Woodsyla

I agree with Leo's last line only. If he wants to go let him. This has been the same since the dawn of time. Suarez has been f***ing outstanding this season though. He's a one man defensive wrecking ball and £50m isn't going to replace him no matter how well it was spent. We need better quality around him. He has to work so f***ing hard to get a sniff is it any wonder he's missing chances. Where the f*** is the suporting cast. How many goals have we actually scored from midfield this season, 10-15? Appalling.

Seems I've misremembered (copyright Hilary Clinton) that particular nugget. I was sure I'd read that one of the things Rafa asked Kenny to do was look at Suarez. Rafa was looking at Suarez in 2009 though.

I agree with this. From a footballing perspective Kenny II has been bittersweet and there are questions (in terms of purchases not questions to Kenny) that need answering in the summer. Re Benitez, if Kenny decides that he has had enough then we should get the best available manager. IMO that is Rafa. We have Kenny, Kenny must be given time but it's nice to know that if the King decides to abdicate there is a quality manager who would be desperate to take the reins. Then it would down to the owners to ignore the poison they were fed for 6 months and bring Rafa back. To summarise, Kenny is the man unless he says so, if he does it would be madness not to get Rafa back. I've never been on a march but I would drive up to Liverpool for that ...... ... to join in the f***ing hiding these pricks will rightly get. I've never heard of anything, in football, more insulting in my entire life. Bob and Bill will be ...... etc

No, we wasted massive money by buying English and paid waay over the odds for decent but unspectacular players. The money for Torres was spent on Suarez and Carroll. Suarez was scouted by Dalglish at Benitez behest. In hindsight we should have added the rest of the £50m to the summer transfer kitty. As we have £30m more a season to spend because we don't have a massive debt round our neck we will be ok but we have spent an awful lot for not very much under the new owners.

Deserved more that. Excellent work.

He was approached by Abramovich to take over to the end of the season. He declined. Abramovich is now trying to recruit Guardiola and Mourinho. Rafa wants to work in this country, there is a high likliehood that he will end up managing a CL team in this country at the end of this season. Because he is a top top manager and proved it at Liverpool and Valencia. The fact that your tiny pea brain can't comprehend this is an irrelevance. Kenny is gettting the respect that his results and purchases deserve to be honest. What he isn't getting is the respect Kenny Dalglish deserves. These are two separate things in my opinion.

The day Luis Suarez was given an 8 game ban and officially made the poster boy for racism in this country. Can't think how that could have had a negative impact on results ......

The constant denigrating of all of Benitez achievements is also embarrassing. Kenny Dalglish is a legend, but he has done very little this season to convince that he is going to win titles this tenure. The last couple of months we have gone backwards. There have been extenuating circumstances, but there were for Benitez, so I don't see why Rafa shouldn't get treated with the same respect that others demand for Kenny. Not a strong league, you're a f***ing clown.

This is the stupidest thing I have ever read on the internet. League not full of quality 2007-09 2007 3 CL Semifinalists -1 finalist 2008 3 CL Semifinalists - 2 finalists 2009 3 CL Semifinalists - 1 finalist

PLTBT

Well that and the homophobic remarks on Twitter. Mostly that though. For me Villa was bad but the hammer blow was Spurs. When he gave that pen and then Spurs rolled over I knew for the first time that you don't need to be better that United to with the league. You need to be better than United and the refereeing bias to win the league. A reminder of just how f***ing good Wenger and in particular Mourinho's title winning teams were. Still gutting that a title winning platform was broken up due to lack of funds. Still onwards and upwards.

Another often overlooked factor we have been without the only decent holding player at the club since December. We had 23pts from 13 games when Lucas got injured, we have managed 16pts from 13 since.

He's been playing as a lone striker a lot of the time. He will do when we get a quality striker who can play with him.

I don't think we can underestimate how much the Suarez saga has derailed our season. We lost our best player for a month and mentally probably longer than that. It must still be tough for Luis to get booed everywhere he goes. To put it in context since the FA published their report we have reaped 5pts from 7 games and the only team we have beaten are the comically bad Wolves. Arsenal is the first league game this year where we really looked the part again. In the first half of the season we struggled to put teams away at home despite battering them. Before Arsenal we were just struggling.

We've beaten Arsenal and Chelsea away from home and gone toe to toe with City and United at home and looked the better side. We battered Arsenal off the park on Saturday. I honestly think that if we had just Van Persie this season we would have 15 more points. Defence is relatively stable, midfield is workman like if not spectacularly creative and we have the best no 7 in the World. We do need squad improvements and we are not the finished article but a 20 goal a season striker would put us above Spurs. Definite progress.

I think he'll die first personally. They are so far away from that at the moment and their squad needs a complete overhaul. Yes they are competing for the title but both Real and Barca are streets ahead of them now. Their central midfield has to be the slowest in Europe.

This is the key for me. Suarez is not a finisher, we battered Arsenal but lack of a cutting edge we come up short. Had we started with Van Persie and Suarez up front it would have been 6-0 at half time. To break into the top 4/win titles we need a Rooney/Van Persie/Drogba. We had a Torres, we need a new one, and sadly I don't think Carroll is it. Yes we have areas that we need to improve the but the bare stats of the home form don't lie. We don't score enough goals. We need a centre forward.

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Ok, but it does seem like we are arguing over which is better Brie or Camembert. Your initial post said that we have had much better fullbacks than Johnson. Babbel is the only one we have had that is on the same plane as Johnson going forward. He's not the complete fullback but he is a good one and the fact that we were blessed with the outstanding talents of Babbel, Finnan and Arbeloa over recent years shouldn't be used as a stick to beat him. He's one of the top right backs in the league currently, that's good enough for me.

I disagree, Babbel was great going forward but Johnson has more tricks in his locker and is better in front of goal. Babbel was an infinitely superior defender.

Simao was on the f***ing plane and Benfica hiked the price again. Some bad luck, some poor judgement, some financial constraints.

opinion of CEO of 1 of largest kit retailers in country. Can't say who, wouldn't be fair Hmm, let me guess ...... How's them grapes.

In Babbel, Arbeloa and Finnan we were blessed, I think Johnson although not as good defensively is better going forward than all 3, Babbel is the standout in the list though.

They are the ones we are competing against, to win titles, so what they do is the benchmark.

Portsmouth owe us £9m. Portsmouth are barely keeping the wolf from the door and we know it. If Portsmouth go under we lose our money. If we buy Johnson then that money has been invested and we only need to find another £8m. Yes we stil pay £17m but £9m of that money was in jeopardy. For everyone who says we overpaid for Johnson don't forget we paid exactly the same as Chelsea offered. He chose us. We couldn't have paid any less as Portsmouth wouldn't have accepted our bid.