Owzat wrote:Flight wrote:One thing that isn't considered is which players the top four already had when Rafa arrived, to put into context what he took on.
EXISTING PLAYERS AT TOP FOUR CLUBS WHEN RAFA ARRIVED
ARSENAL
Almunia
Toure
Clichy
Eboue
Fabregas
Van Persie
Bendtner
CHELSEA
Cech
Carvalho
Terry
Ferreira
J Cole
Lampard
Drogba
MANCS
Ferdinand
O'Shea
Neville
Ronaldo
Giggs
Scholes
Fletcher
Rooney
LIVERPOOL
Carragher
Gerrard
Sami
I assume you mean are still at the same club that were when Rafa took over. That's Rafa's choice, personally I think he has got rid of a few he could have kept (Cisse, Pongolle and Warnock for starters). And a number weren't got rid of until last summer - Finnan, Kewell and Riise. It also ignores a few situations like the one with Owen, maybe that could have worked out better. Either way it gives Houllier a zero cost player in Owen, Rafa a -£8m "net" if you subscribe to that theorem!
Surely you judge property by what you own, you don't own a £200k house and say it is only a £50k house because you sold your £150k house to buy it! Even more so if you didn't buy the house you sold in the first place! That may be where the money came from, but if you sold that £200k house then you'd be looking at recouping around £200k for it so that is what it is worth. Same applies to players, how much Rafa got for Cisse, Owen, Riise, Finnan, etc has no bearing on what the current squad is worth.
We had a pretty large squad when Rafa arrived, in 1st team squad and saleable assets. Rafa loaned a lot of them out before eventually selling them off here and there.
Squad When Rafa Took OverGKs (3) : Dudek, Kirkland, Bernadi
CBs (4) : Hyypia, Henchoz, Medjani, Whitbread
FBs (5) : Finnan, Warnock, Riise, Traore, Vignal
MF (11) : Gerrard, Hamann, Kewell, Smicer, Diao, Murphy, Potter, Le Tallec, Cheyrou, Diarra, Biscan
CFs (6) : Owen, Cisse, Pongolle, Mellor, Baros, Diouf
Quite a bumper squad to start with by any standard, I haven't included arguable cases like Welsh, Partridge and Otsemobor (not sure if Babbel was ever an option for Rafa if he was still here) And it was a good enough starting platform to win a European Cup with - with a few signings. Even Houllier wants some credit for Istanbul 2005.
Signed 04/05 : Alonso, Luis Garcia, Nunez, Josemi (Summer) and Pellegrino, Carson and Morientes (January)
Is a side of Dudek, Finnan, Warnock/Riise, Carragher, Hyypia, Diouf/Smicer, Kewell, Gerrard, Hamann, Owen and Cisse such a bad starting XI?
The unfortunate thing was a lot of the other players were terrible, I said elsewhere that we had a good side but Houllier bought badly latterly and we ended up with Biscan, Traore, Cheyrou, Le Tallec, Diao, Medjani and rubbish like that. If they'd all been snips it wouldn't be so bad, didn't Houllier get wrapped up in buying "the next Henry", "the next Vieira", "the next Zidane", "the next Desailly" ? Problem was the players he bought were French, but that's where the similarity ended.