For the anti Rafa mongs....

[Unrighteous]

They're scientologists aren't they?

 

[SpeedyG]

How many football managers do you know that have formal education of psychology of high performing teams and could argue the merit of using conflict as catalyst for change and improvement?

 

 

Oh dear you just zinged yourself as my subsequent post has just pointed out.

[Unrighteous]

What's your opinion on using conflict as a catalyst for change and improvement?

 

That depends... really. For short bursts, I would say that conflict is a solid mode of motivation.

 

However, over a longer period, I would say that conflict breeds more conflict and eventually there would be a break down in everything that has been built. So, I would suggest balancing the conflict with periods of resolution and rebuilding of relationships.

 

My personal opinion would be to attempt to bring about a sense of healthy competition between players to motivate them, and it would be better for the long term.

[Unrighteous]

Oh dear you just zinged yourself as my subsequent post has just pointed out.

 

I was thinking when I edited the photo into the post that you've probably have some "Idiot's Guide to Football Management" open in front of you that has some basis for bringing up that subject, as I would suggest it is a pretty obscure subject to be bringing up on an internet forum.

[goatboy59]

Good luck to him. He's probably paid by the word.

Maybe he can buy the Yanks out?

[Liverpool lad]

I think this debate has been done to death, if people aren't revealing their sources and I don't blame them, then it cannot go any further. I don't think anybody is covering any new ground here.

[SpeedyG]

I was thinking when I edited the photo into the post that you've probably have some "Idiot's Guide to Football Management" open in front of you that has some basis for bringing up that subject, as I would suggest it is a pretty obscure subject to be bringing up on an internet forum.

 

My point was I don't trust the pre-spun conclusions and version of events from people who aren't really in a position to understand all of the factors at play.

[Unrighteous]

My point was I don't trust the pre-spun conclusions and version of events from people who aren't really in a position to understand all of the factors at play.

 

That's fine. I didn't ask you, nor expect you to do so. I wouldn't post more than I did, because even if I listed every single thing that I've heard people who like Rafa will just call it hearsay(and thats fine) and people who don't like Rafa would just dislike him even more.

 

That's the problem with this stuff. It's easy to discredit, hard to prove, and impossible to trace.

[SpeedyG]

That's fine. I didn't ask you, nor expect you to do so. I wouldn't post more than I did, because even if I listed every single thing that I've heard people who like Rafa will just call it hearsay(and thats fine) and people who don't like Rafa would just dislike him even more.

 

That's the problem with this stuff. It's easy to discredit, hard to prove, and impossible to trace.

 

Fair enough, lets face it though, almost everything on here is conjecture and made up crap anyway and as you mentioned everyone has their agenda.

 

I'd post it just for drama purposes :)

[RoboRiise]

Cappello slung a plate at the restaurant wall in the hotel in the Ukraine when he saw an 'unnamed player' texting under the table during dinner.

 

Now I think thats brilliant , but i can't see it being seen as a positive if Rafa had done it ( unless it was at Lucas I suppose )

 

 

Unless Carra misinterpreted his meaning, Rafa did try to encourage him to arrange a fight in the showers with un-named, underperforming members of the team - I'd have thought that counted as a fairly strong disciplinary code.

 

(Edit: I should poll that up but I can't be arsed, I wonder how many posters on here would support Rafa if he arranged regular beatings for underperforming members of the team. Obviously we'd have had the problem of Ryan Babel being beaten to death sometime last season but other than that, it has clear potential. Although a smack in the mouth has fallen out of favour as a disciplinary tool in recent years, it's still pretty effective.)

Edited October 19, 2009 by RoboRiise

[Unrighteous]

Fair enough, lets face it though, almost everything on here is conjecture and made up crap anyway and as you mentioned everyone has their agenda.

 

I'd post it just for drama purposes :)

 

My agenda is pretty simple. I want Liverpool to be the healthy, juggernaught of a football club.

 

As for Rafa? I'll pull him up on his errors, and I abstain from singing his name in the kop, as I don't think he's an individual that will help our club move forward. It's not like I've got some voodoo doll that I stick pins into...

[SpeedyG]

Unless Carra misinterpreted his meaning, Rafa did try to encourage him to arrange a fight in the showers with un-named, underperforming members of the team - I'd have thought that counted as a fairly strong disciplinary code.

 

(Edit: I should poll that up but I can't be arsed, I wonder how many posters on here would support Rafa if he arranged regular beatings for underperforming members of the team. Obviously we'd have had the problem of Ryan Babel being beaten to death sometime last season but other than that, it has clear potential. Although a smack in the mouth has fallen out of favour as a disciplinary tool in recent years, it's still pretty effective.)

 

In the US military soldiers are encouraged to beat their under performing peers with bars of soap handily placed in socks for extra velocity.

[Guest ShoePiss]

In the US military soldiers are encouraged to beat their under performing peers with bars of soap handily placed in socks for extra velocity.

 

 

[isr]

The funny thing is, ISR, most of the people who want Rafa gone don't want him gone solely on the on-pitch results.

 

Now, I don't claim to be an 'in the know' or anything like this but if even a third of what I've heard about how Rafa is treating players at the club is true? I'd still want him sacked. He's just not a good, positive person to have at the helm of our club.

 

Unrighteous, the kind of stuff you're alluding to really does get my goat.

 

(and I'm not trying to be overly personal here, with anyone. We're just debating)

 

Deep down, we all ackowledge that a good, succesful manager needs to a hard-arsed bastard at times with his players.

 

We should know. ALL of our succesful managers were .... hard-arsed bastards to our players when needed. Every one. Shanks. Paisley. You name it. The stories are legion.

 

Part of the reason why we have a "back the team, back the manager" mantra is because, deep down, we know that there are times when the manager needs to be ruthless. And at those times, you need to have clear delineation of who gets the final backing.

 

We never used to be a club who would turn against a manager, because he "upset" a particular player.

 

At some clubs, the lionise certain players, to the exclusion of everything else. The develop personality cults, etc. Success usually doesn't follow. (classic example: Shearer at Newcastle).

 

At ours, yes, we lionise players (Kenny is the closest we've come to developing a "personality cult" of our own, but we've stopped just short of that). But we have always held the manager higher (at least, we did when we were winning things consistantly).

 

In the end, it boils down to a simple choice. What do we want to be? I'll give you 2 polar opposites, for arguments sake.

 

1) Real Madrid. Players first, manager second. Once you achieve "cult status", you can then proceed to be shit for 2 years, and still any manager who dares to drop you, will be lynched.

 

End result: "galactico" setup (they've always been like that, post Puskas and di Stefano, even before the term was coined). Managers come and go. Win the league, you're sacked (the managers who won their last 2 league titles were sacked before, and just after, the next season started). Win the European Cup, you're sacked (eg: the guy who won no.7 for them).

 

Win the European Cup AND the League - you'll probably earn a stay of execution for a year.

 

Spains most successful side.

 

 

2) Liverpool. The fans. The manager. The team. The Holy Trinity, in that order.

 

End result: great players shipped out (and perhaps upset along the way) when it was felt it was time to refresh the side, before a decline set in. Managerial stability? Yes, in spades.

 

Englands most successful side.

 

 

What do we want to be? Some might argue that 1) is a price worth paying. If so, then be honest about it. It would mean a complete throwing out of the last vestiges of "the Liverpool Way". If thats what some are clamouring for, then so be it. But be up front about it.

 

This, more than anything else, explains the rift in our support. Because there are 2 different approaches at work here. They are both mutually exclusive, and they get to the very essence of what we want our club to be like.

 

PS: if you're also alluding to Rafa's public spats with the current ownership, then how about this. Take Shanks. Transport him to the present day, and give him Rafa's job. Then tell me how often he would be in the media, arguing and complaining about the shit around him, post Athens. Be honest!

[isr]

Bellend.

 

Ah go blow yourself.

 

(and yes I am being personal here. Just for you. Cause you're ... "special" ... )

[Brownie]

But we have always held the manager higher (at least, we did when we were winning things consistantly).

 

That bit above is the key, in my view. Up until Evans, we haven't had a manager for an extremely long time, who failed to win the league.

 

Until Rafa wins the league, he'll divide opinion. I admit that's a very simplistic way of looking at it, but it's true.

 

If we win the league under him, there would still be a minority of fans who weren't fond of him, but that's just the way it is. I know a couple of Man Utd season ticket holders and they both despise Ferguson, believe it or not. That's just football.

 

There were people who didn't particularly rate Shanks and Paisley from what i'm told. It's always been the way. I don't see why people take it so personally.

[WaltonRed]

I'm not an anti-rafa mong for the record, I'm pro Liverpool Football Club

[Unrighteous]

ISR. It's not about 'upsetting' a player. I could care less if Rafa made a player feel 'small' because they fucked up.

[Red Nick]

Rafa Benitez will leave LFC with some fans thinking what might have been that certainly wasnt the case with Souness, Evans and Houllier.

[WaltonRed]

I always think what of been with Ged Nick, had we signed Anelka and Duff rather than the three bumnuts from France

[Dan Vito Corleone]

Exlax doesn't get on with quite a few of their fans actually Brownie, I know a couple of ST holders myself who don't like him.

[isr]

That bit above is the key, in my view. Up until Evans, we haven't had a manager for an extremely long time, who failed to win the league.

 

Until Rafa wins the league, he'll divide opinion. I admit that's a very simplistic way of looking at it, but it's true.

 

If we win the league under him, there would still be a minority of fans who weren't fond of him, but that's just the way it is. I know a couple of Man Utd season ticket holders and they both despise Ferguson, believe it or not. That's just football.

 

There were people who didn't particularly rate Shanks and Paisley from what i'm told. It's always been the way. I don't see why people take it so personally.

 

Brownie, its football. And we're talking about a football club which most, or all, of us hold very dear to our hearts (speaking for me personally, for 31 years).

 

In the old days, I would get really steamed after a bad performance and loss (all I'll say is that its damned lucky we never owned any family pets). Now, I have learned to hold those emotions in check (at this rate, I'll soon grow up enough to be able to tie my own shoelaces!). In the end, its a game. And one should learn to enjoy it, and derive enjoyment from it, or else whats the point?

 

But when we start talking about fundamental issues which go to the very core of what this club is supposed to be about, then it hits home. Hard.

 

Similar to the ownership disgrace.

 

To directly answer one of your comments:

 

Until Rafa wins the league, he'll divide opinion. I admit that's a very simplistic way of looking at it, but it's true.

 

I don't really disagree with the premise behind this. Until a manager proves his worth, the jury is (and should be) out. But, what did we want from a manager, post Houillier?

 

- get us into a position to mount genuine honest-to-goodness title challenges (just like the good old days).

check

 

- win stuff

check

 

- get us back to being amongst the big guns in Europe.

Err, check, double check. With a cherry on top.

 

For all his faults (and who hasn't got them), Rafa has ALREADY demonstrated all of the above. If someone had offered that to us in the dark days of 1994, we would have bitten his hand off.

 

Is he the greatest manager in the whole wide world? Dunno. How would you ever really know, unless you tried them all out, one after the other. The Real Madrid way, which I described above (oh wait, Capello was the best. Now we know. Crap, already fired him...)

 

Rafa is here, now. He HAS demonstrated the ability to do the job (for all the arguments about net spend, and "he threw the league away", etc, etc, the results as mentioned above still stand).

 

So why not support him?

[Brownie]

Rafa Benitez will leave LFC with some fans thinking what might have been that certainly wasnt the case with Souness, Evans and Houllier.

 

It totally was! Every day I think what may have happened if we hadn't fucked up against Coventry in 1997 and if Houllier hadn't got sick.

[col06]

personally all this apparent cold shoulder stuff is irreverent there paid to do a job not to be loved by the manager

[isr]

ISR. It's not about 'upsetting' a player. I could care less if Rafa made a player feel 'small' because they fucked up.

 

Yeah, I get it. Dark hints at .... what exactly?

 

Is he taking transfer bungs?

Is he banging someone's missus?

Is he molesting the apprentices?

 

Honestly, what kind of reaction were you hoping for? "Burn him at the stake, the bloody foreign rotter."

 

I can only talk about what I see. If everyone did that, and less of the behind the scenes character assasination, we'd be better off.