsea and Man U, they will highjack any possible deal even though they don't need the players as they just want to make us weaker as they have no problem letting those player sit on the bench just as long as they don't play for us. The fact that nothing coming out of the Rafa's end suggest that he is working hard and trying to be creative just like the Mascherano deal. Let's wait and judge later. We all know we will at most bring in 2 to 3 players. So, there are still plenty of players and time. Keep our fingers crossed and the ones who meant to be here will be here.

Worth mentioning as well that Keane has done fu'ck all since he got sent back to Spurs!
Confidence shot to fu'ck..some will say!
Id go with past it and brought down to earth with a bang!

[Owzat]

We spent around £40m last summer, 2/3 of it on Keane who has gone back to the shop for a refund already, and Dossena who we will probably sell back to Serie A this summer. N'Gog wasn't a great signing but not a bad one for the price, Cavalieri was only meant to be back-up and only so so when he played while, Degen was injured every time he played and Riera was one of out better solutions to the LM position but faded a bit towards the end of the season and you might also question if we didn't pay a little bit too much for him too.

So 08/09 started with £40m worth of signings, none of them much better than 7/10 and most around 4/10-5/10. The previous season we signed Torres, I don't think there's much doubt he was the best signing Rafa has made, but for five seasons in charge and a lot of spending, how many quality players has Rafa bought? Gerrard and Carra were already here, we still have doubts over LB and RB and to some degree LM, we don't have a quality back-up CF and some of the back-up is at best just about good enough.

There are two obvious ways to look at it - successful signings vs flops, or what we have to show for five seasons in the transfer market (just about an XI good enough to compete with the top clubs and not much beyond that) There have been some decent signings that have come and gone like Luis Garcia and some might argue Crouch, Sissoko and others, but then there have been as many, if not more, poor signings like Bellamy, Dossena, Keane, Morientes, Pennant etc. I think the flops would drag down ratings if you were to rate all Rafa's signings, there haven't been that many 9/10 and 10/10 signings, there have been a fair few down below 5/10

Has Rafa unearthed anyone a lot better than what we paid for him? Arguably Torres, maybe Alonso, but thereafter I think most fall in the range of most good players eg Skrtel cost £6m, Vidic cost £7m so hardly a "bargain". He's also dabbled a lot in buying kids, none have come through yet and you have to wonder if any ever will. Two of our best players are Gerrard and Carra, top players but doesn't say much if we have maybe 8-10 other good signings (or better) in the squad to show for five years worth of spending.

If Rafa is so good in the transfer market then how come we have ongoing debates about who to sell involving lists of up to a dozen players?!?!? A few names "put up for sale" on here include Itandje, Lucas, Babel, Dossena, Degen, N'Gog, El Zhar, Voronin and Plessis. Tell me any of those were massive successes.............................. The best you might call any of them is a "decent signing", some do get undue stick like Voronin who cost nothing and did score 4 in his first 10 appearances and 2 in his last 5. Lucas does a decent job, is only young, but yet he gets nearly as much grief if not more since Voronin was out on loan so often "out of sight, out of mind"

I'd probably rate Reina, Torres, Alonso, Kuyt, and Agger as my best five of Rafa's signings. That's what, 1-2 a season, none from last season. The rest may be good to very good, I wouldn't say Agger was irreplacable, the others are key elements to our side along with Gerrard and Carragher. We may remember some of those who have come and gone like Luis Garcia fondly, but he was not that great a player. He had his moments, so did players like Pongolle (not a Rafa signing)

So anyway, I voted "ok". His better signings have been excellent, his poorer signings have been very poor. A lot of Rafa's signings don't survive more than 1-3 years, the quality we seek should be lasting 4-5 years like Alonso and Reina have and Torres, Kuyt and maybe Agger should. If we did sell any of those it would be either financially the best thing or the player wanted to leave.

[Owzat]

In fairness to my "ok" I would probably have put the poll on a seven point scale and then voted "Good" (5/7 instead of 3/5)

Excellent
Very Good
Good
OK/Average
Disappointing
Poor
Dreadful

*if it were the last two then I seriously doubt we'd be top four given only Carra, Sami and Gerrard played last season who Rafa didn't sign

[Toffeehater]

I think he has been excellent in the Spanish market......Reina, Alonso, Torres all outstanding signings, with the failures such as Morientes and Josemi costing us little in comparison. 

I think the problem he has had, have been when buying in other markets. Masch has been a great buy, but most of the others while decent were perhaps not the best options in hindsight. We could argue all day about who we could have signed, should have signed.

Again its not all down to Rafa (although the buck stops with him) there are a lot of scouts who need to pull up their socks as well. Dossena, Degan, Babel plus so many of the reserves (especially players we had never heard of and probably never will again once they leave.)

i think saint has got it spot on , he has done decent