Liverpool FC Forum

[Sir Roger]

We've won 12 of the last 15 league games, 34 of the last 50 and lost only six games in two seasons. You have to wonder if Rafa can't win it next season if he ever will, the platform is there. Last season had too many draws, this season has had too many draws, can we afford a third consecutive season with too many draws or any kind of backward step?

The amount of goals scored, specifically in the last part is phenominal. We had the same players who were drawing game after game after game giving points away to lesser opponents. Then it turned around. We were nigh on unbeatable and scoring freely. Why was this? What changed? How can a squad suddenly turn from being boring, predictable, easy to take a point from into a force of nature, brushing aside with ease everyone in front of then? Does this mean that we need more players? Different players? Get rid of good players to bring better players in? Or does it mean we had the players we needed to win the league all along? Only they werent performing for whatever reason to the best of their ability. I have said before that Rafa deserves criticism as well as praise and it is both heartbraking as well as uplifting to see how close we came to toppling the mancs. There is no doubt that privately Ferguson was shi'tting himself at one point that all his dark arts hadnt worked and we would overturn them to become champions. Alas those draws caught up and we basically handed them the title rather than them winning it in style.
The question is now what has Rafa learned? Because that squad, for all its faults could have won the title, and lost it not because of their lack of skill, but probably because of the managers choices and decisions. Let us hope he has learned from his mistakes.

[Bosko-Macedonia]

well, if we don't win the premier next season....then manu could be the most successfull team with the most titles :@:@:@:@

And I can't believe that situation...if we don't win

[Bosko-Macedonia]

also, I think that we should keep Rafa....he made pretty good job from his coming here

[Rafa D]

What a load of fucking bollocks.

I fucking can't believe that people would even comtemplate a pathetic idea such as this. This season, although we didn't win the league is the closest we have come seen the formation of the Premiership years. And those 12 people who have said yes should be throughly ashamed.

I'm not going to go on again and again about how precarious a position we were in the summer of 2004 when Rafa took over, as I've done it to death before, but we were in serious danger of becoming a Villa, Spurs etc type of club. We lost Owen, we had a average team and if we didn't win the CL then we would of lost Gerrard as well the following summer. Rafa was a godsend for this football club, IF the board would of got that appointment wrong, we would be nowhere near were we are now.

Some of you are sounding like Chelsea fans - " if we don't win this he has to go", take a look around, we are fighting in the hardest league in the world, against teams who spending millions and millions of pounds. And this year we were fantastic. We put in a real challenge and of course I hope we can win it next year, but so are Man Utd, and Chelsea, and Arsenal and I suggest City will be a force next year if the predicted transfers come to fruition. We will continue to grow under Rafa and if you want a blueprint for success then look no further than up the M62 to those shower of shite.

Reguardless of your personal thoughts, at the moment they are the best team on the planet. They are on the brink of 2nd sucessive double of League and Champions League, unpararelled success. Its hard to stomach but they are the team to beat, and I can honestly say hand on heart, that I consider us the 2nd best team in Europe at the moment.

But look at their blueprint, Mr Fergurson came in and didn't win fu.ck all for 4 years, then he won the F.A cup and then success followed. We are in a similar position to what he was, WE had been the dominant force, as they are now and it took him a LONG TIME to overhaul us. But he did it. And I have every faith that Rafa is the man to do it for us.

Some of you should too.

[simolonge]

Just one add on. Rafa was STILL talking this season about how he won the league twice at Valencia having drawn lots of matches. Now we all know on here thanks to Owzat that you need to win around 27 games in order to win it usually.

I never saw or read anything to that effect mate.

[Octsky]

its getting harder and harder to win the EPL. we need a savior. someone like bill shankly. and to be honest, beside rafa right now, i cant see anyone else.

[DrPepe]

our transfer ins and outs this summer are likely to be strongly restricted by our financial inferiority relative to the big - spenders around europe

for example, if money is really tight we may need to sell alonso to fund the arrival of a quality attacking player (something most people think is vital)

if this is the case would any of the twelve  "1. yes sack rafa" voters  reconsider their  voting choice ?

How are we meant to compete with the megabucks boys if we have to sell one of our top players to fund purchasers in other postions?

[Sir Roger]

I think its fair to say that next season Rafa HAS to win the league. No ifs or buts. No excuses. No, no regrets. He has everything he needs now to get the job done. It is a minimum.

[bigmick]

I think its fair to say that next season Rafa HAS to win the league. No ifs or buts. No excuses. No, no regrets. He has everything he needs now to get the job done. It is a minimum.

So if winning the league is a "minimum", what is the "maximum"? That we win it by 12 points or something?

I can't agree mate. I agree it's a minimum that we are at least up there, but it's hard to win and if we go close (and not even necessarily as close as we did this season either) then I don't think you can seriously look to boot out the manager. Yes if we finish sixth or something then by all means send out the mob, but not if we have another decent season.

"Decent season"-top four in the league not more than 10-11 points off the top of the table. It'd be nice to win a trophy again, or get to a final or something. Oh and the last 8 of the Champions League obviously as a minimum, where the competition starts proper.

Obviously all of the above could be overly optimistic if say both Gerrard and Torres were out for the season, but assuming a normal run with injuries.

[account deleted by request]

While I don't think you can ever demand the league, I think a 4th season without a trophy would be unthinkable.(I don't think any of our past managers since Shankly has ever gone 4 seasons without a trophy)

I think expectations are high now that we can take the next step and lift the title once again(I thought we could and should have THIS season just finished), so if we don't. or if we don't at least come close questions will be asked....... by me anyway 

We have tended to fall back in recent times when just short of the top, hopefully we won't see that next season. I do think that next season will be much harder than this one .....so we need to bring in the right players, and raise our level even higher if we are to pull it off.

We have had a team good enough to go close for a few years now, and imo we have underachieved, we can't afford to do that next season.

[Effes]

Just "further progress" will do.

[bigmick]

While I don't think you can ever demand the league, I think a 4th season without a trophy would be unthinkable.(I don't think any of our past managers since Shankly has ever gone 4 seasons without a trophy)

I think expectations are high now that we can take the next step and lift the title once again(I thought we could and should have THIS season just finished), so if we don't. or if we don't at least come close questions will be asked....... by me anyway 

We have tended to fall back in recent times when just short of the top, hopefully we won't see that next season. I do think that next season will be much harder than this one .....so we need to bring in the right players, and raise our level even higher if we are to pull it off.

We have had a team good enough to go close for a few years now, and imo we have underachieved, we can't afford to do that next season.

Yes needless to say (so why am I saying it then ) I think we ought to have won it this season S@int, we wasted an absolutely golden opportunity IMHO.

I'm still absolutely convinced as I have been for some time now that we should have got much closer than being out of it before it had even got started last season as well. We did after all have a fully fit Torres for the whole season, and I simply cannot for the life of me believe that the introduction of Albert Riera this season has not only compensated for Torres's loss, but has actually catapulted us to a level where we've suddenly become title contenders.

So it's full marks to Rafa for building the team to the level it currently is, but yes there probably has to be some criticism of ouractual achievement. That said, now we've got the hang of it all it would be a mistake IMHO to get rid of the manager for retrospective failure. You can hardly give him his cards and say "that's because you didn't win the title the year before last you useless c...".

A trophy would be nice, or a final or something. My only reservation with that though, is that if we start to progress in any of the other competitions before you know where you are we'll be "resting", protecting" etc and waiting for the delayed gazelle to kick in for the "important matches" at the end of the season. Unfortunately as we know, quite often in these circumstances those "important" matches turn out to be ones where you're making sure you qualify for the Champions League the next season.

[Owzat]

Sometimes you have to wonder if (minor) trophies aren't a distraction. Four seasons without a trophy is not great for a big club, but what did Roy Evans win? The League Cup. I think that tournament had begun the decline in standing, wasn't it 94/95 that the mancs put out the infamous kids against York and got tonked? Besides, we did go more than four years without a trophy between 94/95 and 00/01.

I wonder if we'd have got as close as we did in the league if we had got further in the Champions League. Our record in games after a European Cup game, excluding the finals as there was the summer inbetween, and all but last of the early qualifying rounds of 05/06

Game After European Cup Game Under Rafa

P65 W28 D19 L18 F94 A62

Premiership Game After Cup Game Under Rafa

P88 W39 D27 L22 F125 A81 PTS 139 (out of 264)

139 points out of 264 is 1.58 points per game, that would leave you on 60 points if you showed that form the whole season, one more than we managed in 04/05 when we won the European Cup. 86 points is 2.26 points per game, shows how much cup games have affected us.

Premiership Game After Cup Game Under Rafa 08/09

P17 W9 D7 L1 F30 A14 PTS 34 (out of 51)

A bit better, at least it is 2.00 points per game but if you take the rest of the league games in comparison

League after a cup game 08/09 : P17 W9 D7 L1 F30 A14 PTS 34 (2.00 pts/game)
Other league games 08/09 : P21 W16 D4 L1 F47 A13 PTS 52 (2.47 pts/game)

2.47 points per game would have given us 94 points, 2.00 points per game just 76. Our one defeat after a cup game was Boro away after the win in Madrid, the seven draws were :

0-0 vs Aston Villa (away) after win over Standard Liege (home)
0-0 vs Stoke (home) after win over Marseille (away)
0-0 vs West Ham (home) after win over Marseille (home)
2-2 vs Hull (home) after win over PSV (away)
0-0 vs Stoke (away) after FA Cup win over Preston NE (away)
1-1 vs Wigan (away) after FA Cup draw with Bitters (home)
4-4 vs Arsenal (home) after 4-4 draw with Chelsea (away)

We also struggled to beat Citeh at home after a win over PSV, needed a late comeback to beat pompey away after our extra time loss in the FA Cup replay. Playing at home after a cup game is no guarantee we'll win, it is something we need to work on as 17 of the 28 points we dropped this season came after a cup game - most of those games we should have won (relegated boro away, Hull, Stoke and West Ham at home, Wigan and Stoke away)

We played only 55 games this season, our lowest figure under Rafa. As I've said before, our record of draws is ok in Europe and cup competitions, but we need to improve on our ratio of two wins to every draw. In Europe you can get to finals with that kind of ratio, you won't win too many domestic cups with it or the Premiership.


Oh, and I mentioned how we would have been level with the mancs on a two point system with them a game in hand. Well here's how the final table would have looked.

Man Utd P38 W28 D6 L4 PTS 62
Liverpool P38 W25 D11 L2 PTS 61

I came up with a better points system, should encourage sides to play attacking football and look for goals. I came up with it before I tried it on this season. Basically you score a point for every goal, two bonus points for a win and a bonus point for a draw. That means losing 0-1 would get you nothing, winning 1-0 would get you three points, but losing 4-5 would get you four points and winning 5-4 would get you seven points. If sides finished level on points then most wins would decide the title, then goals conceded.

So under this system :

1. Liverpool P38 W25 D11 L2 F77 A27 PTS 138
2. Man Utd P38 W28 D6 L4 F68 A24 PTS 130

3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th would have stayed the same, but Citeh would have finished 7th, spudz 8th and a few other changes. The bottom would have seen Boro rock bottom, WBA and Sunderland the other two going down.

The reason I think this system would be much improved is it rewards attacking football, even at 4-0 up a side would be looking to score more goals and their opponents would also look to score goals. Why should a side scoring a late winner get as many points as a side that wins 5-0? I like the fact that a side losing 3-4 like Hull did against the mancs would get the same points as a side winning 1-0. Sides wouldn't look for 0-0s as they'd get that point just for scoring a goal. Maybe a few more sides attack the mancs and they'd crumble more often

EDIT : three points for a win in the new system would have seen us score 163 points to the mancs' 158, I simply wanted to reduce the influence of the points for a win and reward goalscoring

[account deleted by request]

I think football is about winning Owzat, under your system a team could LOSE every game in a season(but score heavily) and "win" the league..... that can't be right surely!

btw I said our managers hadn't gone 4 seasons without a trophy ...... not Liverpool (we changed managers half way through the spell you mention mate)

I agree mate that the League cup has become an egg cup over the years and the FA cup has started to slide in importance, but I do think its important to gain some silverwear even if it is an egg cup.  A team like Liverpool is built on success, and while qualifying for the CL every serason may be some sort of success(certainly from a financial point of view), its not the same as winning a trophy.

[Owzat]

I think football is about winning Owzat, under your system a team could LOSE every game in a season(but score heavily) and "win" the league..... that can't be right surely!

If a team is capable of scoring lots of goals then I can't see how they wouldn't win games, especially if say they lost every game 4-5 then someone else would be picking up seven points to their four every game. Theoretically you are right, that could happen, but how likely is it that a side would lose a lot of games, but score the extra goals necessary to compensate the lack of two points for every win? I applied it to the current league table, obviously they weren't playing to score goals, but with the odd exception the table remained fairly constant. Citeh lost 18 games and scored a lot of goals, they still only moved up a few places.

At two bonus points for a win, one for a draw, a side losing all their games would have to score 90 more goals than a side with the mancs' 08/09 record (and then lose on the deciding number of wins)

btw I said our managers hadn't gone 4 seasons without a trophy ...... not Liverpool (we changed managers half way through the spell you mention mate)

I know regards the change of managership, but I was merely picking up on spells without a trophy. Souness, Evans and Houllier weren't given four trophyless seasons ie won a trophy and were no longer manager before four seasons had expired. We're facing Rafa having four seasons without a trophy, he would be the first.

Souness - FA Cup in 1992, gone by 94/95
Evans - League Cup in 1995, gone by 98/99 (token joint manager)
Houllier, League Cup in 2003, gone by 04/05

I agree mate that the League cup has become an egg cup over the years and the FA cup has started to slide in importance, but I do think its important to gain some silverwear even if it is an egg cup.  A team like Liverpool is built on success, and while qualifying for the CL every serason may be some sort of success(certainly from a financial point of view), its not the same as winning a trophy.

I've regarded Europe as a poisoned chalice since it was expanded to throw greater numbers of teams at it. Now there are too many games for most squads to cope with, not so bad when you have a title challenging team, but when you are finishing third or fourth then it makes it harder to focus on the one target.

The FA Cup and League Cup were not much of a distraction this season, a mere five games combined. We'd already terminally damaged our chances of winning the league by the time we exited the FA Cup