Liverpool FC Forum

[Greavesie]

Again it's not the actual choices that have been made its the way the club have gone about them

And yes both Kenny and Pepe gave a f*ck about the principals and foundations the club was built on - in fact Kenny is a cornerstone of those and you can tell from the letter what the club meant to Pepe - the club agreeing to loan him without telling him after he was willing to stay and fight for his place - sorry that's not the way we should operate.

If BR really didn't want Pepe anymore then stop with the ***** about fighting for places and actually tell Pepe that he is free to go on loan or leave but don't sort it out without having the respect to tell him - that's wrong. We can't accuse modern footballers of being disrespectful to the clubs and fans and then the club show disrespect to their players.

And when Suarez told the club that he wants to leave in a flash and the blink of an eye the club say he isn't going anywhere - why didnt they do the same to Pepe - why aren't the club buying a striker right now because Suarez says he wants to go

Your last point is bull. It's a lot harder to shell out £25m on a top striker with no certainty that Suarez is actually going to leave. You seem certain that Suarez definitely wants to leave and has told Rodgers nothing to the contrary. I hold hope that Suarez will stay, maybe Rodgers does too. Pepe stating he would go to Barca if they came is a totally different. They're two different situations lad

[Benny The Noon]

So if Madrid came in for Suarez you think he would turn them down after going on about them all summer ? He would be away in an instant

[Redrider]

Seems that Reina placed his cards clearly on the table, by saying if Barca come in for me then I am interested. However, Rodgers and Ayre kept their hand below the table and did not inform Reina of their intention to have him off the wage bill.
Seems that Pepe played an open game which did not get the same response from the management, which is a little sad.
If they play the same 'hard ball' with Suarez, there will be almost certainly be 'blood on the floor', Suarez has previous with Groningen and is 'mental enough' to take Ayre and Rodgers all the way to achieve what he desires, particularly if RM come in for him and they will expect to get him for next to nothing!
Could be a very messy start to the season which could completely ruin the morale in club. Beware the ides of August!

[Santa]

Some guys here keep biatching about how the club treat Pepe even after he and his agent openly declared that he wants to consider leaving us for Barca...so we go out and replace him. The transfer to Barca didn't work out and here he was happy to abandon us and some guys still think we should sit down pay him a ransom and further extend his contract...wtf???

I think the club should just sell Pepe instead of loaning him out but then again the last thing Pepe should ask for is sympathy. Now don't get me wrong I am happy for the club to sell Suarez for the very same principle. Luis is probably a bit difficult to replace whereas Pepe is not, and we are probably playing hardball now to squeeze out more cash from Arsenal...I get no joy seeing Luis in our red shirt next season. To me, when someone's heart is no longer here, I would rather move on.

btw. I don't see anyone utter a s-h-i-t or question how whisky nose treated those who betrayed him, yet some think we must be different. Character weakness I guessed...

[heimdall]

That letter confirms a lot of things about the way the club is currently run.

I agree it confirms that the club won't be pushed around by players any more, Reina is just having a whinge becuase Barca realised he's actually fairly average and have better options.

[JC_81]

Reina made his bed and he can lie in it as far as I'm concerned.

Good keeper, great servant, but why should he dictate to us when he stays and when he goes?  He fancied going back to Barce and when it didn't work out he gets offended that we, only his second choice club, don't want him either?  Tough cheddar son.

Let that be a lesson to other players who think they can mess us around.  I'm surprised at his comments, a bit disappointing imo.

[Kenny Kan]

While I wish Reina all the best, there is a majority of sense being posted in this thread.

[Benny The Noon]

Brendan Rodgers expects Liverpool to benefit from Pepe Reina and Simon Mignolet's fight for the No.1 shirt.

Rodgers has repeatedly said Reina has a future at Anfield despite the arrival of Belgium international Mignolet from Sunderland.

And the Liverpool manager expects his two senior keepers top push each other to new levels of performance.

He said: "I always felt it was important for us to have competition right the way through the squad, and that includes the goalkeepers.

"I spoke to Pepe about this a few months back and told him we wanted to bring in another goalkeeper as real competition. I was very open with my goalkeepers and they know the situation.

"Pepe has been terrific here, Brad Jones was excellent when he stood in last year and I felt we needed another one.

"Simon comes in and we've got great competition and when you've got competition it pushes everyone to perform.

"We obviously lost a young goalkeeper in Peter Gulacsi so we needed three very capable goalkeepers.

"We've brought in Simon Mignolet, who's one of the top young goalkeepers in Europe - he's shown that at Sunderland over the last few years.

"He's got great stature and I think he was player of the season at Sunderland and I really think he can improve on that talent.

"He's part of the Belgian set-up and it's really their golden era of players so him coming here will hopefully increase his opportunities there also."

http://www1.skysports.com/football/news ... epers-spot


That was BR when Mignolet arrived - so he spoke to Pepe "months ago" to say a GK will arrive. The rest of what he said has of course turned out to be *****.

[parchpea]

We may have agreed the loan in principle without informing him but I don't think he was under any
obligation to go either but knew his time was up and that's football.

Cant imagine the club had the power to send him anywhere without his agreement and I just sense
some sour grapes here after being Liverpools No 1 for so long.

[Kenny Kan]

Another poor attempt at beating the manager with a flimsy stick.

[ConnO'var]

I am not a fan of the way we treated Dalglish and I for one am not sold on BR and his methods yet.... though I do have hope based on the back end performances from last season.

I am perfectly willing to give him more time and I fully expect to be proven wrong at the tail end of next season.

On the Reina issue however, I fully agree with the actions taken by the club. I am uncertain if Mignolet will be better but once Pepe had made it clear that if Barcelona made an approach, he would like to leave, then the club had to be proactive and get things sorted out. All this disrespect about loaning him out without consulting him is a load of tosh. He is not a slave. He can always say no.

If he was truly content to fight for his place, he would have done so. But the risk to his WC aspirations were probably too high for him to stomach. The main reason he is in Napoli and not here fighting for his place is IMO, because of the dreaded WC. Why he would bother, I have no idea as he is far down the Spanish pecking order with Casillas, Valdez and De Geaia (sp) all in with a shout.

All this talk about him being above board and our management being underhanded is pure speculation and there is no way we will know what actually went on unless we were flys on the wall and are privvy to inner going-ons at the club.

GKs are much easier (note the use of the term easier and not easy) than Strikers. and 9 million is much easier to stomach than 25-50 million risk.

With Suarez, we are in the driving seat as he has a much longer contract left as compared to Pepe. There is no way we should get ourselves bent over for a reaming in his situation.

Food for thought..... Once VV had decided to stay, would Pepe have signed a new contract to protect the club's interest? If next season, Barcelona came calling, would Pepe have his head turned again and should we then force him to stay because we have protection despite us knowing that we would have an unhappy player on our books? Would Barcelona pay our asking price on a GK not in the running for the spanish national side or would they scour their much vaunted academy for the next Valdez or perhaps look for a younger GK for their next generation?

IMO, Reina was never going to be anything more than an interim solution for them. In my OPINION, the club did the right thing here from a finacial standpoint.

The only real unknown is how well Mignolet is going to fare under the glaring spotlight that every Liverpool player gets put under.

[red till i die!!]

from the independent

There was a moment of sadness in Pepe Reina’s goodbye letter to Liverpool fans, a point of clear criticism directed at the club management.

Reina, after eight seasons at Liverpool, in which he barely missed a game, felt that he deserved to leave on his own terms. He would have preferred to go to a team of his choice, at a time of his choosing, after a discussion with the club.

Instead, he has been shipped off to Napoli on loan with as little consultation as they might give a youngster whom they had decided would never make it.

“I thought that I deserved better than that,” wrote Reina, the disappointment obvious, “even though I understand that difficult decisions have to be taken in football.”

Of course, football is a heartless place and clubs cannot afford to treat their big players with too much deference. When Simon Mignolet signed from Sunderland the only question was under which circumstances Reina would leave this summer. As it happens, those circumstances were not to his taste, and this is a more efficient outcome than his collecting his salary while sitting on the bench for the next season.

But everyone knows about ‘the Liverpool way’, and this is not it. This is meant to be a club where individuals were respected, especially those who had earned it on the pitch. Honest conversation was always meant to be the solution, and difficult divorces managed in a calm and dignified way, but Reina found himself surprised and rather put out when Liverpool decided to move him to Italy.

It raises questions, not for the first time, about the man-management at Anfield these days. It may well grow out of the American owners, coming from a sporting culture where players are traded at the whim of the owners without much of a say for themselves.

Or perhaps it comes from elsewhere at the club. Brendan Rodgers has his own ways of motivating players but it is not clear that they all respond well to him. Early last season Stewart Downing was publicly criticised by the new manager and was not delighted by it.

“I was obviously upset. I always try to give my best," said Downing last October when Rodgers had questioned his commitment. "You’ll have to ask the manager what he meant by his quotes. I would have preferred it obviously if it was private.”

Nuri Sahin, the Turkish midfielder signed on loan from Real Madrid but who never fully settled in his six months at Anfield, doubted the communication skills of Rodgers, and blamed them for his failure to settle.

“I did not fail at Liverpool,” Sahin insisted. “Brendan Rodgers wanted me to play as a number 10. But I do not play behind the strikers. I talked to him and asked him why he was playing me there. It is not my real position. The coach could not answer me. Thank God I have left Brendan Rodgers.”

Reina has left too, with his own distaste at the new regime.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/foot ... 37142.html

[Kenny Kan]

Good post ConnO'var, good to see you posting as well.

[Benny The Noon]

from the independent

There was a moment of sadness in Pepe Reina’s goodbye letter to Liverpool fans, a point of clear criticism directed at the club management.

Reina, after eight seasons at Liverpool, in which he barely missed a game, felt that he deserved to leave on his own terms. He would have preferred to go to a team of his choice, at a time of his choosing, after a discussion with the club.

Instead, he has been shipped off to Napoli on loan with as little consultation as they might give a youngster whom they had decided would never make it.

“I thought that I deserved better than that,” wrote Reina, the disappointment obvious, “even though I understand that difficult decisions have to be taken in football.”

Of course, football is a heartless place and clubs cannot afford to treat their big players with too much deference. When Simon Mignolet signed from Sunderland the only question was under which circumstances Reina would leave this summer. As it happens, those circumstances were not to his taste, and this is a more efficient outcome than his collecting his salary while sitting on the bench for the next season.

But everyone knows about ‘the Liverpool way’, and this is not it. This is meant to be a club where individuals were respected, especially those who had earned it on the pitch. Honest conversation was always meant to be the solution, and difficult divorces managed in a calm and dignified way, but Reina found himself surprised and rather put out when Liverpool decided to move him to Italy.

It raises questions, not for the first time, about the man-management at Anfield these days. It may well grow out of the American owners, coming from a sporting culture where players are traded at the whim of the owners without much of a say for themselves.

Or perhaps it comes from elsewhere at the club. Brendan Rodgers has his own ways of motivating players but it is not clear that they all respond well to him. Early last season Stewart Downing was publicly criticised by the new manager and was not delighted by it.

“I was obviously upset. I always try to give my best," said Downing last October when Rodgers had questioned his commitment. "You’ll have to ask the manager what he meant by his quotes. I would have preferred it obviously if it was private.”

Nuri Sahin, the Turkish midfielder signed on loan from Real Madrid but who never fully settled in his six months at Anfield, doubted the communication skills of Rodgers, and blamed them for his failure to settle.

“I did not fail at Liverpool,” Sahin insisted. “Brendan Rodgers wanted me to play as a number 10. But I do not play behind the strikers. I talked to him and asked him why he was playing me there. It is not my real position. The coach could not answer me. Thank God I have left Brendan Rodgers.”

Reina has left too, with his own distaste at the new regime.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/foot ... 37142.html

That's a good post.

[ConnO'var]

I would be taking reports bythe Independent with a large grain of salt.
That article smacks of sh!t stirring.

How can one expect any player who leaves due to a lack or performance or game time to be completely unbiased in their assessment of how the club is being managed? Are they going to give a glittering testimonial to the people who didn't rate them?

Nuri Sahin did well in the Bundesliga. He could not hack it in the Primera Liga nor the Premiership at the clubs he was at. With most unsuccessful situations, everything but the kitchen sink gets blamed instead of taking a retrospective look at one's self.