eds wrote:Ring-of-Fire wrote:lakes10 wrote:bavlondon wrote:rocky29 wrote:bavlondon wrote:The thing is, though, that Rafa signed a contract for control over youth team and transfers but was never actually given the control in the following transfer windows and was sacked a year later having been given £16k to spend in the summer. (It was actually closer to minus £15m as we only paid £5m upfront for Aquilani and won't have paid any more of it since he's been loaned out to Juve). Glen Johnson cost £7.5m as Portsmouth owed us £10m from the Crouch deal (money we would otherwise have never seen again as their administration and relegation has shown). We sold Alonso for £30m 3x what he cost) and Arbeloa for £5m-odd. We spent £12.5m in real terms on their replacements and people still think Rafa was in control of the signings! Rafa set up a deal for Tevez but the owners refused it. He set up a deal for Michael Turner, but the owners refused it. (So he went for Kyrgiakos instead.)
The youth set up has provided us with Kelly, Shelvey, Pachecho, Suso and Wilson - all players bought into the club/academy by Rafa.
It's very easy to blame him for the failure of certain signings, but why do you think he wanted more control over said signings? He obviously wasn't happy with the players he was getting, so he tried to stop others interfering. It makes perfect sense if you ask me, and no-one in their right mind would think that this team is what Benitez wanted.
Excellent post that. Some people really seem to have forgotten the constraints Rafa had to deal with. The fact that we were one of the most feared teams in Europe then just goes to show what a great tactician he is.
he spent over 220 million over 5 years so dont talkabout constraints plus his man management skills were attrocious.
And what was his net spend each year? Something like 25 - 30mil? Tell me do Chelsea, Utd, Spurs or Man City expect to finish in the top 4 with those sort of resources? Your taking the overall figure and skewing it to fit some twisted agenda.
still he got 76 players in them years and still could not bulid a team to win the prem and left us with no bench last year and this year.
76? I think you need to stop reading Sky's pages.
Rafa signed about 40 players for the first team, many of whom were replacements rather than additions. (He sold 46 first team players as well, which itself shows he was never given the funds to replace some players, let alone improve/increase the squad.)
The rest were all for the youth side, which is alright if, when it comes to comparing signings with other clubs, you also include THEIR youth players in the numbers. Even then, there'll be no mention of the fact that Rafa was reinventing the youth set up and had to replace a lot of dead wood and sub-standard reserve players. That's the problem with dickhead journos with a hard-on for Rafa - they skew the figures wildly as they know that there are people out there who believe everything they read.
For the record, Rafa's spending was as follows:
Bought: £229,125,000.
Sold: £148,130,000.
Net Spend: £80,995,000. (Divided by 6 = £13,499,166.70 per season.)
Question these things and it's easy to see the agendas and lies. It's also easy to see the lengths some scumbags will go to to defame one of the greatest managers in our history.
This post is a true reflection of what is wrong with our club today. Contentment in mediocrity.
One of the "greatest" managers, WTF
Did he win the premier league?
From those odd 36 youth players he bought in, where are the ones playing for our 1st team?
Why was money spent on temporary fill-ins when I can name you countless examples where it wasn't needed??? Our squad grew and grew BUT the quality didn't.......
Of all the mistakes the worst was when he blew it the season we were on top and went on a massive stupid rant against whiskey nose, all he needed to do was focus on our remaining games and we would have won the title, but alas a 4-4 draw to Arsenal cost us dearly, you can't use the "we were dirt poor and had no money to spend" excuse then.
Also how do you spell out the following sunshine:
Aquilani 20m
Keane 19m
Johnson 18m
Babel 11m
Riera 8m
Dossena 7m
Penant 6.7m
Morientes 6.3m
The only good players he bought in were Alonso, Reina, Torres (all Spanish), Mascherano and to a arguable point Kuyt.
That is a s**tload of money to make on mistakes, it can't be ignored, no matter how hard you huff and puff and cry out about hidden agendas, secret Manure UFO underground conspiracies, the simple answer is Rafa and I will slowly say it just........wasn't.........good........enough.
What you fail to see is the fans that understand something about this game do look back and smile about Istanbal 2005 and the FA Cup in 2006, but outside of that they realise there was nothing that "great" about Rafa Benitez. Harsh but fair.[/quote]
you obvioulsy have your view on things. not havin a pop at you....but im just pickin up on a couple of points you mentioned and thats all...
- youth players havent broken into the 1st team....we dont have a problem there that is different to anyone else. Arsenal invested heavily on youth and they seem to be the only team to be successful in this way, we didnt invest half as much. we have to address this like many other teams.
- after that rafa "rant".....we went on an incredible run which forced united to go on equally incredible run to hold us off...the 4-4 draw you mentioned. we absolutely battered arsenal that night. united had to really earn that title in the end, we made our mistake going on our 3 successive draws + middelsborough loss run.
- all the buying/selling stuff. think the major problem here was that we should never have been in a position of having to sell to buy. especially when trying to rebuild and make your own team. there were mistakes. there always are.
morientes, babel, keane, johnson were all celebrated acquisitions when made on the whole. they seemed to be just what we needed. riera had a good first season, gave us the width we needed and was looking promising, his mentality ended up being the problem. Aquilani shouldnt have been a replacement to Alonso cos he was injured, we needed someone rdy to step right in.dossena was italy's left-back, who woulda thought he couldnt defend eh?
We bought good players, not just the ones u mentioned but Crouch did well when he was here...Arbeloa was solid, Agger too when fit, Sissoko did well also.
by the way, i wanted rafa out after last season....only if we had someone with proper credentials to take over mind u, otherwise it woulda been pointless. he went to war upstairs, he forgot about the football. was too much going on at the time. clean break seemed to be best for everyone.
some moron on sunday supplement said we blame roy for everything. i dont. dont think many do really....he's been put into a circus. i do see him as a caretaker manager, only because he hasnt shown me anything that should suggest otherwise. and some of his comments have been just stupid. head down, mouth shut, do your job.
as for the topic. our big players are letting us down cos they just seem lost. they dont know where we are going, they look like they are waiting to be "shown the way" whether its out the exit doors or onto the pitch with confidence.
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