Liverpool FC Forum

[tubby]

Hopefully someone will be recording parts of the march and uploading it to youtube.

[Igor Zidane]

Hopefully someone will be recording parts of the march and uploading it to youtube.

Hopefully it will be all over the news tomorrow bav lad , that would be better.

[NANNY RED]

you should of got a grip of one Cigg an said do you fancy buying a football club

Who said i didnt   

No they where sound they really do like Rafa and they where Liverpool fans they where fuming the yanks wouldnt sell to Sheikh Mohammed. Some people also said this prince fella was a load of sh!te, and he will not be buying Liverpool.

it looks like that Prince fella was just after a bit of publicity,

Watch for the bouncers Cigg there gonna be loads of them on the gate

[Kharhaz]

Big march before the game tomorrow and some suprises inside as our owners will be at the match.

Hopefully Igor the surprises will come after we are 3-0 up, A distraction for the players before that time could well result in us going on to a 5-loss run and placing rafa under more pressure.

[crazyhorse]

It took some guts to start this thread I suppose, but then again it is someone putting into words something most of us have at least considered lately.

We are not a sacking club, something to be proud of.

In terms of whether we should.. well there is an argument that says that Rafa has failed and should go. Various members will say the squad is thin, poor players have been purchased, rotation, poor tactical decisions ect ect ect. You can see there is a real argument here and it is maybe wrong to call these people names, say they are not real supporters or know nothing about the game.

When we lost the CL game in midweek I was very upset, angry and it did start my mind wandering. I avoided this place because to be honest I could not be bothered to read the rubbish that was undoubtedley posted as a knee jerk reaction to a dreadful performance.

But should the club dispense with Rafa's services.. No is my thought, after a few days thinking about it. In my head would sacking the manager save the season? NO, would it improve the squad? NO, would it mean more cash to improve the squad? NO, is there a better option out there? NO.

Would sacking the manager, now in mid season cause disruption in the squad? YES, would it mean another few years of rebuilding? YES, would it mean a few more championship also ran seasons? YES.

Rafa built a squad capable of challenging for every honour in the game, and the current squad peaked in terms of what it is capable of last season when we narrowly missed out on the title. Since then we have lost Alonso and signed another player who as with all new signings is an unknown quantity. There is no money to buy the players which will take us up the extra 5 percent or so to win these titles, the hardest 5% to achieve. There is no money to improve on what we have.

Rafa is and has proven to be a stubborn, headstrong manager. That is not such a bad thing, he has self belief and thinks he is the best. He knows what he wants, and how he wants to do his job. He has upmost confidence that there is no one better. He has shown that he can change his attitude (rotation for one) but he does not do it easily. He is still learning, as do all great managers.

Keep him. He is not perfect, and I do not have the mindless faith that some have but I do feel that he will do it in the end. I do think he will walk away from the club though if he feels he has done all that he can and can take the club no further. In my muble opinion that point has not yet arrived and this is the crux of my argument.

We may be facing a difficult time. January approaches and we will have a fight on our hands to keep hold of Masch, and even Stevie. We do not need the worry of replacing a manager who has proven to us that he can win things.

[Ben Patrick]

It took some guts to start this thread I suppose, but then again it is someone putting into words something most of us have at least considered lately.

We are not a sacking club, something to be proud of.

In terms of whether we should.. well there is an argument that says that Rafa has failed and should go. Various members will say the squad is thin, poor players have been purchased, rotation, poor tactical decisions ect ect ect. You can see there is a real argument here and it is maybe wrong to call these people names, say they are not real supporters or know nothing about the game.

When we lost the CL game in midweek I was very upset, angry and it did start my mind wandering. I avoided this place because to be honest I could not be bothered to read the rubbish that was undoubtedley posted as a knee jerk reaction to a dreadful performance.

But should the club dispense with Rafa's services.. No is my thought, after a few days thinking about it. In my head would sacking the manager save the season? NO, would it improve the squad? NO, would it mean more cash to improve the squad? NO, is there a better option out there? NO.

Would sacking the manager, now in mid season cause disruption in the squad? YES, would it mean another few years of rebuilding? YES, would it mean a few more championship also ran seasons? YES.

Rafa built a squad capable of challenging for every honour in the game, and the current squad peaked in terms of what it is capable of last season when we narrowly missed out on the title. Since then we have lost Alonso and signed another player who as with all new signings is an unknown quantity. There is no money to buy the players which will take us up the extra 5 percent or so to win these titles, the hardest 5% to achieve. There is no money to improve on what we have.

Rafa is and has proven to be a stubborn, headstrong manager. That is not such a bad thing, he has self belief and thinks he is the best. He knows what he wants, and how he wants to do his job. He has upmost confidence that there is no one better. He has shown that he can change his attitude (rotation for one) but he does not do it easily. He is still learning, as do all great managers.

Keep him. He is not perfect, and I do not have the mindless faith that some have but I do feel that he will do it in the end. I do think he will walk away from the club though if he feels he has done all that he can and can take the club no further. In my muble opinion that point has not yet arrived and this is the crux of my argument.

We may be facing a difficult time. January approaches and we will have a fight on our hands to keep hold of Masch, and even Stevie. We do not need the worry of replacing a manager who has proven to us that he can win things.

what's with the 'we might have a fight to keep steve' comment mate ?

[Reg]

If theres no new owners theres no cash injection and we wont win the league in the forseeable so why should Stevie hang around? There is a degree of negative, but understandable logic to it.

[Ben Patrick]

Out of interest did you guys live through the Shanks and Paisley era?

The 'Hire and Fire' attitude didnt exist then, success came through hard work not constantly changing staff and spending money.

Its a fair point, one that Rafa could do with looking into as we constantly have massive squad overhauls every summer.

Continuity is not being preached by our boss.

[Ben Patrick]

If theres no new owners theres no cash injection and we wont win the league in the forseeable so why should Stevie hang around? There is a degree of negative, but understandable logic to it.

I dont.

There is no way i could see him jumping a sinking ship now. Not after what happened last time when he nearly went to Chelsea.
Stevie is here for life.

[Octsky]

If theres no new owners theres no cash injection and we wont win the league in the forseeable so why should Stevie hang around? There is a degree of negative, but understandable logic to it.

I dont.

There is no way i could see him jumping a sinking ship now. Not after what happened last time when he nearly went to Chelsea.
Stevie is here for life.

Stevie is top of RM's lists. latest football news.
The scums wants to screw us for the 4th time in one decade.
But i trust Stevie will stay and lift the title with us, with or without Rafa.

[bigmick]

Probably the longest post in history, but a really good article in the times (I know most of it will get instantly dismissed, but I think it's a good article anyway.

BENITEZ IN THE TRANSFER MARKET

Rafael Benitez was a stubborn child. “It wasn’t humanly possible to convince him,” said his late father, Paco. “One day he fell over because he wouldn’t listen to me. Although he hurt himself, he swallowed his tears and didn’t cry.” From zonal marking to squad rotation, to a job obsession that makes Bill Shankly seem a mere dabbler in football, Benitez is unshakeable when he fixes upon things. Except, curiously, football players. His dad managed hotels. At Casa Rafa they’re run off their feet at the check-in and checkout desks.

Playing guests come and go. Defeat by Manchester United today would extinguish, in record time, another title challenge and ensure Liverpool’s worst run of results in 56 years. Their manager gives a practised defence. Benitez, citing injuries, blames manpower issues for the crisis. For a sixth season at Anfield he suggests he is underfunded and thwarted by superiors from concluding the transfers he needs. United, Chelsea — and Arsenal, because of Arsène Wenger’s “hidden” spending on youth recruits and player wages — have always been more privileged; so, now, are Manchester City.

Yet, for a man whose hands are tied, Benitez has a remarkable knack of getting his fingers on the chequebook. Since joining Liverpool in June 2004, he has spent an estimated £256m on players and recouped £134m through sales. His £122m net outlay is outstripped by Chelsea’s over the same period but otherwise Benitez’s poverty pleas seem emptier than Nick Griffin’s skull. United are down just £27m on player trading and Arsenal are in profit by the same amount. And look at Benitez’s volume of activity: 79 permanent signings, 63 sales and 82 loans in and out. That all means Liverpool have completed a transfer transaction for every eight days and 18 hours of their manager’s reign. Players booking into Casa Rafa should request an hourly room rate.

Related Links
How Liverpool's transfer spending compares
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Dalglish rallies Kop behind Benitez
Liverpool’s current plight seems opposite to what their most recent meeting with United foretold. The 4-1 win at Old Trafford in March, while too late to swing the 2008-09 title their way, set up Liverpool as prime contenders for the 2009-10 Premier League. But Xabi Alonso, Sami Hyypia and Alvaro Arbeloa went and Glen Johnson, Sotirios Kyrgiakos and Alberto Aquilani arrived. Kyrgiakos is a reserve. Aquilani, costing £20m, is yet to play in the first team because of injury and Johnson struggles to justify the £18m price for a right-back. Meanwhile, Alonso has been princely for Real Madrid, Arbeloa is playing for Spain and Hyypia, top of the Bundesliga with Bayern Leverkusen, has been voted the best defender in Germany.

Benitez has traded and spent significantly, seemingly without advancing his club. None of the left-backs (Emiliano Insua, Fabio Aurelio, Andrea Dossena) he bought for a combined £8m appears superior to the one (Stephen Warnock) he jettisoned for £1.5m. Getting Fernando Torres, even for £26.5m, was genius but how many of the other 33 strikers and wingers he has signed were good deals?

“I have seen a lot of names in the press and I didn’t even know the player. They are even counting all the players of the under-8s, under-9s, under-10s, under-11s who we signed,” Benitez complained. No players under 16 are included in the 79 signings. Forty-five have played for Liverpool’s first XI and nearly all the rest in their second string.

Benitez argues Liverpool were so bad when he arrived that half the first team, nearly all the reserves and every youth footballer bar one were substandard. Fifty players at various levels needed to be replaced. He says youth signings should not be factored into his transfer spend — yet he grouses if they are left out of Wenger’s.

He has a point that five years ago Arsenal, United and Chelsea had much stronger squads and needed less remedial work. Base strength has allowed Sir Alex Ferguson to concentrate on expensive signings recently.

“If you talk about players who cost more than £7m, we have 80% success and below this figure we have to take some gambles. When you don’t have too much money, you have to gamble,” said Benitez. “£7m-plus” was an interesting threshold to select, ruling out Dossena and Peter Crouch (who both cost £7m exactly), Jermaine Pennant (£6.7m), Fernando Morientes (£6.3m) and Craig Bellamy and Lucas (both £6m).

Fans blame George Gillett and Tom Hicks, Liverpool’s co-owners, for the volume of mid-price footballers bought but Benitez, he of squad rotation and 14 backroom appointments since 2007, seems to like personnel changes in bulk. Having lost six of his first 13 games this season, does he regret replacing Alonso with Aquilani, who he knew would be unavailable for the season’s initial phase? “The price and the quality of the player were right. The problem is Steven Gerrard got injured and [Javier] Mascherano had to play with Argentina, trying to qualify for the World Cup.” Should Alonso have been allowed to exit? “We won a lot of games without Alonso. Alonso decided he wanted to leave. I don’t think we can be thinking about the past,” Benitez shrugged.

Hicks and Gillett have massive debts to service and it is thought Benitez will be empowered to spend only what he raises in sales in January. He would like someone to buy Ryan Babel. Keeping Mascherano, courted by Barcelona, might be a problem. Yet more trading beckons.

Liverpool have beaten United without Torres and Gerrard but generally rely on the pair. Gerrard is likely to be missing today and Torres, Johnson, Dossena, Kyrgiakos and Albert Riera were unavailable against Lyons. “Take five starters from United, key players, and tell me if it’s the same team,” Benitez said. For the record, United were without Wayne Rooney, Ryan Giggs, Darren Fletcher, Owen Hargreaves, Rafael and Park Ji-Sung in midweek and beat CSKA Moscow away.

TACTICAL THINKING AND DEFENSIVE DOUBTS

“I think we have some wine . . .” said Benitez, sounding like a maiden aunt who rarely entertains visitors. You pictured a musty bottle of Mateus Rose, opened in 1986, from which a glass had already been drained. Entertaining Ferguson is not top of the Spaniard’s priorities. “In my first games with Liverpool v United we had some chats, talking about football. Everything was okay, no problem. Now I think something is different,” said Benitez, implying he is not to blame for their feud.

It is strange, now, to think of Benitez being warmly received by Ferguson when on a study visit to United’s training ground a decade ago. Benitez was between jobs and keen to broaden his technical knowledge. As a youth player he was so studious about football that teammates nicknamed him Trina, after a Spanish soft drink, because he never went to bars or discos. His reputation is for being a guru of tactics. It seemed apt when he marshalled a patently inferior Liverpool to successes against Juventus and Chelsea en route to Champions League glory in 2005, but has recently taken a battering.

Benitez decided to alter his set-up this season, investing huge sums in an attacking full-back, Johnson, and attacking midfielder, Aquilani, while selling the more defensively minded Arbeloa and Alonso. Liverpool have been vulnerable at the back all season. Carragher is frank about the number of goals his side are conceding. “It’s something we’ve got to sort out,” he said. “We conceded one from a set-piece [versus Lyons] and got caught on the counterattack at the end.” Of all Benitez’s tactics, zonal marking causes the most controversy. On Thursday he gave a four-hour interview to a blogger from the Kop in the hope of getting his message directly to fans. A portion was spent arguing — with the aid of DVDs — that the defensive measures Liverpool deploy at set-pieces are actually a mixture of zonal and man-marking, and that sides who simply use man-marking tend to concede more goals.

The stats back up Benitez and he is by no means the only top manager using a zonal system, but something seems wrong with the way Liverpool practise it. Where once it was rare for Liverpool to concede from a corner or free kick, now it happens regularly. Benitez’s 4-2-3-1 set-up is another area of contention. Again, the theory is espoused at other leading clubs but Liverpool struggle with its execution, thanks to their long-term lack of quality wing play and more recent dearth of a deep-lying playmaker, with Alonso gone.

All this said, Benitez won the tactical battle with Ferguson when Liverpool won 4-1 in March. The interplay between Torres and Gerrard, and the accurate long-kicking of Jose Reina, undid United. Nemanja Vidic, horribly outplayed by Torres on that occasion, has something to prove. “Vidic will always accept a challenge because he’s a warrior,” said Ferguson. He can be more sure, at Anfield, of finding a battle than a bottle.

COOL CUSTOMER OR A COLD FISH?

When the heat gets turned on Benitez, witnesses line up to testify how cold the man can be. His captain, Gerrard, acknowledged in print that the froideur of Benitez’s man-management took him some time to get used to. Carragher was struck by a working relationship that seems to eliminate the personal and yesterday Alonso was talking up the benefits at Real Madrid of having a boss with a warmer heart. “Manuel Pellegrini is much more involved when it comes to emotional things,” said Alonso. “But Rafa is the way he wants to be.”

Others concur. “When Liverpool score, he probably won’t even smile or pump a fist — he’ll just write down a note,” says Jermaine Pennant, the former Liverpool winger. “We won 6-0 against Derby County and played amazingly. All we got from the boss was a quiet, ‘Well done.’ It’s like in any job, if you’ve done something the manager appreciates, it puts you in a better frame of mind if he says, ‘Fantastic, you were really good today’. But he is a great tactician.”

In Spain, where Benitez fortified habits he had developed as a young coach schooled at Real Madrid, former colleagues echo that. Antonio Lopez, a former deputy at Valencia, said: “We agreed on a lot of things but maybe I was able to give a bit more in terms of human relationships. Rafa is distant.”

“He likes to dominate,” added Felipe Minambres, once Benitez’s assistant at Tenerife. “He wants total control of fitness, tactics, strategy, food and the dressing room. He’s meticulous.”

Attention to detail and a great archive of knowledge were marks of the man, remembers the goalkeeper Cesar Sanchez, who worked with Benitez when he was embarking on his career at senior level, at Valladolid. “He was ahead of his time, with his laptop and his deep analyses of opponents.” The idea of Benitez the boffin quite appealed in his younger days. One former colleague recalls him boasting, with a grin: “I taught Vicente del Bosque [the former Real Madrid coach and now Spain’s head coach] how to switch on a computer.” Del Bosque made Benitez his assistant in a caretaker spell at Madrid, though the relationship deteriorated after a perceived slight during a television commentary by the former apprentice towards his former mentor.

Del Bosque is not the only ally Benitez has lost in his career. He repeatedly clashed with technical directors at Valencia. His Valencia reign started edgily and even in the great days of league triumphs, he wore armour. Valencia was, and is, a political viper’s nest. Benitez fought battles over transfer funds, learnt to watch his back and fired the odd toxic arrow — “I asked for a sofa and they bought me a lamp”, he said of one transfer — from the dugout into the executive offices.

So reports of Benitez’s tussles with Rick Parry and with the owners of Liverpool tend to prompt wry smiles. In Iberia, as on Merseyside, players found him a little too political in his man-management. “He’s a great coach, in that nothing escapes him,” said the former Valencia goalkeeper Andres Palop, “and he gives so much information to players, sometimes too much. On a personal level, he surrounded himself with the important players and the others counted for nothing. There’d never be a word asking how I was.” As for handling a crisis, Benitez has been in similar situations to this before. His first four months at Valencia were heading down a cul-de-sac that put his position in far greater doubt than his tenure at Liverpool is today. The team had gone five matches without a win. The press were turning on the manager and he wondered out loud if one of the club’s former directors had been paying local reporters to criticise him. “I’m convinced we can win trophies here,” he announced before the Sunday fixture, away at Espanyol, that might have put him out of a job. But at half-time, his players traipsed into the dressing room 2-0 down.

In Valencia, what happened during the interval is almost as feted a story as what Rafa said after 45 minutes in Istanbul in the 2005 Champions League final. Certainly, the match between Espanyol and Valencia in December 2001 is recognised as a turning point in his career. Without the second-half goals that turned a deficit into a 3-2 win, Benitez might easily have been sacked. As it was, Valencia left the Olympic stadium in Barcelona relieved, won La Liga in May 2002 and repeated the triumph 24 months later.

Even those on whom Benitez left little residue of warmth would back him to find a way out of a crisis, just as he did at half-time in Montjuic or during the interval in Istanbul. “He will suddenly surprise you with a line-up or a strategy,” said Palop. “The thing with Rafa Benitez is he always has a card up his sleeve.”

[lakes10]

it seem our owners have not been tellling the truth again, reports coming into the press office seem to think that the the owners are set to sack Rafa if we dont win today, it will not be a long thing as he will be told right after the game.

SSN were first to report this during the night and the bbc have only reported it once.

[roberto green]

it seem our owners have not been tellling the truth again, reports coming into the press office seem to think that the the owners are set to sack Rafa if we dont win today, it will not be a long thing as he will be told right after the game.

SSN were first to report this during the night and the bbc have only reported it once.

I wouldn't believe any off it mate Iv'e been looking over the back pages and it is all doom and gloom for Liverpool, there is hardly anything on the Mancs.Just the usual pre Liverpool Manc game dribble they serve up to turn the screw on us,

I'm off to the march and I think it is going to be huge they are saying 10,000 plus will be on it I think it could be more like 20,000

[Rush Job]

Its a fair point, one that Rafa could do with looking into as we constantly have massive squad overhauls every summer.

Do we?

[lakes10]

it seem our owners have not been tellling the truth again, reports coming into the press office seem to think that the the owners are set to sack Rafa if we dont win today, it will not be a long thing as he will be told right after the game.

SSN were first to report this during the night and the bbc have only reported it once.

I wouldn't believe any off it mate Iv'e been looking over the back pages and it is all doom and gloom for Liverpool, there is hardly anything on the Mancs.Just the usual pre Liverpool Manc game dribble they serve up to turn the screw on us,

I'm off to the march and I think it is going to be huge they are saying 10,000 plus will be on it I think it could be more like 20,000

look out for them prats that were posting on the other forum on friday saying they are going to use the march to start i fight with the police and man u fans.........most of them are not even liverpool fans they are renta mo, the onse that start all the fights in london when there is any march.
the police know they are going and are goinjg to try and stop them at the train station, theres around 100 of them said to be going.