by Aussie Style » Mon Dec 13, 2010 1:29 pm
I found this on another site, not a bad read..
13 Dec 2010 11:32:26
Liverpool Rumours
Dear Mr Henry,
It is with a very heavy heart that I am writing to you, and the reason why I am writing to you is because of the manager's position at our club. Over the course of this season the club has went from one embarrassing moment to the next, stumbled from one unwanted new low to another and all of the time the culprit for causing this is just one man. . Roy Hodgson.
Roy came to the club in the summer and has since shown every trait that a Liverpool manager SHOULDN'T. I obviously don't need to go through the season game by game and point out to you how poor things have been but here are a collection of Roy's quotes since his arrival:
• Describing Northampton Town as formidable, (what's that about. . they're in the 4th tier of English football for a reason! )
• Calling a victory in Trabzonspor "famous". . (I don't need to tell you that Liverpool Football Club is one of the most famous sporting institutions in the entire world, we have had success that others could never even dream about and although we are not as successful as we were, in recent years we have beaten Inter Milan, Barcelona, Real Madrid in the Champions League and domestically Man Utd, Chelsea etc in their own back yards. . victories against Trabzonspor in the Europa League DO NOT come close)
• Saying (albeit tongue in cheek) that he hoped not to lose 6-0 to Man City.
• Saying he wasn't expecting anything out of the Birmingham City game.
• Describing a 2-2 draw at home to Sunderland as finishing the week off with a high point.
• Letting Alex Ferguson get away with calling Torres a cheat. . (it took him 5 days to actually back Torres publically)
• Saying that "To get a result here would have been Utopia" referring to playing Everton away despite the fact we hadn't lost their in the league for a few years before his arrival!
• Calling the Spirit of Shankly Union members who were organising a protest against our previous owners a certain "group of people". . alienating fans that are trying to help progress the club. . and of course this classic
• "The protest does not help but it is something I have had to live with since I came to the club" (Did he not see that this "group of people" were trying to rid the club of a cancer that is killing the club and their removal would actually make the manager's job a hell of a lot easier?)
• His ill informed comments about Kenny Dalglish's "mistreatment" by Rafa Benitez
• His attempts to start an unnecessary and un-Liverpool like media row with previous boss Rafa Benitez
• His public criticism of certain players such as Daniel Agger, Glen Johnson and his apparent freezing out of young starlet Dani Pacheco
• And so not to bore you to death I'll leave you with his most recent one, after our defeat to Newcastle "For a team that wants to be in the top half it's not good enough". . top half. . top half??
His quotes and his approach mimic the mentality of a manager in charge of a club which would not be of the stature of Liverpool Football Club. The way his constantly tries to dampen expectations in his interviews is done so that when his lack of tactical nous becomes apparent he can simply use his self preserving quotes to take the attention of his own short comings. His motivational skills leave a lot to be desired and the sight of him scratching his chin looking like someone who (as I heard someone say the other day) "doesn't understand the question let alone know the answer", is a terrible sight for anyone associated with the club. As he slumped in his seat during the final minutes of the Newcastle game like a disgruntled supporter rather than a pro-active manager, for me that was the last straw, my patience had run out with him many weeks ago but I never felt the anger towards a Liverpool manager as I had right then.
He has played the media card very well, he has been thus far above criticism, coupling that with the fact there are certain sections of the English media who seem to be more than happy with the demise of our football club, only the other night certain "experts" on Sky Sports tried to tell us how much "progress" we had made under Roy. .
Here is how we have fared at this date (13th of December) for the ten seasons before Roy's arrival:
2000 P17 Pts 27 Goal Difference +8 Pos 6th
2001 P15 Pts 33 Goal Difference +14 Pos 1st
2002 P17 Pts 31 Goal Difference +10 Pos 4th
2003 P16 Pts 22 Goal Difference +5 Pos 9th - Gerard Houllier got the boot
2004 P16 Pts 24 Goal Difference +6 Pos 7th
2005 P15 Pts 31 Goal Difference +12 Pos 2nd
2006 P17 Pts 28 Goal Difference +8 Pos 5th
2007 P15 Pts 30 Goal Difference +18 Pos 4th
2008 P17 Pts 38 Goal Difference +15 Pos 1st
2009 P16 Pts 24 Goal Difference +10 Pos 7th - Rafa got the boot
2010 P17 Pts 22 Goal Difference -1 Pos 9th
So where is the progress?
The experts will probably try to say that Liverpool are in fact closer to the top as they are 10 points behind the leaders this year, where as they were 13 points behind at this stage last season, not taking into account that the leaders are in fact 5 points worse off at this point then they were last season (2009 Chelsea played 16 had 37 points. . 2010 Arsenal played 16 have 32 points, Note: Arsenal also have a game in hand on Liverpool)
Liverpool are 6 points clear of the relegation zone. . RELEGATION ZONE?? . . There's 2 words which many generations of Liverpool fan didn't have in their vocabulary, until this year, and for the record we were 10 points clear of it at this stage last season.
As for goals scored and goal difference, I cannot ever remember Liverpool having a negative goal difference in the league in December, we had a -2 before Monday night's game; it was before the game that the "experts" were talking up Liverpool's "progress". . Since we have played and lost to Newcastle and now we have scored 21 goals this season, compared to 32 at this date last season, we now have a -1 in the goal difference column compared to a +10 last season.
Our away form has been nothing but shocking this season too. . Away from Anfield this season we have played 9 games and in almost half of these games we failed to even score, (that's a big fat zero against Birmingham, Stoke, Everton and Man City, with Man City being the only team actually ahead of Liverpool in the league at this time and in those 4 corresponding fixtures last season, we only failed to score against Man City and were unbeaten against all 4) but in these 9 games we have scored 6 goals, conceded 16 and have 5 points at this date last season we had scored 10 times conceded 12 and had 10 points!
Continuing on the theme of away form, we have had 1 win, 2 draws and 6 defeats away from Anfield, the game at Tottenham Hotspur was said to have been our "best away performance" of the season, but looking back, were we really that good?. . I don't think so.
Roy has won 1 of his last 27 away games in the league. . he has won 13 away games out of almost 110 attempts. . how are these statistics associated with the manager of such a massive club with massive expectations?
At this point I would like to say that I am comparing stats to last season, a season that the experts, continually told the world that wasn't good enough for a club like Liverpool and subsequently leading to our manager being removed. . yet the stats from "the worst season ever" as some were referring to it last season are actually BETTER than this season and that's not taking into account that our previous manager had to deal with the awful behind the scenes turmoil that our previous owners caused, Roy complained before the game against Blackpool that the protests against the owners were a distraction "Those people aren't making my job any easier" is what he said, but, thankfully, the ownership issue was sorted just 9 weeks into the season, where as our last manager had to deal with them for 3 YEARS, also last season up to Christmas we had been involved in the Champions League and therefore we could not rest our better plays, as Roy has been allowed to do in the Europa League this season. Roy has also, up to a couple of weeks ago had our best players constantly at his disposal, and last season the manager didn't!
To summarise, at this stage of the season Liverpool Football Club has its:
• Worst points ratio at this stage of the season in donkeys years,
• Lowest position in the table
• Worst away form,
• Worst goal difference and
• Had a Stint in the relegation zone
So now can somebody tell where all this mythical progress is taking place?
There is NO progress though is there, week by week the club is being dragged downwards, the morale of the fans is shattered, the body language of the players is awful, everyone is down in the dumps and the longer Roy has had in the job the worse things have become, therefore the longer he is here there is only one direction we will all go.
The next thing that will probably be rolled out in Roy's defence is that Rafa left him, with what I believe has been referred to by the media as "a mess". . can someone explain to me how it was common belief in May 2009 when Liverpool finished 2nd on 86pts that they had "over achieved", last season they finished 7th and had "under achieved" so Rafa "had to go" and yet Roy who re-shaped the squad adding Joe Cole aged 29, Raul Meireles 27, Christian Poulsen 30, Paul Konchesky 29, Milan Jovanovic 29, Brad Jones 28 and Fabio Aurelio 30, all very senior, very experienced players, (Meireles the only one who has had a positive impact on the current squad) who cost a considerable amount of money, has statistics which are factually inferior to his predecessor, but yet the experts are giving the impression that he (Roy Hodgson) is doing a good job with the "mess" that Rafa left behind?
Roy seemed very proud to be able to tell the world that he had the chance to sing Rafael Van Der Vaart in the summer but turned him down as he wasn't the type of player he wanted, yet he has wasted millions on players like Konchesky, Poulsen (who have turned out to be arguably 2 of the worst players ever to wear a Red shirt) and Jones. And now he has been talking about Carlton Cole being a possible target. . Carlton Cole to Liverpool. . give me strength?
Our previous manager attracted some top quality internationals, we were the 2nd most represented club team at the World Cup during the summer (only behind Barcelona), if you want a return on your investment then surely we should have a manager in place who can attract young players of quality such as Reina, Torres (and the departed Alonso and Mascherano) rather than run of the mill, middle aged (for a footballer anyway) players such as the aforementioned Poulsen and Konchesky.
Our previous manager also believed in trying to attract young talent, Roy simply has no interest in signing young players.
I realise that you did not put him in charge, Roy is seen by almost every Liverpool fan as the last part of the previous owners disastrous regime, and your belief in sabermetrics goes against everything that Roy is and against every player that Roy has signed, so now I beg you, please for the sake of keeping the few world class players we have at the club, for the sake of every Liverpool fans sanity, for the sake of the morale of every Liverpool fan who has ever stepped inside any ground to cheer the Redmen on, for the sake of the traditions of the club that you now own, for the sake of getting Liverpool Football Club on the road to being successful again or even just for the sake of you getting a return on your investment, please rid us of this man, the sooner he is gone the sooner that the disgruntled players, the fans and the club can be united in getting us back to where we belong in world football.
You used Twitter after we had beaten Chelsea this season to post this "An indication of what can happen when this group comes together as one?". . so imagine what we could do if everybody was pulling in the same direction every week of the season?
Yours sincerely
Iceberg ahead !!!
