Kite

Totally uncalled for. Garcia had a poor game today - there were plenty of other incidents to back that up, his pointless volley from outside the box from Gerrard's cross when unmarked, his crazy decision to pass to Morientes after Morientes had successfully pulled two defenders out of position to leave Garcia unmarked and on the edge of the box... he is utterly inconsistent in his play and while he can be great he can also be poor. Today he was poor.

Saw a pre-match interview with him on Sky and he was saying about how once Real Madrid came in for him he had no choice but to leave Liverpool. Which is total bulls***, he was deliberately winding down his contract by his own admission and had no intent on staying at Liverpool, however his revisionism now smacks of someone who does have regrets. As should anyone who walked away from the chance to be a European Champion, basically. His performance today would hardly have helped his case though if he really does want to become a red again.

Good post. What has made me more angry than anything over the "Owen decides to sign for Newcastle" saga is how much speculation and hearsay, apparently sensible, Liverpool fans are willing to come on here and state as "Fact". "A friend of a player said the player said that Rafa thinks that..." is not a fact nor is "Michael Owen's agent told another Liverpool player, with that same agency, that its all Parry's fault things went wrong..." is not a fact, etc etc ad nausem and quite annoying really how quickly some people want to believe the word of agents and ex-Liverpool players, 'old timer' stewards and secret sauces, so long as it paints Liverpool FC, one of the best run clubs in the country and a club to be hugely proud of, in a negative light.

No, didn't let me down neither. Some nice players coming into our reserve team this summer that no-one seems to be getting any credit for by the way.

Exactly - Why pay more for a player who couldn't even hold down a first team place in his new team? We should be paying less!!

So we would have paid for Owen to play for Real then? Great deal!!

Firstly, the Gerrard saga is in NO WAY an example of "negotiating style" but an abnormality brought about by Gerrard's unexpected immaturity: the club had every right to expect Gerrard to sign a new contract when the holidays were over and everyone was back to business given what went before. No-one expected Gerrard to resurrect the "I'm off to Chelski" s**** so soon after winning the CL. Once the huff was seen to be real, the club acted with directness and sealed Gerrard's contract less than a week after negotiations actually began. Not too lax at all. Secondly, you are assuming we want Owen over and above all else. Your theory only works if Rafa only wants Owen and no longer is bothered by our lack of cover at defence or at right midfield. Given Rafa's many many comments about these latter two positions, is it not possible that the Owen saga is a distraction from Rafa's main concerns - he might like to have the option of Owen in the squad, but it isn't the main issue concerning him at all, hence our fairly uncommital attitude to getting too enscounced in talks earlier. Plus, he may not believe Owen is worth 15 million nor worth the lads wage demands, especially given we have more pressing weak areas in the squad - he may prefer to maintain some of our budget for January dealings, he may prefer to avoid large scale variances in player salaries etc etc As far as I have witnessed, our current "negotiating style" seems to be with an eye to the long term future and health of the club and squad, which is very commendable in my opinion.

Owen was quite cynical in the way he manipulated his way to Real a year ago so I expect he's simply being quite cycnical again in attempting to maneouvre his way back to England - it behoves this club to be quite cynical in return and judge his worth purely on what does he offer us that we don't have and is the fees involved justified, etc. Personally I think this whole saga has been a huge distraction from the real issues effecting the club of finding squad depth in wide postions and at centre back. Owen left us at a very awkward time last season, not giving us any time to find replacements etc., and now he is arriving (somewhere) at a fairly awkward time again. Nothing he does, off the pitch anyhow, really endears that lad to me - I wish we'd focused on keeping Cisse and intensified our search for replacements in the more important weak areas of the squad

You are really into this pedantic sophistry, aren't you? Our two main targets for RM this summer is what I've been talking about and all our main CB targets for this summer. I've been totally referring to this summer's transfers but you want to try to imply that there's a big long term masterplan in action which means .... well, nothing really relevant actually cause the players we tried to sign this summer for the stated positions haven't come - be they "main", according to your highly complex definition, or not. The bottom line is that these "stop gap" players as you refer to them, aren't here either. So right now we don't have "main" players nor stop gap players... and our squad remains too slight for the demands of the season ahead. Perhaps a player or two will appear before Wednesday but, going back to Owen, just how much negotiating can one man do? If Parry is going to spend the next few days trying to thrash out a deal with Owen, his agents and the never facilitating Real, then there isn't a whole lot of man hours left over to nail down a deal with at least two more players?

So when NHE accused me of being simplistic and misleading, when I mentioned that we have failed in getting the right sided players and/or central defending players we have been mainly linked to this summer, what he really meant was I don't know what's going to happen several years down the line. Which I concede is true. Thought most of us were like that actually? But seeing as I don't have the grasp of multi-dimensional time and space that NME seems to think is necessary to make comments about transfers this summer, then I guess I am indeed being "simplistic" in his terms

Bizarre use of language - what dictionary says "main" means "only" The fact that we missed "Main", which in my definition means the first choice, the names towards the top of the list rather than further on down, means we may be buying those names further on down the list... there's no implication whatsoever that missing "Main" targets means getting none.. .it means missing those targets you initially wanted to get and thus having to get targets less acceptable etc etc etc How do you come up with the idea that the fact that we wanted Figo and were negotiating for Figo and were talking to Figo mean he wasn't a "main" target for this summer???

they each were a main target at a particular time, yes. With only five days left to find players now, perhaps our only "real" target left is to get Owen in? I don't know of any decent RM available anyhow now.

We missed Figo, Stelio and Milito - are you claiming they weren't targets? (maybe just a protracted smokescreen???)

thought my comments might ruffle feathers

we missed our two main rm targets and our main cb target - is it now a case of getting in Owen just to satisfy some myopic fans fantasies???

aye, long thread here: http://www.ynwa.tv/forum/index.php?showtopic=71898