pikas

I'm pretty sure that the FA enforce all football debts to either clubs or players is paid in full or the club is kicked out of the league. In Portsmouth's case the PL kept back the 'parachute' payments and paid the clubs directly. From an article in the guardian Had Johnson played like he did for Portsmouth and Aquilani not been made of glass no one would give a shit how much they cost.

1)If Rafa felt Johnson was overvalued he should of walked away from the deal. He was happy enough to blame Parry for overspending on Keane to know that overspending is bad. Portsmouth owed a few clubs money and the PL made sure the football teams were paid in full(local business's however were screwed over) 2)Aquilani will cost us a base fee of £18m, plus 5% of whatever Juve give us for him next summer and the £3.8m in wages he earned for playing a handful of games. Rafa was entirely justified in spending what he wanted on both players, and in my view I dont think Rafa would purposely land the club in more debt by overspending on players he didnt think were worth what we paid. They did however fail and Rafa paid the price.

6th/7th We've won 2 league games away from home in the last 12months, I dont see that improving over night. Kenny will get us back to winning and playing well at home but this group of players are either not good enough or dont give enough of a shit to win on the road.

I love Carra but Didi was a far better player in Houlliers years than Carra was.

Voronin 39 games played for Liverpool 7 goals scored while Mellor played 22 games and scored 6 goals. Stats are often bullshit but there is no way that Voronin was miles better for Liverpool than Mellor was. Again you're missing the point about naming players from the youth who are better then Degen. If they're not given time to develop of course they're going to be shit. If you spend the ages of 17-22 twiddling your thumb in the reserves with no progress of course you're going to be shit. Rafa did some great things for the club, but his treatment of the academy was just as bad as Houlliers and pretending that in 6 years and a 100+ players later that not one of them was good enough to make our squad is a copout. Look at Insua and Ngog, both fairly and consistently useless when they joined but Rafa showed faith and gave them games and 1st team coaching until they eventually improved. If both players had been left to rot in the reserves they'd be at the same level as when we signed them.

Much better to get rid of Mellor and Warnock and bring in class like Voronin and Dossena, and if you're telling me that we didnt have one player in the 6 years of Rafa's reign as good as Philip fucking Degen then I'll know you're taking the piss. I dont blame Rafa for not producing any players as good as Carra, Gerrard, Owen or Macca but he could of produced more fringe players from the ranks. Look at Taggert he gives a few youth players a few games every year and maybe a loan spell and after 3/4 seasons they're either good enough as back up or sold for millions.

We won the reserve league in 07/08 and the youth FA cup in 06 and 07. Did Rafa make any real attempt to integrate academy players into the 1st team? No, he'd give them a start and then bomb them out as soon as possible. Look at the amount of chances and time Ngog and Insua got compared to actual players from the youth system. Guthrie looks crap for Newcastle now but back when we signed Lucas he'd already played a whole season for Bolton in the league and europe but was got rid of to make room for Lucas who's been pants up until this year. Had we put the same time and coaching into Guthrie i'm sure we'd be now getting the same world class performances we now get from Lucas at about £8m-£10m of the price. Rafa had some great moments at Liverpool but the failure of the academy was down to him playing politics.

Well for starters the Aquilani part is. Roma published the full details of the transfer on their website and the payment in January had nothing to do with his appearances.