Liverpool FC Forum

by **bigmick** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 8:37 pm

Saint can speak for himself and does so very well, but I reckon he is probably like me in that he likes Rafa (honestly I really do) but finds the constant attempts to drool over his abilities and achievements and to ignore his shortcomings by some a bit wearysome on occasions.

If we are going to retreat and dodge the bullets around the back of the barrier with "injuries" scrawled accross it in spray paint, we will never ever win the League as every team sustains injuries to a lesser or greater extent. Rafa has never ever to the best of my knowledge used injuries as an excuse, even in his first season where we had to resort to using Neil Mellor up top in Champions League games in which we had to win. No rotation here, we HAD to win the game. Rafa didn't mention injuries once, to his credit he got on with it. This season, we've had nowhere near as many injuries as that, and yet people are keen to use that barrier. It doesn't wash.

Similarly the "spending power" barrier. We aren't in the forseeable future going to be able to compete pound for pound with Chelsea otr Manchester United in the transfer market. If we are going to use that as our excuse, then once again we will never ever win the league. Put simply, as our funds aren't quite so big as those two other teams, we are going to need to find players which are cheaper yet can be moulded into a better team, which isn't easy. That's the task today though for the manager, and that was the task when he came into the job.

In the main he's made a decent enough fist of it. He won us the Champions League in his first season, we were a fraction fortunate I think it's fair to say on occasions but no matter, he won it for us and it's in the record books. He got us a "record points total" in his second season and we won the FA Cup. I do think the points total thing is somewhat overrated as an achievement by his supporters as the total is largely irrelavent it seems to me, its the amount relative to everyone else which is the issue surely? If he got us to seventy five points this season and we won the title, I wouldn't be overly concerned that we hadn't beaten our "record". Whatever though, the Champions League success and the FA Cup win mean that he can be considered a success choose whichever way it goes in the Summer.

Now though, to anyone looking through non-tinted specs we are floundering a bit. Things are clearly not all rosy at the club, and the debate really is about how much of that is attributable to the manager. I don't personally think the "well Rafa didn't miss the chance, Gerrard did" argument is very sensible. If you go down the route of saying the eleven plyers who took to the pitch are always to blame and it's nothing much to do with the manager, I'll apply for it myself should it ever become available. No, being realistic, the team isn't currently producing performances and results which are acceptable to a club of our magnitude and the manager is culpable.

As I've said before, we have the best goalie, a solid defence, the best central midfield and the best striker. The manager deserves the utmost credit for putting that together, but it's also a legitimate question to ask couldn't we expect more acxhievement given those facts? People are very quick to tell me it's nothing or very little to do with rotation. Equally, it's nothing or very little to do with the manager, the players he buys, the tactics. Just out of interest, what is it to do with then, or is this as good as Liverpool supporters can expect?

I say lets give Rafa till the end of the season and assess it then. Clearly if there isn't a significant improvement, we should look elsewhere. If there is, then it's a much more difficult decision. In the meantime, people like Tompkins have unfortunately been proven to be absolutely talking out of their erse for a while now and as such shouldn't be taken too seriously.

by **heimdall** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 9:31 pm

Good post S@int, you make a lot of sense and I agree with you. :buttrock

Hope this doesn't do more harm than good

by **maguskwt** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 9:52 pm

s@int wrote:To say that Fergie had a fantastic head start is wrong in my opinion, they were an old team coming to the end. We were a young team just coming into our prime.

that is exactly the point I made a point against...

Fergie did have a fantastic head start...not much exageration there IMO...

the truth of the matter is ferguson's old guards have experience in winning the league multiple times... players like scholes, neville, giggs, ferdinand, solksjear gives them so much stability, invaluable experience and winning mentality. Add to that they strenghtened the squad with rooney and ronaldo. How can they not have a fantastic head start you tell me... the aforementioned 7 players consistently stood up and be counted... and then there are other quality players like van der sar and evra who may not have won the PL before back then but were still quality...

then they strenghtened the only weakness they got by signing vidic (which was our target)... I don't wanna praise them too much but that's how it is...

their old players like scholes, giggs, and neville still can make a difference today if they're fit...even now how many times have giggs provided assists from which they keep winning...

they were an ageing squad when they won it last season yes... but the old players still made a difference... it is this season that their old players start to show their decline... but guess what... they got it covered by paying good money for anderson, nani, hargreaves, tevez

we were the club always playing catch up to them, arsenal and recently chelsea... and did we as a club do enough? I don't thinks so... they're the ones in front, we are the one behind...

it is obvious that as a football club we're clearly lagging behind the mancs...

by **maguskwt** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 10:00 pm

bigmick wrote:Now though, to anyone looking through non-tinted specs we are floundering a bit. Things are clearly not all rosy at the club, and the debate really is about how much of that is attributable to the manager. I don't personally think the "well Rafa didn't miss the chance, Gerrard did" argument is very sensible. If you go down the route of saying the eleven plyers who took to the pitch are always to blame and it's nothing much to do with the manager, I'll apply for it myself should it ever become available. No, being realistic, the team isn't currently producing performances and results which are acceptable to a club of our magnitude and the manager is culpable.

As I've said before, we have the best goalie, a solid defence, the best central midfield and the best striker.

Just out of curiosity how do you rate our team as compared to our rivals?

Surely I believe you're the one with the rose-tinted specs since you believe the current squad is good enough to win the title...

by **LFC2007** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 10:07 pm

maguskwt wrote:
bigmick wrote:Now though, to anyone looking through non-tinted specs we are floundering a bit. Things are clearly not all rosy at the club, and the debate really is about how much of that is attributable to the manager. I don't personally think the "well Rafa didn't miss the chance, Gerrard did" argument is very sensible. If you go down the route of saying the eleven plyers who took to the pitch are always to blame and it's nothing much to do with the manager, I'll apply for it myself should it ever become available. No, being realistic, the team isn't currently producing performances and results which are acceptable to a club of our magnitude and the manager is culpable.

As I've said before, we have the best goalie, a solid defence, the best central midfield and the best striker.

Just out of curiosity how do you rate our team as compared to our rivals?

'As good as any other in the league'. - I believe was the phrase used by Mick.

by **maguskwt** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 10:12 pm

LFC2007 wrote:
maguskwt wrote:
bigmick wrote:Now though, to anyone looking through non-tinted specs we are floundering a bit. Things are clearly not all rosy at the club, and the debate really is about how much of that is attributable to the manager. I don't personally think the "well Rafa didn't miss the chance, Gerrard did" argument is very sensible. If you go down the route of saying the eleven plyers who took to the pitch are always to blame and it's nothing much to do with the manager, I'll apply for it myself should it ever become available. No, being realistic, the team isn't currently producing performances and results which are acceptable to a club of our magnitude and the manager is culpable.

As I've said before, we have the best goalie, a solid defence, the best central midfield and the best striker.

Just out of curiosity how do you rate our team as compared to our rivals?

'As good as any other in the league'.

quote meaning that's what mick said? or is this what you're saying?

by **lakes10** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 10:32 pm

The only Job the Manager is asked to do it to win things. not to have won things,

by **whylongball?** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 10:35 pm

bigmick wrote:Saint can speak for himself and does so very well, but I reckon he is probably like me in that he likes Rafa (honestly I really do) but finds the constant attempts to drool over his abilities and achievements and to ignore his shortcomings by some a bit wearysome on occasions.

If we are going to retreat and dodge the bullets around the back of the barrier with "injuries" scrawled accross it in spray paint, we will never ever win the League as every team sustains injuries to a lesser or greater extent. Rafa has never ever to the best of my knowledge used injuries as an excuse, even in his first season where we had to resort to using Neil Mellor up top in Champions League games in which we had to win. No rotation here, we HAD to win the game. Rafa didn't mention injuries once, to his credit he got on with it. This season, we've had nowhere near as many injuries as that, and yet people are keen to use that barrier. It doesn't wash.

Similarly the "spending power" barrier. We aren't in the forseeable future going to be able to compete pound for pound with Chelsea otr Manchester United in the transfer market. If we are going to use that as our excuse, then once again we will never ever win the league. Put simply, as our funds aren't quite so big as those two other teams, we are going to need to find players which are cheaper yet can be moulded into a better team, which isn't easy. That's the task today though for the manager, and that was the task when he came into the job.

In the main he's made a decent enough fist of it. He won us the Champions League in his first season, we were a fraction fortunate I think it's fair to say on occasions but no matter, he won it for us and it's in the record books. He got us a "record points total" in his second season and we won the FA Cup. I do think the points total thing is somewhat overrated as an achievement by his supporters as the total is largely irrelavent it seems to me, its the amount relative to everyone else which is the issue surely? If he got us to seventy five points this season and we won the title, I wouldn't be overly concerned that we hadn't beaten our "record". Whatever though, the Champions League success and the FA Cup win mean that he can be considered a success choose whichever way it goes in the Summer.

Now though, to anyone looking through non-tinted specs we are floundering a bit. Things are clearly not all rosy at the club, and the debate really is about how much of that is attributable to the manager. I don't personally think the "well Rafa didn't miss the chance, Gerrard did" argument is very sensible. If you go down the route of saying the eleven plyers who took to the pitch are always to blame and it's nothing much to do with the manager, I'll apply for it myself should it ever become available. No, being realistic, the team isn't currently producing performances and results which are acceptable to a club of our magnitude and the manager is culpable.

As I've said before, we have the best goalie, a solid defence, the best central midfield and the best striker. The manager deserves the utmost credit for putting that together, but it's also a legitimate question to ask couldn't we expect more acxhievement given those facts? People are very quick to tell me it's nothing or very little to do with rotation. Equally, it's nothing or very little to do with the manager, the players he buys, the tactics. Just out of interest, what is it to do with then, or is this as good as Liverpool supporters can expect?

I say lets give Rafa till the end of the season and assess it then. Clearly if there isn't a significant improvement, we should look elsewhere. If there is, then it's a much more difficult decision. In the meantime, people like Tompkins have unfortunately been proven to be absolutely talking out of their erse for a while now and as such shouldn't be taken too seriously.

as usual...very subjective
Luton, Reading, Wigan didnt have our spending power yet they could match on the day. Luck or not, one thing is certain Rafa at the end of the day is responsible. So throw shoes at Alonso

or anything to get things done

by **Sabre** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 10:44 pm

Well even if I admit a player that has been injured for three years most of the time has been a key player, even if I admit that's the reality as it is, and not twisted, I won't buy the theory that's an error of Houllier or Rafa's physio. No medical reasons to back that words. If any, the only error of the physios is not foreseeing all this nightmare of injuries in order to offload Kewell and buy a player. And I don't think such things can be foreseen.

You could say aswell that Morientes or Kuyt are key players because they had a bright past before Liverpool, but here we go, at least I admit they have dissapointed during their years here, and they haven't been a key player. But the people who see things like they really are and have not rose tinted specs consider a player that has been injured a key player and, you know, the physio's not the guy who treats injuries but the one who fúcks up players.

Ah well.

For the record, I have admitted that some of the buys of Rafa have been dubious or wrong choices, at least no one can say I don't criticise the manager never.

For the record aswell, I admit Rafa does mistakes and I also admit the team is not clicking at the moment. And for the record, I'm not drooling over Rafa.

At least I don't hear the "Rafa cannot be criticised" old record any more. The fact is that now you can't defend him without reading that you drool over him, you have Spanish loyalties, or rose-tinted specs for that matter.

*shrug*. Let's sack Rafa, sometimes I'm tempted to see a new manager so that Bigmick, S@int and all this excellent posters talk more about football matches rather than the future of the manager. I miss the times in which most of us were pro Rafa because there were more posts of describing the abilities of players (for me bigmick's best feature as poster), more posts about tactics in a game, and more posts about football and less about articles of secret meetings with American owners. Take this last paragraph as a praise to your posting, because it is.

I'm humble enough to admit that I have learnt a lot about Liverpool since 2004 thanks to you guys, so I retire from the Rafa defence discussion, I have it on my signature that support. Let's see if we have more footie posts soon. Hope so.

by **account deleted by request** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 10:51 pm

Fergie did have a fantastic head start...not much exageration there IMO...

2001/2002 English Premier Table

P HW HD HL HGF HGA AW AD AL AGF AGA Points GD
Arsenal 38 12 4 3 42 25 14 5 0 37 11 87 +43
Liverpool 38 12 5 2 33 14 12 3 4 34 16 80 +37
Man Utd 38 11 2 6 40 17 13 3 3 47 28 77 +42

So I think we can say in 2002 we had caught up on the mancs, even with all there experienced players. The fact that we didn't kick on and they did is for another thread and another discussion.

Now we are talking of a max of 2003-2008 not 1992 - 2008

My argument is with this by Tompkins:-

Again, Ferguson hasn’t had to spend as much between 2004 and the present day because of players like Giggs, Scholes and Neville, who only came into the team five-ten years after Ferguson took charge.

What I am saying is Neither did Rafa because of Gerrard,Carra,Hamann,Riise,Finnan,Hyypia,Kewell

and this :-

From the Houllier era we only had the legacy of Gerrard and Carra, that could be counted as key player, the other players are either decent or good but not key ones, not match winners. It's a fact we didn't have those match winners back then

Thats rubbish.....Matchwinners - we had three when Rafa took over Kewell, Gerrard, Owen. We only have two now Gerrard and Torres with Kewell down as a possible.

Remember it was It wasn't Houlliers fault that Kewell was injured and the injury was misdiagnosed and became much worse. (edited to keep leon smiling)

I think Gerrard, Carra and Hyypia could be counted as key players since Rafa has been here, and maybe Finnan too seeing as Rafa has never managed to find an adequate replacement for him till this season. Hamann was a key player in two finals under Rafa too don't forget.

I don't think its reasonable to ignore or dismiss players of that quality when assessing just what Rafa had to to start with. He didn't start with nothing he started with a team that had just come 4th from the top while the mancs finished 3rd not top.

What I am saying but obviously not very well or clearly is that Rafa had a reasonable team with some very good players when he took over, not a load of cr@p that were worthless. Which seems to be the point that Tompkins and Sabre seem to be making.

by **Sabre** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 10:55 pm

Remember it was It wasn't Houlliers fault that Kewell was injured and the injury was misdiagnosed and became much worse. (edited to keep leon smiling)

Hmm, I retire from the discussion but I missed some bits about the kewell story, want to know more, have you any link handy to that stories of misdiagnosing and the consequences of this? is there something about it in the kewell threads? I missed it :blush:

by **account deleted by request** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 11:03 pm

Sabre wrote:
Remember it was It wasn't Houlliers fault that Kewell was injured and the injury was misdiagnosed and became much worse. (edited to keep leon smiling)

Hmm, I retire from the discussion but I missed some bits about the kewell story, want to know more, have you any link handy to that stories of misdiagnosing and the consequences of this? is there something about it in the kewell threads? I missed it

Its in one of the Kewell threads because I put it there ages ago, its also in RAWK Kewell thread (were I got it from) I think it was about June.

The brief outline was Kewell was strugglin with injury. The physio said that it was just a groin strain and shouldn't stop him playing. Kewell said he couldn't play with it. Rafa insisted and Kewell broke down during a game. Kewell was again told it was just a groin strain but paid to go to France to see a specialist. Rafa apologised to Kewell and sacked the physio.

I am writing this from memory but I am sure the basic facts are right.

I will retire from this thread as well, because more than half my brilliantly thought out and written posts have been lost in an argument over the meaning behind one sentence.

by **bigmick** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 11:30 pm

I'm not going to retire as I answered Maguskwt's excellent question about how good we are, in typical length, and mercifully for you lot the fecker disappeared

In a nutshell, I think our rivals have improved more than we have, particularly Arsenal. I think although Torres is a fantastic player, his presence has made us a worse "team" on occasions. I know that sounds crazy but I kind of get the impression that the other 9 are happy to give it to Torres/Gerrard and let them get on with it sometimes. I think previously we hit it long, early and often to Crouch and Kuyt. We had a bloke playing wide right who scored every week, Sissoko kicked anything that moved and Alonso did lots of unseen work. We had whoever got his boots on first on the left, and it kind of worked in a funny way. As a team right now we seem unsure to me as to how we should play.

The result of this, and the fact we have been managed in terms of squad and team selection significantly worse than our rivals this season IMHo (and everyone knows my views, there's no need to argue them here) means that we will finsih 12-15 points off the top, in fourth place. Had we gone for a more conventional selection method, and really found a way to play (with obviously Crouch up top as opposed to Kuyt) we are capable of halving that deficit and being considered challengers in my view. If we could get the bloke who scored all those goals to go back out to the right, e would properly go close IMHO.

The previous post was much longer, probably just as well it got lost.

by **bigmick** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 11:36 pm

LFC2007 wrote:
maguskwt wrote:
bigmick wrote:Now though, to anyone looking through non-tinted specs we are floundering a bit. Things are clearly not all rosy at the club, and the debate really is about how much of that is attributable to the manager. I don't personally think the "well Rafa didn't miss the chance, Gerrard did" argument is very sensible. If you go down the route of saying the eleven plyers who took to the pitch are always to blame and it's nothing much to do with the manager, I'll apply for it myself should it ever become available. No, being realistic, the team isn't currently producing performances and results which are acceptable to a club of our magnitude and the manager is culpable.

As I've said before, we have the best goalie, a solid defence, the best central midfield and the best striker.

Just out of curiosity how do you rate our team as compared to our rivals?

'As good as any other in the league'. - I believe was the phrase used by Mick.

I don't actually remember saying that but I'm not going to dispute it as it's not a million miles away from where I think we are. I do think that if we accept that the stuff about best goalkeeper, solid defence, best central midfield partnership, best striker stuff is true or very close to being true (you could arguably put in best miidfielder as well), then if we are a mile off the top either in points total or team quality then there are some answers needed.

Clearly the team is a better one than the one that won the Champions League and the FA Cup for instance. It's better than the one whcih amassed a record points total for the club. So given that, it's probably legitimate to ask why we won't beat that points total this season, and to ask is perhaps the management of the team at least slightly responsible.

by **LFC2007** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 11:43 pm

bigmick wrote:The previous post was much longer, probably just as well it got lost.

I've done that on many an occasion - the solution is to highlight the post, right click and click copy every so often - be careful not to click 'paste' which is below it - if you do happen to - hit ctrl + z (undo last). In the event that your post goes walkies, it will be saved on your computer - all you have to do is click 'paste' again, and as if by magic, it will re-appear.

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