TheDrowningMan

Of course. And he happened to spend the 'Rafa amounts' almost exclusively on shit.

Wasn't £6m supposed to cover the Skrtel deal? I trust that they will now be releasing the other £4m immediately for any other deals Rafa may have in mind.

He did well at Porto, but then if referees could do their job correctly he'd have not made it past the second round in 2004 and would never have gotten the Chelsea job. I really doubt his credentials in England. He failed in the CL, his league form was purely a result of having enough money that he could spend it without a care, seeing whatever shit would ultimately stick. We have the core of a great team, but Mourinho isn't the man to add to it. He signed an incredible amount of shit, only consistently delving into top quality when he spent ludicrous amounts. All told, his judgment was nothing short of appalling. If we look at most of the players he signed for similar amounts to Rafa's usual outlay, you'll see that they are generally much, much worse. We'd be looking at the likes of Tiago in place of Alonso, Boularouz in place of Agger or Arbeloa & Obi Mikel in place of Mascherano. This is the man who spent £13.2m on Ferraira, a catastrophe barely given the responsibility to play when he was their only fit right back. I would advise everyone trumpeting the virtues of Mourinho to be careful what you wish for. Personally, I'll be laughing from afar as he toils hilariously, dragging Liverpool's name into the mud while overseeing an era less successful than Rafa's while the clueless Cowboys continue to piss all over the club's heritage. Come to think of it, Hicks, Gillett & Mourinho would be a marriage made in Heaven (or should that be Hell?). Only the most sordid, classless of football clubs could have all three at the helm, much to the delight of our fiercest rivals.

Mourinho, who only won titles in England because he spent a preposterous amount of money? Did you see how much shit Mourinho bought during his spell? He wasted more money than Benitez, Ferguson and Wenger have in their entire careers on some of that shit. Mourinho on a budget WILL NOT win our club a title. You'd have to be very, very, very, very naive about football to think he would. You would *have* to keep Rafa on or hire a 'co-manager' to be in charge of transfers at the very least - which of course is just as ridiculous as the notion that Mourinho could win an English title with our squad and a tight budget in the first place.

Or maybe the cunt is just being honest, given that he found himself toiling away in mid-table for five of his first six season before finally winning the title? If anyone knows about stability and patience being the best route to success, it's Ferguson. Unfortunately for us, Man Utd wasn't run by people like Hicks & Gillett and the 'Newcastle' element of our fanbase circa 1990. If it were, their period of dominance would have never emerged.

That makes for depressing reading. A ground share under different ownership would - undeniably and unequivocally - have been better than what they have in store for us with their stadium plans. Debt, debt, debt, more debt and all with the Hicks/Gillett 'sheen'. With hindsight, we might have gotten more interest, interest from parties more capable of running our club, if the possibility of such a share was considered a goer. It might have been pissing on our club and traditions from a great height, but if it had been against the backdrop of a stable, affluent future then - fuck - it'd be better than we've got now. Funny how things change, isn't it? You spend years blasting the possibility of sharing with the pile of excrement across the park, only to be purchased by the sort of people who make such fecal matter look like a glorious meal in comparison. Come to think of it, now I'm going to worry about the ultimate nightmare scenario of sharing with shit while being owned by shit of an even more rancid variety. Fuck.

Here's another thing: Given that the refinancing now looks as though it's set to go through, you either keep Rafa and let him build the club in his image over the next 10 years, OR you concede that the only Championship we'll ever win is the Coca-Cola one. Sack Rafa AND restrict our finances heavily with this irresponsible loan and IT IS INEVITABLE that we will end up having to sell our best players because sufficient quality cannot be added to them, but there will be the double whammy of no managerial continuity and stability. A Leeds style situation is inevitable if Rafa goes and we end up operating on a such a dangerous, high stakes tightrope. No top managers will want such a precarious job and no top players will want to stick around wasting their best years toiling at a second rate club under second rate managers when they could be playing for teams like Manchester United, Barcelona, Real Madrid & Arsenal.

Moores is a pretty hardcore Everton fan. That became obvious a long time ago.

You're a fucking idiot if you missed the meaning of that analogy, but then I think your posts have been enough to verify that as fact before now anyway.

I love the way that the European Cup is now a tin-pot trophy. If told, when GH left, that just under four years down the line we'd won a European & FA Cup, reached another European Cup final but hadn't lived up to our promise in the league as of yet almost everyone would still have been frothing at the mouth about the prospect of the EC coming back to Anfield, about us being a major force in that most prestigious of competitions. Instead, to some twat faced shit monkeys it carries about as much weight as the Carling Cup. A lot of it is down to timing. If Rafa had replaced Souness at the helm, there wouldn't be all of this shit thrown at him. But again, the further away that elusive prize gets, the more the idiocy grows & the more the Newcastle analogy rings true. Fun fact: How many league titles did Arrigo Sacchi win when manager of a Milan side many consider to be one of the greatest in football history? Where was his reputation really built?

Sir Alexander Chapman Ferguson CBE 86-87 11th 87-88 2nd (nine poins off of the top) 88-89 11th 89-90 13th (FA Cup Winners) 90-91 6th 91-92 2nd and then the period of dominance began. We're competing in a far harder era, against opposition who're either more stable and settled, much more cash rich or in Man Utd's case BOTH. Rafa, as a European & FA Cup winner deserves one more season after this, particularly with the way this one has been shot to shit by The Cowboys. He doesn't deserve two less than Houllier. Problem is, an increasing minority of our fanbase is very, very much like Newcastle's nowadays. The longer you go without winning what you want in this era, the more things are blown out of proportion, the more reason is cast aside and - ultimately - the longer you go without that elusive prize. As ever in the English league, you either offer sufficient patience or you give enough money to see if enough of the shit you buy sticks ala Mourinho.

Yep, absolutely.

Did Arsenal finish above us the last two season prior to the current one?

We are a better league team than in Houllier's last two seasons.

A CL success and another final is not going backwards, unless you're suggesting we've gone backwards from 1990, in which case you may have a legitimate point.

How many years did Alex Ferguson go before winning his first title? Why are Ferguson and Wenger allowed to go four, five years without winning a major competition without question? Why do they go unquestioned, even in fallow periods? How many years did it take Ferguson & Wenger respectively to reach a CL final? What is a youth infrastructure, and does it necessarily pay immediate dividends? Has Arsene Wenger won a major trophy - excluding the FA Cup - since Benitez took the helm at Liverpool? If not, why not? Should he be sacked if they fail to win a major trophy this season, taking him two seasons beyond the apparent 'sacking point' of Benitez, who hasn't had almost 12 years with which to build the club in his image? Why do barely any managers have as many CL wins to their name than league title successes? Why are they backed to the hilt by their boards? How long do managers of clubs like Newcastle & Tottenham receive on average? How many major trophies have the aforementioned clubs won in recent years, despite spending the sort of money Liverpool does, and in excess of Arsenal? Why are Wenger and Ferguson the most successful managers over the last two decades? After Wenger won his first Premiership title, he didn't win anything else for four years. Why? You'll find all the questions in the answers and the answers in the questions.

The home / away thing leads me to believe we are very, very close to mounting a title challenge. It's a case of blending the two. Like Arsenal last year, we might look like we're years behind but we're not.

Paulo Ferraira - £13.2m Mateja Kezman - £5m Tiago - £10m Didier Drogba - £24.5m Asier Del Horno - £8.5m Michael Essien - £24.5m Shaun Wright-Philips - £21m Jon Obi Mikel - £12.5m Andrei Shevchenko £30m Khalid Boularouz - £8.5m Anyone who couldn't win a league after spending that (heavily abridged) amount deserves to be shot dead. Mourinho probably deserves to be banned from football manager forever for crimes against the sport for failing to win the league last season and failing to win a single CL in his time at Chelsea. And Wenger hasn't won a 'big two' trophy since 2004, and has been out pointed and out witted by Rafa up until this season. The problem is, people like you pay too much attention to Sky and the pundits. You desire to see us in a Newcastle or Tottenham style state, for that is what your methods of chopping and changing would bring us. The current manager has given us our highest points total since we last won the league and won a trophy AT LEAST as important as the Premiership title, and reached another final a couple of years later. We've seen what works in the Premiership - you either give a manager SHEDLOADS of cash and see if he can make enough shit stick or you give them time - particularly when they've already won you a fucking trophy which is, in many ways, harder to win than the Premiership in itself (ask Wenger and Ferguson). If you go around axing managers who do that, you end up a fucking wreck.

As I said earlier, if Moores is a decent human being, he'll be on the phone to DIC at the moment offering a £40m freebie to boost their offer if they don't want to pay over the odds.

Let's say that they refinance and - largely because of the turmoil they have created - we fail to make the CL. All in all, that knocks *at least* £100m off of any offer DIC would make at a later date. Then, because the Cowboys have sacked Rafa and failed to give the pathetic patsy who takes the job next sufficient transfer funds, we finish 6th or 7th next season. That, due to the crippling loan and lack of CL football results in a need to send the likes of Torres & Gerrard to properly run clubs at a cutdown price. If Man Utd or Chelsea are the highest bidder, Hicks & Gillett will snap their hands off. We WILL do a Leeds if this sort of - very likely - scenario comes to fruition. We need our protests tonight to be full of vitriol. We need to make massive visual & vocal statements. Hicks' Texas franchises regularly finish bottom due to his lack of investment - However, in the cosy US sporting environment you don't have relegation, you can't ruin dreams forevermore due to your own mismanagement. In Europe, you most certainly can.

If Rafa leaves essentially because the Cowboys do not want an ambitious manager asking to be backed, then it means that the club is not trying to compete at the highest level, so in that case I think it perfectly possible that they might leave. And, to be honest, why shouldn't they? If you had the choice between a mid-table club skimping and saving to line the owners' pockets, one at which the manager is a mere figurehead appointed to protect their fiscal interests (much like Hicks has in place at his Texas teams, and clearly wants here) and magnificent, superbly run behemoths like Manchester United & Arsenal, you'd choose the latter if you're an ambitious footballer.

As long as the newspapers keep it up, the fans will be there in significant numbers to aim vitriol at the owners. This will be much, much more effective than the 'save Rafa' protest because we have the media well and truly on our side this time.

...surely he wouldn't mind bolstering any potential bid to take our club away from these heinous individuals by, ohh, £30m, perhaps £40m or so, even if he gets nothing but the offer to retain his 'life presidency' for it? Or is that sort of kindness - no, scratch that....is the sort of behavour befitting *any* half-decent human being with his resources beyond the man who sold us up the river in the first place?

Are they really fucking thick enough to believe that the club will be worth a billion simply because of the stadium? IT WON'T BE WHEN IT'S A MID-TABLE / OR POSSIBLY A CHAMPIONSHIP OUTFIT BECAUSE YOU'VE STAKED SO MUCH AGAINST THE CLUB AND FAILED TO OFFER SUFFICIENT TRANSFER FUNDS. The pair are fucked up, cunt faced pieces of human excrement.

Hicks' statement is excellent news. He HAS to deny a sale, he HAS to look reluctant or he'd be shooting himself in the foot with the deal he'd likely get. Note that there is no mention of Gillett in there, that there is no mention of the joint attempt to sell some of the club to DIC in November, and a denial of ANY interest or bid from DIC at this stage, which we know to be incorrect. The statement is a perfect get out clause. None of it issues a concrete 'will never sell' style message, it's all about intentions and expectations, which we know mean not a fucking thing. He's a proven liar and deniar, and this is about the best news could expect from the man short of 100% confirmation of a sale.