Liverpool FC Forum

[Madmax]

Probably a better and more pertinant question than the topic starter is this. If we finish third or fourth, 10 points or so off the top of the league this season would you change the manager then? That's an interesting one.

Thats what i would find interesing aswel. see the responses. Personally if that was the case i feel a change would be imminent!

[NANNY RED]

My answer was gonna be as long as Micks but ill keep it short .

No he should stay

[aCe']

yes.. he should be sacked if we dont win the league

[Raffmaker]

Depends,

If we finish out of top 2 and 10 points or more adrift then yes.

2nd place is minimum requirement this term. Benitez has had the time and the cash. he reminds me of Gerrard Houllier to an extent that he is a one trick pony in a lot of his signings are from his native country
This is just all about pride. If Man Utd do happen to win titles for the next two seasons they would beat our record. Is that what we want??? Its UNTHINKABLE.

[lakes10]

IF we dont win the i think he will still be here next season, but if he gets off to a bad start then i think he will get sacked.

I am not going to go back on what i said at the start of this season, "He must win it or go"
he has spent a lot on money and a lot of the clubs time building up this team and if its still wrong then we should look at a nother manager that can get it right, i am sure when GH was sacked the club come out and said that he had asked for another two years to win the prem, the club said they could not give him this time and needed a manager that could do it sooner than that.......well on that from they did not get one, what the did get was one of the best football brians out there, but maybe not the best in the prem.........................and if he wins it this year? give him a new contract, its called earning it, like we all do if we a get a pay rise.

[alanricouk]

If this season we finish outside the top two, and way adrift, he can pack his bags.

[destro]

He should stay and get some serious money then be judged, Ferguson spent a small fortune before Raffa even came to Liverpool so to try and compare the spendings of each club is pointless.

However, look at how much Chelsea have spent, look at how much United spent in the 26 years it took them to win the league ( including breaking the British transfer fee on more than one occasion ) and then take into account the inflated transfers since then and how much those players would have cost in the past 5 years, even Blackburn at the time they won it with Jack Walkers millions ( Shearer 3 Million ! ). Without looking for stats I would guess that Arsenal could maybe be thrown in with that lot, even though Wenger does appear quite shrewed in the transfer market.

So give him more time I say, and before anyone replies with the mistakes he has made or the money he has wasted, what other top team manager hasn't ?

[Zidane]

Never understood the constant saying of we don't spend big we may not literally spend big but we spend -a lot-.  If you were to gather how much has been spent in the past 5 years by clubs worldwide we would have to be in the top 5.

[destro]

Then take into account that we are playing catch up Ferguson had at least a 60 Million HEAD START and still spent after Raffa took over and Chelsea just destroyed everyone

[aCe']

He should stay and get some serious money then be judged, Ferguson spent a small fortune before Raffa even came to Liverpool so to try and compare the spendings of each club is pointless.

However, look at how much Chelsea have spent, look at how much United spent in the 26 years it took them to win the league ( including breaking the British transfer fee on more than one occasion ) and then take into account the inflated transfers since then and how much those players would have cost in the past 5 years, even Blackburn at the time they won it with Jack Walkers millions ( Shearer 3 Million ! ). Without looking for stats I would guess that Arsenal could maybe be thrown in with that lot, even though Wenger does appear quite shrewed in the transfer market.

So give him more time I say, and before anyone replies with the mistakes he has made or the money he has wasted, what other top team manager hasn't ?

its not like we started off with a relegation side that was struggling for survival in the league with sht player all around now is it !

he hocse to spend the money the way he did.. he chose to buy the players he did... hes to blame when transfers go bad..etc etc..

ur right manutd and chelsea bought some sht players in the past few years (chelsea more than manutd) but they still ended up winning trophies though so its all good as far their fans are concerned...

[destro]

No we didnt start off with a relegation side good point very well made ?

But we did start off with a team that wasn't as good as United or an improving Chelsea team

Yeah its all good when you sell a 20 Million pound flop and replace him with another 20 Million pound player.

He chose to spend what LITTLE money he was given, there is a big difference with more money do you really think we would have signed for example Pennant, that Raffa said " Get me Pennant at all costs there is no one else in the world that I want" was Ferguson ever told " No sorry Alex that player is too much for us aim a little lower" would he have been told " You cant have Barry try again"

People bleat about how he wasted the money, I remember how Dossena was a world beater before he kicked a ball for us because he cost 7 Million and played for Italy hindsight is a wonderful thing

[Zidane]

No we didnt start off with a relegation side good point very well made ?

But we did start off with a team that wasn't as good as United or an improving Chelsea team

Yeah its all good when you sell a 20 Million pound flop and replace him with another 20 Million pound player.

He chose to spend what LITTLE money he was given, there is a big difference with more money do you really think we would have signed for example Pennant, that Raffa said " Get me Pennant at all costs there is no one else in the world that I want" was Ferguson ever told " No sorry Alex that player is too much for us aim a little lower" would he have been told " You cant have Barry try again"

People bleat about how he wasted the money, I remember how Dossena was a world beater before he kicked a ball for us because he cost 7 Million and played for Italy hindsight is a wonderful thing

The problem I see with your view on it is that had he not kept settling and buying numerous low price players he would have been able to buy more quality instead of quantity.  I don't know if that came down to ownership not wanting to spend big numbers or him just preferring to build the squad with his players, either way it wasn't a good move imo.  He should have built it with high quality players instead of lots of lower quality ones just because he preferred them to what we had.

[bigmick]

The transfer side of it has been done to death but recent history doesn't look great. This Summer, we spent 40 million quid with the net improvement to our first choice team being Albert Riera. Allied to that, it's only because nobody would stump up 16 million quid that we still have Xabi Alonso. If he had signed for Arsenal and was playing for them as well as he's played for us this season, how would people see that little exchange?

Now in fairness to Rafa almost nobody could have forseen Alonso's massive improvement this season, but he certainly isn't still at the club because of any excess of judgement on our part.

We have bought some good players over the years with the 150-200 million we have spent, but feck me we have bought some rubbish as well. Most troubling for me are the signings which simply look ill thought out, and psoitions within the squad where we appear threadbare at best. Last season we spent the whole of the Summer trying to sign Gabriel Hienze. When the transfer fell through, many people on here were of the opinion that we needed a centre half then. Course we didn't buy one, then lo and behold a month into the season we are short of a centre half. The same thing could be said for the last couple of seasons at left-midfield. We end up having to make do with a semi-converted striker. Thankfully we've got somebody who can play there now, no genuine cover mind if he gets injured or tired after an hour, but at least we can line up with a genuine left midfielder.

After flying along with the 4-5-1 at the end of last season, we decide we ought to be able to play 4-4-2 as well. I think this was probably considered a first option, but even as any option it's fair enough. Unfortunately, after four years and umpteen strikers (some of who were still here) we decide that none of them are suitable for the role. So we go out and spend/spunk 20 million quid on another striker who isn't suitable for the role. We in doing so make ourselves a little conundrum of who we are going to play in central midfield in this 4-4-2, as we have a lot of central midfielders. This is a bit of a blow, as one of the pluses of the 4-5-1 is that it allowed us to get Alonso (valued by Rafa 16 million), Masherano (18 million) and Gerrard (priceless) on the same pitch.

While all this is going on, we come to the startling conclusion that the drunken waster we bought from Birmingham is a drunken waster, so we decide we aren't going to play him any more. It doesn't matter, we only spent/spunked 6.7 million quid on him so he can feck off for nothing at the end of the season. The only problem with that is, when you play 4-4-2 as opposed to 4-5-1 you need a genuine right midfielder. we don't have one. We have a striker who's been converted to a bloke who can do a job on the right in a 4-5-1, but not a genuine right midfielder in sight.

We do have Yossi Benayoun who probably doesn't even know his best position himself I shouldn't think, and wherever it is he isn't good enough IMHO. We also have Babel who probably can't remember what his best position is as he hasn't played there in years.

In defence, Arbeloa gets suspended and we realise that after four years, we ain't got any cover. Charitably, you could say it's not Rafa's fault that Degan is injured. By the same token, you could argue that it's not Rafa's fault that Vorinin is garbage but a little look at their record in both cases should tell you all you need to know. Anyway, once Arbeloa is injured, as we have no cover Carragher (our best defender) has to play there. Then we get a completely new central defensive partnership, and so on.

There are times when I just can't see this meticulous building process for the life of me. I've asked on another thread, given that Keane is currently garbage, do we need another striker? I think we do, and if Torres breaks down in a couple of weeks we'll see why. I know, "we've got no money". You know what though? if I knew we had no money, I'd have been building up Keane and babel all the time Torres was out injured. Soon as Keane started scoring I'd have been in the press telling them what a great player he was, telling them what a steal he was at 20 million. I'd have played him while he was on his streak, so that if Torres was to break down we DO have an alternative.

There are many questions, and even real fans can ask them sometimes.

[Zidane]

Lets not forget we had a decent squad when he came in but he completely scrapped it and rebuilt it so it stuttered the development and growth of the squad, he now has it stronger than before so credit to him but he definitely took longer than I would have liked.

[Owzat]

Really does depend. Now is a CRUCIAL time in his managerial career, forget what's gone before, now we are in the mix for the title in January approaching February. Now is the measure of whether he has what it takes to keep up a title challenge. If he doesn't then maybe we have to look elsewhere, that will be two consecutive good starts he would have blown and no trophies since 2006. In fact both his major trophies have relied on 90 minutes football where we got off the hook and won on penalties. Fair enough the mancs only won on penalties, but they weren't in the EMBARRASSING position of 0-3 down at half time.

Rafa's blown chances to extend the lead we had, but it's more or less clean slate time as he can make amends. It is after all a competiton over 38 games and if he can keep us within touch then maybe he'll prove his credentials as our manager.

If we fade badly it will be mainly because we couldn't beat the ordinary dross of the league, the Stokes (twice), Hulls, West Hams, Bitters, Fulhams of this league and he can't hide behind the excuse of not spending as much as the mancs because how much does it take to beat a side that's spent less than half of what you have? How do the mancs or Chelsea influence us beating Stoke, Fulham, Hull etc? Stoke are in the bottom three, not too many sides have had as hard a time as us beating them - they've lost half their games and none of them to us.

No more excuses, Rafa has to show his mettle and that he can sustain the title challenge. At the moment we're losing ground, he needs to show he can 'mastermind' a revival in our fortunes. Ballacks to the FA Cup, Ballacks to the Champions League, FOCUS on the Premiership and bringing the league Champions crown back to Anfield. He has to put to one side his fetish for the Champions League, that isn't what we're after and that could cost him his job and us our dream