Liverpool FC Forum

[yckatbjywtbiastkamb]

Well i wanted Owen we got Crouch.

Crouch cost £7m and Owen was sold for £8m.

Crouch isn't the worst striker in the world. He's also not one of the top 10 in the league. Let alone the world.

Very annoyed with Rafa Benitez and i hope to high heaven he knows what he's doing. In europe, untouchable, in the premier league, unacceptable.

unacceptable? 5th in his first season?

[A.B.]

Didn't we finish 7th under Houllier in his first season?

[dosserboy]

Hang on, if we sell Baros then IMO we need another Striker, Michael Owen is still possible!And why not? with money from the Baros sale, £6 - 7 million to put towards it, plus a possible fee for Dudek, 5 Million. We need 4 top quality strikers, Morientes, Cisse, Crouch & one other? Le Tallec & Mellor not good enough IMO, Pongolle has shown good signs but not yet the finished article, will be good for the future though!

[banana]

Hang on, if we sell Baros then IMO we need another Striker, Michael Owen is still possible!And why not? with money from the Baros sale, £6 - 7 million to put towards it, plus a possible fee for Dudek, 5 Million. We need 4 top quality strikers, Morientes, Cisse, Crouch & one other? Le Tallec & Mellor not good enough IMO, Pongolle has shown good signs but not yet the finished article, will be good for the future though!

Dudek £ 5 million?

Benithez is the one. He makes all the right moves, not taking the midget back is the best thing he has  done for LFC (apart from selling lazy murphy)

[115-1073096938]

Banana off you stupid asian .

And yes 5th is completely unacceptable. Under Evans the team was a joke, hence the reason in Houllier's first season we finished 6th. Rafa had more than enough to finish 4th and didn't produce.

I believe he's the right man for the job, i said that from the start, but this gloryfying of the man down to winning one trophy is annoying. Yes he's superb tactically, but it will be extremely interesting to see how quickly he can adapt (which is my only concern as i have no doubt he will).

[A.B.]

And yes 5th is completely unacceptable. Under Evans the team was a joke, hence the reason in Houllier's first season we finished 6th.

We finished 7th.

Rafa had more than enough to finish 4th and didn't produce

Rafa also had a injury list five feet long. Players were dropping like flies and we were stripped down to our bare bones. We had five strikers injured at all once, etc..

After our victory over Juventus our players gave up on the fourth place race. It was a double-edged sword but I understand the players, none of them had won the CL before so they focused entirely on the CL.

All of these were factors to why we finished fifth in Rafa's first season.

[115-1073096938]

Rafa also had a injury list five feet long. Players were dropping like flies and we were stripped down to playing six midfielders in one game.

After our victory over Juventus our players gave up on the fourth place race. It was a double-edged sword but I understand the players, none of them had won the CL before so they focused entirely on the CL.

All of these were factors to why we finished fifth in Rafa's first season.

The injuries in Houlliers last season were as just as bad so thats not an excuse. Concentrating on one and not the other? I'm sorry, but thats NEVER an excuse. The europian cup win was the best two days of my life, i'll never forget that, but we simply MUST improve this season in the league. Last seasons league performance was completely and utterly unacceptable.

Whatever way you look at it, its unacceptable. 4th would have been bearable. 3rd decent, second an acheivement, 1st a mircale. This season, 4th would be minimal, third expected, and so on.

[A.B.]

The injuries in Houlliers last season were as just as bad so thats not an excuse.

I beg to differ.

Plus that was Houllier's last season this was Rafa's first, you can't compare the two.

Benitez lost Owen in the summer leaving us with two strikers[Cisse and Baros]. Cisse broke his leg in October and we were left with one experienced striker.

Before that in September we lost Gerrard. Last season was the worst as far as injuries were concerned, worst in the club's history.

I'll even give you a full list of all the players we've had injured and some of them were injured more than once:

-Alonso
-Gerrard
-Morientes
-Cisse
-Baros
-Hamman
-Biscan
-Finnan
-Nunez
-Josemi
-Luis Garcia
-Kewell
-Pongolle
-Smicer

I'm sure I've left out a player or two, and even those players that are the fact that they were injured left Benitez with no cover on certain positions and it shifted our entire starting 11. In fact we had so many injuries we had a full 11 players injured.

Things weren't the same in Houllier's last season and Rafa's first as much as you'd like to think so.

[Ciggy]

I really wish Owen would come back, he will be warming the bench even more now they have Robinho, imagine Owen/Crouch/Cisse/morientes as our strikers probably the best set of strikers in the world, with the best midfielders behind them in the world Only need to sort the defence out and that would be one world class team. oh well I can dream I suppose 

[A.B.]

Owen made his bed so let him lay in it. He made a mistake by not giving Benitez a chance so why should Benitez give him a chance? Had he stayed he would had played more games than what he did at Madrid and not only that but he could had scored at least 20 goals. He would had a Champions League medal and lifted ole Big Ears on 5/25/05.

[Ciggy]

Owen made his bed so let him lay in it. He made a mistake by not giving Benitez a chance so why should Benitez give him a chance? Had he stayed he would had played more games than what he did at Madrid and not only that but he could had scored at least 20 goals. He would had a Champions League medal and lifted ole Big Ears on 5/25/05.

A.B. sometimes people need a change in there job/relationship, it gets stale, you like a change after being with the club since he was 11 he probably thought a change of scenary was better he's only human and we all do it.
And then after the fact you realise you made a mistake it happens to most of us, he probably regrets the minute he pulled on the Madrid shirt, that he was better off with the devil he knows rather than the one he didnt.
I would love him back tomorrow.

[A.B.]

I would love him back tomorrow.

I wouldn't mind having Owen back but Madrid want 15 million, thats 7 more million that what we sold him for.

[yckatbjywtbiastkamb]

Banana off you stupid asian .

And yes 5th is completely unacceptable. Under Evans the team was a joke, hence the reason in Houllier's first season we finished 6th. Rafa had more than enough to finish 4th and didn't produce.

I believe he's the right man for the job, i said that from the start, but this gloryfying of the man down to winning one trophy is annoying. Yes he's superb tactically, but it will be extremely interesting to see how quickly he can adapt (which is my only concern as i have no doubt he will).

you say the team under evans was a joke but if the champions league qualification would have included 3rd and 4th spots he`d probably still be liverpool manager.
apart from when he took over from souness and finished 9th or something his other finishes were 4th, 3rd, 4th and 3rd but in those days only the top 2 qualified.
roys team faced the best manchester united team since the best, law and charlton days and possibly the best newcastle team of all time not to mention the arsenal of petit, annelka and overmars but despite all this we were considered to be the best passing team in the league. we were often right in the hunt for the title and the phrase liverpool managed to finish fourth in a two horse race was often used by the press.
what let roy down was him being too friendly with the players and him not finding a top class centre half but as an attacking force we were top scorers in the league a few times.
the board only brought houllier in because we were missing out on cl football and if the spots available now were available then who knows what would have happened. maybe roy would have came across a great side because we were only a couple of centre halfs away from one - one thing about roy he knew how to get a passing side together who could score goals.
by the way roy left in the november and houllier took a side that hadnt finished outside the top four in four years to 7th.
so i dont think rafa did that bad considering the mess he was left. the great bob paisley once finished fifth and won the european cup in 81 i think, would that be unnacceptable to you as well?

[7_Kewell]

I don't know about paying 10+ million for an Owen return but i'd take him on a season loan!

[Afroman]

I would only take him back for 8 mil it ain't gonna happen so I ain't too bothered