Liverpool FC Forum

ycsatbjywtbiastkamb » Fri Oct 12, 2012 1:50 pm wrote:

devaney » Wed Oct 10, 2012 4:27 pm wrote:

ycsatbjywtbiastkamb » Tue Oct 09, 2012 7:28 pm wrote:this is where the owners decision in the transfer window to be conservative with their money comes back to bite us on the @rse.
luis has done brilliantly, he`s scored 5 league goals in 7 games, thats a superb ratio (especially when you consider the teams we`ve played in those 7 games) but a glance at the league table shows even that impressive return isnt good enough.
we obviously need more than one man firing in the goals.
a club of our size and standing should have at least 3 top strikers on our books, not 1.
1 win in 7 in the league is a terrible return for a club of liverpools stature, even if we win our next 6 league games on the bounce (which we wont) thats 7 wins in 13 games which is nothing special, thats how poor our start has been.

The Carroll Dempsey saga was a mess and I think we can all agree on that. The owners during the summer I think were the fifth highest spenders in the Premiership. Unfortunately Kenny and Comolli pisse.d £110m down the river and you don't recover in five minutes from fk ups of that magnitude! Hodgson got Joe Cole on a free with a £90k per week wage bill and Brendan is now trying to establish if he can of any use to the team. Good luck with that one Brendan!

being the fifth highest spenders in england is nothing to write home about when we are the 5 times european champions and widely regarded as one of the two biggest, not just football clubs, but sporting institutions in this country.
you mention joe cole but brendan seems to like him, he didnt try to loan him out and their was plenty of talk in the echo pre-season about how he had a future here. he`s certainly getting more of an opportunity than the likes of carroll did.
liverpool are not the only club in history to waste money in the transfer market and most of the money went on players comoli hailed as moneyball signings. the owners specifically hired comoli because they thought player recruitment in this country was stuck in the stone age so they cant do a pontius pilate on that £100m. anyway by most accounts they broke even that year, it wasnt out of their own pocket.

for a club of our size and standing to have 1 fit senior striker is a ridiculous situation.
fsg have been in charge two years now, they hired a DoF and sacked him, they`ve hired two managers and sacked 2 managers and sacked a raft of other behind the scene`s staff. they`ve overseen the spending of £150m and over 20 players have left the club. they`ve also sat in the directors box at wembley 3 times and watched us lift our first trophy in 6 years. that all happened on their watch.
a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since H&G left, it`s wearing a bit thin for them to keep on acting like the conservative party and blaming everything on past regimes.

I think you will find that FSG lost £60m in their first year according to the accounts. Total cost to FSG is therefore £360m. I don't understand your argument that they have not spent any of their own money. If you mean Henry personally then why should he risk his own wealth? He is a businessman not a philanthropist!

You cannot simply dismiss that we were the fifth highest spenders during the summer. I accept that other clubs have wasted money in the transfer market but not of the magnitude experienced by FSG in their first year.     

We were in a serious mess before the arrival of FSG and H & G's final action of appointing Hodgson set us back even further. FSG gave into fan power and appointed Kenny who had a good few months before the real pressure job started. Unfortunately the season with poor transfer decisions costing over £110m lead to an awful second half run in the Premiership which set us back even further. The cup runs were our only salvation. That was only last season and is it fair to blame FSG for what happened? Personally I don't think it is. They reasonably sanctioned the spending of a considerable amount of money and the people in charge of spending it got it seriously wrong. Yes FSG have been here for two years but their first year problems can not be simply put down to them. I will reserve judgement until the end of this season. A very serious concern is what is happening to the Red Sox!

devaney

I think you will find that FSG lost £60m in their first year according to the accounts. Total cost to FSG is therefore £360m. I don't understand your argument that they have not spent any of their own money. If you mean Henry personally then why should he risk his own wealth? He is a businessman not a philanthropist!

You cannot simply dismiss that we were the fifth highest spenders during the summer. I accept that other clubs have wasted money in the transfer market but not of the magnitude experienced by FSG in their first year.     

We were in a serious mess before the arrival of FSG and H & G's final action of appointing Hodgson set us back even further. FSG gave into fan power and appointed Kenny who had a good few months before the real pressure job started. Unfortunately the season with poor transfer decisions costing over £110m lead to an awful second half run in the Premiership which set us back even further. The cup runs were our only salvation. That was only last season and is it fair to blame FSG for what happened? Personally I don't think it is. They reasonably sanctioned the spending of a considerable amount of money and the people in charge of spending it got it seriously wrong. Yes FSG have been here for two years but their first year problems can not be simply put down to them. I will reserve judgement until the end of this season. A very serious concern is what is happening to the Red Sox!

by all accounts they bought us at a ridiculously low price for a club of our stature so they are quids in.
because of the various partnerships and advertising deals they have done we are earning more now as a club than we did in our CL years under rafa. deloitte have us down as the 8th biggest earning club in the world and thats without the cash cow that is CL football.

re that £110m fsg have done a great job of palming that off onto kenny.
lets get this straight, when they first arrived one of the first things henry an co did was make statements about how archaic the transfer system was in this country, they said they couldnt believe teams spent millions on players based on just a managers judgement without having any sort of stats or data backing that judgement up.
the first appointment they made was comoli, they got him on the recommendation of billy beane because they were looking for someone in footy who was a big believer in moneyball and stats based player recruitment.
do you think they`d do all that and then give £100m to an interim manager and say to him buy who you want?
it was fsg`s moneyball theory that blew that money.

fsg handled the whole suarez affair terribly as well, not to mention hiring and firing a DoF within a year, the farcical carry on in the press surrounding our search for a new manager (whelan etc), werner coming out and saying he thinks the `game 39` proposal is a great idea, giving the impression that the 2 domestic cup competitions (including the F.A cup - the oldest trophy in the world and the genisis of the sport) are worthless, having fulham report us to the F.A infact the whole summer was a right carry on culminating in the deadline day farce which once again made us a laughing stock, upsetting someone doing a great job (pep segura) to the extent he decides to leave.....i could go on and on.
fsg have made plenty of mistakes, this blame everything on kenny and the previous regime is wearing a bit thin.

ycsatbjywtbiastkamb » Sat Oct 13, 2012 5:34 pm wrote:

devaney

I think you will find that FSG lost £60m in their first year according to the accounts. Total cost to FSG is therefore £360m. I don't understand your argument that they have not spent any of their own money. If you mean Henry personally then why should he risk his own wealth? He is a businessman not a philanthropist!

You cannot simply dismiss that we were the fifth highest spenders during the summer. I accept that other clubs have wasted money in the transfer market but not of the magnitude experienced by FSG in their first year.     

We were in a serious mess before the arrival of FSG and H & G's final action of appointing Hodgson set us back even further. FSG gave into fan power and appointed Kenny who had a good few months before the real pressure job started. Unfortunately the season with poor transfer decisions costing over £110m lead to an awful second half run in the Premiership which set us back even further. The cup runs were our only salvation. That was only last season and is it fair to blame FSG for what happened? Personally I don't think it is. They reasonably sanctioned the spending of a considerable amount of money and the people in charge of spending it got it seriously wrong. Yes FSG have been here for two years but their first year problems can not be simply put down to them. I will reserve judgement until the end of this season. A very serious concern is what is happening to the Red Sox!

by all accounts they bought us at a ridiculously low price for a club of our stature so they are quids in.
because of the various partnerships and advertising deals they have done we are earning more now as a club than we did in our CL years under rafa. deloitte have us down as the 8th biggest earning club in the world and thats without the cash cow that is CL football

re that £110m fsg have done a great job of palming that off onto kenny.
lets get this straight, when they first arrived one of the first things henry an co did was make statements about how archaic the transfer system was in this country, they said they couldnt believe teams spent millions on players based on just a managers judgement without having any sort of stats or data backing that judgement up.
the first appointment they made was comoli, they got him on the recommendation of billy beane because they were looking for someone in footy who was a big believer in moneyball and stats based player recruitment.
do you think they`d do all that and then give £100m to an interim manager and say to him buy who you want?
it was fsg`s moneyball theory that blew that money.

fsg handled the whole suarez affair terribly as well, not to mention hiring and firing a DoF within a year, the farcical carry on in the press surrounding our search for a new manager (whelan etc), werner coming out and saying he thinks the `game 39` proposal is a great idea, giving the impression that the 2 domestic cup competitions (including the F.A cup - the oldest trophy in the world and the genisis of the sport) are worthless, having fulham report us to the F.A infact the whole summer was a right carry on culminating in the deadline day farce which once again made us a laughing stock, upsetting someone doing a great job (pep segura) to the extent he decides to leave.....i could go on and on.
fsg have made plenty of mistakes, this blame everything on kenny and the previous regime is wearing a bit thin.

I have never held Kenny totally responsible for the transfer debacle. Comolli played a very large part but it cannot be ignored that Kenny was involved heavily in the summer 2011 signings which have turned out to be a disaster. That is just over twelve months ago and cannot be dismissed as one of the key reasons that we find ourselves in the mess that we are in.It is also only six months ago that we had our worst finish in the league for a very long time.I was at the Fulham game at the very end of the season and we were an utter disgrace. That was in May 2012 so forgive me if I don't subscribe to your castigation of FSG. Some of our tactics were woeful. For example Kenny begins to get something out of Carroll and drops him for the FA Cup Final. Do you blame FSG for that as well?

Just how low was the price that FSG paid. £60m first year loss doesn't make it look like the most attractive of business deals. And remind me just exactly how many prospective purchasers did we have that could have been regarded as genuine given that we were a bargain basement deal. I have said myself in the past that FSG got a good deal but I'm beginning to think that is also beginning to wear a bit thin.

I actually admired LFC for supporting Suarez through a very difficult time. Yes it could have been handled better but that is hindsight. Glen Johnson wore a t-shirt to support Suarez which says a great deal about what the players thought of the affair. Ayres is paid a shed load of money as the managing director and remained silent leaving Kenny to fend off the media which unfortunately he struggled with. Did FSG advise Ayres to keep silent? We will never know the full story but I don't hold FSG totally responsible.

When things go wrong blame the board.

When things go right heap praise on the manager.

To be fair if Carroll, Downing and Adam had been instant hits and we had got 4th last season everyone would be saying what a genuis Kenny is and how he must have picked them all by himself.

Soon as they fail, its FSG its DOF fault beacuse we love kenny, i get it i really do but if you think those players came to liverpool without Kenny having known the price your deluded. As a football man Kenny must have known the gamble he was taking. He rolled the dice and lost.

ycsatbjywtbiastkamb » Sat Oct 13, 2012 6:34 pm wrote:

devaney

I think you will find that FSG lost £60m in their first year according to the accounts. Total cost to FSG is therefore £360m. I don't understand your argument that they have not spent any of their own money. If you mean Henry personally then why should he risk his own wealth? He is a businessman not a philanthropist!

You cannot simply dismiss that we were the fifth highest spenders during the summer. I accept that other clubs have wasted money in the transfer market but not of the magnitude experienced by FSG in their first year.     

We were in a serious mess before the arrival of FSG and H & G's final action of appointing Hodgson set us back even further. FSG gave into fan power and appointed Kenny who had a good few months before the real pressure job started. Unfortunately the season with poor transfer decisions costing over £110m lead to an awful second half run in the Premiership which set us back even further. The cup runs were our only salvation. That was only last season and is it fair to blame FSG for what happened? Personally I don't think it is. They reasonably sanctioned the spending of a considerable amount of money and the people in charge of spending it got it seriously wrong. Yes FSG have been here for two years but their first year problems can not be simply put down to them. I will reserve judgement until the end of this season. A very serious concern is what is happening to the Red Sox!

by all accounts they bought us at a ridiculously low price for a club of our stature so they are quids in.
because of the various partnerships and advertising deals they have done we are earning more now as a club than we did in our CL years under rafa. deloitte have us down as the 8th biggest earning club in the world and thats without the cash cow that is CL football.

re that £110m fsg have done a great job of palming that off onto kenny.
lets get this straight, when they first arrived one of the first things henry an co did was make statements about how archaic the transfer system was in this country, they said they couldnt believe teams spent millions on players based on just a managers judgement without having any sort of stats or data backing that judgement up.
the first appointment they made was comoli, they got him on the recommendation of billy beane because they were looking for someone in footy who was a big believer in moneyball and stats based player recruitment.
do you think they`d do all that and then give £100m to an interim manager and say to him buy who you want?
it was fsg`s moneyball theory that blew that money.

fsg handled the whole suarez affair terribly as well, not to mention hiring and firing a DoF within a year, the farcical carry on in the press surrounding our search for a new manager (whelan etc), werner coming out and saying he thinks the `game 39` proposal is a great idea, giving the impression that the 2 domestic cup competitions (including the F.A cup - the oldest trophy in the world and the genisis of the sport) are worthless, having fulham report us to the F.A infact the whole summer was a right carry on culminating in the deadline day farce which once again made us a laughing stock, upsetting someone doing a great job (pep segura) to the extent he decides to leave.....i could go on and on.
fsg have made plenty of mistakes, this blame everything on kenny and the previous regime is wearing a bit thin.

agree 

I have to admit that 'the laying all the blame' on Kenny is wearing thin. After all it was Kenny who wanted those players, but Kenny never agreed the prices for those players, that was down to Comolli.

Boxscarf » Sun Oct 14, 2012 12:39 pm wrote:I have to admit that 'the laying all the blame' on Kenny is wearing thin. After all it was Kenny who wanted those players, but Kenny never agreed the prices for those players, that was down to Comolli.

I would expect any manager worth his salt to check the price before agreeing to purchase a player.

You could argue it was not his job but for the sake of a phone call or a conversation with Comolli
its just lazy management to me that.

Dalglish was manager and should have made sure he was on top of every situation and especially
recruitment which has been at the root of all our problems.

Of all the people you wouldnt have wanted it to be Dalglish but the truth is he and Comolli set the
club back 2 years and if he could go back and fix those errors Ive no doubt he would.

I think it is entirely plausible for Kenny to have known nothing about the finer details of the transfer i.e. transfer fee/ agents fees etc. I understood why Kenny signed the players he signed. Adam, Carroll, Downing and Henderson were all outstanding performers for their clubs at the time Dalglish signed them. Downing was performing better week in and week out then Ashley Young for Villa. Charlie Adam was the best player at Blackpool. Henderson was one of the best players at Sunderland and Carroll was the star man at Newcastle. Then you have Suarez and Coates who were considered to be players for the future. For me it wasn't the players that he signed that was the problem, it was the fees paid and the system/tactics that Kenny used that I disagreed with. Henderson is never a right midfielder, yet he spent much of his first season there. Coates was a better option than Carragher and yet he persisted with Carragher over Coates. As I have said, I agree with ycsatbj.. Kenny was a major scapegoat last season. At the end of the day, we won our first trophy in 6 years under him and could have won another if it wasn't for a wrongly disallowed goal.

the loss of lucas was the moment it all went pear shaped for kenny imo, up to that point we were doing okay, yes we`d had one or two frustrating draws like against sunderland and norwich but we had been by far the better side in those games and had some bad luck too (sunderland should have been down to 10 men within a quarter of an hour, suarez missed a pen, their keeper had a worldy, downing nearly snapped the bar and 9 times out of 10 larsons flying volley goes into row z, similar story against norwich, missed a myriad of chances, their keeper has a blinder, we hit both posts and concede a sloppy equaliser when reina uncharacteristically storms right off his line to try and punch a cross around the penalty spot).
with lucas in the team though we`d beaten the likes of arsenal away, everton away, chelsea away (twice) and man united only just managed to scrape a late equaliser to rescue a point at anfield.
his best performance in his entire anfield career was probably against man city at anfield where joe harts heroics kept them in the game, it finished 1-1 but we should have won. the following game lucas did his cruciate.
that performance against city (who were literally steamrollering sides up to that point) came a week after our win at chelsea and i remember there was a feeling that we were really starting to gather some momentum.
by that point kenny had been in charge roughly a year and he`d done a superb job considering the state the club was in (on and off the pitch) when he took over.
lucas`s injury meant that jay spearing now started to patrol in front of the back 4 and although jay tried his best the team had definately lost something, players seemed able to run right through the heart of our midfield and get at our defence which never seemed to happen when lucas was there.
other crazy stuff happened as the season wore on but imo the loss of lucas was the pivotal moment.

Boxscarf » Sun Oct 14, 2012 2:34 pm wrote:I think it is entirely plausible for Kenny to have known nothing about the finer details of the transfer i.e. transfer fee.

Really?

You think the first he knew that we had paid 35mill on Carroll was when sky sports broke the news? Kenny knew. You think he was kept in the dark as we bidded higher and higher on deadline day? f*ck me i knew just watching sky sports!

FSG Kenny and Dam knew what each other was doing FSG cant sack themselves so they sacked the other two.

Boxscarf » Sun Oct 14, 2012 12:39 pm wrote:I have to admit that 'the laying all the blame' on Kenny is wearing thin. After all it was Kenny who wanted those players, but Kenny never agreed the prices for those players, that was down to Comolli.

Did he at any point say it was to much money though, and in any case those 3 players were ***** even at 10% of the price paid. Kenny was a fairly terrible manager for us and Comolli was an even worse DOF. I cannot fathom that West Brom are even considering hiring him.

The Raven » Mon Oct 15, 2012 12:37 pm wrote:

Boxscarf » Sun Oct 14, 2012 2:34 pm wrote:I think it is entirely plausible for Kenny to have known nothing about the finer details of the transfer i.e. transfer fee.

Really?

You think the first he knew that we had paid 35mill on Carroll was when sky sports broke the news? Kenny knew. You think he was kept in the dark as we bidded higher and higher on deadline day? f*ck me i knew just watching sky sports!

FSG Kenny and Dam knew what each other was doing FSG cant sack themselves so they sacked the other two.

of course kenny knew what was going on, but the financial side of things was comoli`s remit.
when carroll was signed dalglish had been back from holiday about 2 weeks (after a decade out of the game), comoli had been there nearly as long as the owners and was basically running the club, he was sorting out players contracts and who was leaving the club etc. comoli was even overseeing the search for a new manager.
dalglish was probably just over the moon at getting his dream job back, even if he thought comoli was overspending after a decade out of the game i doubt he was going to walk into anfield and start challenging his boss (the owners man) right away.
infact dalglish probably felt under pressure to make the relationship with comoli work, he must have thought that comoli was going to be there in the long term and if he wanted to keep the managers job he had to work well with him.

ycsatbjywtbiastkamb » Mon Oct 15, 2012 12:56 pm wrote:

The Raven » Mon Oct 15, 2012 12:37 pm wrote:

Boxscarf » Sun Oct 14, 2012 2:34 pm wrote:I think it is entirely plausible for Kenny to have known nothing about the finer details of the transfer i.e. transfer fee.

Really?

You think the first he knew that we had paid 35mill on Carroll was when sky sports broke the news? Kenny knew. You think he was kept in the dark as we bidded higher and higher on deadline day? f*ck me i knew just watching sky sports!

FSG Kenny and Dam knew what each other was doing FSG cant sack themselves so they sacked the other two.

of course kenny knew what was going on, but the financial side of things was comoli`s remit.
when carroll was signed dalglish had been back from holiday about 2 weeks (after a decade out of the game), comoli had been there nearly as long as the owners and was basically running the club, he was sorting out players contracts and who was leaving the club etc. comoli was even overseeing the search for a new manager.
dalglish was probably just over the moon at getting his dream job back, even if he thought comoli was overspending after a decade out of the game i doubt he was going to walk into anfield and start challenging his boss (the owners man) right away.
infact dalglish probably felt under pressure to make the relationship with comoli work, he must have thought that comoli was going to be there in the long term and if he wanted to keep the managers job he had to work well with him.

So what are you saying?

Dalglish didnt dare question Comoli though fear of losing his job he was given 3 weeks before? I dont think he works that way do you? If at any point Kenny had said "they are taking the ***** hes not worth that"  FSG would have pulled the plug end of. In Carroll we have a panic buy to end them all.

Adam, Downing and Henderson? Whats the excuse there?

The mess is everyones fault, as i said im sure they all knew what each other was doing and agreed righty or wrongly on the fees to pay.

The Raven

So what are you saying?

Dalglish didnt dare question Comoli though fear of losing his job he was given 3 weeks before? I dont think he works that way do you? If at any point Kenny had said "they are taking the ***** hes not worth that"  FSG would have pulled the plug end of. In Carroll we have a panic buy to end them all.

Adam, Downing and Henderson? Whats the excuse there?

The mess is everyones fault, as i said im sure they all knew what each other was doing and agreed righty or wrongly on the fees to pay.

well for a start henderson and downing were lauded as moneyball signings (and that `secret footballer` wrote an article saying andy carroll was a moneyball signing too, he said that most people thought that moneyball was just about player recruitment but it is about tactics as well, apparently stats men had worked out if a team wins X amount (i forget the numbers) of headers in the final third, wins the ball back X amount of times in the opposition half and puts in X amount of crosses in a game then statistically they hardly lose a match, apparently all our signings that summer were geared towards that strategy)
dont forget kenny was just interim manager, comoli was the owners man and comoli was looking for a new permanent manager (and gave an interview about what qualities he was looking for) i wouldnt think kennys prospects of getting the job full time would have been great if he started questioning his bosses (comoli`s) wisdom in the transfer market.

Moneyball signings arent players going for over 15-30mil

Bellamy was an example of a Moneyball signing.