goose island

what happened here, I thought this thread was about laughing at the Mancs?!

no i get it, i was being facetious. it's a redundant conversation best left alone. i'm with the apathetics to the point that i've been to Goodison as many times as Anfield in the past 12 months. any form of action from the club showing that they are willing to re-engage with the local community is probably the only thing that'll change that for me.

it needs doing in all honesty, in 20 years time the Rafa conversation will still be like Groundhog Day.

i'd put this ahead of competing at the top if i'm honest.

good job we took action then, eh?

haha, sorry having a sense of humour bypass here!

laugh all you want, but come August 2013 we'll be starting season number 4 without Champions League football at Anfield.

how can you describe any period of a season in which you only lose two league games "terrible"? how was every season bar 08/09 exactly the same? in 05/06 we came 9 points of winning the league. were they exactly the same in that aside from 05/06 & 09/10 the European Cup quarter finals was a minimum achievement? read that again and blow your mind a second time.

as great as Arbeloa was (and besides being a player Rafa signed, and one you'd probably never head of before he did), Glen Johnson is f***ing light years better than him.

of course our teams under Gillette & Hicks were better. when they bought us we were on our run into a second European Cup final in 3 years, had finished the season before 9 points off 1st place in the league and as FA Cup winners. our teams under Gillette & Hicks were brilliant until the summer of 2009, when the transfer budget goalposts had been moved to such a degree that we couldn't replace outgoing players with anyone better coming in. the position we were in when Gillette & HIcks took over and where they left us are light years apart. to judge Brendan Rodgers at this point is ludicrous. FSG's main failing has been blindly letting Commolli throw money at over-priced, average British footballers. the initial cash injection which was supposed to spring us to life out of administration was wasted. Kenny managed to do that himself without the money. i think last season has since shown that FSG's reluctance to give Kenny the job full time was justified. it's a shame that he isn't still at the club in some capacity however. at the beginning of last season we did exactly what Arsenal did to us yesterday at their place. they went on to finish 3rd in the league. we've got a long way to go before we can judge Brendan Rodgers' side, but he has a few big decisions to make early on now, namely: - (i) how is he going to ease the pressure on Luis Suarez so he isn't trying to win the game in 5 minutes by himself (ii) where does Steven Gerrard fit into this side, and should he remain captain?

we're gonna get gubbed. 1-5.

the point i was trying to make was that even when we were on top, it didn't actually look like we were in control. the goals we did concede were from the easiest of chances. you don't concede these type of chances if you're in control. if anything, the ease with which teams could come and get a result at Anfield would suggest that despite all our shots at goal, they were at least equally, if not more, in control than we were.

to be fair that seemed to be the plan last season and it didn't get us very far. although the scoring of the goals bit itself didn't happen a great deal, we were very good at surrendering a one goal lead and in general not looking in control.

the desperation to win can be as prohibitive as productive though. one of my main gripes with Suarez is that at times he plays as if every stage of the game is the last 5 minutes. i'd prefer to see an unmoving commitment to a style of play until the bitter end, a bit like how we were in 08/09 (and the reason we scored so many late goals that season), and the way that Man Utd just peg teams back when they are chasing a game with wave after wave of attack (mostly down the flanks). last season the plan just seemed to be go out there and be boss. we're going to need to be patient before we see what the plan is with Rodgers (including the crowd at Anfield).

if you want to talk about it crudely, solely on the basis of their performances in the past 2 seasons do you think Gerrard & Carragher have been value for money on their wages? yes, there are probably more pressing worries in terms of how our wage bill is distributed than the club captain and a veteran of 700+ games, but just because you are one of the best players to ever play for the club, and the club captain, it doesn't mean that your own performance isn't placed under scrutiny by the same parameters as everyone else's is. in fact as captain, you also have a responsibility to motivate your side on the pitch to get that extra 10% out of them. the 10% that in pure ability terms they probably don't have. it's just a case of opinions, but personally i don't see that we get that enough from Steven Gerrard since 2009. it doesn't surprise me that last season our record in games he didn't start was far better than in the ones that he did start. there is no taking away their past achievements for the club, we've been spoilt rotten to have 2 players like Gerrard and Carragher with us for their entire careers, but it's ludicrous to consider them beyond criticism on the basis of their past achievements for the club. just as with everyone else, if we are to move upwards, we need them on board with the manager. but since at least 2009 i don't think we've seen it.

after a very casual interest in anything LFC-related this summer, what with the Euros and then the Olympics, I am finally ready to go WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH, WE'RE GONNA WIN THE LEAGUE!

i bet you Fergie will have a pop about this at some point. it will be like Rafa and the game over gesture to Allardyce.

i absolutely loved that game of football. one of my favourites from the last 10 years. brilliant.

i would say trophies and the finances need to be treated with equal importance to be honest. the extreme is a Leeds Utd type scenario where you overspend your means and gamble on hitting glory in the short term. to a certain extent, Gillette & Hicks did this with us by taking out loans that we could barely service even if we were winning the leauge & champions league every year. after everything we went through with Gillette & Hicks I am quite happy for us to be living within our means. if it means a couple of lean years on the pitch then so be it as hopefully with the right people and a decent youth set up we can build things up again. i don't think we can underestimate how much Gillette & Hicks took out of us. i also think in retrospect that the way we spent last summer we really gambled on getting 4th and lost. i think everyone involved in the upper echelons of the club should take the blame for that, including the owners, because if the remit at the start of the season was 4th, then it was clear in January we needed to invest in the playing squad to achieve that. ultimately the activity in the summer, and then the inactivity in January has set us back another couple of years. we might be best off cashing in on our most valuable assets and starting again. the stadium issue still needs to be addressed. as it stands we are miles behind on matchday revenue compared to our rivals. Agger, at 27, is probably thinking that he wants to be playing in more cup finals, and winning league titles before it is too late for him. it makes sense for both parties, but for the club its only sensible if it means we re-invest wisely. this, for me is the main issue. i'm not sure if we have the right people involved to be able to do that. time will tell for Rodgers, he needs to be backed for a few years now before we expect to see results. that's where we're at. on a side note, being of Iranian descent and only really looking at the news headlines, I'm not really sure what the issue is with Standard Chartered this morning but i do wish that everyone with an association with Liverpool FC would stop either making us look like c**** or just looking like c**** themselves.

not true, my corners and free-kicks are always boss.

talent? Aquilani is infintely more talented. potential? so you mean Spearing is younger. attitude? you are basing this on no evidence whatsoever. value for money? because Spearing come through the ranks. well done for picked the most pointless measurements to conduct your analysis. except for talent. which Aquilani wins by miles.

of course you can't discount Carra's own ability in this, he was an outstanding centre half for the vast majority of Rafa's time as manager. but to say at 26 he was a developing young player, when 03/04 aside because of his broken leg, he'd made 30+ plus league appearances in every season since 98/99 is laughable, and to say that he'd found his true position by the end of Houllier's reign is pure revisionism. liability was a deliberately harsh word to use and it's going too far to call him a liability in his pre-Rafa days. but in 2004 it was widely considered that we would need better than Carragher in our starting 11 to take us to where we wanted to be. he wasn't a player you would see any of the other top teams coming in for. since 2010 he has been a liability, both in terms of what he can offer to us on the pitch but more importantly being selected ahead of better alternatives in the squad. Mascherano gets called out for supposedly refusing to play Man City away for Hodgy. Isn't Carragher supposedly refusing to play right-back at Boro' away in 2009 a remarkably similar situation? I have seen no evidence to say that either of these events happened, but if it's a situation of player vs. manager, I'm of the opinion that as a supporter you should always back the manager (unless it's Hodgy). there is no better example than Fergie for evidence of that. frankly, the less said about Carragher's last contract extension the better. haha, sorry!

i can accept that you (and plenty of others, probably including a few players) didn't like Rafa but it's scary that people like you still can't accept that sacking Benitez was a massive, massive backwards step for Liverpool FC. i'm not talking about the actual deed in 2010, although if the rumours about Purslow's behaviour are true then that is abhorrent enough in it's own right, i'm talking about the fact that the writing was on the wall for some as far back as Barnsley in the FA Cup in 2008. probably earlier for others too. this on the back of a 3 year record which read: - 2005 - European Cup Winners 2006 - FA Cup Winners & 80+ points in the league 2007 - European Cup Finalists even pre-'rant' in 2008/09 he was getting undermined in the press, and a decent proportion of our crowd were acting like spoilt brats, booing us to the top of the table against West Ham being a prime example. 86 points, and losing out in the league to, in his own words, Fergie's best ever United squad still wasn't enough for some. i'm not trying to say he was perfect, but from where we were in May 2004 to where we were in May 2009, and what we'd achieved in the interim, the progress was clear as f***ing daylight. it didn't stop the daft calls for Mourinho to replace him though, and the even dafter notion that Mourinho was going to 'crawl over broken glass' to come to Anfield. still waiting for that one to happen. it was clear during 2009/10 that certain players wanted Rafa gone. it seemed that others had just given up on the club entirely when they saw how the summer transfer window was handled. if you honestly believe that Rafa got any of his first choice transfer targets during that window then you are deluded. the goalposts constantly being moved on his transfer budget, how the f*** was he supposed to operate seriously at that time? i'm sure you're bound to mention the sale of Alonso at this time. why is it the same people who will pan him for selling Alonso, never praise him for signing him in the first place? a good manager should always outlast any number of players at a club anyway. we'd seen Rafa build at least 2 sides during his relatively short time with us, what's to say after a season of transition in 2009/10, we couldn't have done better in 2010/11? like i said, i can accept that people didn't like Benitez, i just can't believe why not. he is undoubtedly the best manager we have had in the last 20 years. Carragher was a liability until Rafa arrived and he's been one ever since he left.

the other significant event around that time being our captain getting arrested for assault.

didn't say it was, just asked why bother. do we know for certain that Mascherano 'refused to play'? 9 goals in 23 league games before Torres left. not a bad return in spite of not trying a lick. going over old ground now, leaving it at this.