Liverpool FC Forum

[account deleted by request]

Utter fu.cking bollo.cks that S@int.


"When the Spaniard arrived at Anfield in June 2004, he had a more-than-decent squad at his disposal. A midfielder or two here, a striker there, a bit of tinkering to get the details just right and Liverpool would be back at the summit of English football where they belonged. But, for whatever reason, it just hasn't happened."

Decent enough squad? Get to fu.ck. The squad left was a shambles. Our 2 best players were Gerrard and Owen - and  Owen - down to Houllier and Parry - was on his way out as he only had 1 year on his contract. Carra was a nobody until Rafa put him in the middle and the likes of Diao, Biscan, Troare, and other boll.ocks were in the team. Where the are those players now.

Maybe Rafa does need to challenge, maybe this is his year to show he can, but dis-reguarding the great work he has put in in the last 4 seasons is a fuc.king disgrace.

Funny how with such a cr@p squad and a couple of additions we could win the CL. Since when with the addition of over £150million worth of highly talented players we have never reached similar heights Doddy?

It also seems strange that the more cr@p players Houllier left Rafa we ship out, THE LESS SUCCESSFUL WE BECOME !

[Penguins]

Please don't tell me you believe that you spouted out there...

It's common knowledge if you compare the squad back then to the one we have now there is a huge difference.
That year in the CL was special since we were almost out
in the group stages with the super teams:
Monaco, Olympiacos and Deportivo.
A last gasp goal saw us through and from then on we had everything to win.
If it Mellor who scored, it was Pongolle or Smicer.
It still doesn't take away the fact that they weren't that great footballers. The true quality of a team you see through a full long league campaign spanning almost 40 games.
And to be honest we were pisspoor ending 5th 30-40 pts of the top.

CL isn't always about having the best team wins.
It's a cup competition where it is just as important to get that right feel in the team togheter with the right tactics and some luck.

Besides Gerrard, Carra and Hyppia there was nothing of league title quality in that squad Houllier left us with.
Face that fact please. Everyone else has!

And even more now than before I laugh at the idea of sacking Rafa if No 19 isn't coming.
I would even say that our squad that ended 4th last season is worse of now.
Crouch our 2nd striker is sold.
What do we have now?
Kuyt?? Voronin? Some teenagers?
It surely must be Rafa's fault if they doesn't start to score every other games, mustn't it?

Sure, the summer isn't over yet but as of now we have a net spend of -10 Million.
I am sure our rivals are quacking in their boots.
One of Barry or Keane will not change that much either.

Anyone really surprised Chelski and Manure, the two teams that outspend anyone else ends up 1st and 2nd all the time and Arsenal's budget teams has ended with them getting 0 trophies in 4 years?

Unless you can buy top class and not go through the bargain bin every summer, any kind of challenge will be hard.
All these hyped up wingers like Gonzales and Leto are just baffling to me. For some reason we end up buying these players for 2 million each expecting a world class star in the making after them being talked up all the time.
What's even worse is that people start to believe the hype!

Well, here is a news flash:
You get what you pay for!



It is obvious the yanks is trying to run the club like a franchise
back in the states where all the money for players must comes from within the club= practically no net spend.

[account deleted by request]

Players that Houllier left Rafa -  Finnan , Riise, Carra, Hyypia , Gerrard, Hamann , Kewell, Owen , Baros, Cisse. How many of those WOULDN'T get on the team now?

Finnan, Riise, Carra , Hyypia, Gerrard and Kewell obviously would because they all did last season. Thats SIX PLAYERS....... 4 YEARS AND £160MILLION LATER! Hamann was instrumental in our triumphs both in Istanbul and at Wembley, Baros or Owen are no worse than Kuyt and even Cisse is better than Voronin.

So it was just luck that we got to the CL Final AND the League cup final?

Kuyt?? Voronin? Some teenagers?
It surely must be Rafa's fault if they doesn't start to score every other games, mustn't it?

Well Rafa did bring them to the club, train them and play them, so yes I would say he has to take his share of the blame.

It still doesn't take away the fact that they weren't that great footballers. The true quality of a team you see through a full long league campaign spanning almost 40 games.

We finished 4th in Houlliers last season, we finished 4th last season under Rafa thats the true quality showing through then is it?

[66-1112520797]

It's an interesting post, and there are parts of it I agree with. Doddy has pointed out one line which is way off but the basic point of the article does take some answering.

I suppose some fans would have been happy four years ago if someone had told them that far from finishing fourth like they just had under Houllier with that shambolic team, that in four years time we would finish fourth with a massively better team. That's entirely their privilage of course, as is the premise that despite never ever having launched a title challenge in four seasons whilst employing a particular and (I've now been convinced) totally unique methodology, it would be the correct thing to do to continue with mass rotation "Rafa style". 

All that said though all the arguments, counter-arguments, discussions about peoples jobs/places of residence/total numbers of matches attended etc etc have been done to death already. I have no doubts that this season we will see the endgame beginning to pan out one way ore the other. This is right and correct, it's been five years now which is plenty long enough for any manager to demonstrate at least once that they have a clue what it takes to actually get a challenge for the title off the ground. Sorry for being repetitive but I'm afraid you have to put this bit in or people start getting over excited- I'M NOT SAYING THAT I EXPECT US TO WIN IT, JUST TO CHALLENGE. A BIT.

Now quite how it will all pan out only Rafa will know. Either we will style it up again to a similar level we have in previous seasons and simply go for it 'Rafa style". If we do this, obviously I don't think it is the way to go. Curiously despite being derided for three seasons, albeit by an ever diminshing crew of pro-rotational Doc Martin clad boot boys ** I haven't read too many "I just hope rafa keeps up the mass rotation" quotes. I don't think he will do this for reasons previously stated, but if he does and it fails again then he really ought to be shown the door IMHO. The worst case scenario is that he does it and it kind of works in that we launch some sort, any sort of title challenge. Not only will I have to endure endles nonsense from the thought police about how we challenged "because" of the delayed gazelle effect, but it'll encourage him to try it again next season. If we're not careful, by the time we've finally all come to the conclusion that making 75 changes to the team in 15 matches perhaps isn't the best idea, half the forum will be dead because ten years will have passed since Rafa became manager.

The other and far more likely scenario is that he's come to the conclusion that perhaps he's over-egged it a bit (I won't say "seen the light" as that seems to offend some perople). I think at the end of this season they won't be saying he hasn't got a clue how to win the Premiership any more because we'll go extremely close. They may be saying "well why the feck did we waste four seasons "styling" when we could have picked a settled team and really had a go, THOUGH NOT OF COURSE THE SAME TEAM IN EVERY SINGLE GAME. This would be a difficult one to answer, infact I have no idea whatsoever what people will say to that one. I'm only certain that they'll think of something, some reason why it was all a good idea all along. Either that or they'll just ask the bloke who asked the question how many times he goes to games or where he lives or something .

** I might have slightly overstated the intensity of debate in this bit

[Penguins]

Players that Houllier left Rafa -  Finnan , Riise, Carra, Hyypia , Gerrard, Hamann , Kewell, Owen , Baros, Cisse. How many of those WOULDN'T get on the team now?

Finnan, Riise, Carra , Hyypia, Gerrard and Kewell obviously would because they all did last season. Thats SIX PLAYERS....... 4 YEARS AND £160MILLION LATER! Hamann was instrumental in our triumphs both in Istanbul and at Wembley, Baros or Owen are no worse than Kuyt and even Cisse is better than Voronin.

So it was just luck that we got to the CL Final AND the League cup final?

Kuyt?? Voronin? Some teenagers?
It surely must be Rafa's fault if they doesn't start to score every other games, mustn't it?

Well Rafa did bring them to the club, train them and play them, so yes I would say he has to take his share of the blame.

It still doesn't take away the fact that they weren't that great footballers. The true quality of a team you see through a full long league campaign spanning almost 40 games.

We finished 4th in Houlliers last season, we finished 4th last season under Rafa thats the true quality showing through then is it?

Finnan, Risse, Hyppia, Kewell, Hamman, Baros, Cisse would never walk into our team right now.
As backups yes, but never as starters.
Hamann was good but was only ever 3rd 4th choice.
Not to mention that him and Hyppia were already then at the wrong side of 30. Which meant they needed replacement in the near future!
Kewell was a huge disapointment. Baros couldn't cut it at Villa or at Lyon and Cisse cost 14 millions, Voronin cost 0.

And there is just no way Rafa has had a net spend of 160 million. The problem is that Rafa would really had spent just as much if he would had got his 1st choice targets. Why?
Here is an example.
Let's say Rafa wants a striker. He tries to sign Villa or someone else that might be his 1st choice. He would cost 20 million.
We can't afford it so Rafa has to get his 3rd choice in Bellamy.
We "spend" 6 millions.
Next summer we sell bellamy for 7.5 millions so Rafa can spend money on new players. But it also means those six millions spent on bellamy last season are wiped out.

This is the problem for Rafa these past years, always having to settle for 2nd and 3rd choices "bloating" the spend column
even though they are sold next season.

So even though after 4 seasons it looks like Rafa spent 35+ millions on strikers(exclusing Torres), he actually got back
17 millions.


Bellamy
Morientes
Kuyt
Voronin
Crouch

Almost all of these are I believe rafa's 2nd or 3rd choices.
They cost around 28 millions.
Rafa has got back 21.5 million from sales and still have Kuyt and Voronin in the team.
Which means rafa spent a whopping 6.5 millions+Torres on strikers in 4 years!

Same with Midfielders.
Look at Sissoko, Gonzales. Once again stop gap players.
Sure it says 7 millions in the spend column but we got back 13 millions so made a 6 million profit!
And if we had bought a world class midfielder at 20 millions
we could not have sold anyone and it would had been a pure expenditure.

That is was makes us different from the big clubs.
How much money that is tied into the team.
We so far haven't been able to have that many players valued at 15 millions or more in the squad.
What this means is that you never get a settled team
since we buy stop gap players all the times.
It all becomes even more evident when you look at how many players Rafa has sold compared to Manure and Chelski this past 4 years.

While they go out and spend 20-30 millions on a couple of players while not selling the actually invest/spend 20-30 millions into the team.

We on the other hand have been forced to buy 3-4 players at 20 millions who are better than what we have but not the class we actually need. This means coming next summer 2-3 of those players will be sold for, let's say 13 millions to help us finance another upgrade.
Which means we actually only invested/spent 7 millions into the teams. And therefore we never get continuity in our squad.

And when you talk about the last season Houllier was here.
It was the year Gerrard saved our team from midtable obscurity if I remember correctly. Not to mention both 03/04 and with Houllier's team 04/05 we ended someting like 30-40 pts behind. A little difference between that and 11 pts.
Not to mention that was before Chelski went out and spent 300 millions.

[stmichael]

I don't think it's realistic to expect us to win the league but when you look at our squad and the ability we have then we should be able to challenge better in the league than we have up until now under Rafa. Rafa's first few summers were spent totally re-designing the squad in his image by shipping out the players who weren't good enough and replacing them with quality. He's done that and is now in a position to supplement the squad with quality additions who go straight into the team, and we're now seeing that with the signings of Torres, Keane etc...

The time for excuses is over really, we have to ensure that we beat the majority of the 'weaker' teams and we also have to improve our record against the other top teams. We're more than capable of doing that and i'm hopeful that we will.

I'm happy that Rafa is concentrating his efforts on players that are proven in the Premiership as that is and always will be the priority. I don't know where Catch22 is from but he and his friends certainly don't have the same views as the majority of reds if they believe that the CL is the main priority, i'm afraid it isn't. Rafa wasn't brought here specifically to improve our CL form, he was brought here to challenge the other top teams with a lower budget.

Obviously it's well documented that i'd prefer to keep Alonso than sign Barry but I do see the reasons why Rafa may want him.

What I want to see this season is a settled side for the first few months of the season so that we're in the mix and gaining momentum for a sustained challenge, and then we can make changes as players do become naturally jaded etc. Rotation isn't an issue per se, it's how and when you do it really. No more resting of top players for games that we can't afford to drop points in, and then I can see us really building momentum and starting to genuinely believe that we can do it.

That's the one major aspect missing from the team IMO, a lack of belief. They have seen past mistakes before and therefore have it built into their pysche that those mistakes will continue to be made - Rafa has an opportunity to show the players that he's learnt from those mistakes and I think that the players would respond to that.

[account deleted by request]

Finnan 4 years ago was better than ANY of the five right backs Rafa has bought.
Hyypia 4 years ago was better than ANY of the 6 CB'S that Rafa has bought - same with Carra.
Gerrard is still better than any of the 103 midfield players Rafa has bought.
Riise 4 years ago was better than Gonzales, Leto, Zenden, and Aurelio, while Kewell is still better than any of our LWingers including Babel.

If Voronin can get a game for us I am pretty sure Baros and Cisse could!

The point I am making (and which you are not getting ) is that Rafa was left with 11 or twelve players that where as good if not better than most of the players he has brought in to replace them. You don't win the CL WITH A TEAM OF CR@P. The team wasn't perfect and the squad was terrible, but there was a lot of good players as well.

If I had to pick a team from how the players were 4 years ago and todays team

                    Reina
Finnan      Carra     Hyypia    Riise

Gerrard      Mascherano Hamann    Kewell

                 Owen    Torres

So thats 8 players from Houlliers team and 3 Rafa buys

Rafa has improved the squad without question but actual improvements to the team have not been so impressive.

Rafa has bought 50 players and has paid out £162million + for them. So to say he has had no money and has had to settle for 3rd and fourth choices is a load of cr@p. EVERY MANAGER including Mourinho has had to settle for other than their first choices or Kaka, Torres, Gerrard and Ronaldo would be on every managers shopping list.

Link

[Reg]

I wish the team could play as well as you lads debate.

[bigmick]

Finnan 4 years ago was better than ANY of the five right backs Rafa has bought.
Hyypia 4 years ago was better than ANY of the 6 CB'S that Rafa has bought - same with Carra.
Gerrard is still better than any of the 103 midfield players Rafa has bought.
Riise 4 years ago was better than Gonzales, Leto, Zenden, and Aurelio, while Kewell is still better than any of our LWingers including Babel.

If Voronin can get a game for us I am pretty sure Baros and Cisse could!

The point I am making (and which you are not getting ) is that Rafa was left with 11 or twelve players that where as good if not better than most of the players he has brought in to replace them. You don't win the CL WITH A TEAM OF CR@P. The team wasn't perfect and the squad was terrible, but there was a lot of good players as well.

If I had to pick a team from how the players were 4 years ago and todays team

                    Reina
Finnan      Carra     Hyypia    Riise

Gerrard      Mascherano Hamann    Kewell

                 Owen    Torres

So thats 8 players from Houlliers team and 3 Rafa buys

Rafa has improved the squad without question but actual improvements to the team have not been so impressive.

Rafa has bought 50 players and has paid out £162million + for them. So to say he has had no money and has had to settle for 3rd and fourth choices is a load of cr@p. EVERY MANAGER including Mourinho has had to settle for other than their first choices or Kaka, Torres, Gerrard and Ronaldo would be on every managers shopping list.

Link

It's a brilliant post that Saint, and probably worthy of a thread all on its own. I personally think Agger is going to surpass Hyppia even at his best if he can get himself fit, I think that Aurelio is better than Riise was and that Alonso is probably better than Hamman (and certainly as a partner for Masherano) but other than that I wouldn't have too many arguments. It would also to be fair be extremely disappointed if Dossena isn't better than Riise ever was (not that I've seen him play but simply because you would hope we wouldn't have signed him otherwise).

It's probably underneath these players that the real story lurks to tell the truth. Too many Benayouns, Zendens, Cheyrous, Cisse's, Barmby's etc etc etc etc. The fecking money this club has wasted on rubbish over the years never ceases to amaze me. It wouldn't be so bad if they came and stunk the place out for free, but they don't.

This is probably why I don't share the majority view that barry and Keane are rip off's and that they are a waste of money. At long last we are buying quality players who you absolutely know will improve our first team, who you can be certain will be able to handle our league. It really is long overdue. The thing to do if you are outgunned financially (which we have been, are and are going to continue to be lets be honest here) is not to buy fifty sh!t players on the cheap and hope they'll come good. The way to go is to narrow the search, buy less but better quality. I hope we get both Keane and Barry, and when we do I hope we play them in the team.

Lets buy some good players who we know can do it, and lets play them in the first team. Lets face it, we've tried everything else.

[stmichael]

I think it's fair to say that Benitez has a better record buying defensive players than attacking players.

I mean look at the team:

-------Agger--------Skrtel-----
Arbeloa--------------------Aurelio
------------Mascherano------
-------------Alonso----------

Dossena could turn out to be a very good player.

I mean if you take Torres out not one of the attacking players he's brought stand out like his defensive players. Ok Babel & Lucas are both raw and have potential but can they fufilll it?

You dont necessarily have to spend big just right. Dimitar Berbatov was brought for the same money as Kuyt.

[Reg]

Mick, I question whether Alonso has consistently proved himself to be better than Hamman.

Otherwise S@ints post raises some excellent points.

[bigmick]

Mick, I question whether Alonso has consistently proved himself to be better than Hamman.

It's definately debateable Reg, but if you were going to pair them with Masherano I think that him and Hamman would step on each others toes even more than the Argentine and Alonso do. Definately not clear cut though and you may well be right, I really liked Didi as a player.

[tubby]

Ask yourself how many Man Utd, Chelsea or Arsenal 1st team players would get into our squad. And now how many of our players could get into their squads. I can only think of a handful. Gerrard, Mascherano and Torres.

[woof woof !]

If I had to pick a team from how the players were 4 years ago and todays team

                    Reina
Finnan      Carra     Hyypia    Riise

Gerrard      Mascherano Hamann    Kewell

                 Owen    Torres

So thats 8 players from Houlliers team and 3 Rafa buys

Rafa has improved the squad without question but actual improvements to the team have not been so impressive.

Personally Saint, I think Arbeloa is every bit as good as Finnan and a damn sight more adaptable. Aurelio has as much defensive nous as Riise and twice the footballing skill. Who knows how much we'd now be singing the praises of Agger  at CB if it weren't for his injury. Hamann was a great signing for us but even four years ago he was nearing the end of an admittedly great career at LFC . With Gerrard in the center allowing Benayoun possibly the most underrated of all Rafa's signings giving us an intelligent quick witted outlet on the right I think we'd have a fairer reflection of how Rafa has improved the first team.

.                           Reina

. Arbeloa   Carragher    Agger     Aurelio

. Benayoun   Gerrard    Mascherano  Kewell

.                  Owen          Torres

So thats four players from Houlliers team and seven Rafa buys.

[66-1112520797]

Alonso is probably better than Hamman

Not on your fecking nelly