Search the Community

The future looks bleak for the club. Out of the Champions League, League Cup and a title challenge which is in tatters. The first time in seven years that the club has failed to reach the last 16. So what has caused this huge decline? First of all, lets look at last season: Second place finish with 86 points, scoring 87 goals and letting in 27, with a goal difference of +50. The future looked bright and it seemed Rafa could be the man to guide the title to Liverpool. The owners of the club said they would give Rafa Benitez the funds to take the final step and win the league. The owners' end-of-season propaganda looked to try and get back in the good books of some Liverpool supporters, especially getting the backing of SoS. New sponsorship deals were announced which would generate even more money for the club as well as key players signing new deals and Rafa having full control of the academy. Then, reports of the clubs' finances were leaked which shown that the debt the club had was unsustainable and that the club needed to raise cash to stay afloat. Rafa's transfer plans were cut and he was told that he needed to reduce the wage bill. Real Madrid came in with huge cash and tried to bully Liverpool and, in some people's eyes, they did bully Liverpool into selling Xabi Alonso and Alvaro Arbeloa. Xabi Alonso had agreed with Rafa that he was to go and Arbeloa had one year left on his contract. Rafa's hand was forced. Furthermore, he did not get all the funds from the sales he made. If you look at a net spend, Rafa has spent less than £3 million in the last two seasons. Is this what you would expect from title challengers? Rafa signed Aquilani on a 5 year deal (contrary to popular belief it was actually a 5 month deal) and Glen Johnson. As well as bringing in young defender Chris Mavinga who looks like one for the future. Johnson looked like a brilliant buy for the £17 million Liverpool spent on him. Portsmouth also owed Liverpool money from the Crouch transfer the season before which made the deal look even better. Now then, onto this season, the team itself seemed weaker than before, and the season had not yet started. Matters out of the managers hands had depleted the squad and it was up to Rafa to pick up the pieces. On the opening day of the season, it was evident that things were not right. Further leaks of the clubs finances shown Rafa had to work on a shoestring budget and the owners had made fools of themselves once more looking for buyers, yet nothing had transpired. Gillett has sold one of his assets to fund his side of the debt while Hicks (to this day) struggled to raise cash and according to a few reports, he has missed one payment. Back onto matters on the pitch, Rafa struggled to raise his teams morale and the club was on a downward spiral. Reports that star players such as Mascherano and Reina were unsettled further damaged the club. Some fans turned against Rafa but the majority of fans inside Anfield seemed to back Rafa. Despite the failings of the club on the pitch, the supporters inside Anfield tried to spur the club on, beating Man Utd 2-0 at home. But was this a turning point or papering over the cracks? Further results seemed to show that this was papering over the cracks and something needed to be done. The owners promised to not sack Rafa and the owners stated they were willing to back the manager with money in January. Meanwhile, several members of the SoS group met Gillett and he granted an interview with one member of the group. In this interview Gillett seemed to place the majority of the blame on Hicks and backtracked on things he had said previously. One obvious thing emerged from the meeting, Gillett would never accept responsibility for his actions. “Now if it’s not getting better, it’s not Gillett and Hicks, it’s the manager, it’s the scouting. You have to make sure you balance out your analysis. There was plenty of money, so if you have any complaints, take a look at the ins and outs.” This was taken from Gillett's meeting with SoS. In this alone, he shows blatant disrespect to Rafa and it seemed he had dug himself into a huge hole with his comments. Both Gillett and Hicks have had an awful relationship with Benitez since their arrival, and the relationship has had a number of low points, but this was the lowest point by far. Back on the pitch, all the matters on it lead to the owners' troubles off it. Now as a manager, Rafa is not perfect and he does have to take some of the blame but after being promised so much and given so little, you have to wonder how easy a ride Rafa has had. No matter what does happen though, the club will survive this rough patch and will come out of this stronger. But it cannot be done alone. Rafa needs the support of the players, the board and more importantly, the fans. Rafa can change the club, but he needs the support of all Liverpool fans to do this.

Can everyone just take a breath and calm down for a second. We have people writing stuff like it makes then “physically sick” to see someone defend the manager. People claiming that others are “happy to be in the Europa League” when no one has said anything of the sort other then that seen as we are in it, let’s try and win it. Some thinking that Rafa was trying to improve Aqualani’s fitness with a 90 second appearance, when he was clearly just killing time. One person has said it was a pointless win in a ‘why did we bother’ sense, despite the very obvious fact that had Lyon taken one of those 3 very good chances at the end, then it would have been a vital win and the atmosphere here would have been very different. We played awful. Truly awful. Regardless of what our Captain and Manager says. And we are on a truly horrible run. And the manager has to take the blame for that. However, if people are supporting Benitez then that does not mean they think he is a “God” or that everything is going great. For the most part they are saying that now is not the time to change a manager, the summer is. The first win out of a really bad sequence is never pretty, and hopefully that was the first win on the way to a good run. Let’s get Torres back, Aqualani to match fitness (I don’t know when) and other key players back in form, and get back to winning ways (yes it will happen in the real world), and then, come the summer, we may have to look at other options for manager. We have ex players saying we should have kept Bellamy, Crouch, Keane and paired them with Torres. We know that wasn’t possible because Crouch wanted to go and Keane was shite, yet people will say the ex player was right without looking into the issue. Bellamy played a total of 21 games over the following two seasons when we sold him due to injury, yet this is not mentioned. The post can be seen as having a go at the manager, therefore it is 100% right/wrong. The truth, as with most things, is somewhere in the middle. People need to accept that others have opinions that will differ, but the constant twisting of words, abuse or posters with over dramatization such as – Poster 1 : I’d give Rafa until the summer and see then – Poster 2: you think Rafa is a God and can do no wrong you prick! – Poster 1: fuck off you cunt, etc, etc – Pointless. Telling everyone you are going to put someone on ignore (just PM the person, no one else cares, and that’s my personal experience) just causes more arguments. If people want Rafa out then that’s just fine. Rafa has made enough fuck ups to justify this stand point. But that view can be passed on without making up shite to make him sound worse. If people want Rafa to stay then that’s fine also. Maybe we have vastly over achieved in seasons gone by and now expectations are at a silly level given what is going on with the club away from football. Could both camps just read what they write before they hit ‘post’. And if they think that maybe they are making up a few things to flesh out their post, or they know that they are twisting someone’s words to make an argumentative point (the most common post), or they know they are purposely twisting an issue so it passes blame that should be on Rafa to someone else, then could they take a minute and then edit the post so it’s not a childish hissy fit? That applies to everyone whether you support Rafa or not. There really is no need for all the personal stuff or the drama. Just my tuppence worth and I’ve probably been as guilty of some of the above, but I’m going to make the effort, so maybe some of the over hyper people could too. It’s actually only a few who go massively overboard, so if you think you are one of those, then make a wee effort and the forum could be so much better, while still having the same, open debate, just without the hyperbole.