The Guest

Why don't you tell us about that great pass Lucas did against Newcastle? It was great that wasn't it? That idiotic decision against Everton which would have worked out once in a million times basically encouraged Rafa to make more of them. Except everyone conveniently remembers the one that worked and not the hundreds of times they didn't. Changing Lucas for Mascherano when your chasing a game to win the league is basically not going to do a fucking dot and it didn't. If you can't see that you're a brainwashed cunt who can't think for himself. The funny thing is say Rafa had took Masch off and threw Keane or Ngog on and we won or even if we drew. I would be praising Rafa for it. You would also be praising Rafa for it because you've got no brain and can't think for yourself. To people like you whatever decision Rafa makes is the right one. You've got no opinion until Rafa tells you it. You seem to have spectacularly missed my point anyway (probably because you seen it wasn't a Rafa-bumming post so went into meltdown). I wasn't calling Rafa a bullshitter for making mistakes. I called him a bullshitter for actively making wrong decisions and then not explaining what he was playing at. Instead bullshitting the fans. It will probably piss a lot of people off me saying this but Rafa is not as good a manager as Wenger or Ferguson. They've had a long time at both their clubs and kept on having relative success. Their clubs are personified by the pair of them. Wenger is having a tough time of late but he has had the biggest impact on modern football across the world out of any manager in the past 20 years. I think somebody else said it on here. I feel as though whenever I talk to some Liverpool fans I end up being more critical of Rafa than I should because there is so many blind cunts who think he is god. Whenever I speak to fans of other clubs I won't hear a bad word said because the criticisms from them are always the same myths about him. He can be a top manager but I think long term he is an accident waiting to happen.

In Summary Rafa

Coming from you, that means so much.

People rip into the owners but thank god we don't have cretins like this anywhere near the club. Go and put Sky Sports News on and get your popcorn out you stupid cunt.

Strawman alert? I don't think you fully understand that phrase as I don't think it has any context or meaning here. Can you explain what you mean? I'll explain again what I mean, hopefully a bit clearer. We hired an actual Director of Football for, I think, the first time in the history of the club. We then went on to blow the biggest amount of money the club has ever blown on players which have been pretty useless for the club. The most successful clubs in English football have never required a DOF before and appear to not require one now. They appear good in theory for the exact reasons you mentioned but in practice it's quite the opposite. Managers of football teams are managers for a reason. Why have somebody who knows more about football than you're manager hired at the club but not managing your football team? If he doesn't know more about football than your manager then why the fuck would be appraising your managers performance. How do you know the "shadow advisors" are not better? Do you not think Man Utd and Arsenal owners have not had advisors like this over the years? There is no conflict with the manager then. This accountability thing is bollocks. If they give bad advice DOF or not they won't be paid for their advice again. As I said before it just becomes another person to take the blame as we have already seen. If you want accountability then let the manager do his job without his hands tied and then he is the accountable one.

Sorry that wasn't all aimed at you mate. It turned into a bit of a rant!

Absolute load of bollocks. He's gave the youth players a chance and he's given the club it's passing identity back. There is now a genuine philosophy behind what they are trying to achieve. Whether you think it's stupid or shit it's up to you but you can't deny it's there. A DOF like Commoli do you mean? That worked out well. All that fucking stupid position ends up being is somebody else to blame who ends up costing the club another shitoad of money without actually doing anything. If there is a DOF then he may as well be our manager ebcause obviously he knows more about football than the manager. It's the most fucking brainless thing in football. It's a complete contradiction. Rodgers at the end of the day will be judged on results and performances. The correct thing to do is give him the full season and evaluate things then. Results are obviously not good enough but then the owners need to make the decision about whether Rodgers is capable of improving them. The majority of the performances so far this season suggest yes he can. With additions to the squad we are not that far away. I don't know where you get the impression that Rodgers will be laughing about yesterday his whole demeanour suggests the opposite.

But the ones that were most successful were all given enough time. It's obviously a different ball game now in more ways than one. We are competing with lottery winners and Ferguson as well as our own history. Changing managers every season is what will happen unless we give Rodgers time and let him build his own team. We've set the bar with Hodgson and the King and it needs to be reversed. It's obviously not always the right decision to just stick with a manager whatever happens. You only have to look at Spurs to see how much they benefitted from getting rid of Ramos fairly quickly. In hindsight it was obviously the correct decision to get rid of Hodgson. Only time will tell if the Kenny decision was correct. The point is that there are good signs with Rodgers. It's not like he is some big name/reputation who basically just comes in doesn't learn the language and just picks the team and stuff is going wrong. If we had that we would probably not be in the premier league much longer. Our problems are much deeper than it all appears. We have got in a very hard working manager and he is involved in everything from helping the youth players to training etc. This is what we need. Everybody on the same page. That is exactly what he is working towards. Despite what that fucking whopper KOPOUT is trying to suggest Suarez signed a new deal not long ago as have two of the most promising youth players in England. Strange for someone who has lost the dressing room. Things aren't working instantly everyone can see that but surely people can also see the immense good that his hiring has done. Regardless of all the shit that people chat about Rafa and his great youth revolution and even Kenny's impact it has been Rodgers that has had the balls to play these lads. In the long term it will be great for the club. 1. Because the experience these players are gaining now will reap rewards in th ecoming years and 2. Liverpool will be seen as the club which gives youth a chance which in turn will attract young players. It's something that Rafa and any manager for a while never did. We used to be a club that had fans who were seen as having a good football knowledge, were patient and gave their managers time. It seems that is just all a lie or we've attracted one too many gobshites. Not aimed at you Dave as it's understandable to be down and a bit disillusioned after being beat them crabs. I'm just trying to say it's not all bad and there are good signs.

Spot on. I think people forget that the responsibility shouldn't be on these players and writing them off now is not helping anyone. He was fucking crap yesterday like and should have been subbed but he's not a bad player. He's shown glimpses of what he can become. He's got the right attitude and mentality to be a top player for us.

I felt like Rafa was a bullshitter because there were so many times when it was blatantly obvious what was wrong and all he needed to do was say it/accept it/say nothing but make the necessary changes to fix it and he did none of them. It was usually because he was putting his own ego above the club. A lot of the time for reasons I still don't understand now. A couple of examples just to show you what I mean. The Robbie Keane situation. For whatever reason he didn't like Keane and I think that is one of the main reasons he didn't work out here. One specific game in the famous 08/09 season. 2-0 down to Hull City at home. Torres was out injured I think, he wasn't playing anyway. We decided to go with Kuyt up front on his own. This wasn't some let's try this out situation. By this point we had seen this tactic a million times and a fucking million times it hadn't worked. We had specifically bought Keane for this situation and for whatever reason Rafa decided against it. The side starts attacking more and we get 2 goals back. Basically down to the brilliance of Gerrard. Something which Rodgers doesn't have as much as Rafa did. We had them on the ropes and the momentum was with us yet you could see the shackles were still firmly on. Hull park the bus. What do we do? Fuck all. The game starts to get a bit more tense the wingers are getting the ball but nobody is in the box and we aren't getting enough men forward. We are crying out for another forward on the pitch. The equaliser had came in the first half an hour yet we had now gone 40 odd minutes without creating anything of note. What does Rafa do? Throws fucking El Zhar on for Benyoun that's what he does. Imagine Rodgers made a decision that bad. Fuck me the internet would explode. He follows it up with throwing Babel on for Riera. Even being a light hearted soul you can look at this and maybe think okay there might be some tactical insight I'm unaware of here. Maybe he thinks two new wingers might be able to create a chance etc. At the time I disagreed but could understand it. This is where he got me though. Desperate for a win against a pretty poor team what was his next decision you ask? Did he throw Keane on? The forward on the bench to try and get a late winner? No he took Mascherano off and put Lucas on. Safe to say we drew the game. The rest as they say is history. In his interview afterwards he was basically asked why didn't he throw Keane on or even Ngog, he responded with we needed to change the wingers. That wasn't the question Rafa. Why didn't you bring Keane on? You had 3 subs and you changed a defensive mid for a defensive mid and now you don't want to answer the question you want to bullshit me. He didn't answer the question because he knew he was wrong. But he was right. His ego was far more important. Why bring Keane on when we might win the game. Much rather keep him on the bench and draw. People will forget about it soon enough. Bullshit story number 2. Peter Crouch leaving situation. Crouch after a tough start actually became a really good player for us. Obviously that meant he must be taken out of the side. One of the things I always look back on and think why didn't we ever let that partnership have two games on the run is the Crouch/Torres partnership. It would have been great. Too attacking for Rafa though. He didn't just take him out the side though he seemed to fucking hate him. He was completely fucked off. I don't know why though as Crouch was always a likeable guy and never let anyone down. Typical Rafa though, when we had nothing to lose and had to go for throat against Arsenal in the champions league at home. He played him. It seemed like for once he let his ego go and knew it was the right decision. We fucking battered them all game. There was a great bit of link up play between the two when Torres smashed his goal in. They were very lucky to be back in the game when Walcott broke away but we knocked them out anyway and we deserved to because we had had the balls to go for it. It gets to the end of the season. Throughout the whole year Crouch had to sit through fucking Voronin getting put on the bench ahead of him nearly every game despite the fact that Voronin at this point had absolutely proved he was as fucking useless as Sean Dundee. He wasn't given a chance, he was basically cast aside. Rafa the bullshit merchant comes out and says we are selling Crouch because he wants to play every game and he can't here. I don't know who the fuck he was trying to kid but it felt like he was patronising the fans again. Anybody could see Crouch was happy at Liverpool and is a fairly level headed person. It wasn't like he was coming off the bench and playing 1 in 2/3 games. He was being frozen out completely for some unknown reason. And then we were being told he was leaving because he wanted to play every game. I'm sorry I just didn't and don't believe it now. Crouch then went on to be successful at Portsmouth and then Spurs who funnily enough had 4 strikers and rotated them. He fucking bullshitted us then for what I guess was to do with his ego (AGAIN) and in the end it cost us because we then only really had 1 regular recognised striker in Torres for years. When i look back on these things, and there are a whole fucking load more I could bore you to death with, it pisses me off. Rafa could be a fucking great manager but he was flawed and the longer time went on the worse he got. I feel like Rodgers contrary to popular opinion doesn't have an ego in the way Rafa did. He has his ideas and believes in them but he's not afraid to admit his mistakes. The recent interview thing he did with the fanzines is brilliant. He talks very honestly and pretty much tells you everything you need to know. The bad and the good. He also says he is willing to change and do things different if it is necessary and I believe him.

The lack of strikers is not an excuse and the Lucas reason was used by all the Lucas bummers not himself. I think he might have mentioned Joe Allen playing out of position but I don't think Rodgers has once said we would have won had Lucas been there etc. Just take a step back and actually think about the games this season. Yes there has been some stinkers in there, Stoke being one of them but a lot of games we have played well and haven't got what we've deserved. That has been simply down to not having enough goals in the side. I think Rodgers has to take some blame for that. Every fucking summer since god knows when we seem to be crying out for wingers/strikers and whatever manager we have goes out and signs as many centre midfielders as he can find. The problem has been that we have some games, play quite well and not really come out with the points we deserve. Then we have a bad game like Stoke and get beat suddenly that's what's been happening all season, Rodgers is shit etc. It's not the case. There is only so much a manager can do. He gets the players playing in a certain fashion and then it's down to them. The individual errors that cost us yesterday are not trainable. (Putting men on the fucking posts is like but that's another story) It's his first season and he needs time. I'm not completely convinced but I don't think anybody is or should be but that is not the point. He hasn't been here long and any new manager at any club will get results like this. Rafa had plenty of them himself in his first season. The main reason why I think I am still positive about Rodgers is because I like the way he speaks and what he says. He's honest and talks to the fans and media intelligently and I think he comes across like he has his ideas and knows exactly what he's doing. He doesn't try to bullshit me like Rafa used to and he doesn't act like a shithouse like Hodgson did. Kenny deserved more time, possibly another season and Rodgers should be granted the same. It's not nice but you just have to take results like this on the chin and take the postives that we have.

You're a fucking cretin.

Best squad my arse and best manager my arse. Man Utd will win the league and city will finish second.

Code you utterly pointless cunt. The whole point of the charity single was to try and raise as much money for the charity as possible. The fact that people started to pretty much demand it get to number 1 meant more money was raised. People were buying the single multiple times. It wasn't childish 14 year old girl behaviour, people knew full well what they were doing by courting for it to be number 1 and it fucking worked. You could literally start an argument in an empty room. As has already been pointed out you are incapable of seeing any other point of view just incase it may change your own. You are that fucking pig headed. The fact that it's this subject alone should surprise me that you are managing to cause an argument but it doesn't at all because you are literally that much of a cunt.

I am not rewriting anything mate. After Rafa shit his undies we were never in a position to win the league and were never going to. I said it at the home game when we drew and went top. A lot of people booed. I didn't but I certainly knew why people were doing it. We played shit negative football and never went for the throat despite having a far superior team. We got a draw and anyone with a brain knew it was a missed opportunity. We could have gone completely clear at the top and didn't. We gave the mancs the opportunity to come back at us and they did. They went clear to the point that it wasn't in our hands anymore. I said it to my mate at the time. That's it we've blew it and no doubt we will win some games and look like we are challenging but we never really will be. That Fulham game was great but even then I didn't believe it and I was right to. Looking back on it if we hadn't blew it then to his negative tactics we would have blew it at some other point. All them great games at the end probably wouldn't have happened if we had turned some of those earlier draws into wins because that's what Rafa's like. Only go for broke when it's the last option. The Man Utd point is just a mirror of the earlier point I made. But I will spell it out for you as well. Say Rafa turns up with his Chelsea team and decides he's going to play 2-3-5 without a defensive mid in sight. They create 100 chances hit the bar 50 times but win 1-0 is that negative performance with negative tactics? I'll answer it for you. No it's not. The manner in which the team is set up and plays spells out whether its attacking or not, not the outcome. Plenty of goals can be conceded playnig negative football and we proved plenty of goals can be scored playing it as well. By and large though they don't go hand in hand. The majority of our goals weren't scored playing negative football though, they were scored when we were playing attacking football after the negative football failed. On too many occasions though we either didn't play the attacking football early enough in the game or simply not at all.

It's kind of funny because it is true. Stats as usual are manipulated to whatever agenda your pushing. Negative football doesn't mean not scoring any goals it also doesn't mean not gaining any points. It means the opposite of attacking/positive football. You know, not attacking much in the game so that it's harder for the opposition to score because you are being defensive. It's this thing called tactics. They use it in football quite a lot. Let me try and put it in some easy terms so a thick cunt like yourself can understand. Say Rafa turns up with the Chelsea team and they are playing against an under 12's girls team. Rafa puts 10 centre halves and a goalie on the pitch lined up in a 10-0-0 formation. They go on to win 10 nil. Is that attacking football? I'll answer it for you. No it's not. But extremely thick minded cunts seem to think it is. I'm not going to go into further detail because you should be able to figure out the point I am trying to make. I went to every single home game and a few aways that season and I can use my own fucking eyes. Rafa had signed some world class players and we had a lot of luck that season but even then it was inspite of his tactics. He liked to "control" the game for the first 60/70 mins which usually meant not playing any sort of attacking football. and stopping the other team from playing. Time and time again this invited the opposition on to us. We would be on the back foot either drawing or even losing. He would then start to throw more players forward and subbing attacking players on and more often than not we came back. Taking the one, two or even three chances that fell to us. As anyone who has watched football for any prolonged amount of time will tell you, you can't just keep relying on taking one or two chances a game. We were incredibly lucky that it happened as much as it did that season. The sad thing was that when Rafa had shit his undies and starting playing even more negative we drew games and fell behind in the title race. It was only at this point when we had nothing to lose we started playing attacking football. We were never back in the race at any point although people seem to remember that we were. He showed in that period we were capable of playing that football and battering teams. Unfortunately it was too late. He neeed us to play like that when we went top. It didn't happen and he cost us the title. He put us there in the first place mind but that solidified the view for me that we would never win the league under him because no matter how good a position he could get us in he would always shit his bills and throw it away because of how he threw away the league that season. RedShadow makes the point every so often about if we had of won this or that game which we lost or drew by a thin margin. My answer to that is well actually we won a fucking shitload more games by thin margins than we lost/drew on and if we had won those other games then we would never have played that attacking football at the very end when the league was already gone and Rafa would have thrown it away in some other negative manner.

You do realise these characters get unearthed then a season later they appear to be a flash in the pan. Look at the state of Newcastle now. It happens every year. A couple of players sign for these lower clubs hit a run of form and get raved about. It very rarely happens for any of the top clubs because the top clubs don't get the space and time the lower clubs do. Desite how shit we've been clubs still come and defend against us first and attack second. I have no doubt Benteke, Ba, Cisse etc (maybe not Michu) would more than likely flopped at us big time.

I keep seeing everywhere how Lambert pulled some sort of masterstroke against us. They fucking just launched it up to Benteke most of the game. He did brilliantly. He won everything. It's not some tactical masterstroke it's just hitting long balls at a forward who had a very good game. They didn't even handle us particularly well. Before they scored we should have had numerous goals. Our final ball was awful. Again this had fuck all to do with Villa playing well or any tactical nous from Lambert. Like in any football game if you go an extended period without taking chances you leave yourself open to the opposition getting one and taking it. That happened on Saturday and the freak occurence happened twice more. Until we get more strikers/goalscorers it will continue to happen no matter who we are playing.

Reading any post of yours is like trying to decipher the matrix. Do you realise how difficult this forum would be if everybody decided to write in this beyond lazy style? What I am trying to say as I always do whenever I see your posts is it's fucking unreadable. Seriously how do you expect anyone to respond to it? I read the first paragraph and give up. You posted a link to a website which is even harder to read than one of your posts. After finally getting to a bit which actually even mentions this subject, it doesn't actually do anything I said needs doing. It just goes through a number of referees that have not had United games since making bad decisions or sending players off. This is not enough evidence. There needs to be comparisons to other clubs in similar circumstances and examples of every time United players have been sent off etc and what happened to each referee after it. Until that happens it will just remain a conspiracy theory.

I fucking loved it at the time. I thought finally someone has come out and slaughtered the cunt. Let's not turn it into some big conspiracy unveiling though. Looking back on it, it might look like that but it wasn't. Rafa was getting involved in the mind games. He was trying to get in the mind of Ferguson and the refs. It may have worked as well but in reality he shit his undies, starting playing even more negative football and cost us the title after putting us in the best position to win it in near 20 years. In the mind of some fans including myself, as ridiculous as it sounds, it was the final nail in the coffin. After years of shit/baffling decisions in the league we finally got the luck to go with the great players Rafa had assembled to make a great first 11. No matter how good a manager Rafa could be when the chips where down in the league he couldn't hack it. It was too much for me and the following season was something that had been waiting to happen for a long time in my eyes. It's all opinion I suppose but despite the shit the club has been through since he's left I believe the club would be in an even worse position had he stayed. His time is seen as golden age now and it was but when he left his ability had well gone and it still hasn't proved to have returned. Getting back on topic the only time this will not be seen as just some stupid conspiracy theory is when somebody actually sits down and makes comparisons. It's all well saying a certain ref hasn't been involved in a Utd game for years etc but you need to compare this with all the refs and all the clubs. Are there any other refs giving penalties who then ref Utd again soon. What about bad/controversial decisions for other clubs and the refs who made them? You can't just pull out one or two strange things and naming big numbers because not reffing a team for 20 weeks might be the norm etc.

Fuck me. Where do these fucking brainless cretins come from?

Fucking hate these cunts. A load of fucking closet mancs. I hate all that "It's your round my lord, shit support my lord" shite as well. It wasn't remotely funny the first time I heard it never mind the fucking 500th time in one game.

To be fair none of those managers you have mentioned have managed a "big" club. Yeah they have managed Newcastle, Villa Sunderland etc. They are all clubs with pretty much no chance of winning anything. The managers at that level are on a hiding to nothing. They can't compete with the big spending big attraction clubs, have a few years trying to break into that level. They might get top 6/7 and then end up leaving when a new club takes there place. This might change in the next 5 years or so. With Ferguson and Wenger leaving Utd and Arsenal it opens the door to these clubs. As long as Chelsea and City keep spending the money they will still win things and be there or thereabouts with regards to the league. Arsenal and Utd are different though, although both clubs have spent money they aren't in there positions in the prem due to that, they are there because of their managers. When they leave, their clubs can't and won't spend like City and Chelsea so they will be in the same boat as everyone else. You might see some of these managers actually have the chance to step up and win things then. We've got on the bus early so hopefully ours will work out in the long run.

And 3/4 brain dead.

Technically Enrique is 10 times the player Riise was/is. The only comparison you could probably make with the 2 is that they are both physically similar in that they are beasts. Riise was never really that good and all his massive errors were down to sheer lack of ability. Enrique is quite the opposite, his bad performances and errors are down to over-confidence in his own ability. I think it was Townsend who said it "I really like Enrique but he thinks he's Pele" when a lot of the time he could keep it a lot more simple. I do agree with you though. He's hit a really good patch of form now but we have seen it before. He could easily start putting in the performances we seen over the last half of last season and most of the start of this season.