Megadrive Man

At the moment I still think Rafa is the right man for us. Surely people must see that Rafa has overachieved since he's been here, and regardless of who the manager is, we will never be able to go forward as a club whilst Hicks and Gillett are still here!

Football has been destroyed by the money men, who constantly remind us that unless you're challenging for the Title or in the Champions League you're essentially a nobody. I'm 22 years old and followed the Reds for as long as I can remember. Some of my happiest early reds memory's are of our cup winners cup campaigns, playing the likes of Mypa 47 and Sion and seeing some brilliant high scoring games and wonder goals , Including Robbie Fowler's greatest ever strike in my opinion. I'm sure for many fans this period was seen as a low for our Club, we were still recovering from the Souness era and whilst entertaining, we never looked likely of winning the major prizes, yet back then I felt much prouder to be a Liverpool fan than I do now. The Core of this club is rotten, Football in general is just a soulless moneymaking exercise, Grade A morons such as Jamie Redknapp, Matt Le Tisser and Paul Merson harp on about Torres and Mascherano not sticking around if we miss out on Champions League football, Good! Is that all football is these days? As far as I'm concerned I will continue to support Liverpool football club, through the bad times and the good,and as much as every defeat hurts right now I can take comfort from the fact that it may not be such a bad thing in the long run as a huge financial meltdown, might just be the best thing that could happen to us now.

You make some very good points Reacher. The longer these clowns stay in charge, the worse we are going to get. From what i've read of their plans, we will get 20 million every summer, for the next 5 years to spend on transfers and contract renewals. plus any money from selling players will go into the transfer kitty. So we've got 100 million over 5 years, when some clubs will be spending more than that in one year! Plus, by selling our best players we will never have a good squad of players, unless most of our youth players develope into fantastic players. The other major factor for me is that Gerrard and Carragher have only got a few more seaons left at the top level, and once they retire, we won't be able to replace them!

A really fantastic prospect, but much like Babel or Mark Gonzalez, he's not a 'rafa' type player and I don't think he'd work out here. I fear he will end up going to one of our biggest rivals and being a major success.

All teams need a mixture of hard working players and flair players. This season, because of the sales of Alonso and Keane, and persistant Injury problems to Aquilani, Gerrard, Torres, Riera, Aurelio and Agger we have found ourselves with an uneven balance of workers to flair players.

If he wants more Anfield action, there's plenty he could be doing. I'm sure the bogs could do with a right good clean.

Why league 2???? They should have to start at the very bottom on the non league system and work the way up like any other team would have to.

I can't believe some of the things i've read on here, such as we're bound to go on a ten match winning streak and will easily finish in the top 4! Based on what????? In our next 4 league games we play City, Everton and Arsenal, based on current form we could just as easily lose all 3 of those!

anyone know any good links for the game, Pm please

No Voronin in the squad?????

Can anybody Pm me please, I completely forgot it was on ESPn!

Did anyone watch the Birmingham Man City game on Sunday, Birmingham outplayed them and should of won the game by 3 or 4 goals. Looks likely we'll be without Gerrard and Torres for this game, which probably means Kuyt and N'gog up front and also we have problems at the back, maybe a first league start for Darby at rightback. Its ridiculous to say it but Birmingham at home is now a very tricky fixture for us! Whats even more ridiculous is that they will have around 40 million more than us to spend in January! Depressing times indeed

We are in serious danger of missing out on the knockout stages of this years champions league and will struggle to finish in the top four this season, in my opinion. This will mean us missing out on upto 50 million, which clearly we cannot afford to do. Realisticly we would probably have to sell Macherano in the summer, for around 15 million considering he only has 12 months to run on his contact at this stage, and clear out some of the squad players, voronin, degan, babel etc How much would we have to spend? Not much, if anything! Certainly not enough to make us a stronger team than we are now. Also, none of the players in the reserve team really look anything special , well nowhere near the standard we'd require to improve the first team, so all in all its not looking too good.

Benitaur has hit the nail on the head. We are now having to sell players just to finance new contracts for current players! Even teams like Sunderland have more money to spend than we do!

200 million over 6 seasons is roughly 33 million a season, which is the amount that Chelsea United and even Man city have been spending on 1 player! Not to mention that Rafa has had to raise most of these funds by selling players!

Why do you say that? Most of Rafa's big money signings have been top players for us. Torres,Mascherano, Johnson etc. Its beacuse of a lack of funds that Rafa has had to resort to signing bosman players such as Voronin, Degan etc Do you honestly think if we had money Rafa ever would of signed these players?

It would of paid for itself in a few years! I honestly think it will be a long time before we move to a new stadiumnow.

I’ve been expecting our current predicament for a while now. I thought we might be ok this season, and maybe next, but I think this will be the year we fall away and ‘the big four’ is no more. The reason why? Is it Rafa’s fault? No, not in my opinion, he has done an amazing job just by keeping us in contention for all these years Is it the current owners fault? Not entirely, yes they have played a huge part in finishing us off so to speak, but they should never have been sold the club in the first place. Since the introduction of the Premiership we have slowly began to fall behind our rivals and allow lesser clubs to overtake us. I believe us currently, to be behind United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Man City and eventually Tottenham once they build their new stadium. Much as I hate to say it, United have it all, Massive Stadium, World class players and crucially old sir Alex whiskey nose has always been backed by the board and been allowed to sign any players he’s wanted, when he’s wanted them. Chelsea have been backed by the billions of Abramovich who has allowed countless different managers to spend as much as they want, and unlike Rafa without having to sell anyone to fund the deals. Arsenal haven’t spent crazy money like the likes of United Chelsea and City, But Wenger has been backed despite not winning anything of late and not challenging for the title either. Wenger is now reaping the rewards of ten years of being at the club and bringing through young players that the board have backed him to splash the cash on. Arsenal also have their new stadium up and running whilst ours is constantly fobbed off and put onto the backburner. Manchester City had a net spend of over 100 million this summer, ours was 0 million. We simply cannot compete with their financial resources and won’t be able to under current ownership. Strangely I am actually looking forward to what’s coming next for us. It could be a grim few years, maybe even longer but I think eventually we will come back stronger and create a new era of success for Liverpool football Club

What Resources??? At some point over the past ten years, Man United, Chelsea and Now Man City have paid huge transfers and wages for players, whilst we have had to fill our squad with bargain basement players, because these clubs have so much more money than us! Rafa has had to make do this summer, as yet again he has not been backed, despite the owners insisting he would be!

So the strongest possible team we could play on wednesday night would be :- ---------------Reina-------------- -Carragher-kyrgiakos-Agger-Insua- -------Mascherano--Aquilani------ ------Kuyt--Lucas--Benayoun---- -------------Torres-------------

If we don't qualify from the Champions League group stages, then we will not get any money, no question. 12 million is maybe enough to buy one decent player, to put it in perspective Birmingham City will get 40 million to spend in January so lets hope we don't get into a bidding war with them.

But what choice did he have? Take for example the signing of Kyrgiakos. Benitez was told he had only 2 million to spend, even If he sold some other squad players! This is why we kept Dossena and Voronin, because he wasn't to be given the money to spend on new signings. The Reason we have had to bring in so many mid table players is because Benitez has had to try and build a squad of players with less money than some managers can spend on one player!

No surprise at all. Was our best defender when he played here last season in my opinion. After the first couple of games this season I would have dropped Carragher and made Sami first choice if he were still here.

The problem we have this year, is that we have a poorer squad than United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs, and Man City. Without Gerrard and Torres, you could argue that we are also behind Villa, Sunderland and Everton.

I think i'm right in saying that when they're at home we must be away if we play on the same day? Its strange how they always have a nice home fixture after an International break or tricky away champions league game.