Last night's match v Boro was depressing viewing indeed. The turgid performance (yes, another one) was a clear indication that Rafa has lost the plot & the dressing room at that. A sad state of affairs. Five years seems to be the new statutory limitation on managerial progress @ Anfield.After the initial triumph of Istanbul of 05 & the FA Cup in 06, there was real optimism that we would at least be challenging fer the league at some stage. Instead, Rafa & his huge fooking (& expensively assembled) squad has contrived to emulate Houllier's last stand.
Halfway thru the season & these are some of the "memorable" displays - v Spurs (h), v Pompey (a), v Porto (a) , Marseille (h), v Besiktas (a), v Birmingham (h), Wigan (h), Man City (a) & this is not counting our lucky wins v Derby (a) & v Blueshites (a). Fooking bollocks!
As fer the eternal optimists & Rafa-loyalists out there, don't even start with the "this season has the hallmarks of another 2005". Please don't be delusional. Inability to beat Mighty Luton Town hardy ever transalates into triumph over Inter.
Last nite, it was painfully clear how lacking in talent we are. Yes, Torres scored a wonder goal but Voronin? Aberloa? Even the redoubtable Riise & Finnan both looked uninterested. Alonso is a shadow of his former self. The castle to our supposed kingdom has crumbled due to inferior building materials. And Rafa the architect will have to take the blame.
The writing's no longer on the wall. It's been graffitied onto the psyche of all right-thinking Kopites - time to go Rafa . . .
ps: If Juve want to pay 10m fer Momo (one of four holding midfielders in our squad), shouldn't we accept & use the money to bid fer Anelka to partner Torres?
19 comments:
not a bloody good weekend, huh? yea, tell me about it. dropping points at home against teams like birmingham can prove costly. that so-called hiccup could be lethal if not checked. complency was the order of the day, thinking they could steamroll them Mcleish's men.
spurs at the Lane next. its going to be no easy ride. with AC milan's game looming, i dread thinking last season's disastrous period could repeat itself on Arsenal. we were bowed out of 3 competitions in a matter of one fucking week.
Still angry...so just short sentences..
fooking awesome display ...from 'BORO!!!
boateng was everywhere...
Liverpool? fooking nowhere...
arsebeloa, voro-fooking-nitwit-pornstar-nin...fooking upstaged by a gooner reject..
how much longer are we to accept drivel & shit from the team?? RED loyalist? yes...but RAFA loyalist? Please shut the door on your way out Mr Benitez..!!
Early this morning, went to do some grocery shopping with the wife (with my Liverpool Champions League T-shirt on)....stopped at Starbucks for coffee, the young lady at the counter, took my order, and said..wah..abang support liverpool ke?? semalam teruk kan? sorry, i tak support liverpool..tapi u mesti loyal supporter..
sakit hati ooooh....tempted (but didnt..not her fault) to ask her to just give me my coffee and tell her to fook off..
not for the sake of being Rafa-loyalist or whatever but, I would love to see Rafa have another year.
Yeah, another heartache might be installed, another shameful season might be installed.
However, after having a manager for 3/4/5 years and then sack on a lousy season will continue to be a problem that will haunt any club not just Liverpool time and again.
One year should not hurt after all, we have been waiting for that long...
bro...
hearfelt concur-ment.
can't stand the ride already dude; every week is like a rollercoaster
gone awry.
here's to hope; however
delusional it may be.
although mine is faltering
wayside.
damn..have to
get my bp
checked one of these days;
getting smashing headaches nowadays
see ya chief.
p.s.chief, said & done - boro is a sound team..not an easy team to beat particularly at home.even managed to dismantle the gooners. but all the same..can relate to the frustrations - it don't matter who they're playing as long as they played with some heart in it.
I am speechless and my eyes are still hurting from the crap i witnessed last sat nite. Will be a sad day if the gaffer goes at the end of the season but if he has already lost the changing room, then there is no choice but to do it.
Without running the risk of sounding harsh, our performance was abysmal! The games against Luton and Middlesbrough have been our worst in recent memory. This was Luton, a club going through administration and who's players have not been paid in weeks. They were made to look like Premiership giants going up against a side littered with international players. Not only that, they had the audacity to come and us and attack, looking for a maximum 3 points and in all honesty, we didn't have a clue.
I am not on to call for the managers head but yet, I simply cannot stomach the appalling state of affairs on the pitch. Yes, Rafa's rotation policy may work in Spain. Yes, he has the medals to back them up. Yes, he is one of the most tactically astute managers in the world but you are quite simply only as good as your last game. Give him time you say? How much time?
The more optimistic of fans may point to the fact that we are rebuilding, blah blah blah. Fine, we can at least expect to see some progress, no? Has there been any so far? Are we any closer to challenging for the league? How many players have come and gone? How come? It's like we're tearing down the building after each season to start from scratch again.
Guys, i found this excerpt from
http://www.anfieldroad.com/news/200801132773/owners-welcome-to-leave.html/
some of you should check this out as it interestingly set out the story of what the hell is going on at Anfield and a fooking season. It does shed some light of what is really going on...
Unfortunately this uncertainty, added to their mistreatment of a manager who is still closer to winning the league than he should be - given the budget he has compared to his rivals - means that this season is fast becoming a write-off. Rafa’s love for club and the city is a genuine one, but faced with the threats he’s had, he must already be starting to come to terms with the idea of working somewhere else. A new manager would mean the start of another four to five years of rebuilding, as Rafa’s players are replaced by the new mans’ players, and with little extra funding in place to improve on his squad. But the owners have already lost the support of the fans, and that’s something they’ll struggle to win back. Fans will expect any new manager to do markedly better than Rafa, and to do it at speed. There’ll be no patience from supporters for five-year plans, not if Rafa leaves under these circumstances.
Just recently Rafa has been getting more criticism from those fans who take pleasure in complaining, and those fans who always expect instant success. But now more of the fair-minded fans have started to join in too, feeling they’ve now seen the light they saw when Gerard Houllier’s reign was coming to an end. But in reality Rafa is still improving, even if not as fast as they’d like. The last four games have been drawn, but the last two of those came under some of the darkest of those black clouds the club has been sitting under of late. Yesterday’s draw wasn’t the end of the world, and wasn’t a bad result at all considering the stories in the press that morning. Liverpool moved up a place to fourth, and are no further from the top than they were that morning. An opportunity was missed to close the gap, but the gap remains 12 points with a game in hand.
The owners wanted Rafa out before a ball had even been kicked this season. They made offers to coaches who had never managed at club level. They promised a stadium they couldn’t afford, and they now want out, taking a profit with them. Their takeover saw shareholders paid around £1000 more per share than they would have under DIC. The owners didn’t pay that. The loan did. They never took a great risk themselves, and are now fighting to make sure there’s no risk whatsoever on their own assets. All of those thousand pounds per share came out of those loans. They’re now trying to sell the club for a profit, and selling it at £500m should ensure that. And all that without putting a penny of their own money in.
What’s important now is that supporters don’t lose sight of how close Rafa has been getting to winning things. He wasn’t supported financially in the summer in the way he expected to be, and has been treated like something Hicks stood in on his Dallas ranch for most of this season. He deserves better, and it’s important he gets the support of the fans, even through these bad times, until the owners finally accept they are the ones we want to see the back of. If their first-choice replacement was Jurgen Klinsmann, failed national coach who played all his competitive fixtures at home, and has never managed a club anywhere, imagine how poor their second or third choice might be.
Support the manager, give him some time, and don’t let the owners hound him out.
More of my personal views on the current state of the club is up on my very own blog - JonC1977.blogspot.com
I want to see progress. Its not just this season but the last few as well. We've seen some terrible football that shouldn't have any place in our club.
Therein lies the rub. I meself lost faith when Rafa's tactical blunder saw us miss a golden opportunity to win big ears fer the 6th time. And me worst fears bout his tactical nous are coming true.
Yes, play whatever formation with whatever players you want. Main thing is we expect some decent footie & some decent results to show fer it. If not, what's the fooking point?!?
As fer being a complaining turd, please note I had voiced my reservations bout these fooking yanks from day one. And surprise, surprise, it was the same old "let's give em a chance to bring the club forward" from the same old fookers who think I am a whiner without perspective.
Well, you may think I am a whinger but sorry to say, me predictions are more often correct than not. Truth fooking hurts!!!
As fer the new manager - what did you expect? Any gaffer worth his salt won't come near us with a barge pole ie we are turning into newcastle - a poisoned chalice.
And we are in danger of becoming delusional. ie . being a "massive" club in our own heads.
Sorry, but "massive" clubs don't take 18 years to win the league. And before anyone throws back the fact that the scum took 26 years in between titles, well, man utd are not a fc but a plc. . .
We are Liverpool FOOTBALL club. So where's the football, mate?
Liverpool have been diabolical. The problem is, we the supporters anticipate so much, sometimes too much from our beloved reds, only to get continually disillusioned. Liverpool are 'Big' enough a club that should be an inevitably dominant force every match, every season. How LFC have not been just that since the 80's puzzles me.
In my opinion, we’ve always had the necessary personnel to make it happen. But in that same instance, sadly, not all of them were necessarily WINNERS. It quite blatantly has been like this for the longest time. I remember LFC seldom buying big but buying potential more instead and turning them into winners. These were all worthy talents and were about to be the best at what they do. Liverpool had so much quality coming off the bench as well to make that timely difference. On the pitch, at least 7 of the 11 would raise their game every game to ensure a desired result.
That game, the acquiring of quality and the sense of assured outcomes have all departed LFC. The fans of old hardly get to re-live that glory, these days.
Liverpool now, are a mediocre side. (Damn it hurts but its true!) Anyway, that’s that. Fer the time being, the players need to dig deep and soldier on. The title’s out of reach anyway so forget the 12 point gap and just get stuck in. I do have me doubts on this few though - Kuyt, Voronin, Crouch, Pennant, Kewell and Sissoko. In me book, they all don’t make the cut. Sell! The Yanks too can go. On the other hand, really hope we keep Mascherano.
I have no doubts Rafa will continue on his own ‘tactical’ ways as well but that doesn’t mean I will have to mock him. But then again, said it before, changes must come and changes must make the difference. With that and only then, can we think seriously of anticipating another chapter. Quality in the likes of Torres is encouraging. But fer now, I’ll live with hope! I hope!
What’s going on behind closed doors we can only speculate. The media too will go on disruptively influencing the reds downfall as they would with every other fookin unfortunate team. Inevitable that. And sad to think that every period of reign here seems to be ‘unfinished’ every time. But can we live with point fookin zero again? Hey, marriages don’t work sometimes no matter what anyway, so you’ll just have nothing but to get on up and fookin walk on!
Are we really expecting too much? Put it this way. In Reina, we have a keeper that has won the Golden Glove award in his first two seasons with the club. He has to date kept 49 clean sheets in just over two seasons. In Finnan, we have one of the most consistent fullbacks in the league. In Carra, we have arguably one of the best out and out defenders and in Agger we have a ball playing centreback with a bright future. Mascherano kept Kaka in check during our last Champions League bout, not an easy task by any means. Gerrard is Gerrard, nuff said. Torres has been simply magnificent. We clearly have the quality and yet we play like crap.
mark: As I have said before at the start of the season, we still lack quality in several positions such as out wide to be real title contenders. The lack of defensive cover was also a worry while the fullbacks are reliable but their lack of attacking contribution has hurt the team as well.
But agreed, with all the available talent, there's no reason why we are playing fooking shite football.
I dunno lar, with the kinda crap the fooking Yanks are pulling, its no wonder we are in such a mess.
Rafa & players can say they are unsettled by all this talk of buyovers, new gaffers, no stadium etc etc.
Shit, how sad is it when the focus of our discussions have shifted from the on-field to the off-field shenanigans of the "owners".
Low, dude, real low, is how I would describe the lot of all genuine Kopites the world over rite now . . .
I do not see why players from smaller clubs in even more dire situation than us, can use all the turmoil to inspire themselves into playing the games of their lives while we can't.
Agreed we have some good players in the side right now but as a whole they aren't a winning formula just yet. Yes, the rotation system is surely the blame. And some players (as much as they're paid) are just not cut out to play invariably.
Fer the time being, there are the less famed positions to care of first i feel. The Full-Back positions are clearly shaky. Finnan has been an unsung hero in the past but he isn't the same this. Riise and Aurelio look dissapointingly out of sorts as well. Arbeloa is one who's shown he could make the position his own but is just not enough yet. More so, could we compare these players to the legendary FB pairings of Neal/Kennedy A, Nicol/Staunton or maybe even Babbel/Carragher in the recent Houllier years?
Liverpool are traditionally a footballing side as far as i'm concerned. Don't expect anything else really. Players of the highest calibre should be wearing the sac'red' shirt. Just dunno what happened to that ideology. 18 years and LFC's forgotten how its done. Sad.
I feel we should start by building again with the players (yep again!). After all, they go on the pitch not so the manager! Would definitely need a top notch goalscoring partner that can thread and weave for 'Nando as well as have that matchwinner class. Someone in the mould of Saviola, Tevez or Aguero. Then, a speedy winger that runs at defences and tears them apart for fun in the mould of C.Ronaldo, Robinho or van Persie.
Another 'Keegan and Heighway' factor or a 'Barnes and Beardsley' criteria rolling back the years if you like. Explosive players like these fellas would get the goals flowing again and make the people happy just like Shanks did. It sure as hell would take a lot of the unnecessary pressures away from Stevie and El Nino and let them get on with their own game!
A cool 70 million quid i reckon should stop the rut.
Left this comment on MyRAWK as well.
BTW, I'm not a Rafa loyalist, just a LFC supporter.
Latest revelations are indeed baffling to say the least.
To be fair, Moores and Parry were also screwed by them fooking yanks. Promised the heavens but dragged us all into hell.
I have no doubt whatsoever that if we, the supporters are behind Rafa and the team 100%, there is no way they dare to touch Rafa in the near term. However, I am afraid that sort of support may be a long shot as many have begun to question Rafa.
Come on. The sternest of managers would've been affected by all the shite that has been going on. What more knowing that it started in Nov07 when we were still looking good in all comps except the CL.
To say that it was an insurance policy to sound out Klinsmann is utter bull*hit. Typical yank spin.
I know we've been suffering pain watching the drivel that being dished out in the last 5-6 games but all that happened with the yanks behind it.
You could see the players body language was one of doubt and indifference. No wonder. The press are going all about Rafa getting replaced and him being undermined by them yanks. Which player would not be affected? I suppose Masch and Torres whose English command woulda been affected less as they seem to be the only ones still playing to their true potential.
You may say that Luton players were in deeper shite than ours and they were more inspired to turn in the performance of their lives. Somehow I feel you just can't take the primadonna out of the PL players. They think the world revolves around them. Make no mistake, I wished it weren't so.
Let's sing Rafa's name lads. He must know that in true Liverpool tradition, that He Will Never Walk Alone.
jonW: The Yanks ahve a lot to answer fer. But somehow deep down we all knwo they couldn't give two flying fooks about us.
There were scores of LFC fans marching in support of Rafa, And what do they do at exactly the same time? Talk to Klinsman.
So much fer listening to the fans. Watch this space . . . Liverpool = Leeds?
Is it any wonder that we haven't found a winning formula given the number of changes we've made to the team since 2005? Why the need for so many changes? Are our scouts really that bad? Maybe it's our training regiment. I mean how many promising players have we snatched from under the noses of big clubs like Juventus, Inter Milan, Bayern Munich, etc, only to turn them into crap?
I don't buy that Steve Finnan, Riise, etc aren't up to mark. Is Steve Finnan any worse than Wes Brown or John O'Shea? Mascherano any worse than Hargreaves? Xabi Alonso any worse than Michael Carrick? Benayoun any worse than Darren Fletcher? Even if they are underperforming, one must ask, why? They obviously aren't happy about something, and if they are, why isn't it being addressed? Because Rafa has no human touch?
Let me play Devil's Advocate for awhile. Whether we are realists, pessimist or optimists, I'm sure we have one thing in common; we are behind the club and even our manager albeit perhaps to different degrees. What has come to my attention is the number of fans that have been saying Rafa is a tactical genius and a good manager. What exactly do you mean by this? Yes, his Valencia side played efficient football and tore us apart at Anfield but he did inherit a relatively good side. Let's look at the present, or rather the more recent past then. In 2005, he made a brilliant when he brought on Didi in the 2nd half to subdue Kaka, allowing Stevie to push further forward. He however also decided to start an unfit Harry Kewell who ever so coincidentally made it back from injury just in time for Athens, like clockwork. He made an error but was quick to rectify it. The magnitude of the game however may have overshadowed several other questionable decisions since then. Not playing Peter Crouch even though he is scoring for England, playing Voronin on the right, playing with just a lone striker, the list goes on. So then, why do your reckon Rafa is a tactical genius?
This is not a challenge but a mere discussion I'm bringing up based purely on interest.
mark: Correcto Mundo. Too many questionable decisions on Rafa's part fer me liking. Another fine example is Bolo Zenden in 2007 Athens Final.
James Lawton says the recent fook up by the Yanks has left Rafa smelling like a bed of roses.
He goes on to say that Rafa seems to rotate fer its own sake & to please his stibborn egocentric-self.
I tend to agree.
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