diego

They weren't silly fouls they were silly referee decisions. Lucas was immense.

So how come you have the vocabulary of a demented fish-wife?

Well maybe not everyone. You for example would probably prefer to read your own jaded, content-free posts over and over again.

Tomkins deserves praise for earning the invitation from Raf. But the article was disappointing in that he was unable to reveal many of the specifics he says they discussed. It was also too self-promoting. Even so there were a few crumbs. On the subject of Alonso. It confirms what some of us already knew. The 2008 attempt to sell him arose not only because of his mediocre form for the previous two years but also because Alonso was already making noises in 2007/2008 about being dissatisfied and wanting to move on. Tomkins does not mention that Rafa discussed it all with Alonso in 2008 and they both agreed to the attempted sale to Juventus or to any team Alonso would approve. So in that sense Alonso did not want to move to Spain, exclusively, as Tomkins said, he just wanted to move and was disappointed when Juventus would not meet Rafa's valuation. Although Tomkins does not mention it, Alonso did not like the attempt to buy Barry as his potential replacement or rival and that further soured his attitude to LFC. The Tompkins article also fleshes out the positive reasons why Rafa wanted Barry - to replace Alonso in 2008 with a different type of player who would also boost the number of home-grown players for CL qualification and in 2009 to play in the same team with Alonso. We might be a lot better off now if the club had given Rafa the money to buy Barry in 2008. But we could not and should not have paid the Man City level fee and wages in 2009. I also like that Rafa confirmed that Aquilani was 17 million not the 20 million often quoted. I wish he had been equally forthcoming on the Johnson price which was not 18 million but 16 million and change. However he did quote Rafa as saying that many of the fees quoted in the press are over-estimates. I also found Rafa's analysis of the Houllier's heritage very interesting. He judged that more than 50 players at the club were below standard. This gives a new dimension to the tension between Rafa and the old guard at Melwood and the Academy. Although Tomkins was disguising most of the names, its good to know Rafa is taking such a keen interest in the prospects of some of the younger players.

While I agree that Rafa will turn it around and there is nobody better than him, I think the more pertinent question is will Carragher and Gerrard turn their form around. I think Carragher will - but will not reach his previous levels of consistency. I'm not so sure about Gerrard. His priority seems to be Ingerland now.

Well if you say so I won't disagree.

Let's see if I understand the point of this thread. We are shipping water so lets sink the boat. Is that it? Rafa isn't injured, exhausted by international duty or off form - that's the senior players. Rafa isn't playing fast and loose with the club's finances and reputation - that's the owners. Rafa isn't whining in the press, wringing his hands and crying doomsday - that's former LFC players and other assorted hangers-on and supporters with an agenda. Rafa is the only person keeping his head, analyzing cooly, using our resources wisely and steering us in the right direction. And he can be relied on to do all of that. Sometimes circumstances converge to conspire against the best-laid plans. Torres and the other Spaniards came back from the Confederation Cup knackered. They never got to have a proper rest or a proper pre-season. The tour to Asia did not help. Alonso's long drawn-out denial that he wanted a transfer was unsettling. His eventual transfer disturbed a settled team. Carragher has been off-form. It may not have been so bad if Sami was around to take up the slack until he recovered - but he wasn't. Skrtel was injured and took some time to recover his fitness and form. Agger was injured. Gerrard was in court before the season began and has admitted it shook him to his core. He has not been right all season. Even his verbal contributions have been depressed except when talking about England. His hanging around the England camp after he had been injured did not help. The same could be said of Torres and Spain. Kuyt has also been stressed and knocked about on international duty and Benny has been tired by all the travel associated with it. Mascherano has been out of sorts after a summer of lobbying for a transfer, and has then been affected by the nervous stress associated with captaining Argentina under the volatile Maradonna and intense press scrutiny and physically tired by a lot of long-distance travel to internationals. Riera was injured and did not get a proper pre-season. Now Johnson is injured. When negative circumstances converge some panic. But we are lucky to have one of the finest managers in the world who has been around the block a few times. He will analyse the causes and do what is needed to adjust subject only to the availability of the players. We played well against Chelsea. We played quite well against Lyon - at least for the first 65 minutes. Lucas is stronger and better than last season. So is Ngog. Voronin is not a bad third-choice forward. Kelly is coming into his own. Our problems are not down to the manager or to the fringe players but to the lack of fitness and drive of the senior players which is due - in large part - to the demands placed on them by their national teams.

Sometimes circumstances converge to conspire against the best-laid plans. Torres and the other Spaniards came back from the Confederation Cup knackered. They never got to have a proper rest or a proper pre-season. The tour to Asia did not help. Alonso's long drawn-out denial that he wanted a transfer was unsettling. His eventual transfer disturbed a settled team. Carragher has been off-form. It may not have been so bad if Sami was around to take up the slack until he recovered - but he wasn't. Skrtel was injured and took some time to recover his fitness and form. Agger was injured. Gerrard was in court before the season began and has admitted it shook him to his core. He has not been right all season. Even his verbal contributions have been depressed except when talking about England. His hanging around the England camp after he had been injured did not help. The same could be said of Torres and Spain. Kuyt has also been stressed and knocked about on international duty and Benny has been tired by all the travel associated with it. Mascherano has been out of sorts after a summer of lobbying for a transfer, and has then been affected by the nervous stress associated with captaining Argentina under the volatile Maradonna and intense press scrutiny and physically tired by a lot of long-distance travel to internationals. Riera was injured and did not get a proper pre-season. Now Johnson is injured. When negative circumstances converge some panic. But we are lucky to have one of the finest managers in the world who has been around the block a few times. He will analyse the causes and do what is needed to adjust subject only to the availability of the players. We played well against Chelsea. We played quite well against Lyon - at least for the first 65 minutes. Lucas is stronger and better than last season. So is Ngog. Voronin is not a bad third-choice forward. Kelly is coming into his own. Our problems are not down to the manager or to the fringe players but to the lack of fitness and drive of the senior players which is due - in large part - to the demands placed on them by their national teams.

I recall being banned from several forums when Owen played for us. I said then that a weak Houllier bought into the media hype about him and tried to curry favour with the public by making him an automatic selection (when he was fit) and to justify that he denigrated Fowler and forced him out. I also said that the presence of Owen meant we missed having a forward who could contribute to build-up, distribution and holding the ball. It meant we needed a lampost forward like Heskey to take the pressure of him and bounce balls of his head, arse and elbow for him to run unto. And this in turn meant we needed to hoof the ball far too much. This suited Carragher and Gerrard fine who were both too much under Owen's influence and too much in awe of his self-marketing. It also meant we missed almost 50% of the penalties Owen took. Owen also had the highest ratio of misses to clear-cut chances of any forward in the Premier League. His highest total of 19 league goal in only one season (including penalties) never justified the exaggerated praise and wages he was afforded. They were my footballing reasons. I never mentioned that I also happen to have been acquainted with him since he was about 15 when he lusted after a positon at Man Utd (as he has recently confirmed...sort of). In my opinion he was always a self-centered little snot and I could never understand why the supporters could not see that.

We would be a lot better off now if it had come off. Its another case of the manager knowing better than the owners and some fans.

The goal should have been disallowed at the time and should be disallowed now, or should justify a replay. Its got nothing to do with who was in the team or how badly we played. Allowing it to stand weakens the rule about extraneous objects on the pitch which can affect play. It is also an invitation to yobs everywhere to fling beach balls, or whatever, unto the pitch in the hope of affecting the dynamics of the play.

It seems to be forgotten by some that it was Rafa who bought Alonso, and who motivated him to produce a first-class performance last season, and who privately and publicly urged him to stay even after Alonso had done a secret deal with Real Madrid in April for much higher wages, and it was Rafa who resisted his old club Real Madrid on the deal and forced them to pay a fee more than double the fee Rafa had originally paid for Alonso and more than one third larger than the fee Alonso and Real Madrid were secretly trying to wangle.

Don't go to Church. Don't know anyone who goes to jumble sales. Do you and John troll them now to find enemies of Rafa? Any luck?

Most people I know think Juan Galonso is an anti-Rafa obsessive who believes in the old Arab motto "the enemy of Rafa is my friend". He looks for Rafa's enemies everywhere - he makes them up if necessary.

Such cynical nonsense. Cynical because the poster is trying, as usual, to create the false impression that their is a consensus against Rafa, even though Colllymore is he of whom Fowler said "he talks out of his arse". He was much disliked at Anfield by the other players.

The article is rubbish. One of its premises is that Rafa is a cold-fish who does not give personal support to the players - a myth based largely on some gash comments Gerrard made in one of his money-earning books (as though his salary was not enough compensation). Its also based on a false version of the facts about Alonso absenting himself from an important game when his wife was giving birth. Both the Alonso and Gerrard comments were self-serving. The facts are that Rafa compliments all the players both in the dressing room, on the training grounds and in public interviews. He always deals with the positives of their performance as well as the negatives. As Gerrard and Carragher ought to know he goes out of his way to speak highly of them when they are being publicly criticized, such as when Gerrard was charged with assault and when Carragher was being written-off by many supporters and many in the press. Pennant claimed that Rafa had a special relationship with those two. While that is an overstatement he does pay them a lot of respect and he has frequently said that the role of local players is crucial to the spirit of the club and the character of the team on the pitch. Paradoxically, some of the criticism of Rafa on this and other fora is that he will not speak negatively of a Babel or Lucas or Deggen etc. As a good manager he stresses the importance of the team and tries to ensure that all players are recognized for their contributions. He also protects them against unfair comment. He has appointed Sammy Lee and Kenny to communicate with players and managers one of the most supportive staffs in the Premier League. After the early defeats he had every right to say that the senior players should take responsibility. If he had said anything else then he would be accused of being Houllier-like in not recognizing poor performance and the cause of it. In doing so he had to go against the grain of opinion on many fora and in the press which was baying for Lucas blood - when Lucas was not responsible for the team's poor performance. Whatever respect he pays Gerrard it never seems to be enough. He still hankers after "uncle Houllier" who never stopped buttering him up. In my view Gerrard has been below form - and one of the worst performers in the game against Chelsea. Ancelloti boasted that his plan to starve Gerrard worked. He didn't need a plan - Gerrard has been ambling around for about eight games. I wonder whether his mind is on England and the World Cup?

The only logical reason a company would announce to the world that it is willing to pay more than something is worth and more than a potential seller has asked for is it knows damn well it isn't going to make a real offer in private but wants the world to think it could afford it if it wanted it. The way this company is running its mouth off and playing fast and loose with LFC information does not bode well. Possibly it hopes that if it kicks up enough noise it might galvanise some others in Saudi Arabia to pony up the cash - and that would be a coup for this relatively small investment company. But I would not let such a company invest my cash. I hate the idea of such loud mouths being involved with LFC. I think the investment will come from elsewhere - different parts of the world or even different parties in Saudi Arabia.

Redzawi - it looks like the Prince got himself worldwide free publicity thanks to his PR release in Saudi Arabia. But he got a lot more from the News of the World whose "sucker" article by Bascombe seems to have fuelled most of the false UK and North American stories. While you are right to suggest that the Prince's high profile appearance and PR campaign was planned for his own benefit, the fact is that Gillett cooperated with it. He knew that the pictures would be splashed all over the press and knew there would be at least speculation. My guess is that he wanted that. Showing a Saudi Prince around Anfield is one way of scaring up other potential investors who may have been holding back.

Uh?

Here is the text of the Barrett article: September 28, 2009 Saudi interest comes as a surprise to Liverpool Tony Barrett * Saudi interest comes as a surprise to Liverpool | Liverpool - Times Online Neither George Gillett Jr nor Tom Hicks, the co-owners of Liverpool, is expecting imminent investment in the club from Prince Faisal bin Fahd bin Abdullah al-Saud, a member of the Saudi Royal Family, despite reports to the contrary over the weekend. Hicks and Gillett are in ongoing talks with a number of potential third-party investors as they seek first to reduce Liverpool’s £250 million debt and second to bring in the kind of sizeable cash injection needed to finance the club’s move from Anfield to a long-planned new stadium on nearby Stanley Park. Prince Faisal, who visited the club’s academy in Kirkby on Saturday before attending Liverpool’s home match against Hull City, is the latest potential investor to express an interest in taking a stake in the club and his public admission to this effect has come as a surprise to Hicks in particular, but also to Gillett. According to a report in Saudi Al-Riyadh, the newspaper, Prince Faisal, who chairs Fama Group, the Saudi holding company, and the F6 Sports Investment Firm, is willing to take a stake in Liverpool of up to 50 per cent for a fee in the region of £200-350 million. Related Links * Hicks intensifies search for new investors * Hicks signals era of stability at Anfield * Liverpool’s £80m shirt deal equals biggest ever The high-profile nature of his reported interest, which began on Friday night with a news item on television in Saudi Arabia, has taken the Liverpool hierarchy aback, particularly Gillett who invited Prince Faisal to Merseyside as his guest to open negotiations about proposed Nascar and Liverpool academy initiatives in the Middle East. Gillett is holding talks with a number of interested parties at present and, as yet, there is still to be an official approach from Prince Faisal or any other members of the Saudi Royal Family. In the past two years, Hicks and Gillett have entertained a number of potential investors at Anfield, but a deal is yet to materialise and The Times understands that Gillett held talks with another interested party in London last night. Gillett’s visit to Merseyside was not without controversy as members of the Spirit Of Shankly (SOS) fans group, which has long been opposed to his and Hicks’s regime, protested against the American ownership of Liverpool at the club’s Melwood training ground. An attempt to stage a similar protest at Anfield during the Hull game was stifled when flags and banners criticising Hicks and Gillett were seized by Merseyside Police shortly after they were unfurled in the Kop stand. Saudi interest comes as a surprise to Liverpool | Liverpool - Times Online

Bascombe did not begin to write his dramatic story about the Saudi investment until it appeared on here and other sites. He then spun it shamelessly without any quotes or sources into a battle between Hicks and Gillett and threw a few knowing comments about Rafa in the process. But according to Tony Barret and LFC the entire story is tripe. So the Bascombe method seems to be - pinch stuff off web-sites at the last minute before the Saturday night deadline, squeeze it into his hackneyed formula and then take the money and run. ________________________________ September 28, 2009 Saudi interest comes as a surprise to Liverpool Tony Barrett * Recommend? Neither George Gillett Jr nor Tom Hicks, the co-owners of Liverpool, is expecting imminent investment in the club from Prince Faisal bin Fahd bin Abdullah al-Saud, a member of the Saudi Royal Family, despite reports to the contrary over the weekend. Hicks and Gillett are in ongoing talks with a number of potential third-party investors as they seek first to reduce Liverpool’s £250 million debt and second to bring in the kind of sizeable cash injection needed to finance the club’s move from Anfield to a long-planned new stadium on nearby Stanley Park. Prince Faisal, who visited the club’s academy in Kirkby on Saturday before attending Liverpool’s home match against Hull City, is the latest potential investor to express an interest in taking a stake in the club and his public admission to this effect has come as a surprise to Hicks in particular, but also to Gillett. According to a report in Saudi Al-Riyadh, the newspaper, Prince Faisal, who chairs Fama Group, the Saudi holding company, and the F6 Sports Investment Firm, is willing to take a stake in Liverpool of up to 50 per cent for a fee in the region of £200-350 million. Related Links * Hicks intensifies search for new investors * Hicks signals era of stability at Anfield * Liverpool’s £80m shirt deal equals biggest ever The high-profile nature of his reported interest, which began on Friday night with a news item on television in Saudi Arabia, has taken the Liverpool hierarchy aback, particularly Gillett who invited Prince Faisal to Merseyside as his guest to open negotiations about proposed Nascar and Liverpool academy initiatives in the Middle East. Gillett is holding talks with a number of interested parties at present and, as yet, there is still to be an official approach from Prince Faisal or any other members of the Saudi Royal Family. In the past two years, Hicks and Gillett have entertained a number of potential investors at Anfield, but a deal is yet to materialise and The Times understands that Gillett held talks with another interested party in London last night. Gillett’s visit to Merseyside was not without controversy as members of the Spirit Of Shankly (SOS) fans group, which has long been opposed to his and Hicks’s regime, protested against the American ownership of Liverpool at the club’s Melwood training ground. An attempt to stage a similar protest at Anfield during the Hull game was stifled when flags and banners criticising Hicks and Gillett were seized by Merseyside Police shortly after they were unfurled in the Kop stand.

The truth appears to be entirely different according to this story from Tony Barret:

Even though G&H may not want to admit it, they have responded positively to the pressure brought by SOS and other activist supporters. I think the bankers have, too. All that has been good for the club. H&G continuing ownership is still a threat to the stability and long-term success of the club. But if supporters can continue to educate them and to pressure them into taking constructive decisions, then the issue of who owns the club becomes less urgent. There is no Utopian ownership. Every type of ownership and every type of owner has its own dangers.

10% of the annual amount is subject to LFC meeting certain performance targets, according to an article in Business Section of the The Telegraph - which, incidentally, also criticizes Standard Charter for doing the deal.

These charts look like they are directed at potential investors or buyers - a diagrammatic summary of a written prospectus. A prospectus must be reasonable which is usually interpreted to mean it must be on the conservative side with all assumptions supported. This presentation would not be for existing shareholders because there are only two of them and neither need a diagram to explain the books and future projections of cash-flow. I would think there will be a separate presentation on the stadium. BTW someone suggested above that if they had started to build the stadium when they promised it would be nearing completion now but not producing any revenue and that this would mean a debt of 700 million serviced by existing revenues from the existing stadium. That's not how it works. A construction loan typically includes "soft costs" which include all the interest payments on the construction loan. It is only when the new stadium is earning revenue that the construction loan would be retired and replaced by a permanent mortgage. The extra revenues from the new stadium would then service the permanent financing.