Flight

Lot's of reasons why I'd like to see Newcastle go down, BUT they are 6 easy points for us. Gone for 'Boro and Sunderland.

Firstly, I have to say the general opinion of Arbeloa on here is shocking. He isn't getting nearly as much credit as he deserves. Secondly, I have to post this in answer to the Johnson banter : Giles, Dunphy, Brady and Souness' at Euro 2008 Souness unimpressed with Thierry Henry's bravery for the Italian second goal: "He's got his hands down protecting his downstairs area and sticks his foot out like a nancy" Eamo: "If you don't mind me saying Graeme, the shot was a bit low to have affected his downstairs area." Cue Gilesy mumbling: "You don't know with these lads, Eamon

Didn't Mr Ferguson tell Ancelotti he would raise a glass to him if he beat us in the CL, previously ? Fuck him. Well done Rafa.

To be honest, that's not the case. And this site has a reputation for being anti-Rafa and constantly having a pop at him. Personally, it's the reason I don't come here much any more.

Exactly. It's not like this was our best points total since the 1987 season .... ermm, except it is.

You know what, after the season we have had, if you want to keep knocking Rafa, carry the fuck on. I remember why I don't come here much any more, now; used to get more sense out of Rashid. :wallbutt:

You're missing my point. I'm not knocking the players. But I am saying those own goals are the difference between us and them. The Mancs have conceded 1 own goal this term - against us in Sept, funnily enough. Last term they won the rem with (I think ? ) 87 points. We are going to finish with 86. We dropped 6 points due to those three own goals alone. Like I said : Anyone who is anything but positive about Rafa and the team after this is off his head and unrealistic.

For a start, he scored a freak own goal that cost us two points. Not much is it, two points ? It's the difference between us still being in it now going into the last weekend. Add on Skrtel and Carras own goals and all of a sudden we've won the Prem. Three games we drew that we should have won. I'm not pointing fingers at those players, I'm not blaming them - but that's the difference between us and the Mancs, when they have won 22 out of their last 24 games.

I'm confident of beating the Mancs regularly, as long as we have our best 11 on the pitch. Largely getting overlooked that many of the points we have dropped have been down to individual mistakes, usually by our 'stalwarts', for example, Carra, Xabi and Skrtel . Should we replace them ? The reason this season is an anomaly is that the Mancs won 22 of their last 24 games, largely aided and abetted by various referees who won't cross Mr Ferguson, because the FA won't back them up.

We've : i) scored the most goals in the Prem. ii) lost the least games. iii) got comfortably the best goal difference. iv) got easily the best record, head to head, against the top four (possibly the best any of the four have ever had ? ) I did wonder what shite threads would get started to give Rafa stick. And how long it would take.

The important bit is that we have spent fucking nothing since then. Rafa won't be seeing a penny of the Keane money. And the wages thing, as well. Anyone who thinks we have been on an even playing field, financially, with the Mancs is deluded. And thats ignoring the fact we only have left 2 players who were here when Rafa arrived.

My bad; didn't we buy Skrtel after Masch ? If not, I apologise. If that's the case, then it should read our net spend for the last 15 months is zero.

I did a lot of digging on our net spend, on a couple of posts on YNWA a while ago. The bottom line is this : ++ / LFChistory.net -- Past Present Future is the most complete record of our sales and purchases The sites that put our spend higher flat out miss out numerous of our player sales. The sites all largely agree on individual figures. Our net spend under Rafa is just over £1mill a year more than Villa or £2mill a year more than Sunderland. Rafa practically blackmailed Statler and Waldorf into the Torres and Masch signings; they hadn't planned on spedning nearly as much. Our net spend since we signed Skrtel is ZERO. We won't be seeing any of the Keane money and Rafa will be getting a small budget this summer. If we are looking at player budgets we have to also take into account wages. Deloitte and Touche publish these annually so we have a very reliable source. For years Arsenal have paid £15-£20mill more than us, the Mancs £20-£25mill and Chelsea now pay £45mill more than us. In other words, even Wenger has spent as much / more than Rafa.

Right click and 'Select as Desktop Background' :)

You can't compare what Rafa has spent, with what Mr Ferguson has spent. Ferguson had a strong first team, squad, reserve side and youth recruits. Benitez had none of that. Jerzy Dudek Paul Harrison Paul Jones Chris Kirkland Patrice Luzi Markus Babbel Igor Biscan Jamie Carragher Steve Finnan Stephane Henchoz Sami Hyypia Jon Otsemobor John Arne Riise Djimi Traore Gregory Vignal Bruno Cheyrou Salif Diao Steven Gerrard Dietmar Hamann Harry Kewell Anthony Le Tallec Danny Murphy Richie Partridge Darren Potter Vladimir Smicer John Welsh Milan Baros El Hadji Diouf Neil Mellor Florent S.-Pongolle Or Paul Scholes Roy Keane Nicky Butt, Wes Brown, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Rio Ferdinand, John O'Shea, Darren Fletcher, Mikael Silvestre, Ryan Giggs. Tim Howard, Fabien Barthez, Ricardo, Roy Carroll, Danny Pugh, Quinton Fortune, David Bellion, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Gary Neville, Diego Forlan, Eric Djemba-Djemba, Phil Neville Ronaldo That's just the first team.

Interesting post, as an aside from the 'debate'. As said, in this post by someone who has worked with Parry this last few years : Benítez came to the club believing there was a platform for him to put his ideas in place and take the club to where they told him they wanted to be. The reality of what he found was so far removed from the initial promises. Benítez found himself running down blind alleys at almost every turn. I suspect if Rafa had known the true state of the club and the shit he would face from Parry he wouldn't have come here.

Rafa has had to replace the whole squad and reserve set up, not just pick all the £15-£20mill players he fancies. We've had to buy plenty of £5-£10mill players because we needed numbers. And his failures in that price bracket haven't come with no pedigree. Dossena is Italys first choice left back, Lucas was Brazils player of the year and Riera looked fucking brilliant in his first two months here. We are now, for the first time in two decades, in a position where we have a very strong first 11 that I fancy against anyone in the world. What we don't have is the ability to deal with injuries in key positions. That will come. Bottom line, Rafa has worked miracles and we continue to get stronger year by year.

Take this lot and make us a better side than the Mancs, who are current European, World and English Champions and haven't dropped a point in 3 months, when their match day revenue is three times what ours is : Jerzy Dudek Paul Harrison Paul Jones Chris Kirkland Patrice Luzi Markus Babbel Igor Biscan Jamie Carragher Steve Finnan Stephane Henchoz Sami Hyypia Jon Otsemobor John Arne Riise Djimi Traore Gregory Vignal Bruno Cheyrou Salif Diao Steven Gerrard Dietmar Hamann Harry Kewell Anthony Le Tallec Danny Murphy Richie Partridge Darren Potter Vladimir Smicer John Welsh Milan Baros El Hadji Diouf Neil Mellor Florent S.-Pongolle In his first transfer window Rafa also lost Owen and Heskey and had Cisse become our record purchase, all out of his control. Trying to compare what Rafa has had to do with Mr Fergusons spend is ridiculous.

I agree with this btw, about how we play. I don't agree the manager wants us to play like this, though. We play as attacking as we can with the players available to us. Do you remember the Valencia friendly at Anfield - just how attacking were they ? I was at that game and it was breathtaking (mind you, we were fielding players like Diomede). I'll get slagged for saying this, but Barry over Xabi would have been a big move in that direction. Xabi has had some brilliant performances this term, but he is constantly linking the defense with the midfield. What we need is more of our midfielders linking the midfield with the attack. Barry does exactly that week in, week out for Villa. He can defend as well as Xabi, but he is much more about using the midfield to create scoring chances for our attack.

I'm sure the manager does see it mate. He can't do anything about injuries though and we have been ravaged by them this term. And there is only so much he can do over a period of time. For the first time in two decades we have a first 11 that is capable of winning the Prem - would anyone argue with that ? We don't have the squad though and I'm sure we will see the players we bitch about being moved on and better players coming in. That's the first time in literally decades we have been in that position, instead of constantly looking for 'the last piece of the jigsaw'.

I saw the OP on the Times site and posted it on YNWA. I was actually coming here to post it when I found this thread. This is my take on it : I have to applaud Hicks. I genuinely have to applaud the man. He has done a great job. He hasn't just done a great job, he has achieved 100%, magnificently, what he set out to do. Let me explain. He destroyed any chance whatsoever of the fans accepting him. There was no way back for him. So, he spent a great deal of the clubs money on very expensive PR people. He has followed their advice to the letter and he has diverted attention away from himself to every other personality in the club. He has done that brilliantly. Machiavelli would be proud. By simply i) allying himself with Rafa, and, ii) keeping his mouth shut he has achieved what I didn't think was possible. He has everyone fighting each other. Inside Anfield he is picking off the people who matter one by one. He has the fans fighting each other over issues that, yes, do matter, but are far less important than the core issues that are a cancer in our club. We are fighting over Rafa. In light of the destiny of our club, it doesn't matter which of us is right. If Rafa stays or Rafa goes, if we get a manager who is capable of more than Rafa or not, the same cancer that is destroying our club will still be present and will keep on destroying us and preventing success.

To be honest, I was gutted by the performance and result on Satdee. But I didn't learn anything I didn't know. We have a strong first 11-14 players Arbeloa is underrated Most of our back up players aren't good enough to be here Kuyt is great on the right of 4 5 1, but shite up front El Zhar and babel aren't good enough to start and might never be (though I might be being harsh on El Zhar - Skrtel at right back didn't work out at all) Having said that, we battered them for the first half hour, then they got their heads up after a ferak own goal by Xabi. We should have enough back up players to do them, but we don't.

Actually, in many cases, yes he did. By not getting our first choice targets. By not tieing up Vidic, Evra, Simao, Barry, Alves and numerous others when we had deals tied up with them. In the year before Rafa arrived we had Ronaldo (the Manc) tied up for £6mill and Parry left that so long the Mancs jumped in and doubled our bid. In Ged's autobiography he talks about how he had the Ronaldo deal totally tied up, waited and waited, then ehard on Sky Sports that the Mancs had bought him when he thought we already had him. I presume you have read this post, or maybe it has been cross posted here ? Its by someone who worked with Parry over this last decade. Quote : He still didn't have any real input into the youth set up which was being overseen and run by Rick Parry. Parry's reluctance to sanction or back the overhaul of the youth system has been a major problem for Benítez. A none footballing man effectively preventing a football man from doing what he was brought in to do in the first place. It is well known within the club that Benítez wants to develop our own players. He is extremely passionate about it, yet feels this won't happen quickly enough under the present structure.Even though that long term the club will benefit both financially and in terms of having a local heart to the club. Something that he spoke of only today. On top of all of this is the farcical situation regarding protracted transfers we are all aware of. This all came to a head, just before the Gerrard fiasco made the headlines. Parry's reticence to get the Gerrard's contract sorted out was seen within the club and by Rafa in particular as an indication of how much power Parry thought he had. This was a further indication of his lack of footballing mentality. He was actually prompted to get this sorted from within the club but still dragged his heels.This caused major problems internally and is the catalyst for many of today's difficulties. The almost catastrophic outcome was seen as a watershed. It wasn't! Benítez had the unfortunate misfortune of having to go through Parry for every transfer. I'm not going into who they were, but certain players at home and abroad had approached Liverpool F.C and had agreed to come after speaking with Benítez only for the deal to fall through after Parry became involved. Some were high profile, some were not. The biggest deals having been well documented. Some equally as big which have not been.were already agreed with players without massive wage demands or contract terms only to fall away yet again. This caused severe professional embarrassment for Benítez and restricted the progress of the team. Once the takeover came about and the club was restructured once again, Benítez was once again made promises regarding transfers.Certain operating procedures were put into place by Hicks & Gillette to try and smooth things along. Without going into too much detail about what they were here, they failed when the H & G relationship started to wobble. The operating procedures fell by the wayside, which Benítez wasn't happy about as they appeared to be working. Once H & G lost the day to day 'hands on ' contact with club matters,apart from Ayres 'input', things reverted to type and Parry just went about things The Parry Way.

I once heard that the night before Abramovich expressed interest in buying them, we were in talks to buy Terry. Anyone hear that - just a rumour or maybe something in it ?

I wonder if half of our fans followed us or remember the football we played prior to Rafa arriving. If we went 1-0 down it was the end of the game, alehouse football hoping Owen would feed off scraps. A team full of shite players on long overpaid wages. Carra pulls no punches in his book about just how poor the squad was when Rafa took over. Take that team and realise in his first transfer window we lost Owen and Heskey and bought Cisse, none of it his doing. We were on the edge of being consigned forever to being a mid-table team. To question whether we have improved is madness. Listen - the Mancs have not dropped a point in 3 months. No-one can do anything about that. Especially the number of times they continue to get the decisions from referees.