by bigmick » Fri Feb 08, 2008 9:04 pm
Well John's post is typically sensible, and just to re-answer Saints point from my perspective, I'd change the manager in the Summer if we won both the Champions League AND the FA Cup. Quite simply, I would like us to challenge for the title and scrapping it out for fourth place year on year is not the way to go. I'll get slated for that of course, but that's my view. It's also my view that unless we improve 200% we will win neither, but that will be proven correct or wrong in time.
Some question whether winning the title is possible given our relative lack of funds claiming that Wenger and Arsenal are a special case, and they may have a point. But I ask this, aren't we at least entitled to be on the fringes, in with a mathematical possibility at this stage? Chelsea for instance are hardly right in it but they are hardly right out of it either. Megabucks Chelsea who have been without Terry, Lampard and Drogba for huge parts of the season and are in the Carling Cup final, still in Europe and the FA Cup and are doing so whilst having to cope with a mid season manegerial change. The same Chelsea who Liverpool absolutely played off the park at the start of the season. There they are now, disappearing into the distance despite having a weaker team than the one which took the field that day, while we languish and flounder, waiting for the much vaunted late season freshness to kick in. Waiting for the points we cast away as sacrificial lambs earlier in the season to come back as our "delayed gazelle" effect comes swishing through the squad. Waiting in vain as our star striker lies injured with a muscle strain for the second time this season. Perhaps the "resting" and the "options" and the "possibilities" was actually just a complete load of b0ll0cks. Some of us said it was so at the time and for my part I've seen nothing since which has made me belive for a nanosecond that we were wrong.
But we must "back the manager", "show some faith". If he gets "proper backing in the transfer market" then all will be good. But it won't. All we'll get, is more "possibilities", more "options", better class players "resting to preserve freshness for later in the season". It really doesn't matter how much you spend on players, or how good they are, when they are sitting on their erse on the bench they are no better than me. When they are rotated into dizziness they become not a team but a collection of individuals. When you have right footed midfielders playing on the left wing, rotated with six feet seven target men playing on the left wing, when you have centre halves playing at right back in an ever changing kaleidoscope of 4-4-2, 4-3-3, 4-5-1, 4-1-3-1-1 it doesn't really matter who you sign. No we've tried it, God knows we've tried, but it doesn't work over here. How come it worked in Valencia? Feck knows but I'm equally stumped as to how Mark Gonzales and Fernando Torres work out over there too, but they do by all accounts. I'm stumped by it, but I don't lie awake at night thinking about it. It doesn't work over here this "Rafa style" and it never will. As one feisty poster on here was very fond of saying, END OF.
One last point. When we are looking at the cost/value of squads, it does amuse me when people put down Gerrard and Carragher as a zero value in defence of Rafa. Gerrard I would venture would cost in excess of 30 million squid, and Carra at least 10. It's not even as if the current manager brought them through. The Man Utd team which included Beckham, Giggs, Butt, Neville one and two must have been worth feck all. Just a thought.
Last edited by
bigmick on Fri Feb 08, 2008 9:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"se e in una bottigla ed e bianco, e latte".
all and £10.5m respectively.
by