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Gerrvindh:
RedHopper again, this time in the Glazers thread.


--- Quote from: RedHopper on July 23, 2012, 01:50:46 AM ---I'm not talking about being fair to man utd. I'm talking about being fair to ourselves. This thread is a quite depressing mixture of hopeless wishful thinking, and mindless personal abuse. I mean I know that we're in the shit, and I know that we finished 37 points behind not just one manchester club, but both of them, but gleefully gathering around a half rumour, desperately wanting to believe that the evil ogre is an alcoholic, and that he drank so much that he shat himself is just sad. desperately desperately sad.  I mean how fucking desperate are we for some sign of weakness that we'll desperately clutch onto any old bullshit. How far have we fallen?

And making it so personalized and about one man is really not such a good idea, particularly when so many of the things we throw at ferguson, could be so easily be thrown at kenny dalglish, and what is worse, they could be made stick, whether you like it or not, so we should make it less about the individual, and see what it is exactly that he does, and see what we can learn from that. 

If I had a penny for every time I've heard another liverpool fan eagerly telling me that man utd are going down then I'd have enough for a couple of pints. If man utd are going down the tubes they have a bloody funny way of showing it. They came within a second of winning the league last season. They got 89 bloody points. They scored 89 bloody goals. I mean lets be honest here. This happens every season. Other clubs are spending far more money than man utd. The fans get unhappy. Ferguson defends the glazers, at the end of the summer man utd have generally spent more than enough to win the league, and do well in europe.  They've spend about £16 milion quid on two players. They've raised at least £10 million so far from selling academy players and park. They'll sell berbatov and maybe anderson and buy a fairly cheap midfielder and a left back, and they'll be ready for the new season. The fans will grumble, but it will all be forgotten about come may. Then it will start again.

Also their debt problem is sadly under control, and if they sell these shares, it will pay off half their debt, and slash their interest payments. The thing to remember is that they do have to pay this pointless and expensive debt every year but ...... they can still afford to pay more in wages and transfer fees than us every year, and as the debt is paid back, they can gradually spend even more than us. We can wish and hope that it's going to drag them under, but they seem to be managing just fine, and it's going to have less and less effect on them as time goes by.

Man utd are usually at best only ever the second highest spending club in the league, and frequently as low as the third or fourth. Between 1980 and 2000, for every three pounds they spent on wages and net transfers, we spent four. That was pretty constant for that 20 years. You have to remember that they had a wage cap of £26,000k a week  up until roy keane got a new contract in Dec 1999. we were lashing out a lot more than that. We made john barnes the most highly paid player in the league and the first £10K a week player in 1991, days before he destroyed his achilles.  We were consistently spending more than them on wages all throughout the 1990's. and the other thing you have to remember is that though they bought the odd rather expensive player, they bought very few players compared to us. Ferguson buys on average 3.5 players a season throughout his career. We generally bought 6 players over the age of 18,  rising to 7.5 players a season under rafa, and carrying on under hodgson and kenny. The reason that they were able to spend so much money on ruud van nistelrooy, is because they didn't buy a single player in 2000-1. Yes they paid a huge fee for roy keane, but he was the only player they bought that season, and they still spent considerably less than us, on er, clough, ruddock and dicks (3 substantial wage bills). yes they spent a lot of money on andy cole, but they sold £15 million on players that summer. we spend £8 million net, making phil babb the most expensive defender in the world, and mark kennedy the most expensive teenager in the world. (these records didn't last long)

Basically we spent a hell of a lot more money than them in the 80's, and we won everything, because we were doing everything right off the pitch, and we had good systems in place. However That stopped very abruptly, and while it can be in part blamed on hilllsborough, we basically just had no idea how to face into the nineties, so we kept spending way more than man utd, and they won everything, because they had passed us out off the pitch Then in the last decade, they were so far ahead of us in terms of a new stadium, and regular CL football, that they were able to spend even more than us, and we struggled to keep up.

This is why I struggle to get angry about ferguson any more. Getting angry with him is like being angry with the rain.  they don't beat us because he's got magical powers, or because he's evil, or even because he has loads of money. He's just really really good at being a football manager, and really good at managing a team on a budget, and he's built a series of really good systems at the club so it basically runs itself in a lot of ways. We can sit here talking about the glazers, and man utd's terminal decline, but the truth is that the last six years for them have been the most wildly successful in their history. A point and goal difference from winning 6 consecutive titles, and three CL finals. If that is a senile manager, a team in decline, and a club on the verge of financial collapse, then by jesus they're hiding it well.

And that's why I find all of this sitting around and fondly imagining that ferguson shat himself, and hoping that something is going to magically make man utd collapse, to be just desperately desperately sad and futile, and strangely impotent, and not a little bit depressing. 

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something awful:
Macca straightens it out for everyone.


--- Quote from: macca888 on July 31, 2012, 07:57:52 PM ---I'm not sure I want to get into the whole debate over FSG just yet. My thoughts on them are wait and watch carefully. Once bitten twice shy is how I feel, but I'm not fully prepared to tar and feather them as villains at the moment. The previous twats taught us to be ultra vigilant, but I honestly think the whole charade of them two fucking robbers has given too unhealthy a perspective. It's given us seemingly a zero tolerance for mistakes and an even lower sense of trust. Regardless of what you might think, we could well have been Rangers or Portsmouth but for the grace of God and a few quid from FSG. Or even worse. Does that make them our lord and saviours? Not in a million years. But I think it buys them a little bit more trust and grace than they've been given. Put it like this, if your last girlfriend had fucked around on you and took you to the cleaners, you might have a good reason to be watchful and cynical. But if  you got a new girl and then you watched her like a hawk all day every day to the point of obsession, and never gave her one ounce of trust or respect, just because you'd been fucked around on before, I can pretty much guaranteed that before long the only action you'd be getting would be off Rosie Palmer and her five sisters.

But the players situation is something altogether different. Three out of the four who have gone or look as though they will be shipped out were on huge wages that let's be honest, for the amount they contributed, didn't deserve and were awarded by the previous management team. Yes, if Carroll turns out to be a fuck up, they can take all the blame for that, because regardless of whether that stupid twat Comolli arranged it, they obviously approved it. But Aquilani, Kuyt and Maxi? Their massive wages were authorised by Mr Football Manager himself, Purslow. Now regardless of whether we wanted them to stay or not, you cannot deny that Kuyt and Maxi fucked off due in part at least to the disillusionment they felt last season. I love Kenny as much as any man, but he did not give them the game time everyone felt they deserved. Maybe if he had, he'd still be here. But maybe he'd have gone sooner. No crystal ball on that one because we'll never know how it would have turned out. Aquilani has been done to death so I won't go there only to say that for whatever reason, clearly nobody bar Rafa has ever wanted him here. Same with Carragher. Purslow authorised that massive wage rise and extra two year deal the day before they took over, which virtually everyone said smelt as fishy as a brass's fanny at the time. So to use these as evidence that FSG are trying to fuck us over are about as flimsy and full of holes as Evra's accusations. That's not to say they aren't; it's merely saying that there are other areas we need to look at for proof.

Now look at transfers out rumours. Well I'm sorry but I just don't believe any single journalist. No smoke without fire I hear you cry. Well actually there is. I remember a newspaper transfer rumour league table from last year. I'm sure the figure that the most successful paper had a strike rate of 1 in 10. 1 in 10. I've got a better strike rate guessing which fucking raindrop on the windowsill will hit the deck first. Think about Pepe for a second. He was linked with every team in Europe at one stage and he confirmed himself that only one club, Arsenal, ever came in for him. That was a couple of seasons ago. And we refused them flat out. Yet every year since, we've had nothing but Pepe to Juve, Pepe to Milan, Pepe to United, Pepe to every fucker. So anyone getting concerned about rumours should at least just hold their water, not because they trust FSG, but because football journalists in England almost to a man would win the Olmypic Mud Slinging gold if such an event existed. Not only that, but do you really give any credence to a gang of c*nts like Holt, Maddocks, Barclay and Samuel who to a man have criticised everything about us for years, crucified Rafa, got their man Owl face the job, slaughtered Kenny from the get go and tried to hound Luis out of the country while all the time brandishing us all as racists? Fuck that. Again, I'm not using this as evidence to trust FSG. I'm using it to say I trust these bastards less than I'd trust Len Fairclough to give my kids swimming lessons.

Now onto transfers in. Again, the papers are as trustworthy as a Barclays chief executive looking after your piggy bank. How about all the various ITK's all over the shop? Well some of them seem to know bits and bobs, but only end up with strike rates slightly above journalists. The reason for that is because of fucking money grubbing blabber mouth agents and players letting things slip. Look at Aquilani's agent. He'd be able to lick two birds out at the same time, he's got that much of a fucking forked tongue. But what about people with connections inside the club? Well the thing is, we're working on potential deals all the time, only a small portion of which ever come off. Without going into all the details, a couple of seasons back, I was 100% certain a certain player was signing for us. 100% certain that it was going to be announced the next day. 100% certain that fees and wages had been agreed and the medical was taking place the next morning. Roy will back me up on that as well if he remembers. Imagine how much of a gobshite I felt the next morning when I got a text to say the medical had been called off! So even if someone says that a certain player is being looked at, there's still only a small possibility that he'll come. Look at Sigurddson for evidence that even when it's nailed on, things can change. This season, radio silence is even worse than ever, or if you prefer, better. But again, people twist it as an agenda to slate FSG. They're not being transparent and open with the fans. Damned if they do, damned if they don't. Fucks sake, if we so much as look at a player on a Panini sticker these days, Spurs make a bid for him. Silence might just help us get some of our targets but blabbing all over the shop increases the likelihood of missing out on them.

The thing is though even when there is a solid link with a player, we've become such disillusioned and spoilt c*nts as fans that we moan to fuck before they've signed on the dotted line and before they've even had a chance to kick a ball in anger for us. Borini, Joe Allen, Dempsey. Fuck me, the vitriol they've taken on that transfer forum is unbelievable. Not quoting verbatim here, but there was a comment about Dempsey possibly being swapped for Adam that said something like "What a fucking joke. Getting rid of an international for a shit journeyman!" Now I'm not playing Judge Judy and executioner here, but according to some, Dempsey is a 29 year old shit mongrel journeyman (who has spent his entire career at two clubs with 71 international caps and a career total of roughly 1 goal in three) versus a seasoned thouroughbred international (with 16 caps, currently on his fifth club with a strike rate of about 1 in 5). Now again, it seemed to me that RAWK had given up on Charlie almost to a man. He was the proverbial overweight donkey according to a large majority of people last season. For all the pisstaking he gets, Fordy at times seemed like the biblical lone voice crying in the wilderness for Charlie. So what happens when Brendan Rodgers decides he wants shut? He suddenly becomes a seasoned international, a one club man, a play maker par excellence with a left foot deadlier than a basket of rattle snakes. We cried out for some bastard just to hit the net last year. So when we make a move for a player with a decent strike rate, he suddenly becomes a gobshite, a journeyman, a one season wonder. You know that saying you can please some of the people some of the time? Well apparently people who keep their eye on more foreigners than a fucking cowboy builder don't know it. Juan can back me up on this one if he read this because he pulled the soft c*nt on it. Someone on a player thread in the general sports, within a few hours came up with what can only be described as the wisdom of the modern day fan. He went from "Never heard of this player, never seen him" to "just watched a youtube video, looks like a decent player." He then topped of his all encompassing football knowledge and prowess, sorry, his supreme fucking idiocy, by saying "for fucks sake, we always miss out on all the best players" when a couple of hours later the lad signed for someone else. Unfuckingbelievable but true.

Do I trust FSG? About as far as I could fucking throw that fat twat Yakubu into a force 9 gale. Have they made a few fuck ups along the way? Most definitely, like appointing Comolli in the first place, not getting shut of Owl Face quicker and allowing us to make deals that made not a lot of sense to both seasoned reds and neutral observers. They've certainly helped to put us back two steps trying to help us move forward one. But do I blame them for everything? Not yet, not until they start proving my, what I think to be, healthy scepticism to be justified.

--- End quote ---

ChaChaMooMoo:
From the liverpool way thread, geoff puts it straight.


--- Quote from: geoffstrong on August  6, 2012, 08:11:47 AM ---There is a simple answer pass and move the Liverpool groove, seriously i am a little older than Andy but maybe not wiser, so this will maybe be a bit rambling.
 There is a myth that takes place in here sometimes, the Shankly years are remembered yes for the results and the players but certainly it is because of the man himself more than the football. His teams where effective rather than stylish at times compared to the Dalglish era, but he was the foundation for what followed. It is also a fact that it was not all success for Shanks far from it, but backing him by nearly 100% of the fans who adored and respected him was never in doubt, (i often wonder if he would have been here as long in the modern era).
The foundation on the pitch and within the club structure was put in place then with the bootroom, with the all red kit, with the socialist with a big S ideals and with the fact that we were the 12th man on the pitch then, something sadly lacking these days, we didn't expect to be entertained if we were it was a bonus, we were there to help the team win! Results then and now are more important than the way you win.
To me though the connection between the Liverpool Way and the style of play is a bogus one, the Liverpool way was the connection between the supporters and the club working as one and that was in place during many different styles of play seeing as the bootroom philosophy was in place but it could be argued the Shanks, Bob, Joe, Kenny all put their own stamp on the style of football we played during these years before Souness ripped the bootroom philosophy apart physically and mentally.
Now to jump a few era's our last link to the boot room was Evans, but by the time he took over football had changed from the days when he sat in it.
When Rafa arrived i said to a mate that he reminds me of a Spanish Shanks i have never lost this opinion about him, he got the fans and the city, his teams were at times far more effective than stylish certainly compared to Kenny's. However during his era (and as i said this has nothing to do with the football) TLW died.  It didn't die with Souness I believe because we remembered what a great player he was for us so with him it was regret tinged with respect rather than anger towards him. Sadly with the turmoil with the owners and the media spin with Rafa some fans (far too many) forgot they were part of the team and with that the holy trinity was cast aside for success at all costs. the recent years have only underlined this fact to the point that we now have fans in here who think they can use TLW as a derisory insult to aim at a poster! Our fanbase is shot to hell in my opinion full of factions that put their own opinions and agendas before the club.
Now Brendan i hope he is as strong as he appears, he will need to be, because we are sadly so far removed from TLW and the Bootroom philosophy that i fear for his chances and for the club's future to ever be as good and as (for want of a better word) united as the Shanks/ Bootroom era.

--- End quote ---

kavah:

--- Quote from: rafathegaffa83 on August 20, 2012, 10:38:10 PM ---For me this is a rebuilding process in some respects, with a bit of remodeling. It's probably something that had there not been almost half a decade of turmoil (in-fighting, backstabbing and political maneuvering from players, staff and administrative figures alike) would have taken place much earlier and in a much smoother transitory phase. On one side, you've got a youth system that is ready to be tapped, on the other you've got a squad that has had several players who are either past their prime or don't provide good vaIlue. Letting go of some of these players has been a difficult task on many levels. But in a sense, I'm glad Rodgers is making many of those difficult decisions that are probably being done in and around right time.

The likes of Kuyt and Maxi have delivered well down the years, but both are either at their peak or past it. It's not that they aren't good footballers, or can't still play, but they're not good enough for Liverpool anymore. Or at least where Liverpool wants to be in a few years time. Aquilani is a very good player, but it was probably the right time to move him on after how the past few years had gone for him. Shedding those wages enables Rodgers to bring in players who fit better in with his ideas, which in turn assist when he looks to shuffle his pack in a congested season. In less rocky times with a greater degree of stability, we might have even seen the likes of Cole never signed and players like Carragher and perhaps even Gerrard sold off at this point.

I think what we're trying to do this summer is the cut the waste. It's a difficult, painful and arduous process.  It will likely mean we have to take a step backward to move forwards, but it has to be done. When you go back into the club history books Watford in the FA Cup during 1969/1970 is the fixture that changed everything. The previous year, Shankly's Reds had finished second. It was their third consecutive trophyless season, but the runner-up spot to Revie's Leeds was in reality somewhat of a lie. The squad was still packed with legendary players (Yeats, St. John, Thompson etc), but they'd achieved little or nothing in recent times. After winning the league in 1965/1966, the club finished 5th, 3rd and 2nd. The deepest they had gone in any cup competition during that time was the quarter-finals of the FA Cup in 1967/68 in which they lost to eventual winners West Bromwich Albion.

Losing to Watford, who had been newly promoted into the second division and would later be hammered 5-1 in the following round by Chelsea, was the straw that broke the camel's back. It let the largely sentimental Shankly realize that many of most loyal players could no longer be counted on with a degree of regularity and that the squad needed massive strengthening. The 31 year old Roger Hunt, who had scored 25 goals two seasons prior, was shipped off to Bolton a few months prior to the Watford debacle, but he was the first of many big names to go out the door. Within a year, stalwarts Ian St. John (32 at the time of Watford), Ron Yeats (33) , Tommy Lawrence (30) and Geoff Strong (33 during that game), who had all played in the Watford fixture, were all let go. Those four players, who featured in a combined 122 league games that year, would play collectively only 48 league games the following season (34 of which were by Strong). Alec Lindsay and Larry Lloyd, two 22 year old defenders bought at the beginning of the season, who played a combined 14 games that year, would go on to feature in 61 league games the next, as youth were given a chance and the older crowd were quickly phased out.

But like all rebuilds, it wasn't smooth sailing. Realizing he needed something two years prior, Shankly had bought Chelsea forward Tony Hateley, a sort of Peter Crouch of his era (big man, who joined lots of teams for very high fees) for £96,000. He scored 27 goals in all competitions, including 16 in the league, but was sold at a £16,000 loss as he didn't fit the team's style of play. His replacement Alun Evans was the most expensive teenager of all-time, costing over £100,000. Unfortunately for Evans, injuries and bad luck meant that he'd never fulfill his potential and he was eventually sold off for 3/4's of his original cost four years later having only played 79 league games.  At the tail-end of 1969/70 season, he bought Jack Whitham, a 23 year old forward from Sheffield Wednesday. Unfortunately for Whitham, he proved to be so injury-prone that Shankly essentially exiled him during training.

There are lessons that can be learned from reflecting on that experience in the early Seventies. One thing that will be telling with the current Liverpool rebuild is to what extent the younger players do get a chance. People have been complaining about the lack of squad depth, but with the reputedly teeming youth system ready to burst, at some point Rodgers has to look at taking a gamble and giving them a chance. Utilizing them at first to pad the 2nd and third back-up slots and then moving forward from there. Additionally, Rodgers also will be looking to send the message that this isn't a retirement home or a place where you can come and pick-up a hefty wage packet without contributing to the system when called upon.

One of the great tricks of the great Liverpool sides, particularly under Paisley, was knowing when a player was finished. Paisley was aided by his experience working as a physio to know when a player had peaked, but could still provide good value. And thus it's noticeable that despite the long careers of players like Ian Callaghan and Tommy Smith (at 33) at Liverpool, both were let go of, rather than allowed the opportunity to retire gracefully here.  Ray Clemence,  sold to Spurs at 33, went on to play 240 more games before calling it quits.  Additionally, players were sold in their prime to allow a younger player to breakthrough or saw dramatic reductions in playing time before they were shifted on. Phil Thompson was gone by age 31, but didn't play any league games during 1983/84 due to the emergence of Hansen and Lawrenson; Steve Heighway, played only 15 more league games for Liverpool after the year he turned 32); and Terry McDermott, at age 31, was sold back to Newcastle only two years after winning both the PFA and FWA Player of the Year awards.

Now granted with modern contracts and the glare of the media, Rodgers can't easily ship Carragher off to Bolton or bury Joe Cole in the reserves. But what he will need is a great deal of patience and time to rectify some of the haphazardness of the past few seasons. Ideally, he needs to use this season to lay down the philosophical foundations of his methodology, start bringing in younger players and shipping out less useful and older ones in order to ensure long-term, we are annually in the hit for more than just CL berths.

--- End quote ---

The 5th Benitle:
Macca nails it again:


--- Quote from: macca888 on September 25, 2012, 06:31:53 PM ---To be absolutely honest, I'm astounded and sick to fucking death in equal measures of the negativity towards the new manager. Jesus fucking Christ, He's been in the job five minutes and I keep hearing ad nauseum how he hasn't achieved anything, how he's only been in the EPL (get ter fuck with this pitiful fucking excuse of an acronym), and how anyone who has any sort of faith or belief in him is delusional. Well what the fuck do you actually want? Do you really want him to succeed or is the truth more that you actually do you want him to fail so you can wheel out your arrogant "I told you so's" at the end of the season? Honestly, it's more depressing than Hodgson's style of football.

I'm not making a direct comparison of ability, just before any of the doom mongers see the names and jump in feet first, but every manager has to start somewhere on their managerial career. At least having bags of experience as a youth coach and a decent Swansea team in the league for one season was better experience than King Kenny taking over the job for the first time as an absolute novice or Guardiola taking over a Barcelona team after a solitary season as a reserve coach. And both these teams were chock full of stars and winners, not a team who had finished 8th in the league the season before they took over. And that doesn't mean that Rodgers will go on to be anywhere near as successful as them. But as far as sticks go for beating him with, you might want to at least give him a full season to see whether his lack of experience is telling in where we finish.

Brendan Rodgers just cannot win with some people. They say he's inexperienced, and yet won't even give him a chance to learn as he goes along. I suppose it was his sacking at Reading that led to Halsey fucking up at least six decisions? Or maybe it was his constantly espousing his footballing philosophy that caused Skrtel to pass the ball to Tevez for an easy goal? How about the fact that he was never a proper professional footballer that meant Pepe fumbled around like a 15 year old trying to unfasten a bra against Hearts and Arsenal? For fucks sake, I've lost count of the times that I've read it really wasn't his methods at Swansea that got them playing so well. You know how far down the barrel you must be scraping when you're crediting Paolo Souza with taking four points off us last year.

Kristian's OP was excellent, balanced and never had any hyperbole in it as far as I could see. In a nutshell, he said he's done some good things, some not so good, but he can at least sense things going in the right direction as long as it continues in the next few games. But an agenda is an agenda. So if people want to criticise him, they'll keep on doing so. If we'd have won on Sunday, it would have been "but how fucking inconsistent are we?" "We only raise it for the big games" blah fucking blah. If we win tomorrow with a bunch of kids it'll be "but they were Rafa's kids" or "why can't he get the first 11 playing like that" blah fucking blah. Win against Norwich and it'll be "I need to see it regularly before I'm convinced" or "It's only a shit Norwich team" blah fucking blah. He might not win anything at all with everyone on his side but equally he might win everything even if every man and his dog doesn't like him. But not giving him a chance at all is wrong on every level.

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