Liverpool FC Forum

[The Manhattan Project]

What's important to remember, is that after a disaster, you can rise from the ashes to greatness.

I mean, look at the zeppelin industry.

After the Hindenburg disaster, did the zeppelin industry collapse and fade into the midst of time?

NO!!! It become stronger and now today, millions of people fly zeppelins all over the world. They even have hubs at Heathrow and.....oh wait....actually the industry did collapse after the Hindenburg.


OK, bad example.

[The Manhattan Project]

Manhattan loves the fact he is an "Elite Member".

We have our own lounge where we drink sherry and smoke cigars.

And also do that thing that rich guys do where they dip cigars into sherry.

[Redbilly1960]

Disappointing night, 3-6 its not the end of the world. All the nomarks with "Sack Rafa" [B] are no doubt the same plassi supporters walking out with 30 mins still on the clock. Now that does pi55 me off. Support the team through the good times and the bad times or go support someone else.

[The Manhattan Project]

It was a bad result, but still doesn't bother me as much as Wimbledon 1988.




I can't believe Stefan Edberg won that.

[puroresu]

Would a so called 1st team won tonight?  I aint so sure.  Arsenal are on a different level when it comes to passing and moving. Rafa has us playing huff and puff football.  Its embarrasing.  Rafa needs to realise that a team without pace will always struggle against a side with good movement and sharp passing.  Palletta is too slow.  We need pace at the back badly.  Rafa doesnt see this though.

I dont see how this side can combat the passing and movement of a Barcelona side with Eto, Messi and Ronaldhinho.  I just dont see it happening. 
Too many players at the club which are not good enough.  Garcia is a joke!!!

I'm sick of the style of play.  No passing, no movement.  Arsenal dragged our defenders all over the place. There is a huge difference in footballing brain and technical ability.

Its not just down to money.  Wenger has found quality players for cheap.  Its all about looking in the right places.

[The Manhattan Project]

Wenger's scouting system must be the best in the world.

I'm convinced Astrology plays some part in it.

[puroresu]

Another defeat v a top side.  This is getting very repetitive.

[puroresu]

Disappointing night, 3-6 its not the end of the world. All the nomarks with "Sack Rafa" [B] are no doubt the same plassi supporters walking out with 30 mins still on the clock. Now that does pi55 me off. Support the team through the good times and the bad times or go support someone else.

Its not just the score.  Its the gulf in quality of players that hurts.

[112-1077774096]

You know what I'm disappointed but I'm not pissed off. I'm not as pissed off as I thought I might be. I'm proud of the team because 2nd half they gave it a go. I'd rather see my team lose 7-0 and have a go than see them lose 3-0 and not have a go.

I've never left the ground early in my life and I swear that I never will. I stayed to the end tonight and still sang my heart out. The fact that we were singing until the final whistle, even being 6-3 down shows the character of our fans. Then I come on and see Rafa out plastered over these boards.

What have we sank to? We are not the bitter bastards from across stanley park. We are Liverpool fans. A class above the rest.

I did not agree with Rafa's team line-up but we were beaten and we have to take that on the chin and blank it out of our minds and just move on to the next game. We need to be optimistic and have hope and encourage the team and get behind the manager, not slag him off. The man's done an awful lot for this club.

But while I'm being honest, I think Dudek has played his last game for the club. Thanks for Istanbul but I'm afraid we can't keep you and just pretend that you don't make mistakes because of that one game.

There will be bigger and better games for us to win. You can't expect us to win every single game.

WE ARE LIVERPOOL FANS, A CLASS ABOVE THE REST.

WALK ON

just a few points to raise adam:

you say dudek has made mistakes and has to go, you also say you dont agree with rafas team selection, rafa made a mistake with his team selection which he has done many times this season but you think its ok for him to make continual mistakes while some fans still sweep them under the carpet.

you make this comment about Dudek Thanks for Istanbul but I'm afraid we can't keep you and just pretend that you don't make mistakes because of that one game., can that comment not also refer to rafa? or is he beyond criticism?


i have never been embarressed to say i am a liverpool fan, and i am still not embarrassed top say that, i am however embarrassed by this result, just as i have been many times this season.

this part is not about you adam, some of us on here where vilified earlier in the season for speaking the truth, we were called fickle and unloyal for speaking the truth, some of us could see this coming at the start of the season but we were laughed at, laugh at me now you idiots, we have just been humiliated because of a tactically naive manager, he makes mistakes, he is only human, but when is he going to learn from those mistakes? i thought he had, he started playing his strongest team in the league and we started winning and winning well, when he changes that we can just see how bad out squad actually is, remember the current squad he built so there can be no excuses. now i want to refer to saturday, we were struggling to score so can someone please tell me why we made one like for like substitution when bellamy could have come on and added a different dimension?

i think rafa is not as tactically astute as some of you like to think he is.

i am not calling for his head, but some people on here need to wake up and smell the coffee

[Scottbot]

Found this on RAWK and reckon it's a decent post, at least it's a post that gives a bit of perspective and made me feel a bit better about tonight's shocker!

Posted by Andrew_m_Swift

Right now this may not be the best time to write this cos i feel physically sick!  Ive just got in from the game and it is very hard to come to terms with.  The first thing i want everybody to do is take a step back, we will not be sacking rafa (as many of the callers on numerous radio stations are saying).

The way I feel at the current time is the way I felt when I came out of Burnley on a freezing cold January night 2 years ago.  At that time i remember thinking that we only had to beat Watford over 2 legs and we would be in the carling cup final.  I remember being very critical of rafa's team selection that night but when it came to the bigger picture im please to say that I got it wrong!

Tonight I was going into the tunnel when Alan Kennedy announced the team, I looked at my dad and thought what the is rafa doing.  Surely if he needed to rest players then this could now be done during the FA Cup ties when we have a free week.  I really would not have played Dudek, i believe he was partially at fault for all 3 goals on saturday and deserved to be dropped, despite rafa's promise.  I really felt rafa should have played a strong team as the league cup represented our best chance of a trophy.  If he did want to play youngsters then I felt it was important to have a strong spine... say, reina, carra, hyypia, gerrard, alonso, then the other 6 players could have been a mixture of youth and inexperienced.  Im sad to say that dudek went onto concede 9 goals in 2 games, and I would say 6 were his fault.

With regards to Arsenal's youth in comparison with our own.  Wenger has been the Arsenal manager for over 10 years so has had that time to develop a network of scouts and a style of play which is very impressive.  This style of play appears to be implimented right the way through the culture of the club.  As I have already said it has take him 10 years to do this.

Rafa's rotation is another part of his management that is heavily critisized.  He believes that a fresher crop of players stands you in good stead over the course of the whole season.  The proplem with this is that we have almost been out ouf the title race in the past 2 years before were off and running with Chelsea and Man Utd hitting the ground running.  My belief in this is that we should play our best side for the opening 10 matches with only the odd tweak due to injury etc then start to rotate.  Rafa was critisized for constantly playing Gerrard on the right but Pennant was bloody awful during those first few weeks when given the chance.  The only reason I had to put SG back in the middle was that his confidence seemed to suffer and I believe that when a player lacks confidence you should always play the player in there best position.

Rafa has always been constraint by the finances of the club (hopefully not for much longer).  We wanted Simao, they wanted £13m we got nobody, we wanted Alves, they wanted £13m we got pennant, we wanted Owen they wanted £16m, he went to Newcastle... I would like to judge Rafa when has money to spend cos when he spends it he seems to spend it quite well (alonso).

Rafa is often critsized for constantly playing Garcia but I know that in every match ive ever seen him play he's created a chance either for himself or for somebody else.  Take west ham on the opening day, a beautiful little ball to crouch when he could have shot himself.  Take chelsea on 2 occasions and leverkusen etc.  Dont get me wrong the lad is frustrating but rafa watches a game second by second not game by game so he knows he can change it from one second to the next...  It looks like he could be out for a while, I for 1 bet we miss him.

Onto the bigger picture of this season, I said before xmas that if we pick up 12 points we could well find ourselves back in the title race!  I was laughed at by the lads I sit by at Anfield and after Blackburn away they rang me singing at me and taking the .  Something then dawned on me befor this weekend, if we lose both games (obviously I didnt want this to happen) maybe we could make that push even bigger.  I wasnt planning on Gonzalez nad Garcia both getting injured.  Rafa apparently once said to his Valencia team when they were 7 pts behind at xmas 'we can win this league' and they did by 7 points!  I for one am still more worried about Chelsea than Man U, I believe that if we can catch Chelsea then we will have also caught Man U.  We will certainly need a better record than 7pts in 45 against the big 3 for this to happen. Lets see how that pans out!

With regard to the Champions League, obviously we have to beat the European Champions next but in 2005 we beat the champions of Italy and England so why not.  The League Cup final (with chelsea?) would have been in the middle of a fixture sandwich which reads Barca (A) League Cup Final Man U (H) Barca (H).  Pretty tricky to keep the season alive eh!

My final point is, we all make mistakes, hopefully we can learn from them.  I think Rafa realises he has made some mistakes but we have a top manager there so dont get on his back.... Back him!

IN RAFA WE TRUST!

[melofelo]

liverpool hasn't recovered since the mismanagement days of houllier...its almost as if our club is a training ground for other clubs strikers in the league...
rafa need to learn that liverpool isn't an experiment for his slick tricks...you can't field a team every week that doesn't know whose on the pitch till 10 minutes before kick off...
to play dudek after letting in three int he fa cup defies logic...even carson wouldn't have humiliated the fans that much...only an idiot finds himself still looking for his best starting 11 after 10 games with a clean sheet...
only an idiot chooses a goalkeeper who lets in 9 goal in four days because of a promise ? who the hell is he gonna sell dudek to now ??

[KOPMATT]

Disappointing night, 3-6 its not the end of the world. All the nomarks with "Sack Rafa" [B] are no doubt the same plassi supporters walking out with 30 mins still on the clock. Now that does pi55 me off. Support the team through the good times and the bad times or go support someone else.

I agree that we shouldn't sack Rafa, but tonights result IMO firmly lies with him though! I'm devastated and shocked at the way we got turned over tonight, and lets face it, it was shocking!
Also Paul Merson was laughing his socks off at us tonight live on sky coz we face Barcelona in a few weeks, It's not nice to think that 5 time champions are now being laughed about as if we're some sort of Joke because thats how I took it, very personally! I Love Liverpool the club the city & the People and I support them through the good & the Not so good and always will, but tonight has left me in mourning!
YNWA

[red_guy]

I didnt watch the game and just now i found out that we got hammered 6-3.What's the problem besides dudek? Poor defence?

[CarlosRocks]

I didnt watch the game and just now i found out that we got hammered 6-3.What's the problem besides dudek? Poor defence?

the defence was particularly bad tonight, we had peltier on the right and paletta next to him which is a very inexperienced pairing on that side of defence. the gooners spotted this and exploited it several times resulting in goals...

[joko]

rafa tries his best he fielded the most optimum squad considering the alikes of importance of the cup, opponents' line-ups, tiredness (in terms of the other importance to keep struggling to do best possibility in EPL, etc.)

so, I don't think employing your best regular size would have made a big difference IF we have a side with a mediocre bouncingbackability.

it's more of about the squad mentality me think. we should have thought we were a wounded beast having experienced the defeat before, never mind thinking that we are LIVERPOOL FC.

if i were rafa, i would probably have put a bit more irregular players than what he had done

as for the prior defeat, it was also not about rafa, it's about rosicky and henry, and about 3 attacks and 3 goals compared to a dozens of our chances that failing to convert.

but also that arsenal is so far better than us, face it.

so get off rafa's back