Being supportive is not being blind
Posted on: Tue, 2008-01-15 11:32
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Being supportive is not being blind
Listening to comments in the press, websites, Tv and phone in's i am now sick and tired of listening to Rafa baiting and hating.
Rafa has spent alot of money, he has bought players who arent up to scratch, he has played negative football and he has rotated a winning team which has led to bad results. we can all agree with that.
But who the hell are we to dismiss the things he has done, won us the european cup, led us to another final, brought in world class players in Reina, alonso, torres, and great potential in agger and babel. those players alone are worth the 135million he has spent now or soon will be if they fullfill their potential.
This witch hunt after a manager is scandelous. rafa cant score the goals, he cant win a match on his own. we have been blighted with injuries which would cripple any club. we are against manure chelsea and arsenal for the league and one is the richest club in the world, the other has money to buy the world and arsenal play the best football since RUSH DALGLISH HANSEN and Souness graced the pitch.
Are we so blind to what rafa is expected to achive. only one team can win it each yr. the rest will spend big but must miss out as there is no prize for 2nd place. Looking to blame someone is typical of people suffering from frustration and needing to pass the book. No manager outthere will win us the league more so than rafa under the circumstances he is under.
You do your job, with your employers constantly trying to remove you, with a staff (players) who arnt as productive as 3 other businesses. with the world on your shoulders but still trying to keep going in the face of all this adversity. IF anything its scandelous for us to gang up on our manager critisise him and be little him in the public eye. I wouldnt blame the man if he said, SOD YOU. ITS not blind loyalty as some say, to support a man who is under pressure and suffering, with results not up to scratch. Its about understanding the situation. we are in a slump yes but is that just rafa's doing, GET REAL. the yanks who tighten the purse strings when they offered the world. the players like stevie who on occassions dont perform, and the other players who dont perform at all. but we never blame them do we?
This crap and it is crap is killing this team, this isnt liverpool, did the world demand shankly win the league in his first 4 yrs, no , rafa has delivered big time, big time, 1 fa cup 1 champs win, 1 other champs final, top 4 finishes every yr bar one. Come on, this guy has worked in the face of every type of critisum and still stands by our club. Look at our points at this stage of last year, we have improved , its just that others have to. thats football. blame everyone else if we are to blame rafa, thats fine, its one club,this guy has turned down real madrid and others to mention to stay with us. can anyone else do their job with this kind of critisum, i couldnt, give the man credit
Back rafa or BACK OFF. BECAUSE YOUR NOT HELPING. YOUR OUT OF ORDER DEMANDING FROM ONE MAN WHEN OTHERS DONT HELP HIM.
Rafa does deserve our respect, but my main critism is that with such a good squad we should be doing 100 times better. my major critism is the style of play , which in my opinion is dreadfully defensive. Thats the main reason I want to see Rafa sacked. All of his rotation , negative tactics, leave me watching my team play crap football week in week out. I just reckon another manager would do a lot lot better.
I dont have an auguement with Rafa's European recold it is second to none, I dont have a problem with the players he has signed ( we have a healthy squad of players , perhaps the best for many a year ) but they are not performing to anything like there true potential. that has to be down to the manager failing to motivate his players.
Rafa is under pressure , but a lot of it has been brought on himself , he hasnt done himself any favours with his constant rotation, and he hasnt done himself many favours augueing with the owners, everyone knows if you augue with your boss then eventually there is only one outcame. It hurts to say it but Rafa just isnt up to winning us the one prize we all want more than any other, and our recent performances on the pitch have been dire.
The reason why we hired Benitez in the first place was to benefit from his so called expertise and skills and achieve the results his predecessor couldn't achieve. We certainly did not hire him to acquire his expertise and skills on the job at our expense, he should have done that whilst at the academy. If we wanted a junior learning manager we wouldn't have hired him. Pressure comes with job, every football manager has to deal with it. I dont feel sorry for the man, he defied his advisors, his coaches and disappointed the fans.
The demolition of the Magpies at Old Trafford was both emphatic and almost cruel. Mike Ashley (Newcastle owner) is looking at appointing a new manager immediately upon his return to the UK. I don’t want to see us get this far then stare at the fork in the road not knowing whether to go left or right. An astute manager should be able to rally support from management as well as players and fans. Winning the winnable games would be a step in the right direction, but none of the above is happening at the moment.
The Yanks need to say to themselves do we invest our own money yes or no , if the answer is no then they should sell.
With regards to Rafa Benites if they have no faith in the manager then they should sack him, if they do have faith then they have to support him financially.
I think the yanks are turning our club into a circus, we are on the back pages for all the wrong reasons, all of these problems should have been sorted inhouse away from the eyes of the media.
The yanks need a lesson in public relations.
Allthough I don't support Rafa as our manager I dont believe that he is being treated well, he deserves our respect and is hard working. He is being treated dissrespectfully by a bunch of American Cowboys, who havnt got a clue about running a Football Club. How Rick Parry saw fit to reccomend these clowns in favour of DIC god only knows.
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Great post Stulivered...the question is..Are we really in that bad position??? If we an won the game in hand we would be just 9 points off the leaders, meaning 3 match.. Arsenal has yet to play ManCity and like ManUre they may get beated there, or with some luck gets a draw..ManUre has yet to play portsmouth which they may draw..what i want to say that we are not the only teams losing point to lower teams.. We made a draw to birmingham and Portsmouth all the fans and press criticise Benitez, Arsenal draw there, it goes unnoticed to those "so called liverpool fans" they got beated at middlesbourough and we got a draw, same scenario, so if with our worst football we at least got a draw, means Rafa is better than wenger theoretically, isn't it??
Soem people seems to just look for a negativity in rafa, and the only argument they can find is ROTATION, Rafa was wrong to rotate at the beginning of the season, BUT thats PAST now!!! If he change the side nowadays, its clear to protect and rest players!!! Why don't some people more stubborn than rafa get that in their mind and stop complaining about that word!!!!
Talents comes from players, they can't be just put by the manager in them, and a manager can manage from available resources. Some people claiming Rafa spent 135 millions, But he did make sale of around 40 millions from those he bought, and also making profits on uncompetent players..we had to beg teams to buy Diao who cost a fortune, while teams like Juve are offering a load amt of money for the "crap" named sissoko, coz they saw potential in him.
If the squad is really incompetent, why do they create so many opportunities that Crouch, Kuyt or Vornin missed???????????? Do these occasions come from nowhere or a poor squad?? If thats the case then we should be proud that our poor unmotivated squad that Rafa has built can produce that much!! Why did nobody came to ask for him to be sacked for Having won the Champions league instead of Premier League???
Reina, Arbeloa, Agger, Skrtel, Aurelio, Benayoun, Mascherano, Lucas, El zhar, Babel, Torres..All of tehm are players under 25 and brought by Rafa, but Rafa's fault is that he can't remove part of his brain and put in their heads so that he can build them in one team!! You need time to construct except if you have your magic wand.
The MAIN problem that rafa has got to solve is the goalscoring..once he resolve that matter, all mouth will be shut!! He did it before and can do it again..
No one likes to see Benitez treated like this after the many great Euro nights he gave us, and might again this year.
But even if David Moores was in charge Benitez's results this year and his complete failure to challenge for 1st place in the league would threaten his job after 4 seasons supposedly building a "great" team. We're as dodgy this year as last year despite spending 45 million more on players.
We all want the Premier League. It has become obvious Benitez is not the man to lead us there with his tactical mistakes and defesnive style. He has been top of the table for one week in all his time at Anfield. So if the league is our main aim then it's obvious he's not that man to lead us to it.
Lets be realistic. Liverpool don't have the money to compete for the title. £45million is nothing in football these days and most of that money was recouped in transfer sales. Ferguson spent £60million on 3 players in the summer, he's been building his team over the years too. United have been making £15m+ deals for ten years. Torres was the first player we spent that kind of money on, and he's class. So to get class players we need to spend top dollar. We are way behind United, Chelsea, Real Madrid, Barcelona and now Arsenal, equipped with a new 60,000 seater stadium and extortionate ticket prices, will be able to attract top class players with large transfer fees and large wage packets. All we can hope for is a lucky break in the league if we are to win. Meanwhile we will have to be content with champions league qualification or winning it in order to make the club financially stronger and able to compete in the transfer market. Then we can compete every year in the league.
That's a defeatist, negative attitude, Philk, which denies facts. Arsenal FC have not spent more money on players since 2000 than Liverpool FC. Neither do Arsenal pay more money in wages than Liverpool FC. They have acquired players who play a more offensive attacking style which suits winning the Premier League.
Liverpool will probably never be as rich as ManUre or Chelski. Does that mean we give up on the title every year? Benitez himself proved in Spain that a club like Valencia, with less money than Real or Barce, could still win the league title. Real had Zidane, Ronaldo and Figo during that period and still Valencia won the title.
That proves money isn't the be all and end all if another club picks the right players and tactics.
What Benitez has proven at Liverpool is he simply cannot come to terms with the differences in English football and therefore he excels in Europe which he knows so well and struggles in the Premier League.
We can win the league with inferior finances to ManUre - Wenger has done it 3 times at Arsenal despite ManUre always having more money than Arse - but not if our manager is spending 9 million on trash like Kuyt. That's money down the toilet and our greatest weakness is goalscorers. Little wonder when another 7 million was wasted on Crouch. Their transfer fees together would be 16 million which would have bought Anelka or Berbatov. But the manager's buying let us down and hence we struggle. That added to his overly defensive style designed to stop the opposition playing rather than being creative with the ball ourselves is the reason we have been top for one week in 4 seasons under Benitez.
There's no excuse with our current squad to be 12 points off by xmas. The manager has fcked up. The Yanks are two idiots that we need rid of; but Benitez needs to look at his own decisions in the league to see why he's become so vulnerable.
Mate..u are talking as if you were watching Anelka progress at Fenerbace or Berbatov in whatever part of the world he was playing??? Benitez has one policy..better has 2 players for one post than to have just one and when he gets injured there'll no more be cover..thats why he went for likes of Kuyt or Crouch..if he had that kind of money, he would have gone like ferguson for likes of rooney and tevez as bak up, but he can't afford so has to manage with what he's got.
Arsenal paid more than 10 million for a 17 year old boy, and you say they've not been spending!!!
The league is no more what it was like in 1997 when arsenal won the league, its different now, either you build or you get nothing... Even last year Arsenal were playing wonderful football, did they won the league or Champions league???
Criticalmind, that's complete rubbish. Everyone knew we could have bought Anelka when he was at Man City and Fenerbache and yet Benitez didn't want him.
Berbatov was at Bayer Leverkusen and Benitez had been watching him too yet he went for Kuyt. Mistakes like that cost managers their jobs when they fail. Clearly Kuyt and Crouch are not successes. I never said Arsenal haven't spent if you read back; I said they haven't spent ANY MORE money than us since 2000 yet they have done a lot better in the league than us since 2000. Because both Houllier and Benitez play a defensive style which has sone well in Europe but hasn't even challenged for the title.
And the difference between Benitez and Wenger is that Wenger has proven he can win the Premier League. Benitez hasn't - so maybe he just can't.
My heart believes we can win the league every year. But my head says it's not going to happen, every year. I believe our plan now is to build as a club and a team. Our name is the biggest in football. But we are not the biggest team in football. Some day we will be again. Sacking Rafa is not the answer. His plan will work, thats another thing I believe.
I also said that Arsenal can NOW compete. They have not competed since they won in 2004. They've been rebuilding in the years since. Just like Utd were rebuilding from 2003 to 2006. I don't think Arsenal will win the league this season and if not should Wenger be sacked. No because he's building something good. Just like Rafa's building something good.
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