Liverpool FC Forum

[account deleted by request]

interesting stats saint and ones not seen before . The thing that stands out for me is rafa having to stretch the money on numerous players where as man utd spent it on a fewer amount off players . Rafa has had to totally change the squad bar three players and taggert has just been able to add and tinker with big money buys to a solid squad already there .

Surprisingly  last season both teams had the same number of players from 2004......6. We of course moved on Finnan, Kewell and Riise, while the mancs have kept Giggs, Scholes et al. The mancs have also been a little more successful in bringing players through with Fletcher and O'Shea while we sold Warnock and Mellor.

It does show the problems that youth and reserve players have now in breaking through. When you consider the quality that came through both youth sides before to what has come through in the last few years.

[GYBS]

yeah the mancs did really well when that massive bunch came thru or scholes etc but as my mate has said was that more luck than judgement as since then they havent really had many come thru or even before them .

[account deleted by request]

yeah the mancs did really well when that massive bunch came thru or scholes etc but as my mate has said was that more luck than judgement as since then they havent really had many come thru or even before them .

We did the same mate 

They had :-  Scholes , Neville, Beckham , Giggs, Butt.

We had Mcmanaman, Fowler, Owen, Gerrard, Carra.

The question I suppose is would Butt or Carra break through today? I am pretty sure the rest would have broken through no matter when.

[GYBS]

yeah but there players came thru at the same time mate . Our where staggered.

[account deleted by request]

If we hadn't lost Mcmanaman and sold Fowler and Owen they could have still all played together for years and years mate. 4 of them played together when we won the triple.

[Redman in wales]

I think you can interpret stats like that in many ways, and I don’t think that net spending stats are a fair way of viewing spending. Obviously income has to be taken into account but as always the stats never tell the whole story.

The thing about comparing our net spending to utd’s is it compares out-going players. Take 06/07 for example. Our net spend was £13m and utds was -£4.5m. But this is because they can sell players like RVN at £10m and get £12m for Obi Mikel (who didn’t even play a game for utd)  -  While the highest fee we received that season was £3.5m for Kirkland, and we had to sell a total of 9 players to raise £13m. This income for utd means they can afford to spend higher amounts on single players

As well as net spend, those figures also show that we’ve spent more than utd. but as GYBS has already pointed out, we have had to buy a lot more players and ship out a lot of dross, where as Fergie already had a good, strong squad, and was able to buy very few, but costly players.

According to those figures, Utd have bought 14 players since 04/05. We’ve bought 31 players in the same time frame.  – More than double! – We’ve had to spread our pot of money over an entire squad. Fergie has been able to select one or two players to improve his team as and when he wants to.

[GYBS]

yeah agree mate . If we still had macca when gerrard came thru and god hadnt done his knee in think we may well of got very close maybe even winning title . Gh team just missed that extra bit of something from midfield which macca would of provided .

[tubby]

Houllier wasted so much money, makes me sick.

[GYBS]

the summer after wc 2002 he wasted money

[heimdall]

Houllier wasted so much money, makes me sick.

Are you saying that Rafa hasn't??

FFS even when you guys are presented with facts which completely destroy any weak argument you already had you still continue blindly along the same lines.

Rafa has spent more money, fact!

Rafa did not need to buy all the players he bought, fact!

He chose to assemble a massive squad of predominantly third rate players, with obviously a few excellent ones as well.
It is true that Rafa has bought more players than Utd but then he has also sold a lot more of those same purchases!
The fact is that Rafa is not good in the transfer market, he focuses on buying crappy players instead of getting youngsters through form the academy. I am not saying that all the academy lads are quality but surely some of them are ready to step up to the first team, especially considering the weaknesses we currently have in the team in terms of cover.

[GYBS]

do you mean the same crappy players that he has bought that has got us challenging for the title at the moment ?
Tell me why rafa didnt need to buy all those players if it is fact ??

Rafa had to buy a lot more players for a reason .

[DanAn]

do you mean the same crappy players that he has bought that has got us challenging for the title at the moment ?
Tell me why rafa didnt need to buy all those players if it is fact ??

Rafa had to buy a lot more players for a reason .

Damn Saints completely right, I'm thoroughly shocked. I actually did look it up but the web page didn't list half those guys which was misleading. 

Rafa really has no excuse. After sale of players he's had 200 m over 5 years to build a team. And that's starting with Gerrard and Carra. Yeah he's got us challenging but that's underperforming as far as I'm concerned. I've been pretty positive about Rafa but that blows my mind.

He could have spent money on quality and we'd see guys like Alves, Aguero and Silva as a red rather than the 20 sub standard 3 million dollar players he seems to have purchased along the way.

[tubby]

The thing is you cant really compare us to Utd as pretty much during all the 90's up until now that have constantly had a title winning team. Sure Fergie had to build the team from scratch but he always had that foundation of players that WERE good enough. All he has done is replaced them. Rafa has had to take pretty much a whole team full of and slowly bring in decent players. We only had at the time maybe 1 player who could get into other top sides - Gerrard. Now we have a few but for the most part we still have average players that on their day when they play out of their skins are capable of beating the big sides but as we saw again on the weekend - average. Ok we are challanging now but like I left in my sig lets wait and see what the situation is in a months time.

[Spartan1985]

I agree. Gerrard, Carra, Masch and Torres are great building blocks towards a good team. We need to stop buying stop gap players and really aim to get players that will last on the team for years to come. Rafa does seem to be trying to do this more in the last two seasons (Torres, Keane and Masch) however Keane's worth at 20 mill is still yet to be seen. Maybe Rafa has not had the funds to work with I'm not sure but there do seem to have been a few too many flops or bit part players recently. Voronin (I hear he wants back , though to be fair he's scored more goals in less time than keane), Gonzales, Pennant, benayoun, zenden. You might even chuck Crouch or sissoko in there.

[devaney]

My sons as good a Lucas right now and he's 11yrs old

Lets get him signed 

PMSL  just spat coffee out laughing

why is that when folk find something remotely funny, they are always spitting coffee out ?

drink Fu*king tea will ya

My wife's as good as Lucas is now and she's in her 50's !!! What does Rafa see in him?