The walters step over

Surely a club can't sack a player over what happens on the pitch?

If they wanted to do that, they wouldn't have spent the money they did last year. They could easily have dodged the Carroll signing by saying "we want to keep the money for the permanent manager" for starters. FSG bought us to make money, in the same way anyone that wasn't a sugar daddy (which a lot of fans, especially on here said they didn't want) would. They'd have to be the worlds worst business men to want to run down the club to make money when they could've easily saved themselves millions by giving Kenny the Torres money and pocketing the rest. Why are people coming up with doomsday scenarios off the top of their heads and then running with them? Suddenly journalists and random people on twitter that knew f*ck all and were just attention seekers when they were having a go at Kenny/Rafa/Suarez are having their every word hung upon as gospel.

Agree with most of that. For Martinez to put himself through a couple of interviews and travel to America would suggest that,f*ck yeah, he wants to manage us - if the brief was the same as at every other club in Britain then he would've signed already. If there's anything to consider then I'd imagine that you're right, the DOF is in place (or close to being so), and the manager wouldn't be the be all and end all when it comes to transfers. If the theory is correct it may well explain why Rafa hasn't been a serious candidate - He had problems here and Valencia due to being frustrated at not having complete control over transfers and it wouldn't surprise me if FSG have had either a very brief conversation with him or know that he wouldn't work under those conditions. I suppose Martinez has to weigh up whether he wants less responsibility here or full control somewhere else and I don't think it's cut and dried that Martinez is going to be the new manager.

Nobody knows how Martinez would do here, and I wasn't saying that he's automatically going to do better than Kenny. What I am saying is that Kenny wasn't let go on a whim, there were logical reasons for it and I can't blame FSG for trying a fresh approach and changing the structure of the club in order to make us successful.

No, Kenny was fired because we lost 14 league games, had our worst season for 50 years and the lowest number of goals scored at home for over a century and we ended the season more than two months worth of games behind the top two. There's a good argument to say that he could have turned things around having learned from this season but FSG didn't share that belief. If Martinez is appointed then we will be doing what clubs on the continent have been doing for years, taking a chance on a young manager, something that a lot of people in this country have been asking for years. We can't close the gap on the leaders by trying to copy their methods, unless FSG are willing to do an Abhramovich/Mansour then we can't make up for the lack of CL by offering £150,000+ wages so the top,top players aren't going to find us very attractive this summer- we have to find a different path and having an experienced VG as general manager and Martinez as team manager is certainly something quite radical for this country. No one knows how it'll pan out but you can't just say we'll be miles behind everyone else three months before the season starts, it may be the fresh approach needed to kickstart the recovery and eventual title challenges.

I don't think of it in terms of best talker, to me that gives the impression of the biggest personality who gets on well with Henry gets the job. More about who has the best plan to move us forward, how are they going to get more out of the players we have, what positions we need to fill and with the names of the players that they will bring in to do it. I don't think it's a bad idea to find out the details of what the new guy will do before he's offered the job.

Agreed. Personally, I think it's being looked at the wrong way round. In my opinion, what Martinez did at Wigan won't get him the job - it's only got him an interview. What will get him the job is when they say "why do you think we underperformed last year, and what would you do to change things with X amount to spend?". It's why i don't have a problem with the way things are going so far. It looks as though they're going to choose a manager based on what he can do for us rather than what he did for someone else.

The season's finished, pre season is how many weeks away?The urgency isn't as strong as it was last time. You're right that we don't know what they're doing but that doesn't mean that they don't. It just seems to me that people are blatently making stuff up to fill the void on twitter and in the papers and then on boards like this people are saying "well, if that's true then they're clueless".

It's all getting a bit bizarre. Do SOS think they should be in the loop when it comes to the decision making or do they really think that henry should come out and give them a blow by blow account of how the candidates interviewed have fared? I can absolutely understand people being a bit cagey about them after the last two tw*ts (four, if you want to count Moores and Parry) in charge but calling things a shambles and saying FSG don't know what they're doing when absolutely nobody really knows what stage they're at is a)unfair and b)makes us look a bit like whiney kids - "but I want to know NOW!" Redknapps link to us sums it all up for me, journalist needs space to fill, knows Redknapp is in his last year and writes "'Arry to KOP SHOCK". Redknapp gets asked about it, says that he doesn't want to leave spurs so next days headline is "Redknapp turns down POOL" inside a columnist then writes a piece about "why no one wants to manage Liverpool". Fans lose their mind, supporters groups demand something/anything happens and the fact that Redknapp wasn't approached by us just gets ignored in the rush to call the whole thing a shambles. People are panicking over absolutely f*ck all. When FSG mess things up, then jump on their case but it's pointless and damaging to the club to start freaking out when we don't know how far things are.

Phillipe Auclair(sp?) was on Talksport yesterday and reckons Cole is a dead cert to go back to London this summer - his choice is between W.Ham and spurs.

Why would they view a man that they've never worked with or spent any great deal of time with as "Pol Pot"? Somebody asks on messageboard "why they don't they give it to Rafa?" Somebody else replies "Maybe they don't like him" Third person "well, I've heard,blah,Pol Pot,blah" Loads of others go batsh*t crazy.

That's why twitter rumours do my head in, I might be off beam here but I don't think what he wrote makes a great deal of sense and is almost certainly a load of balls. This guy is saying that someone from the club has said to him something along the lines of "we know who we would like to get in an ideal world, it's not AVB but we're going to talk to him anyway" - why, if they have a favourite, don't they just offer him the job? FSG are doing the interviews, to get info like this would mean that you're close to them. If you were close to them why would you then go on twitter so that Henry can see you spilling the beans before they've even sat down with a potential manager?

10 years ago they would've been praised for doing things the Liverpool way for not drip feeding the press with their progress in bringing someone in but twitter has changed things, probably forever. The kenny gives his payoff to the transfer fund thing was just silly beyond belief and still there were enough people that seemed to believe it and the same is true of the "some guy on twitter said.." rumours of who we've approached. If a twitter rumour paints FSG as clueless then there seems be a lot of people more than ready to belive it without questioning where the information is coming from. It's obvious that FSG aren't going to be letting anyone outside of their circle any inside knowledge of what's going on but still people are choosing to believe any old nonsense as long as it fits in with their own thoughts/prejudices. I'm repeating myself here but they're trying to restructure things on a big scale behind the scenes and unless Henry started interviewing prospects whilst Kenny was still in the job - and imagine the uproar if that had come out - I'm not entirely sure how they could've sped up the process.

Possibly, but I'd say FSG aren't particularly arsed what style we play as long as we get top four and if those two are available then there's no harm in asking so I'd still argue his point has no merit. Club chairmen don't appoint people on the basis of style of play, they bring in whoever they think will get them success on the least amount of money possible. I do generally like him as journalists go but I honestly don't see his point. SKY were saying this morning he has an agreement with Chelsea.

That's like a Coldplay lyric, sounds quite profound until you actual think about it for more than two seconds and realise it means f*ck all. Not being funny, but what does that even mean? They're two of the most highly regarded managers in the game and both are out of jobs but if you approach one of them you don't know what you want?

Unless the guy you have is the biggest legend in the clubs history. Can you imagine the hysteria if it'd come out that AVB had signed a contract whilst kenny was still in charge? You know what it would've been like. death threats, protest marches and divvys on SKY demanding that Kennys reinstated and FSG should sell up. It seems that they had a timetable and Kenny brought it forward to find out the score and when he refused to walk, they sacked him. If we're still managerless come July then f*cking right it's time to panic. As it is it's been less than a week and we know for sure that they've approached Wigan, so we know the process has started. Rafa,Capello,AVB and Guardiola are free of any ties so unless they or their agents phone up the press then there's no reason for it to be made public - for all we know they've already been talked to.

Isn't that what they seem to be doing? Like I say there would have been uproar (and quite rightly so) if they'd started the process whilst Kenny was still here. I'd imagine the majority of people they talk to will have to uproot their families and move country if they took the job so imo it's not really surprising that they haven't parachuted someone in just a few days after Kenny left.

As a matter of interest, what do you think they should be doing. How would you go about finding a manger?

Agree with all of this, especially the bit about everyone just needing to calm it a bit. It seems pretty clear that no British journalist has a direct line into FSG so it's educated guesswork at best and people seem to be losing their minds over it. I don't see how sounding out Pep or Capello at the same time as interviewing Martinez can be viewed as something to beat FSg with, if it came out that they weren't considered everyone would go absolutely apesh*t over the lack of ambition. FSG decided to change the manager purely on results, and whether fans agree with it or not it would've been incredibly disrespectful for them to start talking to managers whilst Kenny still held the job. It's been two days, there'll be a lot of things going on behind the scenes we don't know about and there's no point going mental over something some attention seeker decided to write on twitter.

If they can do it within a week or so, then I don't see any harm. I'd much rather them saying to three or four people "why do you deserve to manage us?" than just offering it to the first available guy they speak to.

He never likes to pass up a chance to appear on telly or the radio. SKY reporting that we are talking/ or are about to talk to Martinez but that we will be interviewing others. AVB second favourite apparently. I know it's being labelled as indecisiveness but I don't think it's a bad idea to round up the candidates and make ask them to put their case for the job.

What was the most that any manager could get from Wigan? I'd say keeping them in the division with their gates and finances is an achievement in itself. With the exception of Blackpool they're the weakest club to have been in the premiership (in terms of actually being big enough, structually) and keeping them safe whilst playing good football shouldn't be sniffed at. I know it's just internet venting and it probably won't come to it but there seems to be this feeling in the air that FSG somehow need to be had a go at for Kenny going when the season starts, anyone that does that it just making things harder for us to be successful imo. Martinez can only be judged after we've seen what he can do over a decent period of time, getting on his back because he's not Kenny will not bring Dalglish back and it won't do us any good at all.

Aye, think there's a rung or two on the ladder that's been skipped over here. He seems to come across a a decent fella that tries to play in the right way.So we'll see i guess.

No-ones saying that we were likely to be relegated. Imo it doesn't serve any purpose saying "with a bit more luck we'd have X amount of extra points" because it could be turned around and said if Miller hadn't missed a sitter then we'd have lost a cup final to a lower league team and finished with nothing at the end of the season. The squad we have is capable of getting more points than they did and I don't think anyone can argue that we didn't massively under achieve. But then the question is - why weren't the players responding to Kenny?

It kind of is. If we'd finished five or six points behind fourth then Kenny would've stayed. We were miles away and City and Utd could've finished their season in March and they still would've had more points than us.