So Scott Carson has gone to West Brom, good luck to the lad I hope it goes well for him there. I think he has all the tools to become a damn fine keeper. In truth he was too good to be our number 2 but not quite good enough to be our number 1, or at least not ahead of Pepe Reina anyway. So a move away was the best solution for all concerned and I wish him well, although I must say I was a little surprised at the relatively small transfer fee we received for him. 
I can’t say I’m quite so convinced by Danny Guthrie’s move to Newcastle. That young midfielder came through our Academy and got a season of Premiership football under his belt last season at Bolton where he played very well and earned some very good reviews for his performances. I know that the moronic idiots in charge of our club have left Rafa in the shameful position of having to sell players to generate transfer funds, but even so, when you consider the crazy valuations some teams put on any English players they may have with the slightest bit of talent, £2 million seems very cheap for a very promising young English player like Guthrie. You could barely buy yourself a tea lady in the Premiership for that kind of money these days.(click here)
I think we might have been better served to hang on to him and send him out on loan again for another season. I’m sure there would have been a few Premiership teams willing to take him on loan, particularly among the newly promoted teams, and if he managed to impress for another season his value may have gone to double or even treble what we’ve received for him, or perhaps he might have even developed into a player good enough for our own first team. Either way I think the potential pay-off would have made it worth the gamble, but there’s little point in moaning about it now so good luck to Guthrie.
Other than that not much else has happened on the transfer front since my last blog. Our potential signing of Gareth Barry seems no further forward, in fact it seems we are making more progress on the potential signing of Robbie Keane, but I’ll come back to that a little later.
On the playing side of things, the majority of our players are now back in pre-season training and most of them have got a couple of friendly games under their belts. I saw our game last weekend against Tranmere Rovers and for me the biggest plus point from that game was the return of Daniel Agger. Even though it was only a friendly game you could clearly see the difference Dagger makes to our defence and what a big loss he was for us last season.(click here)
He is a classy player. Outside of his obvious talents as a central defender, he is very comfortable in possession and often Hansen-like as he calmly carries the ball out of defence. Perhaps the most under-rated part of his game is his passing. I know last week’s game was pretty meaningless but his long and short range passing throughout the match was excellent. The long ball he played out of our defence to put Pacheco through on goal in the first half, was particularly memorable and played with such accuracy that even Xabi Alonso or Jan Molby at their best would have been proud of it.
The other big plus point from our pre-season games so far has been Pacheco and it’s easy to see why Barcelona were so pissed off to have lost him. He is only 17 but looks a really exciting prospect. I only saw the highlights of our midweek game against Lucerne but I wasn’t surprised to hear he was our man of the match. His pass to Lucas for the opening goal was brilliant but his overall play in attack is really very impressive. I know he’s quite slight and really still only a baby but I’m sure Rafa is delighted with him and I expect we’ll see him get a few games in the first team this season, even if it’s only in the Carling cup.
It’s hard to read too much into these pre-season games. They are really all just about fitness and perhaps building a bit of momentum going into the new season. But between these games and the manager’s moves in the transfer market we spend our time trying to read between the lines in search of some precious clues about what the boss might have in mind for the season ahead. However, for Liverpool fans this is a particularly tough task because Rafa Benitez is a very difficult guy to second guess.
All football fans like to think that their managers have layers. They like to believe that the man in charge of their team is incredibly wise and that his every word and deed is very carefully calculated and full of very clever and intricate ulterior motives, but the truth is that in the vast majority of cases there is far less to these guys then many of their fans think.
Take Martin O’Neill for example, I heard some Villa fans maintaining that his early rants against Liverpool in the Gareth Barry saga were in fact some kind of clever ploy on his part or that he was in fact nobly making a stand not just for Villa but for all of football, and there are various other theories put forward. But of course this is just total bollocks and the reality is that O’Neill was just pissed off at the prospect of losing one of his best players and went bitching to the press about it. There were no deep and meaningful reasons for his actions, it was just O’Neill having a moan, as he’s often prone to do, nothing more and nothing less.
Another couple of examples of this are Alex Fungusface and Jose Moaninho. The media like to label Fungusface as the “Master of the Mind-Games” when the truth is that most of the time he is just spouting the usual kind of bitter drivel that he has always done but the media just blow up his every utterance out of all proportion. As for Moaninho, his limelight hogging arrogance was painted as some kind of noble act on his part. A selfless attempt to keep the focus on himself while keeping the pressure off his team, what a load of crap! The fact that he continued to try to hog the spotlight long after he’d been sacked by the chavs was ample proof that the “Special Needs One” merely suffers with a severe case of Attention Deficit Disorder and has never met a microphone he didn’t like.
However there are a small number of managers who genuinely do take a more cerebral approach to the game. Arsene Wenger would be one and perhaps Gus Hiddink would be another but surely the king of them all has got to be Rafa Benitez. He’s a tough guy to figure out because there is usually more than one if not several motives behind almost everything that he does and they are not always immediately apparent.
In the early part of last season when he talked about resting players in the early months of the campaign to keep them fresher for the final run in, not many of us were happy with his reasoning but it did give us an example of how his mind works and the fact that he is always planning two or three moves ahead. This is useful because I think when you are trying to get inside the head of Rafa Benitez you can’t just look at what he may doing now but you’ve also have to figure out why he is doing it and what is his long term objective.
A perfect example of this was when he signed Pellegrino on a 6 month loan deal during his first season in charge at Anfield. At the time many of us regarded this as a big misjudgement by the boss as in the 12 games Pellegrino played for us he proved to be woefully too slow to cope with the pace in the Premiership. But we later found that the reason why Rafa brought him in was that he was a player who was very well drilled in the zonal marking system and he wanted him to work with our other defenders in perfecting the system. The long term objective of that move was that it led to us having one of the best defences in the Premiership for the next three seasons and even some of our players have gone on record and acknowledged the role Pellegrino played in that, and it’s good to see the big guy returning to the club as a coach.
There are other such examples of the boss’s long range planning but not all of them are as clear cut. One that I’m still not quite sure about is his famous “as ever I am focused on managing my team” comments from early last season. Some people regarded his repeating of this phrase nine times during that press conference as a show of petulance on his part but just look at what it led to. Massive shows of support by the fans, groups such as the Spirit of Shankly and the Share Liverpool scheme coming into existence, and DIC back on the scene and ready for the opportunity to pounce.
Whether these things were just a fortunate by product or were to a certain degree envisioned by the boss during his so-called “show of petulance, I’m still not quite sure. But one thing is certain, he provided the spark that lit the fuse and I think that one day in the hopefully not too distant future when we are finally rid of these two American fools, we might very well look back at that press conference and regard it as the first step towards their demise.
I could give a number of other examples of his foresight but I think by now you will be aware of the point I am making, which is that basically Rafa is a very clever, calculating manager and the benefits of the actions he takes are not always immediately obvious.
This brings me back to the potential signings of Barry and Keane. I don’t think any of us would have had these two at the top of our own summer transfer wish lists but I think we would all agree that they are two very good players. Still, some people question why the boss is willing to commit so much time, effort and money to bring in two 28yr old players. Obviously, I can’t speak for the gaffer but it’s something I’ve been giving a lot of thought to myself and I’ve come up with my own theory, using the “what is he doing, why is he doing it and what is his long term objective” method I mentioned earlier.
Firstly, what he is doing is trying to bring in two very experienced Premiership players to add yet more strength and options to the already very strong spine of the team. In an interview just after the season finished, Rafa mentioned the fact that foreign players can often take time to adapt to the rigours of the PL. There are exceptions such as Torres and Skrtel etc, but for the most part this is usually the case. However with these two he would have no such worries and could throw them both straight into the first team safe in the knowledge they can do a job for him. Keane has struck up a very good partnership with Berbatov at Spurs which would indicate that he might make a very good partner for Torres and Barry seems to have a good understanding with Gerrard in the England team.
As to why, or perhaps I should say what might be his underlying reasons for targeting these two particular players beyond the obvious ones I highlighted in the above paragraph, as with Rafa I think it pays to look beyond the obvious. My guess at this goes back to a blog I wrote a couple of month’s back that referred to a shortage of leaders in our squad. When you look at the great Liverpool teams of the past or even the successful teams of today you will usually find no shortage of leaders on the pitch but we seem to be a bit short in that department.
Beyond Gerrard and Carra you struggle to find real leaders in our first team other than former captain Sami Hyypia, but it’s doubtful he will play too many games for us next season. After those you would be looking at maybe Masch, possibly Kuyt or perhaps Agger will one day develop into a captain of the side, but there really aren’t any obvious candidates. But Barry and Keane as captains of their current clubs would certainly increase the amount of players with leadership qualities in our squad, and in the case of Keane he is also the captain and record goal scorer for my own dear Rep of Ireland international side. It may not seem like much of a reason but I think that having leaders all over the pitch is a real bonus and increases your chances of success.
Another perhaps underlying reason for Rafa’s transfer targets could be the options it would give to the type of system we might play next season. Some have suggested that the players he has brought in and the ones he is targeting could possibly indicate a change to a 5-3-2 system. With the returning Agger lining up alongside Carra and Skrtel as our three centre-backs, and our two new attacking full-backs playing as wing-backs. Barry would be ideally suited to play on the left of our midfield trio alongside Masch in the middle and Gerrard on the right, and Keane and Torres upfront.
It’s an interesting concept and it might be worth trying in some games but I don’t think Rafa will radically change the system that worked so well for us in the latter half of last season. Personally, if there is going to be an alteration to that system, I would like to see us dropping one of the defensive midfielders for an extra attacker, as Masch tends to do most of the work in the defensive midfield role anyway. This would make our 4-2-3-1 system into a 4-1-3-2 or else a 4-1-3-1-1 system, in either case Barry and Keane could still do a job for us.
Which brings me to the possible long term objective behind these potential signings. About 18 months ago I heard Rafa giving an interview in which he said that by the time we get to our new stadium he would hope to have a successful side which was a good blend of top class experienced players and some of the best young talent around, or words to that effect. I think it’s fair to say that we are all excited with the young talent that is starting to emerge from our Academy since Rafa took it under his wing and the great work of Gary Ablett also deserves a mention, so maybe it’s time to increase the amount of top class experienced players and Barry and Keane would fit the bill in that regard.
Having more such experienced pro’s in the side would help the boss to slowly bring in some of these younger players. Should he be successful in his pursuit of Keane and Barry it would increase the strength of the side in the present but also help in building the side for the future. I think we could expect at least 4 seasons from them both but by the end of that time we could an even more exciting side. Reina would still be in goal, Carra would be at the end of his career but we would still have Agger, Skrtel, Insua and possibly Hobbs and San Jose in defence. We would hope that Lucas and Plessis develop into top class central midfield options alongside Masch and no doubt Gerrard will still be there. And our attacking options could consist of Torres, Babel, Pacheco, Nemeth and possibly Anderson.
So there could well be some exciting times ahead of us in the future but we also need to have success in the present. I think the boss is well aware that it is high time for us to put in a serious challenge for the PL and while we all still very much support him, there is a sense of impatience beginning to develop among some supporters and perhaps even some of the players. There are some fancy foreign players that might fit the bill for us but it’s likely it would take yet more time for them to adapt to the Premiership, if at all, and it’s time that we simply don’t have. So this time Rafa is going for experienced Premiership-proven players that are much more likely to hit the ground running and it’s easy to see the logic in that.
It’s good to discuss, debate or even moan about the various decisions the boss makes, that’s part of the joys of being a football fan. But I guess this epic blog is my rather longwinded attempt to say that whether he decides to buy Keane and Barry, sell the likes of Alonso and Crouch or not try to buy the likes of Silva or Villa, you can bet your bottom dollar that he has a damn good reason for it, in fact it’s likely that he has several. I’m not suggesting that he is beyond reproach or that I always agree with all of his decisions or even that all of his plans necessarily work out for the best, but for the most part, I think we are in safe hands. In Rafa We Trust.
Keep the Faith
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Good Luck Crouchy
Well Peter Crouch has completed his move to Portsmouth and while I think we all knew this has been on the cards for some time, I am still sorry to see the big guy go. This is not just because he is one of those players that you just can’t help but like, but also because since moving to Anfield he has developed into a bloody good player. 
His goal scoring record of 42 goals in 135 appearances is a pretty decent total when you consider that he didn’t score for his first 18 or so games, and most of his recent appearances have been as a sub. I think most of us had our doubts about him when he was first signed, but Rafa saw something in him that he felt could be of benefit to our team and as usual, he was absolutely right.
I find it ironic that many of the media clowns who were very critical of the boss for buying Crouch in the first place, were the same people who later criticised him for not playing him more and no doubt some of them will now be critical of him for selling him. While it’s always easy to have a pop at the media in such circumstances, I think it’s also a measure of how far Crouch has come. In the space of the three seasons he has been at Anfield he has gone from being a footballing journeyman that nobody really fancied, to a player at the top of quite a few teams most wanted lists.
Crouch deserves great credit for putting in the hard work on the training pitch to get himself to this level but I think an awful lot of credit should also go to Rafa Benitez and his coaching staff for shaping the rough diamond into an international player and a top level striker. In an ideal world I think the boss would have liked to have kept him, but unlike some players Crouchy didn’t just want to pick up his wages every week and get splinters on his arse from sitting on the bench.
He wants to play football regularly and as he couldn’t be guaranteed that at Liverpool, he wanted to move on to somewhere that he could. So while I may be disappointed to see him go, I can understand his decision and I respect him all the more for it. So good luck to Big Crouchy, I hope he bangs in loads of goals for Pompey, except of course when they are playing us!
The £11 million we will receive for this transfer is a pretty decent profit on the £7 million we paid for him 3 years ago, and let’s face it we need every penny we can get at the moment. Rafa’s interview with the media as he unveiled our two new signings Degen and Dossena, confirmed what many of us had most feared.
“We know the situation regarding what we can spend, and we are trying to find solutions if we do not have enough money.
“And we will still try to sign players that will make us better. But if you do not have too much money, and that is clear, we will have to have a little bit of imagination to progress in the market.”
Basically what those two lines amount to is the fact that as far as our transfer budget goes, we haven’t got a pot to piss in!
It is yet another disgrace in the long line of disgraces that Tom Hicks and George Gillett have brought to our club. We are Liverpool FC, one of the biggest and most famous football clubs in the world. We have the greatest fans in the world, some of the best players in the world and one of the best managers in the world. We are supposed to be challenging for Premierships and Champions Leagues etc, and yet our manager is given no financial backing by the owners to strengthen the team and is left having to resort to horse-trading in the transfer market.
What happened to all of the money from the £350 million re-financing loan they took out less then six months ago? Their spokesman said at the time that this loan was taken out, “£105m will be put on the club’s books - £60m for the stadium project, and £45m for working capital which will help finance the future purchase of players.” So what happened to that money?
These two scum bags have not put one red cent of their own money into the club, in fact through one means or another I’ve put more money into the club then they have and so have you and probably any other Liverpool fan you might know. I’ve never put together a definitive list of minimum requirements that any potential owner of the club should ideally possess, perhaps I’ll cover that in a future blog, but if I ever get around to it I can assure you that very high up on that list, alongside such things as honesty and integrity, would be the desire that any potential owner would at the very least have access to more available cash then I do!
But to finish on a positive note, I think it has to be said that the darker things become the more Rafa Benitez shines. I’m sure he is just as frustrated, if not more so, at the way these two clowns are running the club. After four long years of painstaking work he finally has a team/squad that is close, damn close, to being good enough to seriously challenge on all fronts and he knows there is a string of top class players who would leap at the chance to come to Anfield, but he just isn’t being given the backing to bring that extra bit of quality that we need.
Instead of this he is being forced to weigh up the pro’s and con’s of each player in the squad to determine which ones he can afford to sacrifice to provide the funds necessary for him strengthen in areas of more pressing need. The guy has to work so much harder than the manager of any other top club and it seems that he is almost dragging the club forward single-handedly and having to fight every step of the way against the very people who should be supporting him in his endeavors.
And yet despite all of this he remains positive, upbeat and exudes an air of confidence that seems to be contagious because each time I listen to him being interviewed, I start to feel more and more confident about our prospects in the upcoming season. He has been our one beacon of light in this whole sorry ownership mess and I firmly believe that he is the only senior figure at the club who really gives a crap about the supporters.
There were a couple of times in the past when I confess I did have my doubts about him, but everyone has the right to be stupid sometimes, even award-winning bloggers like me! Seriously though, I shudder to think where we would be without him, thank God for Rafa Benitez.
Keep the Faith
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Are We Wasting Our Time On Barry?
So it appears that we have had yet another bid for Gareth Barry, rejected by Aston Villa. This transfer has really turned into an epic saga. That’s our fourth bid for the player by my reckoning and yet it seems we are no closer to securing his signature. So enough is enough as far as I’m concerned, this deal is a dead duck and it’s time to walk away from it. 
As I’ve said here before, I think Barry is a quality player who would have been a great addition to the side but it’s just not happening and there seems little point in us wasting any more time on it. Villa’s valuation of the player is just completely ridiculous. They are said to be holding out for £18-£20 million which is just crazy money for a guy who will shortly be 28yrs old. We have offered them a fair price but they seem totally unwilling to compromise, so let’s just leave it at that and move on. (click here)
I have respect for Martin O’Neill’s managerial record but the guy can really be a right tit at times. I’ve no problem with him trying to hang on to his best player or trying to get as much money for him as he can, but his behaviour throughout this whole affair has bordered on the lunatic, and I think he’s been left with an awful lot of egg on his face.
He firstly attacked Liverpool for supposedly leaking their interest in the player to the local press ie the Liverpool Echo, claiming that this was not the way the club had conducted its business in the past. This was later proved to be total rubbish and the story had in fact originated in the Midlands and hadn’t been reported by the Echo until a day later, so if anything the leak would more likely have come from his own club, but O’Neill refused to let the truth stand in the way of a good rant and his moaning continued.
For a guy who claimed he didn’t like to see this kind of stuff played out in the media, he just wouldn’t shut up moaning to the press about it and even had his little soap-box out while he was working as a pundit on BBC during Euro 2008. Another thing he moaned about was what he claimed to be Steven Gerrard putting more pressure on Barry by saying he’d love him to be playing at Anfield when he was asked about it by a journalist after one of England’s end of season friendlies. O’Neill claimed it wasn’t right for Gerrard to be making such comments about a player from another team but the fact that 2 or 3 of his own players were also telling journalists that they’d love to have Peter Crouch playing at Villa Park, seemed to have escaped his attention.
But I think the most embarrassing and bizarre part of this saga came for O’Neill from the words of his own player. Throughout this whole process Moaning Martin had continually stressed that he was doing everything in his power to keep Barry at Villa Park but then the player recently revealed that he hadn’t in fact heard anything from the manager for weeks. For daring to speak out, the player has been disciplined by the club with a fine of two weeks wages and has been told he is unwelcome at their pre-season training.
You get the feeling that O’Neill thinks he is making some kind of point and is stubbornly, or perhaps stupidly, sticking to his guns. I think he is in danger of biting his nose off to suit his face because if Liverpool walk away, he will be left with an extremely unhappy and most likely an extremely unpopular player with the club’s supporters, who will walk away for a mere fraction of what they are currently being offered, in a year or so. I’ve heard some Villa fans say “it’s not the money, it’s the principal”, but if that’s the case why stick a £20 million valuation on Barry, instead of just saying he is not for sale at any price?
Of course, the biggest loser if this situation is not resolved will be Barry himself. He’s already said on the record that he wants to leave, which certainly won’t have endeared him to the Villa fans, and he’s been disciplined for it. If he remains there, he will no doubt be stripped of the captaincy, will most likely play less games and this may well lead to him losing his England place.
If this deal can be completed in the short term then I’d be very happy to have Barry at Anfield, but if it seems that it is going to drag on for much longer, then I think we should walk away before it’s too late. As things stand at the moment, if this deal collapses then I think ultimately the only losers will be Villa and Barry, but if we waste too much more time on it then we also risk coming out losers in the deal.
My concern stems from what happened during the last pre-season transfer window. This time last year we were haggling with the mancs over Heinze. In truth, that deal always looked unlikely to go through so it was disappointing that we seemed to have put all our eggs in one basket and spent too much time on it and when the deal finally collapsed we didn’t have enough time to bring in anyone else. 
I felt this was a big mistake on our part at the time and we suffered the repercussions of it when Daniel Agger picked up a serious injury early in the season. He was a big loss to our defence and although we soldiered on with the personnel we had, it wasn’t until Skrtel arrived in January that we really started to look solid again at the back. Maybe it wouldn’t have been possible, but I can’t help but wonder if we hadn’t spent so much time fruitlessly chasing Heinze last summer then perhaps Skrtel could have been brought in earlier and what a difference he might have made to our season. Of course, that’s all water under the bridge now but I just hope we don’t end up making the same mistake again and spent too much of our time chasing Barry.
We all know how vital it is for us to make a strong start to the season but if we are to that we’ve got some problems that need to be addressed. Whether people like it or not, it looks like Alonso is on his way to Juventus. Added to this we’ve got Masch, Lucas and if he recovers in time, Babel heading off to take part in the Olympics. So as things stand at the moment the midfielders we will have available for the start of the season are Gerrard, Benny Onion, Pennant, I suppose Kuyt would now be considered a midfielder and perhaps we will also use Plessis from our reserves.
I think it’s fair to say that it’s not exactly a very strong selection and if we pick up an injury or two, it will obviously get even worse. If we did manage to get Barry in it would certainly strengthen things, but we do badly need to add at least another couple of bodies into that midfield as soon as possible or we could be left playing catch up in the league once again.
I know it may seem at the moment that there is plenty of time left in this transfer window but judging from Parry and Co’s past record, we are probably the slowest club in the game at tying up these transfer deals. We have already spent two months trying to make this Barry deal happen, so let’s make Villa one more take it or leave it offer and if they refuse it then good luck to them. We’ve got to move on to other targets before it’s too late.
On a final, brighter note, it was great to see Degen and Dossena completing their moves to Anfield during the week. (click here)I haven’t seen either of them play before but they both have impressive CV’s as attacking full-backs and hopefully they will provide us with the extra width that we need to stretch teams. I was also delighted to see Dagger back in training. I really rate this lad, probably because he reminds me so much of the Great Alan Hansen but I consider him a very important player for us and hopefully it won’t take him too long to shake off the cobwebs after being sidelined for so long.
Another couple of quality signings for our midfield and a quality striker, and we’ll go into the season in great shape. As ever, lots of names have been mentioned but let me throw one into the mix that I haven’t heard discussed and I’d be interested to read what you guys think. One player who impressed the hell out of me during Euro 2008 was the Spanish midfielder Senna. I know he’s about 32 but he looks in great shape and could be good for at least another three seasons. His performances for Spain can’t have escaped the attention of Rafa and as he’s currently plying his trade at Villareal, I’m sure he’d jump at the chance of a move to Anfield and given his age we might pick him up for a knock-down price. In our big games next season, imagine having him alongside Masch playing behind Gerrard with maybe Barry on the left and Babel on the right. The opposition would need a bloody machinegun to get through that lot!
Keep the Faith
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The Rick Parry Enigma
Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated! Firstly a big congratulations to Spain. I was delighted to see Torres and the rest of our Spanish contingent winning Euro 2008 this evening, they were clearly the best team in the tournament. Against the Germans you just never know what might happen but they well beat them on the night and richly deserved the trophy. 
Apologies for the delay since the last blog, the wireless router replacement I’ve been waiting an eternity on, finally arrived but the idiots at Eircom managed to send me a faulty one, so now I’m waiting for a bloody replacement for the replacement! Thankfully a mate of mine had an old one which he’s loaned me, it’s not wireless but it’ll do the job so I’m back up and running again. That picture on the left is of me with the blog award at Kopblog HQ, my trophy room is now bigger then Newcastle’s!
Mind you, there hasn’t really been a lot happening during my enforced absence. I know some people are getting frustrated at the lack of activity on the transfer front, but in fairness it’s been pretty quiet everywhere at the moment and at least we did manage to get our two new full-backs fairly quickly, so I’m remaining patient for the moment.
The Gareth Barry saga is still dragging on and has become a bit of a pain. As I’ve said in previous blogs, I think he’s a quality player and would be a very good addition to the side but if it’s not sorted out soon I think we should walk away and move on to another target. Obviously it’s not the players fault, I think it’s clear he wants to come to Anfield but Moaning O’Neill is being a right tit about it. It would serve him right if we did walk away from the deal now because it would leave him with an extremely unhappy player on his hands that will end up walking away for a pittance next season.(click here)
As usual we are being linked with all sorts of other players the latest being Robbie Keane, who’s a player that could certainly do a job for us but it seems an unlikely deal unless Spurs are that desperate to sign Peter Crouch. We all know that we need to bring in at least one winger and David Silva seems to be one of the chief names mentioned as a possible target.
He’s a player I’ve mentioned myself in the past but I must admit that I’ve been less than impressed with what I seen of him in Euro 2008. There’s no doubt he’s a skilful player and I’m sure he would get us a few goals, but I think he’s one of those players that would do our heads in. He seems to drift in and out of games and doesn’t seem to do much in the way of tracking back. I just can’t see him being a Rafa type of player.
Off the pitch, I see that our two moronic owners seem to have kissed and made up, now if only they’d both agree to just piss off out of the club, life would be great. During the week they made a big deal about the Liverpool City Council giving yet more planning permission for our new stadium to proceed, but I thought we were given the go ahead for that ages ago, just how much bloody planning permission do we need? (click here) 
I know we really need the extra cash the increased capacity of this new stadium would generate to help us compete at the top level and I must admit I do really like the design, but I just can’t get enthusiastic about it with these two clowns in charge. This is because I know this stadium would be built on foundations of debt, massive debts so large that it’s doubtful any of us will be around long enough to see the club making any kind of a dent in them.
In fact I honestly feel that unless we can manage to get some new owners in soon, with the kind of financial muscle of the likes of DIC, we could really be only just a couple of poor seasons away from being in real danger of going down the tubes. It’s just amazing that a simple thing such as a lack of homework that a basic goggle search would have provided, has allowed these two Americans to come in and do such damage to a club that has spent over a century building its reputation as one of the best run in the game and that many fans have spent their whole lives supporting. And what I find even more incredible is the news that Rick Parry, the man most directly responsible for the incompetence that has caused this mess, is about to be awarded an honorary degree by the University of Liverpool for his “services to football”.
I’m struggling to think of anybody less deserving of such an honour. The only thing worthy of note on his football CV is the appointment of Rafa Benitez as our manager, the rest is pretty much just a catalogue of incompetence and stupidity that has caused us to miss out on multiple signings, almost cost us to lose our captain and most important player, and if we don’t manage to get some new owners in soon, it could very well cost us our club.
Even the marketing of the club worldwide, for which he is meant to be responsible, is a complete joke in comparison to others and let’s not even bother discussing the many ticketing allocation messes he has presided over, and the list goes on. So just exactly what “service to football” these muppets are referring to, is a complete mystery!
I don’t know what bunch of clowns runs that university, but clearly there’s not a single Liverpool fan among them. Presumably in the future we can also expect them to offer honorary degrees to Tom Hicks and George Gillett for their services to honesty, or George Bush for his services to world peace or even Paul Merson for his services to intelligence! I think it’s pretty clear that if idiots could fly, the University of Liverpool would be an airport.
Keep the Faith
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Out With The Old, In With The New
Sorry guys. As much as I really liked Tony Evans book, I didn’t intend to leave that blog up so long. Problem is my wireless router has died on me (RIP) and I couldn’t get online to post a fresh one.
I’m sure the Irish lads in here will tell you all about how bloody unreliable our national telecom provider Eircom is. The bastards promised they would have a new one sent out to me by last Monday, but I’m still bloody waiting! So I’m sending this in from a friends Blackberry and my fingers are killing me already so I’ll have to keep it short and sweet.
On the bright side, it was great to see that little faggot Christine Ronaldo “the greatest player in the history of the world ever” playing shite once again as Portugal got beaten by the Germans tonight. And the other big bonus was just looking at how crap that Portuguese defence was, I think this Scolari guy is completely over-rated and it looks like the chavs have got themselves another doughnut for a manager.
I see Riise has completed his departure from Anfield and got himself a very good four year contract at AS Roma. I really hope it goes well for him. Although I’ve been critical of him in recent months, I think its fair to say that for the majority of his seven years with Liverpool he has given the club great service. I just think that over the last 18 months or so, he had gone a bit stale and his bad performances were starting to outweigh his good ones.
I think the change may very well work out to be a good thing all round. But he has given us some great memories, that brilliant rocket of a goal he struck against the mancs all those years ago being my favourite. So thanks for the memories JAR and all the very best in the rest of your career.
It looks like Alonso will be next and as much as I have always liked him, I think much the same could be said of him as I’ve just said about Riise. Xabi was brilliant in his first season with us but has never really recaptured that form since then. Some people make the point that some of the injuries he has suffered have taken their toll on him and I think that’s a valid argument but I also think there may be a little more to it then that.
In Xabi’s first season the range and accuracy of his passing was magnificent but never quite reached those heights in the seasons that followed. I’ve always felt that a large contributing factor to this was that teams had done their homework on him after that first season. They knew that if he was allowed too much time and space, he could pull the strings for us with his passing from his deep midfield position. And I noticed in his second season that suddenly he was being closed down a lot more quickly by the opposition and was being clattered a lot more by fouls, which led to some of his injuries.
In my opinion this was the main reason he hasn’t been as effective for us since his debut season. In his games since then, he has played well in some and not so well in others, but he hasn’t really been great in any of them. I still like him and have a lot of respect for him as a player, but I think the time is right for a change. If he stayed for another season, I suspect he would play in less games and consequently his value would plummet. So Rafa’s got his timing right on this one, in my view.
Whether Gareth Barry will be the man to replace him is another issue. I’ve already said in previous blogs that I think Barry would be a great signing for us and would be ideally suited to our midfield set up. But only if the price is right. He is the captain of Aston Villa and in my view, their best and most important player. So its understandable that they ideally wouldn’t want to let him go and we will perhaps have to pay a little over the odds.
That said, if its true that they are holding out for £20 million, its just ridiculous! It’s been reported that we’ve had a recent improved bid of £13 million rejected by them but if we go back to them again I think the very most we should offer is £14 to £15 million and if they turn that down, we should just walk away from the deal.
I think that would be a more then generous offer for a player who will be 28 in November and if they don’t like it, then they can get stuffed. Of course, none of this is Barry’s fault but if we walk away they will be left with an extremely pissed off player who, considering his age, will have just missed out on his only chance to play for a top side in the Champions League etc, and moaning O’Neill will have an even bigger headache to deal with.
The other players we’ve been linked with are Milner and Bentley. Milner is a talented young player who has never really fulfilled his potential as yet and it might be interesting to see how he would develop under Rafa. Bentley is more of a finished article but would be likely to cost twice as much. So if either of these links are true then I think it will come down to how much the boss has in his transfer kitty. These may not be the kind of glamorous names people had hoped for, but lets face it guys we can moan all day long about it, but we just don’t have the budget for those kind of players.
The Gaffer is having to do a bit of horse trading in the transfer market to stretch out his resources as best he can, but even so, I’ll bet we’ll still have a much stronger side next season by the time he’s finished. I think sometimes people worry too much about what other teams are doing, but we’ve could no control over that, so I’d rather just focus on our own team.
All the boss can do is improve the team as much as possible with the resources he has available and hopefully we will then be strong enough to have a real go at the title next season. I certainly wouldn’t rule it out.
The mancs are having their troubles with this Ronaldo situation at the moment. The chavs have a new manager coming in and several of their big name players seemingly about to move on, so regardless of which players their massive budget brings in, its going to take some time to sort things out. And Arsenal have already lost a couple of players and now there are also rumours about Adebayer moving on. So whatever about our troubles off the pitch, on the pitch we seem to have a happy camp and plenty of stability, and that just might give us an advantage when the action gets under way again.
Anyway, I better leave it at that for now. My fingers are about to fall off and my mate is bitching because I won’t give him his Blackberry back, I think this is going to cost me a few cans of Stella!
Keep The Faith
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