Liverpool FC Forum

[Effes]

It's just been a bad season so far. That's all.

You've just gotta dust yourself off and get on with it - like life.

[Reg]

If Fiorentina don't beat Lyon, we will go through. We'll beat them by however many we need to.

But the Lord asketh not the score but whether you were standing Mick..... 

[akumaface]

I think most of our fans would definitely stand behind the team. I just hope the players can get themselves together and do all they can. Anything can happen in football. Just hope that Lyon would not just let Fiorentina wins on purpose.

[Rush Job]

I think most of our fans would definitely stand behind the team. I just hope the players can get themselves together and do all they can. Anything can happen in football. Just hope that Lyon would not just let Fiorentina wins on purpose.

No chance, there flying high and they`ll want to win the league, and hope for a lesser side its not like they pepper the quarters and semis every year and theyve spent a lot of money (more than us this past couple of seasons) and no doubt the directors will have a word, they`ll want to finish top.
If not they dont even deserve to be in the comp.
Fiorentina will get a nose bleed from being ahead of us knowing they still have to come to us and sh!t it.
If they both turn up to play lyon will get a result, there the better side.

[Rush Job]

Nightmare senario, lyon win and we draw.
Now SG is out for a while we need Torres fit and in form and Aquilanli to start showing us what he can do, if not we wont only be out of the CL but we wont be in it next season either.
Its a VERY fine line, but as allways I`m backing us.

[bigmick]

If Fiorentina don't beat Lyon, we will go through. We'll beat them by however many we need to.

But the Lord asketh not the score but whether you were standing Mick..... 

I thought this was a "positive post only" thread Reg, so I made a positive post. Don't dig too deep into mate there's a good fella .

[Dazzer]

I will support the club always and Rafa for the moment but really if we lose vs Brummys I have 100% had it with him.

[Owzat]

Sorry Nan, no.
I'm not behind Benitez. Not at all. He's taking the club backwards. Worst thing is, we can't afford to sack him and we can't afford replacement players or coaches. We're stuffed this season. Another write-off. The man's in his 5th year and we're regressing.
If only we could afford to do what the world knows needs to be done and get rid.

I argue we can't afford not to replace him. We now need Lyon to beat or draw with Fiorentina then beat Fiorentina by three clear goals. The league isn't out of reach just yet, but five defeats in 11 games is poor by the standards of any of the more recent managers including Souness, Evans and Houllier.

It's Houllier all over again, he got us 2nd with 80 points in 2001/02 and then his signings turned from better than decent to poor. 2002/03 started well but then went from unbeaten to abysmal, we couldn't beat Basel and dropped into the UEFA Cup (sound familiar) Ok we didn't start this season unbeaten, but if you take the starting point as the last 11 league games of last season when we won 10 games into this when it has become abysmal then the comparisons are clear.

THE DECLINES

08/09 Games 28-38 : P11 W10 D1 L0 PTS 31
09/10 Games 01-11 : P11 W6 D0 L5 PTS 18

02/03 Games 01-12 : P12 W9 D3 L0 PTS 30
02-03 Games 13-23 : P11 W0 D5 L6 PTS 5

Amazingly Houllier survived that terrible spell and end to the season, having picked up 30 points from the first 12 games we picked up just 34 from the remaining 26. 03/04 was a season too far, just 60 points which was somehow enough to qualify for the Champions League and give Rafa a shot at winning it.

The key problem for me is we've been 'happy' with three seasons of decent league finishes, some good unbeaten runs, a CL final but not a trophy in sight. Should we expect more? My question is not how much we can expect, but is it good enough? Even one 2nd placed finish and one FA Cup in four years isn't really what a club that is the biggest in England should settle for. We could 'keep faith' with Rafa, but that for me would be as much a gamble as replacing him because I'm no longer sure what to expect from Rafa. I'm unimpressed with his tactics, substitutions, excuses and more, no kids are coming up through the ranks of any great note and even if you ignore his signings on the grounds he 'can only afford' such and such, then what I am unimpressed with isn't likely to change and even an improvement in budget would not stop his managerial approach hindering true progress.

Sure we had a good run last season, best Premiership points tally. BUT we beat the mancs and Chelsea home and away, you may think that's an odd comment at first but that is the biggest reason we finished second - 12 points out of our 86. Take those away, as often happens, and 74 came against the rest. This season Chelsea have already taken back the three points we got at SB, our inability to dominate the sides with less spending like villa, Fulham and Sunderland is very much exposed. We only just beat struggling West Ham, league one Leeds and Hungarian side Debrecen.

P17 W8 D1 L8 is simply not good enough, even with lack of budget and injury excuses. The squad is poor, even with Gerrard, Torres and Johnson in the side we've lost games this season. Nobody forced Rafa to pay £17.5m for Johnson, perhaps tempting because £7m was money they owed from us so it was one way of being sure to get something out of that debt, but clearly a top dollar RB hasn't solved our problems and neither has a top dollar midfielder who's so far managed about 15 mins of playing time. Maybe good players, but definitely a good demonstration of poor use of a reasonably big budget. Maybe Rafa has become too wrapped up in signing expensive players and lost track of signing good players and value players. How many of his signings of the past two summers are actually playing at the moment? N'Gog has played 190 mins in the last nine games, Dossena is surplus, Diego is benchbound, Kyrgiakos is playing while Riera, Johnson, Aquilani and Riera (£45.5m worth of players) are injured or returning from injury - and Keane was sold back earliest opportunity.

How come Degen didn't play last night? Not trusted? He's going to be banned for league games, might as well make use of him while he's available. I know few could have expected us to be quite so dominant in the first half, but having Carra at RB was hardly condusive to the main aim of looking to win.

[The_Rock]

How come Degen didn't play last night? Not trusted? He's going to be banned for league games, might as well make use of him while he's available. I know few could have expected us to be quite so dominant in the first half, but having Carra at RB was hardly condusive to the main aim of looking to win.

He wasn't one of the 23 (or is it 25) players chosen for the champions league squad ...

With all those home grown...home association ...Benitez had no choice but to pick Darby over Degen.

[lakes10]

sorry no.

its has nothing to do with Rafa now, we need a result thats not going to happen and thats why i dont think we will make it into the next round.

[lakes10]

oh and as for how much it will cost to sack him...well going by the bbc last night...........nothing, just his wage for a few weeks.

[Ciggy]

Anything is possible we are LIVERPOOL FOOTBALL CLUB, The next few days are gonna be fecking murder in the media, we are gonna be crusified by the lot of them,
Lets stand together as one an take the fecking lot of them on,
WHOSE STANDING

I just wondered mate..............

apart from your obvious patrionism and enthusiasm...

do you actually watch many games, or understand the concept of football?

Just wondered.

WTF? Idiot 

Can people stop posting anti-rafa sh!te, and get a grip post in the other 2000 topics about him.

Count me in Nan 

[Redangel]

I'm standing , firmly and solidly behind MY football club no matter what. That is what being a true supporter is.

YNWA   

[RobinHood6969]

Together we stand
Together we cheer
Together we sing
Together we support, during the days of darkness
And hell yeah, our team goes all the way kissing glory

LFC forever 

[Benny The Noon]

Im in

YNWA