Liverpool FC Forum

Bamaga man wrote:I'd cut off my nose to spite my face in this instance,

s@int wrote:If he had signed a new contract he probably wouldnt have got his dream move to Madrid, and why shouldn't he desert a sinking ship? What loyalty had Liverpool shown Fowler? Shoved him out the door without a seconds thought when it suited Houllier.

I think its pathetic to expect these people to turn down the chance of a lifetime because they owe something to the club, yet the club can turn round and force people out for no good reason.

Football is a business not a charity, if someone offered you a dream job earning pots of money, would you turn it down because you owed loyalty to your boss, even though you were unhappy there? Bollox

Owen did nothing wrong, he played by the rules and if Rafa didn't want to gamble that was his problem, not Owens.

s@int wrote:Houllier had a contract with Liverpool , maybe we should have told Rafa, sorry mate, but Houllier has a contract, come back in 2 or 3 years and we will see what we can do. Its only the decent thing to do seeing as he nearly died managing us. Yes he's happy here, so we may have to extend his contract even though we are in a bit of a mess. But we are doing the decent thing!   

LFC2007 wrote:Exactly what the fck was Baros, Cisse, FSP and Neil Mellor - a load of sh!t.

Sorry to butt into a rather cracking discussion lads but I feel obliged to point out that not only was Cisse our record signing and France's top scorer (ie. no one had any notion he was a bit merde that summer) but Baros had just won the Golden Boot at Euro 04 (making us think we had a hell of a player on our hands).  Hindsight's 20/20 and all that but, at the time, we very much looked like we had the players to soften the blow of Owen's departure.

On the other side, Rafa did fly to Portugal to try and convince both Gerrard and Owen to stay in the midst of the tournament so we can't accuse him of being too aloof and indifferent.

From my perspective, Owen was disgruntled with the way things were headed under the Houllier regime and had let his contract run down while weighing up options.  Houllier's sacking and the arrival of Rafa muddied the waters for him and it took him a few weeks to come to a decision after Portugal, by which time the CL qualifiers were upon us.  In other words, I don't think he'd made up his mind already to leave but had been leaning in that direction pretty heavily prior to Rafa's arrival and ultimately, he decided to take the plunge.

Anyway, I still think this is all beside the point.  He's undoubtedly a better striker than we currently have and he's available for a cut-rate price.  The only question to ask, IMHO, is whether the gamble on his fitness is worth it.  I'll leave character assessments to others (while gently reminding people that we did sign Craig Bellamy, after all)!