Liverpool FC Forum

by **Thommo's perm** » Mon Jul 05, 2010 2:26 pm

jacdaniel wrote:
Thommo's perm wrote:
jacdaniel wrote:
Big Niall wrote:Why are people questioning Roy?

Any manager needs 3 years before we can judge him.

Let's just support him instead of putting pressure on him.

not entirely true.
You can win the Champions league in your first year, FA Cup in your second and Champions league runner up in your third and then have a bad season and people will call you s.hit.

Whether we like it or not, football these days is based on the last season. have a bad season = getting sacked. make some progress and you'll get more time.

in the modern game.. sometimes i wonder whether winning the Carling Cup would be better than finishing 2nd in the PL or CL.

I really hope people can stop this spin about accusing people of saying Rafa had "one bad season and he was sh'it" malarky.
His record is there for everyone to see:
2005 CL, 2006 FA cup, 2007- lost in final CL.
2008, 2009, 2010- zilch and went backwards.
Love him or hate him, Rafa had his chance and blew it.
Good luck with your future Rafa. Thanks and goodbye

So Champions league semi finals and quarter finals are zilch? Finishing 2nd in the PL with our highest ever points total was zilch?

Ask yourself this.. would it have all been better if we'd gotten knocked out of the CL each season but won the Carling cup?

I hope Roy doesn't finish 2nd in the PL four years in a row cos that wouldnt be good enough would it?

Rafa spoke about "progression"
In the end we werent progressing. We won nothing after 2006-zilch. Rafa was taking us backwards.
Hes gone and Red Roy is the manager no matter what. Lets look forward eh?

by **Thommo's perm** » Mon Jul 05, 2010 2:28 pm

john craig wrote:We have got 3 strikers
Torres, Babel and Kuyt...

We had all three of those 'strikers' last season and yet without Torres were abysmal at putting the ball in the net. So your point is?[/quote]
Maybe the new manager will get the best out of them?

by **mart** » Mon Jul 05, 2010 2:30 pm

john craig wrote:We have got 3 strikers
Torres, Babel and Kuyt...

We had all three of those 'strikers' last season and yet without Torres were abysmal at putting the ball in the net. So your point is?[/quote]
You can add Jovanovic, N'gog and even Nemeth.

by **jacdaniel** » Mon Jul 05, 2010 2:30 pm

Thommo's perm wrote:
jacdaniel wrote:
Thommo's perm wrote:
jacdaniel wrote:
Big Niall wrote:Why are people questioning Roy?

Any manager needs 3 years before we can judge him.

Let's just support him instead of putting pressure on him.

not entirely true.
You can win the Champions league in your first year, FA Cup in your second and Champions league runner up in your third and then have a bad season and people will call you s.hit.

Whether we like it or not, football these days is based on the last season. have a bad season = getting sacked. make some progress and you'll get more time.

in the modern game.. sometimes i wonder whether winning the Carling Cup would be better than finishing 2nd in the PL or CL.

I really hope people can stop this spin about accusing people of saying Rafa had "one bad season and he was sh'it" malarky.
His record is there for everyone to see:
2005 CL, 2006 FA cup, 2007- lost in final CL.
2008, 2009, 2010- zilch and went backwards.
Love him or hate him, Rafa had his chance and blew it.
Good luck with your future Rafa. Thanks and goodbye

So Champions league semi finals and quarter finals are zilch? Finishing 2nd in the PL with our highest ever points total was zilch?

Ask yourself this.. would it have all been better if we'd gotten knocked out of the CL each season but won the Carling cup?

I hope Roy doesn't finish 2nd in the PL four years in a row cos that wouldnt be good enough would it?

Rafa spoke about "progression"
In the end we werent progressing. We won nothing after 2006-zilch. Rafa was taking us backwards.
Hes gone and Red Roy is the manager no matter what. Lets look forward eh?

yeah i agree with that, time to move on.
but i stick by my original point which was, in the modern game, no manager is afforded an awful season.

by **Fauxy** » Mon Jul 05, 2010 2:31 pm

Thommo's perm wrote:
john craig wrote:We have got 3 strikers
Torres, Babel and Kuyt...

We had all three of those 'strikers' last season and yet without Torres were abysmal at putting the ball in the net. So your point is?

Maybe the new manager will get the best out of them?[/quote]
Well he managed to get the best out of Bobby Zamora, so i dont see why not!

by **Thommo's perm** » Mon Jul 05, 2010 2:33 pm

jacdaniel wrote:
Thommo's perm wrote:
jacdaniel wrote:
Thommo's perm wrote:
jacdaniel wrote:
Big Niall wrote:Why are people questioning Roy?

Any manager needs 3 years before we can judge him.

Let's just support him instead of putting pressure on him.

not entirely true.
You can win the Champions league in your first year, FA Cup in your second and Champions league runner up in your third and then have a bad season and people will call you s.hit.

Whether we like it or not, football these days is based on the last season. have a bad season = getting sacked. make some progress and you'll get more time.

in the modern game.. sometimes i wonder whether winning the Carling Cup would be better than finishing 2nd in the PL or CL.

I really hope people can stop this spin about accusing people of saying Rafa had "one bad season and he was sh'it" malarky.
His record is there for everyone to see:
2005 CL, 2006 FA cup, 2007- lost in final CL.
2008, 2009, 2010- zilch and went backwards.
Love him or hate him, Rafa had his chance and blew it.
Good luck with your future Rafa. Thanks and goodbye

So Champions league semi finals and quarter finals are zilch? Finishing 2nd in the PL with our highest ever points total was zilch?

Ask yourself this.. would it have all been better if we'd gotten knocked out of the CL each season but won the Carling cup?

I hope Roy doesn't finish 2nd in the PL four years in a row cos that wouldnt be good enough would it?

Rafa spoke about "progression"
In the end we werent progressing. We won nothing after 2006-zilch. Rafa was taking us backwards.
Hes gone and Red Roy is the manager no matter what. Lets look forward eh?

yeah i agree with that, time to move on.
but i stick by my original point which was, in the modern game, no manager is afforded an awful season.

Youre determined to have the last word arent you?
Go on then...

by **bigmick** » Mon Jul 05, 2010 2:37 pm

A number of points, so I'll try and get to all of them.

Firstly, this question of whether or not the squad was good enough to challenge last season. Well firstly lets look at the facts. It did challenge for the title the previous season, but we did sell Alonso and Arbeloa. We chose to replace Alonso with Aquilani, and likewise Johnson for Arbeloa. There was no significant retirees, nor was there any significant "over the hill" tendancies from any ofthe players (like there will be this season coming from Carragher IMHO for instance). So was it good enough to win the league? Well no I don't think it was (because we had no cover for Torres), which is why I said I didn't think it was good enough last season as well to win it. Good enough to challenge though? Yes I think it was. Arsenal challenged, even Spurs kind of challenged, so I think we were good enough to challenge yes.

The inevitable question is therefore, so if we were good enough to challenge last season then you must be saying we are good enough this season? No. Carragher is IMHO on a fairly steep decline, Aurelio has been sold and not replaced, and at this juncture the money spent on Aquilani looks like it's been well and truly spunked. That's not to say that with a couple of signings we couldn't be up there (replace Aquilani with Steven Ireland and find a top class centre half from somewhere for instance), but as things stand I don't expect a serious title challenge this time. I do though expect us to significantly outperform last seasons pitiful effort.

On the question of top class managers beating a path to our door, I actually think we've done pretty well in appointing Hodgson. Obviously Mourinho is the best there is, but he's just joined Madrid so was a non starter. Lots of managers are tied up with the World Cup and so were therefore unavailable, and I'm not aware of anyone openly turning us down. My first choice of those who might have been available was Martin O'Neill, but I'm very happy with Roy. The challenge has to be that he is an improvement on what he replaced, and I'm very confident that he will be.

by **maguskwt** » Mon Jul 05, 2010 2:42 pm

bigmick wrote:The challenge has to be that he is an improvement on what he replaced, and I'm very confident that he will be.

You mean you are very confident that he will improve our performance last season... But are you confident he will be able to better 86 points or win a cup or two?

Let's face it being able to better the 7th place finish of last season is not an achievement... even the most anti Rafa couldn't deny in all honesty that if Rafa stayed, he would have improved last season's standing and done much more...

by **Fauxy** » Mon Jul 05, 2010 2:46 pm

bigmick wrote:A number of points, so I'll try and get to all of them.

Firstly, this question of whether or not the squad was good enough to challenge last season. Well firstly lets look at the facts. It did challenge for the title the previous season, but we did sell Alonso and Arbeloa. We chose to replace Alonso with Aquilani, and likewise Johnson for Arbeloa. There was no significant retirees, nor was there any significant "over the hill" tendancies from any ofthe players (like there will be this season coming from Carragher IMHO for instance). So was it good enough to win the league? Well no I don't think it was (because we had no cover for Torres), which is why I said I didn't think it was good enough last season as well to win it. Good enough to challenge though? Yes I think it was. Arsenal challenged, even Spurs kind of challenged, so I think we were good enough to challenge yes.

The inevitable question is therefore, so if we were good enough to challenge last season then you must be saying we are good enough this season? No. Carragher is IMHO on a fairly steep decline, Aurelio has been sold and not replaced, and at this juncture the money spent on Aquilani looks like it's been well and truly spunked. That's not to say that with a couple of signings we couldn't be up there (replace Aquilani with Steven Ireland and find a top class centre half from somewhere for instance), but as things stand I don't expect a serious title challenge this time. I do though expect us to significantly outperform last seasons pitiful effort.

On the question of top class managers beating a path to our door, I actually think we've done pretty well in appointing Hodgson. Obviously Mourinho is the best there is, but he's just joined Madrid so was a non starter. Lots of managers are tied up with the World Cup and so were therefore unavailable, and I'm not aware of anyone openly turning us down. My first choice of those who might have been available was Martin O'Neill, but I'm very happy with Roy. The challenge has to be that he is an improvement on what he replaced, and I'm very confident that he will be.

Why replace Aquilani??

I keep banging on about this but he had a great start here, he made more assists than anyone in our team apart from gerrard in the space of about 4 months, bearing in mind he wasnt even starting most matches and he was played out of position + was returning from long term injury when he did!

Steven Ireland is a good player, I would like to see him here. But not at the expense of Aquilani.

by **Thommo's perm** » Mon Jul 05, 2010 2:48 pm

maguskwt wrote:
bigmick wrote:The challenge has to be that he is an improvement on what he replaced, and I'm very confident that he will be.

You mean you are very confident that he will improve our performance last season... But are you confident he will be able to better 86 points or win a cup or two?

I would expect him to be in the top four and possibly a good cup run based on the enormity of the job he has in front of him.
I also expect him not to make irrational decisions and try to force the players to play out of position in a useless formation.
If he has them playing good football which wins games I will be pleased

by **bigmick** » Mon Jul 05, 2010 3:28 pm

I'm not going to get into yet another tiresome debate about previous management. When I say i think Roy will improve us, then obviously I'm talking about the here and now. I'm not saying he'll improve us from Dalglish's team which had Barnes, Beardsley and Aldridge, simply because that is a team way back in our history. Equally, although the previous management was in place for six seasons I'm not talking about the efforts such as they were for the first five seasons, I'm talking about the most recent effort. This is the only sensible benchmark by which you can judge a manager. That is the simple question which will be answered one way or another at the end of the season, has Roy Hodgson improved upon the most recent effort of his predecessor? I'm supremely confident that he will. I'm equally supremely confident that as and when he does, some people will say "but the previous manager would have done that anyway/would actually have surpassed that". They will, because they do.

As for Fauxy's point about Aquilani, it is simply a case of differing opinions on a player. You really rate him mate, I really don't. I do think he's a talented footballer, but I am unconvinced that he can be part of a successful team in the Premiership. Hopefully the new manager will find a way to utilise him and then we can all be happy that he's top notch. Given that if we sold him we'd get significantly less than we paid for him, and given that whatever paltry sum it was the owners would half inch most of it giving us the loose change for a replacement, it really does make sense to try and find a role for him. Hopefully the new manager will be successful to this end.

by **Benny The Noon** » Mon Jul 05, 2010 3:46 pm

So are managers judged only by the season previously hence ignoring any seasons before ? So surely that means Hodgson must be judged on his seasons as they go by and if nothing happens in first season that is what he must be judged on ! Also Mick was Hodgson one of the managers you were talking about when you said that the top managers will be queing up for the job ?

by **bigmick** » Mon Jul 05, 2010 4:10 pm

I'm not talking about judging previous managers, other than pontificating that Roy will improve on his predecessors most recent efforts. Fans are free to judge the reign of the previous manager in its entirity. No doubt some will view it a success, others won't but it makes no odds either way. "Judging" how he did isn't what I'm on about, and frankly I can't really be bothered even discussing it as I know it starts people off with their mouth frothing routines before you can even get a sensible debate off the ground.

As for the posters point about Hodgson being judged season by season (I think that's what he means, apologies if it isn't) then obviously all managers are judged in such a way. If Hodgson hasn't won a trophy for four seasons, hasn't been to Wembley ever, and in his last season we finish seventh, get knocked out of the FA Cup at Home by Reading and play awful football all season, I've no doubt he'll go the way of his predecessor.

As for the point about top managers coming to the club, as I said earlier I'm actually very happy we got Hodgson. I don't share some peoples fascination with managers from abroad (I thought Pelligrini was an utterly ridiculous idea for instance) and am quite prepared to believe that Hodgson will do an excellent job for us. He's done an excellent job everywhere he's been with the exception of half a second season at Blackburn, so I don't see he shouldn't do it at Liverpool. Once Mourinho had gone to Madrid, Martin O Neill would have been my first choice, followed by Hodgson.

by **maguskwt** » Mon Jul 05, 2010 4:15 pm

I'm also supremely confident that Roy Hodgson can finish above 7th like for example maybe 6th. But whether that is of any use or meaning well that's another matter...

So yeah let's hire a manager that can improve on last season's 7th finish... that's all that matters isn't it...

by **Benny The Noon** » Mon Jul 05, 2010 4:19 pm

If going season by season then Hodgson has to get us into the CL surely as well as reaching the latter stages of said competition - maybe a couple of semi finals the odd final all of which far out weigh any trip to wembley for a domestic cup IMO . Mick was Hodgson one of those top managers you were alluding too . As for not winning trophies etc our new manager has been trying for 30 years and still not won anything of significant yet and that half a season with Blackburn ended with them being relegated - as well as gaining less points than Sanchez in his half of that season - winning 4 games away in two seasons .

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