by bigmick » Fri Oct 26, 2007 10:03 am
I wouldn't be overly worried about the re-financing, it's fairly commonplace in these huge business deals. We're all as football fans probably going to have to get used to the concept of clubs changing hands every few years and sometimes over even shorter periods, that's what happens with big business and I have absolutely no doubts that that's what will happen with football clubs as well.
This is one of the reasons why in my opinion, the pressure on managers such as Rafa is even greater than before. Obviously if we don't progress in the Champions League and don't get close to winning the Premiership, the owners investment is worth significantly less than might otherwise be the case. Given this, it's probably reasonable to assume that they won't be quite as patient as perhaps David Moores might have been.
I must confess I also detected a slight undercurrent of exasperation in the interview with one of the owners with the plight of the team and in particular, Rafa's methods. They don't to the best of my knowledge, rotate the team is baseball, basketball and American football though I may be wrong. It may have been the case that blokes like Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth and Karim Al whatever his name was didn't travel to some games to give them a rest but I'm not aware of it.
These guys are coming into football with very likely a lack of knowledge about the game, (before anybody asks "how the feck do you know that?", the answer is of course I don't. It's a guess). Just about every expert, every ex player, every pundit, every reporter (bar Paul Tompkins bless him) are unanimous in the asserion that Rafa has drastically over-rotated the team over an extended period. His immediate peers, who manage clubs with similar aspirations to ours rotate the team much less than Rafa. Given this, the numerous people whispering in their ear that our man has got it wrong, allied to what they can see with their own eyes (you don't need to be an expert on football to see we aren't really playing that well) then you can't be too surprised that Rafa is going to come under pressure.
I would though urge the owners and fans of the club to hold fire. Not till after the Arsenal game, we aren't Spurs FFS but until a reasonable assessment can be made. Bring Torres, Alonso and Agger back into the team and we will improve drastically. We will start to win games again because we've got good players which Rafa bought.
Whether the turn around happens quick enough to keep us in contention for trophies, and particularly the League remains to be seen. Even if it doesn't though, that's not where I would pass judgement. My judgement will come once we go on a run again, once we get some momentum going. Will we at that point, sit on our hands and let the players play, let the players grab the headlines? If we can learn and move forward than we should stick with Rafa. Like I said earlier though, if he plans to change the team seventy odd times in the first fifteen games next season as well, then we will never ever win the League with him in charge and we should look elsewhere.
The daft part is, his successor could come in and without doing too much could really win some trophies. Put his arm around a couple, talk nicely to a couple more, sign a left sided midfielder, a decent striker and centre half cover and pick from a core thirteen and he'll probably win the fecking league. Rafa has us on the brink, all he has to do is to realise that what worked for Valencia won't work for Liverpool and he can write himself into the history books. Great men are strong and can take pressure, even greater men admit they are wrong sometimes.
Last edited by
bigmick on Fri Oct 26, 2007 10:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
"se e in una bottigla ed e bianco, e latte".
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