Liverpool FC Forum

bigmick wrote:Is it just me, or are we actually a better team than 21 points behind the champions?

exact point i am trying to make, people are talking about us winning the biggest cup competition in world football, so if we are capable of winning that why cant we even get close to winning our own league.

if we have players good enough to win the champions league, surely they are good enough to win the league. so why didnt we win the league?

simple, because of the rotation and that tactics employed by the manager.


again i will also say (as it seems it doesnt matter how many times i say i dont want rafa out) that rafa can win us the league, he can win us the league when he starts to take it as seriously has he takes the champions league.

(que people now making excuses and giving reasons why we didnt win the league, 20 years, fergie 7 years blah blah blah)

peewee wrote:

bigmick wrote:If we are going to judge our ability to challenge for the title based on whether we have spent enough money, or as much money as Man U and Chelsea then we are never going to win it again. Chelsea will continue to outspend everyone, while we cannot in the short term compete with Man Utd for sheer spending power.

There's more to it than that though. This season we've put out the reigning Champions of England in the European Cup, we've put out the reigning champions of both spain and Europe, and absolutely spanked the team that put out Arsenal. But we're not good enough to beat the Sheffield Uniteds of this World away from home? Do me a favour. Those who defend our league effort inadvertantly do Rafa a huge diservice. He's already built a team that is capable of a challenge, if he sends them out more often than not and stops fecking around with formation/selections/positions. We don't need five World Class players and more money than Chelsea to mount a title challenge, the team was good enough this season to mount a challenge. If only we'd gone for it. 

again i agree with you mick, it doesnt matter who we have in our squad if they are going to be sat in the stands, or on the bench, or played out of position or not getting the service as we are too busy playing defensive football against a team who is about as threatening as a toothless pussy cat.

it doesnt come down to money and its idiotic to thing that money has been our only downfall.

yes we have shown we can perform, so why havent we performed? its simple, because when we perform the very next game the team looks unfamiliar because rafa wants to rest players,and rest them for what exactly? on the off chance that we will still have something to play for.

a lot of you are  missing our points i think, you seem to be taking this as a 'rafa out' campaign and none of us are saying that, we are just pointing out why this season has been disapointing, ok you can point to many excuses (world cup, injuries, new players blah blah blah) and to be frank they are pathetic excuses, i must have missed the manc players and chelsea players at the world cup, and they had injuries, and they had new players.

the buck stops at rafas door, he is human, he makes mistakes, more mistakes than a lot of you will admit to as you stumble on blindly thinking the sun shines out of rafas @rse, and think everything he does is a tactical masterstroke, while those of us who like to be honest about it sit and wonder why we are 21 points behind the mancs, and can see clearly that we are 21 points behind the mancs because of rafas inability to field strong teams against every club, and take each game seriously

Sabre wrote:

I do expect us though, given the fact we have got a bloody good team (which has got to the Champions League final twice in three years, knocking out the Italian Champions, the English Champions twice, the European Champions and the Spanish Champions, before winning the thing last time beating the Italian Champions elect in the final, the team that had absolutely spanked Man Utd in the quarters), to mount a challenge. I expect us to be in the vicinity of whoever wins it.

LFC's starting eleven and 3 or 4 subs are good enough to beat Milan, Barcelona, and Sao Paulo. Whoever you want.

But LFC's squad isn't ready as we speak to play 3 competitions and compete in the regularity title. Simply because when you play people like Zenden or Sissoko, you're playing people who's quality teams like Zaragoza, or Spurs have.

I think everybody wants LFC wins everything, you, me, the other guy, the guy in Malaysia and the guy in China. But the problem with overexpectations, is that when you expect a lot, and there's criticism even when you achieve a lot, then the gloom and doom is industrial when the slightest problem comes later.

If you don't believe me, loot at Barcelona. Last season they were "marvelous" and their football "was the best of the world", and "Rijkaard will win Barcelona everything" and "It's the start of a long reign of Barcelona".


This season? cliques in the dressroom, gloom and doom, the players going crying when they go to the dressroom because they're losing the league, eliminated early in Europe, and Ronaldinho is fat.


And hey, they only signed up Thuram and Zambrotta for positions in which they were weak, so... they should have achieved even more!! over-expectations are dangerous.

I won't get you started on Real Madrid's overexpectations.


I'm not addressing to you especifically Bigmick, the only point I'm referring to you is in the squad depth, the other points are my concern about expecting too much.

Is there an echo in here?

Sabre wrote:

I do expect us though, given the fact we have got a bloody good team (which has got to the Champions League final twice in three years, knocking out the Italian Champions, the English Champions twice, the European Champions and the Spanish Champions, before winning the thing last time beating the Italian Champions elect in the final, the team that had absolutely spanked Man Utd in the quarters), to mount a challenge. I expect us to be in the vicinity of whoever wins it.

LFC's starting eleven and 3 or 4 subs are good enough to beat Milan, Barcelona, and Sao Paulo. Whoever you want.

But LFC's squad isn't ready as we speak to play 3 competitions and compete in the regularity title. Simply because when you play people like Zenden or Sissoko, you're playing people who's quality teams like Zaragoza, or Spurs have.

I think everybody wants LFC wins everything, you, me, the other guy, the guy in Malaysia and the guy in China. But the problem with overexpectations, is that when you expect a lot, and there's criticism even when you achieve a lot, then the gloom and doom is industrial when the slightest problem comes later.

If you don't believe me, loot at Barcelona. Last season they were "marvelous" and their football "was the best of the world", and "Rijkaard will win Barcelona everything" and "It's the start of a long reign of Barcelona".


This season? cliques in the dressroom, gloom and doom, the players going crying when they go to the dressroom because they're losing the league, eliminated early in Europe, and Ronaldinho is fat.


And hey, they only signed up Thuram and Zambrotta for positions in which they were weak, so... they should have achieved even more!! over-expectations are dangerous.

I won't get you started on Real Madrid's overexpectations.


I'm not addressing to you especifically Bigmick, the only point I'm referring to you is in the squad depth, the other points are my concern about expecting too much.

Thats a fair point.

BTW I think its doom and gloom Sabre rather than gloom and doom. 

Yes, back to your point you are probably right about the expectations thing, or over expecting. But at the same time you cannot rest on your lurals and except 'underachieving' in the league.

For as long as I can remember Liverpool fans have been saying " we're only one or two players short, next year will be our year" That continues to happen even toady. The excuses have got to stop sometime, Houllier found that out. I think with Rafa in charge and as we all know he's a damn good manager we expect him to really at least put pressure on the other teams in the league. That would of been his goal when he took the contract up to begin with, but as it stands we're still someway off of that, but brilliant in Eurpope. Its like he's gone off on his own tangent with regards to what the supporters want and what he wants    Dont get me wrong I love winning competing for the European cup as the next man, but I wish we could of improved more in the league like we have done in Europe.

Lando_Griffin wrote:In a nutshell, you're full of sh*t. THAT is the sheer fact of the matter. I say this as I DO go to the game as often as I am able. (Bear in mind I live 125 miles away from Anfield, and work evenings and weekends, so it's not exactly an easy task. This, on top of the fact that it costs me £50 in petrol and then the price of a ticket.) But hey - why let these facts get in the way, huh? I suppose I should alter my entire career so I can go to every game just so I have more weight behind my opinions on here?

Get your facts straight before trying to belittle me.

I said that "expecting" LFC to win the title this year after so long without it was "idiotic". (The premise, not the individual.) How is this a moot point? It's f*cking OBVIOUS that it's downright daft to expect us to win the title. "Hope" we win it - ok. "Think we had a good chance" - fine.

"Expect"? Naive and beyond all sense.

You say the blame for this year's failure to land the league lies squarely at Rafa's door, yet you lambast the players for their ineptitude in other threads. (I suppose their drop in form is Rafa's fault for playing them out of position?)

You said not too long ago that the current side wasn't good enough, then, as soon as you saw an opportunity to have yet ANOTHER dig at Sabre (yes - I am in total disagreement with you on that, too.), you jumped at it and agreed with Bigmick when he said the squad is strong enough to win the title.

THEN - and this is the REAL f*cking joke, THEN you have the downright audacity to complain when people mention the word "fickle"! That, my friend, is like me moaning that someone swears too much.

Look - I don't really give a f*ck about your feelings on this. You know where I stand, and I know where you stand. We've got on ever since I joined this forum, but the way you have hounded Sabre is f*cking shameful, and I for one think you should have been banned for it long ago. Someone's got to say it, cos this is absolutely pathetic. I am no saint, but I have never constantly antagonised anyone for such a protracted amount of time.

Regarding the age issue, I'd say there's a lot of wisdom to be gained by getting older, but sadly it's lost when it comes to football. People naturally yearn for the "good old days", when anyone with an ounce of common sense will tell you that the "way so-and-so won it" back in 1975 WILL NO LONGER WORK now.

Times have changed. The winning Formula 1 car of 1975 wouldn't even beat a Vauxhall Astra now.
The 100m World Record of 1975 probably wouldn't even get you 6th place today.

It's this reluctance to accept new methods and forward thinking that will hold any club, person, or enterprise back indefinitely.

What a lot of you need to remember, is that when Shankly first came to Liverpool, his ideas were radical - even more so than Rafa's, and they revolutionised the sport. Do you think they were implemented seamlessly? This was decades before I was born, but even I know that they were not. There was a lot of doubt in peoples minds from what I have read, then when the ideas began paying off, those same people came around to the idea.

Well - call me what you will, but I'd say a European Cup (and a final to come), an FA Cup, a Super Cup and our largest Premiership points total ever constitute Rafa's ideas "paying off."

I think some of you have been spoilt by the club's past successes and naively take such success for granted.

And moaning about Rafa and his methods, then cheering us on in the Champions' League final is, in my honest view, fickle.

Sabre wrote:

BTW I think its doom and gloom Sabre rather than gloom and doom.

and I meant Look not loot, too. Thank you. 

And your point is fair to, complacency is not good, and not demanding the best out of the team is not good neither.

But, when you want to be even better, what you must do is working hard, do well the things on the signing ups, and train hard. What you can't do is to think that winning the Champions League is something granted, because FWIW, even reaching the semifinals isn't granted in this competition of the best teams of Europe.

So what people should (IMHO) expect is tough work, and things well done, because those are the components of success.

Its obvious we all want the same thing       but some people just have different views on it, and thats what a football forum is for. 

Bamaga man wrote:

Sabre wrote:

I do expect us though, given the fact we have got a bloody good team (which has got to the Champions League final twice in three years, knocking out the Italian Champions, the English Champions twice, the European Champions and the Spanish Champions, before winning the thing last time beating the Italian Champions elect in the final, the team that had absolutely spanked Man Utd in the quarters), to mount a challenge. I expect us to be in the vicinity of whoever wins it.

LFC's starting eleven and 3 or 4 subs are good enough to beat Milan, Barcelona, and Sao Paulo. Whoever you want.

But LFC's squad isn't ready as we speak to play 3 competitions and compete in the regularity title. Simply because when you play people like Zenden or Sissoko, you're playing people who's quality teams like Zaragoza, or Spurs have.

I think everybody wants LFC wins everything, you, me, the other guy, the guy in Malaysia and the guy in China. But the problem with overexpectations, is that when you expect a lot, and there's criticism even when you achieve a lot, then the gloom and doom is industrial when the slightest problem comes later.

If you don't believe me, loot at Barcelona. Last season they were "marvelous" and their football "was the best of the world", and "Rijkaard will win Barcelona everything" and "It's the start of a long reign of Barcelona".


This season? cliques in the dressroom, gloom and doom, the players going crying when they go to the dressroom because they're losing the league, eliminated early in Europe, and Ronaldinho is fat.


And hey, they only signed up Thuram and Zambrotta for positions in which they were weak, so... they should have achieved even more!! over-expectations are dangerous.

I won't get you started on Real Madrid's overexpectations.


I'm not addressing to you especifically Bigmick, the only point I'm referring to you is in the squad depth, the other points are my concern about expecting too much.

Thats a fair point.

BTW I think its doom and gloom Sabre rather than gloom and doom. 

Yes, back to your point you are probably right about the expectations thing, or over expecting. But at the same time you cannot rest on your lurals and except 'underachieving' in the league.

For as long as I can remember Liverpool fans have been saying " we're only one or two players short, next year will be our year" That continues to happen even toady. The excuses have got to stop sometime, Houllier found that out. I think with Rafa in charge and as we all know he's a damn good manager we expect him to really at least put pressure on the other teams in the league. That would of been his goal when he took the contract up to begin with, but as it stands we're still someway off of that, but brilliant in Eurpope. Its like he's gone off on his own tangent with regards to what the supporters want and what he wants    Dont get me wrong I love winning competing for the European cup as the next man, but I wish we could of improved more in the league like we have done in Europe.