cuppatea

The most galling thing about the Andy Carroll transfer was how painfully fucking unimaginative it was. A player with no real reputation in the game hits a brief run of good form and we make him one of the most expensive in the history of the sport. He was being linked with a £6m move to Stoke 6 months before we signed him and you can still go on Newcastle forums and read them discussing the lad at the time, expressing doubts over his ability to play in the Premier League and wondering if they might be able to hold out for a fee closer to £10m before getting shut. What made anyone at the club ever believe he was a £35m player or even had the potential to be? He doesn't possess great technique, speed, intelligence or movement and his attitude towards self improvement is shit. You look at Ronaldo who keeps himself in absolute peak physical condition and is constantly looking to improve his technique and expand his skilset and then compare that to Andy who has a lax attitude towards training and openly admits he "likes a drink". How many truly world class athletes in this day and age (Messi, Ronaldo, Bolt, Federer, Woods etc) make a habit of going out and getting absolutely shitfaced, routinely seen staggering out of nightclubs in the early hours? It's like the last 20 years of sports development have been completely lost on him. At least with Aquilani he had given reason to believe he could be a top class player (which is why he's played for Roma, Juventus, Milan and earned 26 caps for Italy), which is more than could be said for West Ham's Andy Carroll. If our signings this summer don't work out I don't feel it would be for lack of research, which certainly seems to have been the case with 'Big Andy'. In fact offering silly money for whichever flavour of the month Premier League player had hit a run of good form (a sure-fire way to minimize value for money) seemed to be the entire basis for our transfer strategy under Kenny and Comolli. Absolutely fucking appalling piece of business and everyone involved in it from our end should be ashamed.

He's certainly the worst transfer in the club's history, money wise, and quite possibly the sport as a whole. Never has a player been signed for so much with so little justification. Comolli should have been sacked on the spot when he suggested we pay £35m for the lad and if Kenny backed the deal he at the very least should have had his input on transfers greatly restricted.

He signed players he was familiar with upon first entering the job, as is quite common and since then he's had a full year to assess what we need and who is available to fill those roles. It's strange to not only give the manager no credit for our signings but actually use how promising they are as proof that he's clueless.

How have you come to the conclusion he "knows nothing about the qualities of foreign players"? That's quite a bizarre statement.

When Rafa was at Valencia, Barcelona finished 4th, 6th and 2nd, and Real Madrid finished 3rd, 1st and 4th, they hardly overthrew these 2 behemoths of world football. Barca were shit at the time and Real weren't much better domestically, Deportivo were probably better than both.

For someone who used to spend hours berating anyone who would make even the slightest negative comment in RAWK post-match threads under Rafa and Kenny you aren't half a boring, tedious, negative cunt under Rodgers.

It's probably difficult for people who don't watch Liverpool every week to understand just how shit at tackling Charlie Adam actually is.

If making a limited target man one of the most expensive players in the history of the sport based on a brief run of good form isn't the worst signing the club has ever made it's certainly up there.

You reckon the cheap option was to incur expensive payouts by sacking half our staff then spending millions more to replace them? You reckon a new manager will require less money to build his own team than one who could have reasonably been told "you've already wasted a shit load of money, work with what you've got"? You reckon sacking a legend who the fans firmly supported despite our worst league performance in half a century and hiring an unfancied manager who the same fans will tear to pieces for the same level of performance shows they're happy to settle for mediocrity? The cheap, easy, unambitious option would have been to leave Kenny in charge, sacking him indicates they're not going to let sentiment stand in the way of their desire for success.

Completely disagree with that. There was a very noticeable and very significant shift in the attitude towards FSG following the sacking of Kenny. That's the point at which mostly good will turned to ire.

Every signing is a gamble, regardless of which leagues they've played in. I'd rather completely disregard Premier League experience than pay a massive premium for it when it has been shown time and time again that it counts for absolutely fuck all.

No one on here has a fucking clue about the ability or suitability of any of the candidates involved, for fans it all comes down something as simple and mindless as "how many trophies has he won, how good is the team he's managing now?" This would be the average fan's assessment of the managerial ability of Jurgen Klopp: First 9 years of his career: Shit, talentless, clueless cunt, doesn't know what the fuck he's doing, would destroy the club if he ever came here. Wins the Bundesliga in his 10th year of management: Cracking manager that bloke, wouldn't mind him at Liverpool. If you want to say Rodgers is a gamble then that's fair enough (although any managerial appointment is a gamble) but to guarantee his failure based on the fact he hasn't managed a top team before is fucking ludicrous.

Jesus Christ, fans really are stupid enough to believe that by appointing a manager we will become whatever team they were previously managing. That's why everyone was wanking themselves into a frenzy at the idea of us getting Guardiola, not because they rated his ability or thought his situation at Barca was applicable here but because they genuinely believed that if we brought him in, we would be like Barcelona, just like they think if we hire Rodgers we will become Swansea. It's fucking comical.

Well that's a load of misinformed, factually incorrect bollocks, isn't it? Klopp got relegated with Mainz, failed to win promotion and then resigned. Rafa got sacked at Vallodolid and Osasuna, promoted and then relegated at Extremadura and then promoted at Tenerife. His top flight win rate prior to Valencia was a whopping 18%. Mourinho had fuck all experience when Porto hired him, having not even completed a full season at either of his previous 2 clubs. If we'd hired any of them when Dortmund, Valencia or Porto did you'd be kicking off and it'd have fuck all to do with their managerial ability or suitability for the job.

That's interesting because in the poll last summer (http://www.liverpoolway.co.uk/forum/ff-football-forum/101177-where-do-you-think-liverpool-will-finish-next-season.html) you were one of the 35% who predicted we would win the league. You could have looked a right clever bastard being one of the 4% who said we'd finish outside the top 4, or the <1% accurately predicting we'd finish outside the top 7.

What kind of delusional, elitist bollocks is that? Valencia had just been to 2 Champions League finals when they hired Rafa, while we've spent the last 3 seasons languishing in midtable. Players and managers want to win big trophies and they'll go wherever that is most likely to happen, that's why Ancelotti is at PSG (which didn't even exist when he was a lad) and not St.Etienne. That's why Mancini is at City and not Leeds. Even if you're right and we have our pick of the bunch due to our history (which, sorry mate, isn't nearly as big a pull as things like money, Champions League football, world class players etc), that just gives us more options, it doesn't force any of those options upon us. If FSG run the rule over a wide range of managers and decide one without a glamorous CV is best suited for the job, should he be looked over just because the people on TLW don't think he's high profile enough? If hiring managers was as mindless as just taking the bloke with the best CV every time then Arsenal would have never got Wenger, Milan would have never got Allegri and Barca would have never got Guardiola but then I suppose those aren't big clubs like ours so they can afford to hire unproven managers as well.

Makes you wonder what the fuck Valencia were thinking hiring an unsuccessful no-mark like Benitez to break the Barca/Real duopoly in the first place, everyone on TLW knows that is a sure fire way to guarantee failure.

Why do people keep saying Kenny was sacked for not qualifying for the Champions League, as though we missed out by a point? We were closer to the relegation zone, with our lowest ever Premier League points total.

Every poll on this and other Liverpool forums had us comfortably finishing in the top 4 last season, if not winning the title. Only the most pessimistic members of our fan base said we'd be 5th and not even the most negative cunt on the planet thought we'd end up behind the likes of Newcastle and Everton in 8th. The young lad in me who grew up with pictures of Kenny Dalglish on his wall is gutted he was sacked, but the bloke who had to witness our worst league campaign in decades last season hoped more than believed he was going to set things right in the coming months. As much as I didn't want Kenny sacked I don't think it's without justification that he was and while Martinez wouldn't have been my first choice as his replacement, I'm willing to give him a chance to prove himself if he gets the job.

I can only imagine the hysteria on here if we'd appointed Benitez when Valencia did, or Allegri when Milan did, or Guardiola when Barca did, or Wenger when Arsenal did, or Mourinho when Porto did, or Klopp when Dortmund did etc.

If the owners are at all competent (big if for some, I suppose) then it doesn't just come down to pure guesswork. They have a wealth of information available to them and direct access to all of the candidates which should allow them to make an informed decision about who is and who isn't suitable for the job. It's actually quite common on the continent for big clubs to take a punt on relatively unproven managers but our fans seem to think we're above that. Allegri had won fuck all and never managed in Europe before Milan gave him a chance and he delivered their first league title in 7 years. Benitez's managerial record was awful before Valencia gambled on him and he was hugely successful for them. Guardiola had never managed before Barca, Mourinho had barely any experience before Porto etc.

The ammunition for Kenny's sacking came from him overseeing our worst league campaign in decades, not from the fans who, considering how horrendously bad we were in the league, remained extremely supportive of him throughout the season. I was gutted when I heard the news about Kenny's sacking but let's not understate how shit we were. Go back and read the "where will we finish?" threads from last summer; there were far more fans tipping us to win the title than finish outside the top 4. To finish 8th would have been unthinkable after ridding ourselves of H&G, Hodgson, investing significantly in the squad, having the fans and players united behind a popular manager, with the form we showed at the back end of the previous season, having no European football to distract us etc. A league campaign that was supposed to see us return to near the top of the table instead ended with us scrapping with Fulham for 8th place. Kenny is literally the only person alive who could have fallen so far short of what was expected and still maintained fan support. If the owners were happy to settle for mediocrity it would have been far easier to leave an under-performing but still extremely popular club legend in charge of the team than incur the wrath of the fans by sacking him and appointing a young, somewhat unproven manager in his place.

I was sure that link wasn't real and that post was a piss take. How the fuck is that a news story?

How about Rafa, then? Sacked in his first 2 jobs, relegated in his 3rd and had only scraped promotion in his 4th before being given the Valencia job (coming off 2 Champions League final appearances) amidst vehement opposition from their fans?

More to come, apparently.