LFC2007 wrote:We had a genuine interest in Turner (those who cling to the notion of 'realism' should attach that connotation to 'interested'), but we didn't sign him. The funds would never be made available so why didn't the board (the owners, the hierarchy, the men at the top) inform Rafa instead of fecking about, wasting time and effort trying to sign a player we couldn't afford? If that isn't incompetence, what is?
It is stating the obvious to say that every club "misses out on primary targets", we do though seem to have missed out on a damn site more of these 'primary target's than the Manc's or Chelsea. Besides, the 'primary targets' they've missed out on down the years have been way out of our league financially - you provide Ronaldinho as an excellent example. No, if you have competent executives, you don't continually miss out on key targets for the sake of half a million quid here or there, as we have with Simao, Alves and a host of others.
Whose "incompetence" is it if the manager wastes time trying to sign players he can't afford though? Whose incompetence is it if the manager finds out that when he improves everyones contract, this money comes out of his transfer budget**. Surely if you are managing a club the size of Liverpool and a business with the turnover of Liverpool, you'd find all this stuff out before you went wasting your time trying to sign players who you couldn't afford? I know it suits a certain scenario to believe the "pull the rug" theory, but Purslow ("fecking Purslow

I'm glad you think Ronaldinho is a good example of a "primary target" being missed, because he is. The Mancs were within a whisker of signing him for 12 million quid before it fell through and he went to Barca, the rest well and truly being history. That was pretty much the last you heard of it though, as they went on and won the Premiership three times on the bounce with some different players in instead, that's what you do. It's the same thing they are trying to do this season after not getting Benzema or Ribery.
** The reason I've put this in, is because none of know for sure which side of any of the stories are true. Parry's version of events is very different to Rafa's for instance, and whilst I know "fecking Parry

It really comes back to the same old question at the end of the day. Are we over performing or under perfroming? If it's the latter (which it fairly obviously is), do the excuses give a reasonable reason for it? Some people think they do, some don't. I fairly obviously don't.