Petition to reinstate Rafael Benitez as LFC Manager

[Red Nick]

No he didn't, he tried to sell him. That's what managers do if they wanna go and change the side.

 

I just hate that people seem to make out that we took a caged Xabi around Europe in the hope of someone wanting him. Am sure it was no different when we tried to sell other players.

 

Happy Christmas

 

Hopefully your new years resolution is to type the truth

[Dan Vito Corleone]

Alonso was being hawked everywhere, even to Arsenal, for £10m in 2008. It was an absolute disgrace.

[Guest TesticleOReilly]

It isn't a disgrace for a manager to decide that a 50% (at best) return on a player wasn't good enough, and to want to replace him. Unless you're on TLW.

[bossy]

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[Delmar]

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

An intelligent and carefully argued position, and you restrain yourself rather well. I shall rep you, if possible.

[Iantn]

Happy Christmas

 

Hopefully your new years resolution is to type the truth

 

How was it different to any other player then?

 

Apart from the fact it was Saint Xabi!

[mypost]

We are not an old boys network handing out top jobs to our mates. We're supposed to be a world class football club. We need to act like it.

 

For most of our history, we promoted our coaches from within.

 

I would like to see Carragher in a player-coach role here eventually to start out his career in it. That's how Kenny started out after all.

[Royal Family]

No he didn't, he tried to sell him. That's what managers do if they wanna go and change the side.

 

I just hate that people seem to make out that we took a caged Xabi around Europe in the hope of someone wanting him. Am sure it was no different when we tried to sell other players.

 

Well, Rafa started the 2008-9 season with Xabi Alonso playing back-up to the legend that is Damian Plessis. I reckon that putting Xabi in a cage and dragging him around Europe would have been less embarrassing than that.

 

After the Juve deal fell through, we offered Xabi a golden handshake to join Fenerbahce in 2008, just to get him off the books. He said no. His agent then lined up a deal with Arsenal and Rafa said no - so we were willing to let him go to anyone outside the premiership, that much is true.

[Royal Family]

There was in the American owners eyes plenty to play for Mick, a little matter of 4th place which was still achievable up until the last weeks of the seasons.

 

There's not a shred of doubt in my mind that if we got 4th Hicks and Gillett would be still here.

 

I have a theory which will never be proven, in that if wouldn't surprise me if Rafa let 4th go, to speed up Hicks/Gillett departure,in MY hindsight it backfired on him massively

 

So now it's Rafa's most ardent SUPPORTERS who are claiming that he deliberately threw matches?

 

You've been reading too much Dan Brown, methinks.

[Code]

Do the Villa fans have petitions to bring MON back?

[Trumo]

Do the Villa fans have petitions to bring MON back?

 

No, but if they had any brains they could have organised a walkout. A sizeable number probably used to work for British Leyland so they'd be familiar with the routine.

[Dan Vito Corleone]

I'm surprised Villa have struggled so much under GH to be honest.

[109_ultra]

I think the game has changed so much even since GH left in 04. His methods will not have gone down well at all in a new era of player power and i'm not surprised to hear about the training ground bust ups. We live in a world where if a wiley old manager comes in and tells an overpaid primadonna to do 10 laps of the pitch after training to walm down and improve stamina he gets laughed at and told where to go.

[Dan Vito Corleone]

I think the game has changed so much even since GH left in 04. His methods will not have gone down well at all in a new era of player power and i'm not surprised to hear about the training ground bust ups. We live in a world where if a wiley old manager comes in and tells an overpaid primadonna to do 10 laps of the pitch after training to walm down and improve stamina he gets laughed at and told where to go.

 

I agree that player power has gone through the roof. He won't have made a good impression telling Carew his hat and trainers were unacceptable attire and they were going to be working on Sundays the minute he walked through the door, which is exactly what he did!

 

However, GH teams are usually hard to beat and resiliant and solid. Villa are none of those things at the moment.

[109_ultra]

He won't have made a good impression telling Carew his hat and trainers were unacceptable attire and they were going to be working on Sundays the minute he walked through the door, which is exactly what he did!

 

haha brilliant, good old Ged still as mad as ever!

[Iantn]

Well, Rafa started the 2008-9 season with Xabi Alonso playing back-up to the legend that is Damian Plessis. I reckon that putting Xabi in a cage and dragging him around Europe would have been less embarrassing than that.

 

After the Juve deal fell through, we offered Xabi a golden handshake to join Fenerbahce in 2008, just to get him off the books. He said no. His agent then lined up a deal with Arsenal and Rafa said no - so we were willing to let him go to anyone outside the premiership, that much is true.

 

Started the season as back up or started the season trying not to use him because his future at the club was still up in the air?

[Dougie Do'ins]

I think the game has changed so much even since GH left in 04. His methods will not have gone down well at all in a new era of player power and i'm not surprised to hear about the training ground bust ups. We live in a world where if a wiley old manager comes in and tells an overpaid primadonna to do 10 laps of the pitch after training to walm down and improve stamina he gets laughed at and told where to go.

 

I agree that player power has gone through the roof. He won't have made a good impression telling Carew his hat and trainers were unacceptable attire and they were going to be working on Sundays the minute he walked through the door, which is exactly what he did!

 

However, GH teams are usually hard to beat and resiliant and solid. Villa are none of those things at the moment.

Some interesting quotes in here that tie in with the player power thing. It's like any of us winning the lottery on Saturday, I'm sure none of us are going to be worried about what our bosses have in store for us come Monday morning.

 

Roy Hodgson warns Liverpool's fat cats to choose if they want a career or big money | Mail Online

[RobbieOR]

Ged banned mobile phones too. He's got under the skin of Stephen Ireland's skin too, that was always going to be trouble.

[Dougie Do'ins]

Ged banned mobile phones too. He's got under the skin of Stephen Ireland's skin too, that was always going to be trouble.

That was one of the first things Ged and Tommo did here. It needed doing to.

[Dan Vito Corleone]

Dave went into detail about it in the diary in the latest edition of TLW. It really rattled Villa players' cages.

[Anubis]

Ireland is getting shipped out in January, supposedly.

[Dan Vito Corleone]

Yeah Houllier has said he can leave. If ever there was going to be a personality clash it woud be between those two.

[Anubis]

Roy Hodgson warns Liverpool's fat cats to choose if they want a career or big money | Mail Online

 

Interesting opinion. Now that's a managerial view. Let's widen that to a fan's view. Will Roy practice as he preaches, and relinquish his highly paid contract to allow the club to bring another manager in if that's what they want to do?

[Code]

Can someone post the article?

[Anubis]

Roy Hodgson warns Liverpool's fat cats to choose if they want a career or big money

 

By Joe Bernstein Last updated at 1:04 AM on 26th December 2010

 

Liverpool's rebuilding plans are being threatened by the refusal of several out-of-favour stars to walk away from fat contracts.

 

Stars like Ryan Babel, Milan Jovanovic and Joe Cole will not go unless their Anfield salaries are matched elsewhere.

 

The situation is frustrating manager Roy Hodgson and director of football strategy Damien Comolli, who want to free up space in the club's 25-man Premier League squad.

Roy Hodgson

 

Frustrated: Roy Hodgson is losing patience with his big name stars

 

It may even explain Hodgson's extraordinary comment last week that Cole was not his original choice of signing.

 

The 29-year-old England international has struggled at Anfield and is wanted on loan for the rest of the season by his former club West Ham. Hamburg and Genoa are interested in Jovanovic, while Babel turned down moves last summer to Birmingham, Tottenham and West Ham because they could not match his £70,000-a-week wage.

 

Cole's friend, Glen Johnson, would also like to leave after falling out with Hodgson but he is struggling to find another club prepared to offer the £120,000 a week he is paid.

 

It leaves Liverpool in a difficult position to reshape the squad and owners NESV are furious that previous managing- director, Christian Purslow, awarded several long-term contracts in the dying embers of the Tom Hicks-George Gillett regime.

 

Cole was given a four-year contract worth £90,000 a week last summer while 29-year-old Jovanovic arrived on a three-year deal at £60,000 a week.

 

Joe Cole

 

£90,000 per week: Joe Cole

 

If neither goes, it adds up to a staggering financial commitment of £27million.

 

Hodgson will not name the players he wants to leave - although his comments about Cole were particularly revealing - but he did say he hoped out-of-favour players put ambition before money.

 

He said: 'It's the usual question - money versus playing. How much does playing mean to you and how much does money mean to you?

 

'Some players not in the team will find other clubs want them, but the same sum of money [in wages] is not there. So the player has to ask if they are so uninterested in playing, will they sit for three years despite the fact that the club has made it perfectly clear they don't want them and there's no game for them.

 

'If they want that for three years, they've virtually got to kiss [their career] goodbye. If you spend three years on your backside, not kicking a ball apart from the odd reserve game, you'll find you're not going to be a player at all.'

 

Hodgson has been under pressure from virtually the first day he succeeded Rafa Benitez, whose decision to spend Christmas on Merseyside in the house he bought when Liverpool manager is doing little to ease the situation.

 

There is certainly no chance that NESV will welcome back the Spaniard who has been sacked by Inter Milan, but Hodgson still has to improve on a record of just one away win all season if he is to keep his job.

 

Yet the Liverpool boss seems remarkably calm about his situation, saying even long-serving Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has been under pressure in recent times.

 

'If there is speculation about me, I'm in good company,' he said. 'It's easier to name the people who aren't in that position than those who are.

Ryan Babel

 

£70,000 per week: Ryan Babel

 

'I remember going to Arsenal with Fulham a couple of years ago and after we held them 0-0 the booing [from Arsenal fans] towards their team was quite incredible.

 

'Arsene was visibly upset and saddened by that reaction, and at that time people were suggesting he'd had a good run and it was time to bring in the man with the magic wand.

 

'That's what we have to live with, we have to live with the situation. People are quite happy to see changes on a very regular basis, and a fan will have no qualms about seeing three managers a year at his club, waiting for a man with a magic wand that can turn all of the ills that everyone has seen into something different.

 

'Those of us who work in the game and have been working in the game a long time know that magic wands don't exist. You work with the set of players you find at your club and before you can really say this is a team I put together, this is a club I have fashioned, you're going to need quite a long time before that day will come around.

 

'In the meantime, results give you that time or they might not and you might be in and out before you've had a chance to do that.'

 

With Jovanovic unlikely to accept a drop in wages to move on, Liverpool will have to decide whether to give him a 'Golden Goodbye' to get him out.

 

Hodgson at least is boosted by the return of captain Steve Gerrard at Blackpool today if the match survives the big freeze, and at home to Wolves next week.

Milan Jovanovic

 

£60,000 per week: Milan Jovanovic

 

But the manager's New Year resolution is to pick up more away points after that one Barclays Premier League victory at Bolton.

 

In all, he has just one win in his last 27 away games as a manager in the top flight 'We have to take more points away from home.

 

You can't finish in the top four if you have so few away points as we took in 2010. That's a no-brainer,' he added.

 

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