Liverpool FC Forum

by **redtrader74** » Thu May 31, 2007 7:09 pm

If we are discussing our standing on the world stage, then without doubt Rafa has improved it immensely. When the betting odds are announced we are no longer rank outsiders for the CL. The top 3 has now become the top 4, that opinion of the media may or may not be important to any of us, but the Clubs regard and prospects are certainly important when trying to attract the best players.

I think we are all unhappy with the league form this season, some of us choose to identify why and some choose to look no further than Rafa. IMHO it is because most of believe that Rafa is such a top manager, (best in the world for anything so subjective and dependant on so many variables, is bollox in regard to any manager), he got us to believe after years of dross that after the Shef Utd game we were all deflated.

His philosophy and style does work, it has done at Valencia and here as well. This years league challenge has been his only real failure in 3 years, during 3 years of mass rebuilding.

by **The Manhattan Project** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 2:08 am

Rotation may work well once we have a depth to the squad.

Rafa needs to grasp the reality however that many of the teams we play against in the Prem will try to kick us off the field so we need some hardmen in the team to bully the opposition.

by **The_Rock** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 2:43 am

ah well....i am done putting my point across.....

we all are LFC fans....and we want what is good for this club...

So i shall end by saying....:

1)Hope rafa stays

2)Hope he buys a striker who can actually scores goals...and is fast enuff for this league.

3)Hope he buys wingers who can take on opposition players and are fast enuff for this league

4)When he does rotation...hope he replaces players with those of similar quality...ie (zenden does not equal to alonso..etc).

eh.....Thats all folks...

by **112-1077774096** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 3:37 am

mmm rafa has put us back where we belong in europe, didnt houllier lead us to a semi final or quarter final in the champions league.

to be fair i think the rock has hit the nail on the head, at times last season i hated watching us, i would see the team sheet and say 'here we go again' safe in the knowledge i was about to watch 90 minutes of sh!te, watch 90 minutes of being more concerned about defending, watching our world class players toiling against lesser oposition because of the tactics employed, never really seeing us let of the leash

well guys last season the mancs were let off the leash, and as much as i hate to say it they played entertaining, flowing, winning football, just goes to show that attacking football can win things, it goes to show that red nose has enough confidence in his players to let them play football, while rafa seems to be scared of the 'small clubs' and can not realise that we cant break them down because we are too busy worrying about the counter attack or run out of ideas, or because we dont have the one player to unlock the defence like ronaldo.

well parry, yeah parry is a :censored:

, thought that since the day i met him and he ridiculed a malayian journalist for asking a simple question, w@nker. but to blame him for what happened on the pitch last season is wrong, he doesnt pick the teams or tactics

by **112-1077774096** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 3:41 am

sorry RT, just a point mate, about our standing in europe, it doesnt matter i we are favorites, if we have the biggest ground, have the biggest income, reputation matters not one jot mate when those players go onto the pitch unsure of the palyers they are with or what tactics to employ.

personally i would be frustated if i played for us, i would be itching to be let off the leash and show what i could do rather than be stifled, i would hate to be pennant with nobody in the box to cross to.

lets stop worrying about others and play our football, let the other team adapt, not us

by **whylongball?** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 4:51 am

peewee wrote:sorry RT, just a point mate, about our standing in europe, it doesnt matter i we are favorites, if we have the biggest ground, have the biggest income, reputation matters not one jot mate when those players go onto the pitch unsure of the palyers they are with or what tactics to employ.

personally i would be frustated if i played for us, i would be itching to be let off the leash and show what i could do rather than be stifled, i would hate to be pennant with nobody in the box to cross to.

lets stop worrying about others and play our football, let the other team adapt, not us

I know your point through other threads and fully agree. PLay our game!
But i just wonder how hard it would be to do it given so much at stake just for one game. And if you concede the opponents will just shut the door and it'd be even harder to score.
Having said that i still think we have to go out there and force opponents to make mistakes rather than wait for them to make one imho

by **112-1077774096** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 6:01 am

yes if we concede they will shut the door, but they shut the door anyway and we cant break them down, thats why we need someone to make things happen to be fair, we just didnt have that player last season, but i do believe we could have made more happen if the games were not a stalemate, of course we are a big club and teams will try and not concede, but a lot of games last season we saw two teams trying to not lose the game rather than trying to win it.

we should be trying to win every game

by **bigmick** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 6:22 am

I think Rafa has done a fantastic job and I hope he stays. He has rebuilt the team and squad into something credible after the debacle of the last couple of Houllier years, and his achievement in winning the Champions League with players like Traore, Biscan and Mellor was nothing short of astonishing.

But, and of course it's a big but, he has to get rid of this rotional nonsense if he is ever going to mount a challenge on the Premeirship. For the millionth time, I don't mean he has to pick the same team in every single game but I do mean he has to have a core of players who he picks from. It's a squad game these days alright but nowhere near to the extent our manager tries to make out.

It is my belief, that in the close season we will sign some better players than the likes of Zenden, Gonzales and (these days), Fowler. I firmly believe we will have a stronger squad next season than we did this. Unless however, we settle on the bones of a first eleven we will again come absolutely nowhere near winning the title.

If Rafa starts next season with the same nonsense in terms of selection with which he started this, I for one would begin to ask serious questions. That said, i don't think he will. I think he has at last learnt his lesson and that next season we will finish in our true position (ie where we would have finished this season if we hadn't thrown it away in the first month) which is right in the front rank, very close to having a shout at winning the thing.

by **LFC #1** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 6:30 am

stmichael wrote:Thing is, it doesn't really make a difference, as if they can't work together one has to go, and it's not going to be Rafa, is it?

Doubt it although it's possibly where the rumours of Rafa's resignation are stemming from.

Rumour is that the Amercians will be bringing in some of their own and Parry will be surplus to requirements which will please a lot of fans and probably Rafa as well.

by **112-1077774096** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 8:00 am

i believe gillets son will take over the running of the club anyway, he will move to liverpool an parry will be working under him, sort of a demotion anyway.

thats what i read somewhere

by **Judge** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 8:02 am

peewee wrote:yes if we concede they will shut the door, but they shut the door anyway and we cant break them down, thats why we need someone to make things happen to be fair, we just didnt have that player last season, but i do believe we could have made more happen if the games were not a stalemate, of course we are a big club and teams will try and not concede, but a lot of games last season we saw two teams trying to not lose the game rather than trying to win it.

we should be trying to win every game

agreed peewee.

unlocking defences that are tight is not easy, but i am an admirer of aaron lennon, and i think rafa should buy him, imo.

pace and skill at close quarters frightens any defence.

by **account deleted by request** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 8:04 am

i believe gillets son will take over the running of the club anyway, he will move to liverpool an parry will be working under him, sort of a demotion anyway.

thats what i read somewhere

Yes I read that mate. I think thats were some of Rafa's anger came in, as Gillett's son can only get a work permit by August, and I think Rafa was worried he would have to wait till then to get anything done.

by **Rafa D** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 8:49 am

Very, very disapointing to be reading threads like these a week after competing in our second Champions League Final in 3 years.

You give people something good, and they bleed it dry.

In the run in to the end of the season 2003/2004 it was clear that Gerard Houllier was going to bite the bullet at the end of the season. He had a productive time at Anfield recouping 4 major trophies in his 6 year stint here. The league cup twice, the F.A Cup and the weirdest match in football when we won the UEFA Cup in a 5-4 win over Alaves in Dortmund in 2001. However his signings, most towards to the end of his tenure, were not up to the acceptable standard of a Liverpool player. El-Hadji Diouf (Lens 10 million), Salif Diao (Sedan 5 million) and Bruno Cheyrou (Lille 4 million) were the major let downs, and coupled with the negative one dimensional tactics and unattractive football, a poor youth policy, and a lack of support from fans it was clear to most that the Houllier era was coming to an end.

Personally I was happy Houllier left. He sold my hero when I was still a young un, he bought utter tripe, and seemed to lose his midas touch that had served him so well in his 2000/01 season when he won a treble of cups. But his departure left a big hole that needed the right man for the job. The Liverpool manager is a big job in football. The history of the club, the fans expectation, English footballs powerhouse, our reputation precedes us and whoever takes the job is on a hiding to nothing. We expect our club to be the best, we demand our club to be the best and if not we want answers. The new man would have to deal with all this, and when the name Rafa Benitez was unveiled as our new manager, it was met with a slighly deflated exhale from most fans. I'll be the first to admit it, I didn't know much about Rafa Benitez. I knew he was the manager of Valencia, the same Valencia that turned us over, a pure footballing side, with precision passing and wave after wave of attack, but back in those days, it was the norm for Europes best to turn us over at home. I had heard he had broke the dominance of Real Madrid and Barcelona in Spain with an unfancied Valencia side but I didn't really consider Rafa to be a major coup for the club, more a sense of trepidition and caution surrounded Mr Moores new main guy at Melwood.

The next month could go down as one of the worst, transfer wise in the history of Liverpool Football Club. No sooner had Rafa signed the dotted line to take the mantle of the boss of the biggest club in England, he inherited Mr Houllier's parting shot, Dibril Cisse for a club record £14m, and lost the golden boy of the last 4 years in Micheal Owen, for a paltry £8M and Nunez. Lets put that into perspective, Rafa lost our best player from the last 4 years, the guy who has singlehandly won us the F.A Cup and the major player in Liverpool team consistently for most of Houlliers tenure, and he got in return a club record turkey who didn't know his :censored:

from his elbow as a strikers. We lost one of our best players, and gain our worst dud for the fee we paid, in the space of 2 weeks into Rafa's regime.

He brought in Luis Garcia for £6m, Xabi Alonso was his biggest buy at £10.7m (still a good £4m off the Cisse record), Josemi at £2m and took Nunez as a token gesture from Real Madrid for pulling our pants down over the Owen affair. For me they were all acceptable transfers. Xabi was a buy and a half as his value now is closer to the £20m mark, Luis had repaid us twice over with his important big game goals, Josemi was eventually sold for a profit after failing to live up to his bright start and Nunez is now my local bin man.

His first season started off with what became a familiar 4-5-1 tactic, and he met mixed results. He struggled to get to grips with the English League in my opinion. I remember vividly losing to Middlesborough at the Riverside, 2 - 0 and they won very convincingly. After that match, I was seriously questioning whether he was the right man for the job. We lost too convincingly for me, no good chances and practically battered by a team that stuggled to fill 70% of its ground consistently. I thought then, maybe he could not do the job and expected a torrid and difficult season with a termanation of contract at the end. The arl ar.ses wouldn't have it, "Give him time, doddy", "he's only just got here" were regular responses to my disillusionment at certain times of his first season. We didn't perform well, consistently at all during that first season in the Premiership for Rafa, the Champions League was a great distaction from our terrible form in the league. And to be honest I didn't really take that much notice of the Champions League up until we got through to the knockout stage after beating Oylimpiakos in that thrilling 3-1 victory at Anfield on matchday 6 in the Champions League. Rafa didn't really show us his "magical" touch in Europe until the knockout stages in my opinion. Once we got the big teams, the Leverkusen's, the Juventus's and the Chelsea's , thats when you seen Rafa's tactical genius come to the forefront. Don't know too much about Bayern, except they SPANKED Houlliers team a few years earlier, but the other 2, Juventus and Chelsea were miles and miles better than our currenmt crop of players at the time, We had Igor, they had Makalele, we had Smicer, they had Duff, we had Troare, they had Zambrotta, the Chelsea and Juventus team of 2005, should and probably would of wiped the floor with Liverpool (2005) if it wasn't for one man, Rafa Benitez.

Its a team game, blah blah blah, what about Stevie G? blah blah blah, you can point to other factors and try and make a point but its quite clear in my mind, if we did not have Rafa at the helm in 2005, then Istanbul would of never been and our club would still be looking for number five now. He showed the world that year, what you could do with melticulous planning and right tactical approach, we put Juve to bed and kept Chelsea down, Milan couldn't sleep because Rafa was in town!

The 25th of May 2005, came and went. Brilliant game, a one off, impossible to call and it papered over the cracks in our league form which seen Everton finish above us for the first time ever in the Premier League. I won't go into any detail as most of us know the game inside out, Rafa's should get some credit, so should the players, but for me, Istanbul was all about the fans, we scored them goals, we cheered the ball into the net, we stopped Sheva's double shot and we saved them penalties. Bit unfair on the players, but once we got that final the fans wanted to bring that Ol' Big Ears home and we did. It was dead great.

The summer came and Rafa started a mass exodus from Melwood. Smicer, Biscan and Baros, all heroes from the Champions League run where shown the door, but frankly most of us where in agreement, they were not up to Liverpool standard.

He brought in Peter Crouch, which was met with a collective gasp from the footballing world for £7m, but who would know he would become the 2nd highest scorer in the Champions League in his second season and at one point was offically the best striker in world football, ever. He brought in Momo "The Destroyer" Sissoko from under the noses of Everton in a £5m deal, which despite the growing number of imbeciles who are putting his first few seasons down to beginners luck or something just as silly. He completed the signing of Pepe Reina, which in my eyes is up there with Sami Hyypia's transfer, as one of the best pieces of business this club has done since the formation of the Premiership Years.

With the success of the Champions League still fresh in the mind, Liverpool fans started to believe that we could be great again, and the season started with a sense of expectation that had been missing in the previous years, not just expectation, I mean genuine expectation and a good reason for it, you guessed it, Rafa.

Once again, it seemed Rafa's league form would not live up to the hype. We started poorly and it seemed another season of mediocritity awaited reds fans. However around the end of October, Rafa's pesistance with the rotation and the 4-5-1 and the unscoring Peter Crouch started to pay off as we hit a fine run of form that pushed us into second in the league come Febuary, after a 13 game clean sheet record and the most consistent performance from a Liverpool team in the Premiership. We had a mid-season blip, which culminated in us surrendering our Champions Of Europe crown against a unfancied Benfica in the 2nd round of the Champions League, and enough loss of points for United to take 2nd away from our grasp. However we were soon back on track and finished the season very stongly with 3rd spot sealed quite comfortably and only around 9 points off top spot. We got our highest ever points total on 82 points which would of won us the league in seasons gone by. I honestly believe that last year should and would of been our year if it was not for the Chelsea Russian Rouble effect, United and Arsenal were both in transisitional periods, much like Real and Barcelona were, and we should of won the league that year in my eyes, but alas it was not meant to be.

Then this season, you all know the score with the season, the transfers, the cup runs ending, the poor start, the bedding in etc so I won't bother going into any detail. For me this season has been a step back, we were progressing season after season with Rafa taking giant leaps and strides but this season has been disapointing. The transfers needed bedding in, the big players like Jamie and Stevie took ages getting there act together and this lead to lesses members of the squad getting the flak for bad team performances.

Some point to rotation, that doesn't wash with me. Rafa won the title rotating his players at Valencia and I have every confidence that he can do it again with us here. People moaned about the zonal marking when Rafa first brought that in here, do you hear them moaning anymore? No. Rotation, on the level that Rafa does it, is going to come in for severe criticism, but for me football is evolving, and our mans got the right idea in my eyes.

The simple fact for me is that he's doing the best with what he's got. He has spent no more than £10.7m on one player. Our club record is £14m for a pile of shi.te that connot even wash the boots of Rafa's major transfer failure Fernando Morientes. Compare our highest transfer under Rafa compared to the 2 clubs that have finished above us for the last 2 years and you'll see that they have outspent us heavliy for the last 3 years. And we were considered well below them to begin with when Rafa took over. If you look at the top 10 transfers in the Premiership, its dominated by United and Chelsea. The fact is they have had the money where we haven't. Moan all you want about rotation, the players, the tactics but the simple fact is, Chelsea and United have had loads and loads of money and we haven't. They can spunk £50m this week on 3 players and we simply have not been able to compete with that sort of spending power, and don't get me started on the rent boys.

If Rafa gets the funds and gets his players then fine, slate him, slate his buys, his tactics, his rotation his fu.cking hairstyle for all I care, but at this present moment, he's doing a fine job, best he could do, with the tools he has got.

So lets see shall we.

by **Sabre** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 8:53 am

bigmick wrote:I think Rafa has done a fantastic job and I hope he stays. He has rebuilt the team and squad into something credible after the debacle of the last couple of Houllier years, and his achievement in winning the Champions League with players like Traore, Biscan and Mellor was nothing short of astonishing.

But, and of course it's a big but, he has to get rid of this rotional nonsense if he is ever going to mount a challenge on the Premeirship. For the millionth time, I don't mean he has to pick the same team in every single game but I do mean he has to have a core of players who he picks from. It's a squad game these days alright but nowhere near to the extent our manager tries to make out.

It is my belief, that in the close season we will sign some better players than the likes of Zenden, Gonzales and (these days), Fowler. I firmly believe we will have a stronger squad next season than we did this. Unless however, we settle on the bones of a first eleven we will again come absolutely nowhere near winning the title.

If Rafa starts next season with the same nonsense in terms of selection with which he started this, I for one would begin to ask serious questions. That said, i don't think he will. I think he has at last learnt his lesson and that next season we will finish in our true position (ie where we would have finished this season if we hadn't thrown it away in the first month) which is right in the front rank, very close to having a shout at winning the thing.

Line of acceptance of rotation policy

Rafa <---S----------B--------------------->No Rotations

If the right would be no rotations at all policy, and the left would be Rafa's rotations I think you'd be somewhere in the middle "B"? I'd be on the S

I believe in rotations, even of important players. But maybe it's true that I'd give the players more continuity. For instance when a striker is scoring, FFS, leave him playing, you'll rest him when the streak ends.

Meaning it should see somewhat flexible to adapt to this moment of forms. At times this season, I've seen some good moments of several players cut by rotations. That happened to Crouch, and Kuyt. And this kind of strikers momentums must be seized.

Also, I didn't like things like not seeing Mark Gonzalez at all, and then, Bum!! Manchester United away game. WTF? it's nice to have confidence in the squad and all that, but Manchester United away game with no match fitness? I didn't understand that.

So I love rotations, because they also protect players like Gerrard and Alonso from injuries, and make possible to compete in several competitions. But I agree sometimes those rotations should not be aggressive.

Anyway, whoever thinks that this decissions are not well thought is wrong IMHO, they probably manage a massive amount of data with computers, it's only that sometimes some place for the "naked-eye" should be left, and give some continuity to players might be good, then rest them.

by **account deleted by request** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 9:26 am

A great post Rafa, and under normal circumstances I would be happy clapping just as loudly as you mate (if not as eloquently). Unfortunately after the big step back we have seen last season I am feeling more pessamistic than happy clappy at the moment.

The side Houllier left actually had some very good players in it as well as the dross. We finished 4th in Houlliers last season, since then Arsenal have basically rebuilt their team without much in the way of finance due to their stadium comittments. So for us to have overtaken them whilst nice is no great achievment. We have spent more money than any club bar Chelsea since Rafa took over (Mancs as well now)

Under Evans I thought when we bought Ince he would prove the missing link. Under Houllier we were always just a couple of signings away. Under Rafa before last season it was all we need is a right winger. Now we seem to need about 5 players again! Then it will be we signed the players but they need to settle into the team.

I agree that Rafa is the right man for the job, but you can't blame people for getting frustrated and impatient when we seem to be back at square one. A top side good in the cups but not much in the way of a real challenge in the league. Hopefully Rafa will get things right both on and off the field and we will at least make a challenge this season.

Even at our lowest point (Souness) we won the FA CUP

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