cuppatea

An Olympic judoka moves into a sport with zero competition and after beating up a few accountants and housewives, is hyped as the greatest female athlete to have ever lived and possibly the greatest fighter on the planet, of either gender. I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy watching her flail about like a spaz while she gets repeatedly punched in the face and then KO'd.

I like The Stone Roses but they released a great debut, turned into a Led Zeppelin tribute act for a mediocre second album and then split up. They're behind Oasis in the pantheon of great British bands and don't belong in the conversation with The Beatles and Led Zeppelin.

Adebayor had one (admittedly decent) season in the first team before being frozen out of the side, hawked out on loan (as they continued to pay his enormous wages) and then sold at a £20m loss 2 years later. He was a fucking disaster for them, or would have been if they didn't have an endless pot of money. Balotelli scored 30 in 80 before being sold at a loss. That's hardly "banging them in for fun". Jovetic scored 11 goals in 2 years at the club and you could probably count his number of good games for them on one hand. They've spent the last 3 years paying the former Barcelona sporting director a small fortune and arming him with an unlimited transfer and wage budget and their success rate in the market has been no higher than ours. In fact the only way they've found any success at all is with players out of our transfer and wage budget and who wouldn't come here regardless. It's a similar story with all of the top 4 in the Premier League, they either pay big on established quality that we can't attract or they take speculative punts in the £10-20m region and get as many wrong as we do.

Sorry, forgot about him. That's £300m on twelve strikers in six years, seven of whom were fucked off out on loan within two years of arriving, with only £55m recouped in sales, despite only two still being in the squad now.

That just reinforces my point, really. We spend £20m on a position and there's a sense of bewilderment and outrage that it isn't then sorted for the forseeable future. Here's Man City's spending on strikers since the Mansour takeover: Jo £18m Robinho £32.5m Santa Cruz £17.5m Adebayor £25m Tevez £25.5m Balotelli £24.5m Dzeko £27m Aguero £38m Jovetic £25.8m Negredo £20.6m Bony £28m Total: £282.4m This is a club with all of the money in the world to spend on fees, wages and scouting and yet the only one on that list who wasn't sold at a loss after a few years (besides Bony, who almost certainly will be) is Aguero, who cost more than we've ever spent on a player, is on higher wages than we've ever given to a player and whose status in the game is such that he was and is completely out of our reach, even if we somehow could afford him. At the top of the Premier League, £20m is a speculative punt; the kind you will take 4 or 5 times and be happy if one of them works out for you. Anyone who thinks that going forward every £20m signing we make is going to be a massive hit is living in a dream land. If it was that easy, the 4 clubs in the league who have far greater resources than us would be hoovering them up, rather than spending £30m on squad players, £40-50m on elite teenagers and £60m on proven top class (which still doesn't guarantee success - see Di Maria at Man United).

He worked under a director of football at Dortmund whose job it was to identify and sign players. Arguably their signings got worse as Klopp's influence at the club rose, with his last season there being a disaster, transfer-wise. He should have the final word on transfers and hopefully won't butt heads with the committee the way Rodgers did but they're still going to have a massive input on our signings. For what it's worth, I don't think we've been much/any worse than the clubs above us in terms of transfers; our fans just expect us to do far more with far less. It would take a staggering level of incompetence from clubs like United and City for them to assemble inferior squads to us when they have double our resources and virtually every player on the planet would rather go there than here.

Wasn't Zorc in charge of all transfers at Dortmund? I'm sure Klopp will have had some input, as he will here, but the transfer committee will still be doing the majority of the work, I would imagine.

If Spurs finish top 4 this season then we'll go into the next one as 6th favourites. Chelsea's collapse provides a golden opportunity that doesn't come around too often in this league.

The team that we were involved in a closely fought battle for 4th with last season and finished miles ahead of the year before finished 40 points ahead of us before Rodgers arrived and spent hundreds of millions more than us during his time here. On what basis do you think he was a hapless fraud who blew a fortune? We closed an enourmous gap on the teams at the top whilst operating on a fraction of their budget.

I got far more joy out of watching us batter teams every week, playing scintillating football than I did from a good cup run amidst months of dreadful league form that was painful to watch, even if the latter yielded a trophy at the end. I don't think the kicking Rodgers gets on here does Klopp any favours. People genuinely seem to believe that the expected result for a man taking over the 8th best team in the country and being given half the budget of the clubs miles above us is that we easily cruise past those sides and only an incredible level of managerial incompetence could prevent such an easy task from being fulfilled. The reality is that Klopp faces an incredibly difficult job in getting us ahead of four teams with every conceivable advantage over us. If he does manage to get us above any of them or has us winning trophies then he faces an even more difficult task of maintaining that status as those clubs spend hunreds of millions on better players than we can hope to attract in order to reclaim their place. If he achieves this he deserves an enormous amount of credit for an incredibly difficult job well done, not a shrug of the shoulders and a "well, obviously any cunt except Rodgers can do that".

We have the fifth best squad in the league and one of the four that's better are currently in relegation form, so yes, there's a chance. We need at least one of Sturridge and Benteke to stay fit, though.

If they had appointed a big name 3 years ago, it's far more likely that bloke would be getting dog's abuse on here now than them leading the team from 8th to 1st with half the budget of the teams 40 points up the table.

He took over the 8th best team in the country and was given the 5th largest budget to overhaul sides that were already miles ahead of us and massively outspending us to stay there. He came closer to lifting the title than any other manager we've had in the Premier League era and has left a decent squad behind for his successor. He wasn't without his flaws and it was the right time for him to go but he certainly doesn't deserve some of the abuse he gets on here.

We have a squad overflowing with international footballers from strong footballing nations, which is more than can be said for 95% of the opposition we're likely to face in the Europa League. Our fringe players would walk into the starting XI of virtually every team in the competition.

You seem to have the reading comprehension of a goldfish.

We'd fallen absolutely miles adrift of the top teams by the time he took over and in his 2nd season he oversaw our best league campaign in decades, when no one gave us a prayer of even finishing top 4. I disagree with the idea he was out of his depth or the appointment was a mistake. Having already endured several years of abject shite before his arrival, I'd have gladly taken another 1 or 2 if it came coupled with the best, most entertaining Liverpool league campaign I've ever witnessed (and possibly will ever witness, barring a sugardaddy takeover). The whole thing had gone stale and it was the right time for him to go but he can hold his head up high with regards to his time here.

That's just rose tinted bollocks, really. Even the worst teams in the division are able to spend tens of millions of pounds on top class international footballers these days in a way that wasn't true of English football in the past and isn't true of any other league in Europe now.

Really impressed with the new lads so far. Early days yet but Milner, Benteke, Gomez and Clyne have been excellent in our opening 3 games.

Very good tonight, I thought. Certainly isn't the ale-house footballer some people were labelling him.

Started poorly but grew into the half and played some decent stuff in the last 20 minutes or so. The 4 new lads are looking impressive and Clyne in particular looks like a huge upgrade over Johnson. Lallana and Ibe have been poor again and probably have 15 minutes to save their place in the starting XI.

Michael Owen: "He's so difficult for a striker to play against, Smalling. He's so strong, you just can't get past him"

Let's face it, you've barely seen Lacazette play or, more likely, never seen him play at all and you certainly have no idea whether he'd be willing to come here or not or how much he'd cost. He said at the start of the summer (before announcing he wanted to stay another year at Lyon) that he would only consider a move to a big Champions League side and his chairman publicly mocked the idea of him signing for Liverpool, neither of which fits your narrative that they were all desperate for him to come here and only Rodgers' ego and stupidity has prevented it.

Arsenal spent more than us on both transfers and wages in Rodgers' first 3 years here. If they spent less than us before that then Rodgers saw no benefit from it because they were miles better by the time he took over. It shouldn't be a huge surprise that teams that were far better than us then and have spent far more than us since are still better than us now, despite the great shock and outrage this causes many of our fans. Arsenal have been able to achieve their par because there's never been any threat to it. City's arrival as a force coincided with our implosion under H&G and so they've had a free ride as far as finishing top 4 goes. They still managed to go 9 years without winning a trophy, however, which should give some idea of how difficult it is to win silverware in this country when you're not one of the top 2 or 3 teams (look at Spurs consistently finishing in the top 5 over the last decade but only winning a single league cup during that time for further proof).

What relevance does money spent 5 years ago under Hodgson have to Rodgers? Prior to this summer his net spend was below Arsenal and Chelsea's and well below half of both Manchester clubs. When you factor in wages then Man United have been spending £100m a year more than us, yet people think it's a scandal if we're not above them every season. It's alright saying Rodgers has spent a fortune (and he has) but when there are 4 teams in the league spending an even bigger fortune (a significantly bigger fortune in the case of 3 of them) and all those sides were miles ahead of us to begin with, then what exactly do you expect?

Man Utd spent about £300m more than us on transfer fees and wages in Rodgers' first 3 years here and they finished 37 points above us the year before he arrived. With a similar level of competence in management, they should be miles above us every season, yet we pushed them close last year and finished well above them the season before that. In a league that is dictated by finances at the top end, I don't have much faith in anyone cracking the top 4 without being at one of the 4 richest clubs but Rodgers has already proven he can perform massively above expectations in this league (albeit inconsistently), which is more than most can say.