internet posters/other fans and rafa

[badpiggy]

i'm wondering how representative posters on liverpool sites are of liverpool fans in general. a lot of liverpool fans i talk to who don't access websites are frustrated with rafa, rotation, team selection, negative tactics, boring football, strange purchases - an overall feeling that he might not be the man to win the premiership but the realistion of who the **** else could?

fans that i spoke to who were at the match on wednesday spoke of other fans obvious extreme frustration with the selection of zenden, (who was told he could go a matter of hours later) amazement that crouch did not start - consensus was that he would have caused serious problems for milan and he's our top scorer in cl, dismay that fowler was not even on the bench - he's basically the same as inzaghi and look what he did. i think there's a lot of respect for rafa and his tactical abilities but is there the beginning of impatience/confusion?

personally i have to admit to not undertanding his approach - it's too complex for me to get. i have a suspicion that the constituent parts of rafa's match preparation are good but on matchday the whole can be less than the sum of its parts... so much intensive scientific preparation for such bloodless performances...lot of fans look back to the opening match against sheffield utd and wonder is that a good summation of rafa's basic failing - obsesssion with the opposition instead of creating something ourselves.

i know what rafa's successes are so no ranting about that please. my question is why is this unease rarely visible on here aside from a couple of posters? and they often get attacked like they've just criticised hitler during the nazi regime. what do all the lurkers think? i remember that it took me a long time to post on koptalk because i was apprehensive about the response i would get from other frequent posters. is it the same here? there's sometimes seems to be group of about 10-12 posters who only respond to each others posts in any sort of thought out way so is this intimidating for those who don't post at all?

there'll be the usual "he got us to 2 champion's league finals in 3 seasons so shut the **** up" responses but why don't i hear the same outside of the internet?

[Shaggy]

there's a group of about 10-12 posters who only respond to each others posts so is this intimidating for those who don't post at all?

I don't see that AT ALL.

As for Rafa only being criticised by a "couple of posters".... ...where've you been mate?

I think he's a fantastic manager but he makes mistakes - like all managers do. In my opinion he got the team all wrong on Wednesday - Gerrard's position was so very wrong, Crouch should've played.

I don't think there's a single LFC on the planet who thinks he's perfect - after all, nobody is perfect and every top manager ****s up.

Ultimately though, the gaffer has forgotten more about football than all of us on here will ever know about the game, and I find it amusing when his biggest critics pipe up continually as though they have a greater insight into the game as Benitez does.

[mick the click]

I think you make some valid points. I have to admit my faith in Rafa isn't blind and some of his decisions are puzzling and irritating in the extreme (the Zenden/Crouch thing you mention being just the latest one).

However...he has moved us forward, and I'll wait until he's got the squad he wants before I will make a further judgment. After all, he knows more about footy and our players that I ever will. I want him to take us to a Prem win, hopefully several, before he goes.

[Darth Marty]

we all know and are pretty unanimous that Rafa makes mistakes, that was never clearer than wednesday evening with his team selection...however he is our manager and he has worked bloody miracles so thats why we Liverpool supporters support Rafa. Id like to think we are the best and most knowledgable fans and thats why we lean away from knee jerk reactions.
As for being scared to post? what are you, man or mouse? If you think and believe in something then who cares if the consensus of feeling is against you? Surely your as entitled to your opinion as anyone else?
Get stuck into us, it happens every bloody day on here and as far as im aware we all get on with it and have decent debates.
Try it, you will be surprised how much fun it is.

[Roboklopp]

I think you make some valid points. I have to admit my faith in Rafa isn't blind and some of his decisions are puzzling and irritating in the extreme (the Zenden/Crouch thing you mention being just the latest one).

However...he has moved us forward, and I'll wait until he's got the squad he wants before I will make a further judgment. After all, he knows more about footy and our players that I ever will. I want him to take us to a Prem win, hopefully several, before he goes.

Sums my feelings up too.

I think people who defend Rafa come across as pretty jumpy because those that criticise him often do so in a poorly informed & incoherent way. Whilst it is no 6CM here, there are those who are a little...erm...unreasonable & unwilling to appreciate all of the points.

[Roboklopp]

we all know and are pretty unanimous that Rafa makes mistakes, that was never clearer than wednesday evening with his team selection...however he is our manager and he has worked bloody miracles so thats why we Liverpool supporters support Rafa. Id like to think we are the best and most knowledgable fans and thats why we lean away from knee jerk reactions.
As for being scared to post? what are you, man or mouse? If you think and believe in something then who cares if the consensus of feeling is against you? Surely your as entitled to your opinion as anyone else?
Get stuck into us, it happens every bloody day on here and as far as im aware we all get on with it and have decent debates.
Try it, you will be surprised how much fun it is.

To be fair I think he is referring to KT- he does have about 500 posts here...

[dww]

fans that i spoke to who were at the match on wednesday spoke of other fans obvious extreme frustration with the selection of zenden, (who was told he could go a matter of hours later) amazement that crouch did not start - consensus was that he would have caused serious problems for milan and he's our top scorer in cl, dismay that fowler was not even on the bench - he's basically the same as inzaghi and look what he did. i think there's a lot of respect for rafa and his tactical abilities but is there the beginning of impatience/confusion?

The difference is that Inzaghi has largely remained free of career threatening injuries and played his entire career at top clubs as a result. Far too many people believe in Fowler for purely sentimental reasons. He looked knackered after about 45 minutes of all the games he player - both physically and mentally. Inzaghi looked as fit as he ever has.

There has to be a level of frustration with a team like the one we sent out - but we controled the game in the first half, it was the correct selection IMO. The second half would have been the time to bring Crouch on and go for the game if needed. The substitutions cam etoo let - that is a very valid criticism but we were only down due to a silly mistake by Alonso (the goal was IMO very well finished by Inzaghi).

i know what rafa's successes are so no ranting about that please. my question is why is this unease rarely visible on here aside from a couple of posters? and they often get attacked like they've just criticised hitler during the nazi regime. what do all the lurkers think? i remember that it took me a long time to post on koptalk because i was apprehensive about the response i would get from other frequent posters. is it the same here? there's sometimes seems to be group of about 10-12 posters who only respond to each others posts in any sort of thought out way so is this intimidating for those who don't post at all?

there'll be the usual "he got us to 2 champion's league finals in 3 seasons so shut the **** up" responses but why don't i hear the same outside of the internet?

I actually har very much the same sentiments from Liverpool fans I meet "in the real world" as I do on here. A mixture of wishing for Evans style flair but respect for Rafas achievement from most people but a few take militant pro or anti positions wrt Rafa. I think that there is a very high level of affection for hime from most fans though - remember the Rafatolla march/parade whatever before the league cup final with Chelsea.

I will agree that when you first come to a forum it is intimidating as people have already built up relationships and disussions can get seemingly arbitarily heated. However most new posters on here seem to get at least a few pleasant "hello, keep posting" type messages. I don't see the things you complain of to the degree you do - but then maybe I'm too frequent a poster.

[Kopite_Colin]

I don't see that AT ALL.

As for Rafa only being criticised by a "couple of posters".... ...where've you been mate?

I think he's a fantastic manager but he makes mistakes - like all managers do. In my opinion he got the team all wrong on Wednesday - Gerrard's position was so very wrong, Crouch should've played.

I don't think there's a single LFC on the planet who thinks he's perfect - after all, nobody is perfect and every top manager ****s up.

Ultimately though, the gaffer has forgotten more about football than all of us on here will ever know about the game, and I find it amusing when his biggest critics pipe up continually as though they have a greater insight into the game as Benitez does.

Spot on Shaggy. Rafa's tatcics were right on Wednesday (for the quality of players we currently have)..one man up front, one playing off him..man capable of crossing from the right, left footed MF player playing Left Midfield. The trouble was the PERSONNEL he picked for those positions was wrong. For me (and I'm no lover of SG on the right, but needs must - horses for courses and all that) SG should have started RM, Crouch up front with Kuyt off him, and Kewell starting on the left. That would have had more attacking threat whilst maintaing the shape of the team to do the defensive job required.

And look what happened: we scored with Crouch on the pitch within 10 mins of him coming on. The problem was we were 2-0 by then, and SG was "lost" in the 2nd half, and Pennant, despite his industry, couldn't find a decent ball all night. And Alonso (who had been a liability with his tackling in that game) was left on, we took our "insurance" off in Masher, and we paid for it.

We simply didn't have sufficient quality to give us more options, but also we didn't use the ones that were available to us most effectively. Coupled with rafa's "safety first" mentality we didn't give ourselves teh best chance from the off. That's where I think we lost it.

[badpiggy]

Spot on Shaggy. Rafa's tatcics were right on Wednesday (for the quality of players we currently have)..one man up front, one playing off him..man capable of crossing from the right, left footed MF player playing Left Midfield. The trouble was the PERSONNEL he picked for those positions was wrong. For me (and I'm no lover of SG on the right, but needs must - horses for courses and all that) SG should have started RM, Crouch up front with Kuyt off him, and Kewell starting on the left. That would have had more attacking threat whilst maintaing the shape of the team to do the defensive job required.

And look what happened: we scored with Crouch on the pitch within 10 mins of him coming on. The problem was we were 2-0 by then, and SG was "lost" in the 2nd half, and Pennant, despite his industry, couldn't find a decent ball all night. And Alonso (who had been a liability with his tackling in that game) was left on, we took our "insurance" off in Masher, and we paid for it.

We simply didn't have sufficient quality to give us more options, but also we didn't use the ones that were available to us most effectively. Coupled with rafa's "safety first" mentality we didn't give ourselves teh best chance from the off. That's where I think we lost it.

yeah i know - but these are big decisions from rafa. we might buy tevez/eto'o/alves but how do we know how and where he will play them? this was his team. how good for morale can it be when our seemingly best players don't play or are played in unfamiliar positions? there's ruthlessness and there's man-managent and the two don't have to be mutually exclusive. i say this by way of another doubt tht people often express about rafa.

[dww]

yeah i know - but these are big decisions from rafa. we might buy tevez/eto'o/alves but how do we know how and where he will play them? this was his team. how good for morale can it be when our seemingly best players don't play or are played in unfamiliar positions? there's ruthlessness and there's man-managent and the two don't have to be mutually exclusive. i say this by way of another doubt tht people often express about rafa.

The thing is that after a while being managed by him Stevie has clearly come round to the way Rafa works. I think Rafa will never be an arm round the shoulder type manager but he does back players who work for him and do what he tells them - like Pennant & certainly earlier in his LFC career Crouch. I think since his hat trick against Arsenal Crouch hasn't kicked on as much as Rafa hoped.

I think that Rafa demands a level of commitment that some players find hard - but if you give it to him he seems to get on well with players. Even Bellamy says nice things about him and he has been sidelined a lot and is thought of as a bad boy.

[badpiggy]

The thing is that after a while being managed by him Stevie has clearly come round to the way Rafa works. I think Rafa will never be an arm round the shoulder type manager but he does back players who work for him and do what he tells them - like Pennant & certainly earlier in his LFC career Crouch. I think since his hat trick against Arsenal Crouch hasn't kicked on as much as Rafa hoped.

I think that Rafa demands a level of commitment that some players find hard - but if you give it to him he seems to get on well with players. Even Bellamy says nice things about him and he has been sidelined a lot and is thought of as a bad boy.

true enough

[RedJedi]

Rafa does make some choices that i cant get my head round. For me he doesnt make subs when needed, he leaves them too late.

But Fergie ****s up, Jose ****s up, thats football.

I'll stick with Rafa and put up with his faults, after all we could still be stuck with GH

[badpiggy]

I don't see that AT ALL.

As for Rafa only being criticised by a "couple of posters".... ...where've you been mate?
I think he's a fantastic manager but he makes mistakes - like all managers do. In my opinion he got the team all wrong on Wednesday - Gerrard's position was so very wrong, Crouch should've played.

I don't think there's a single LFC on the planet who thinks he's perfect - after all, nobody is perfect and every top manager ****s up.

Ultimately though, the gaffer has forgotten more about football than all of us on here will ever know about the game, and I find it amusing when his biggest critics pipe up continually as though they have a greater insight into the game as Benitez does.

haven't been on much since the match...

have had a good scan around and you're right - there seems to be a lot of criticism/concern about rafa and his recent statements about transfers etc... some might say that these problems have been obvious for a long time and i know people whose concerns haven't changed one jot since the day he took over - in fact they've been confirmed. i'm not one of those by the way but people i work with are and they're more knowledgeable about footie than me so i value their opinions

[Phil Eel]

People may criticise Rafa for his tactics last Wednesday - it's called having 20-20 hindsight ! We dominated the first half and let's face it, should have won. The idea of having two wingers and Gerrard making thrusting runs, was to take advantage of a tiring, ageing Milan back line. If we had a goalpoacher who would have been in the right place to take advantage of Dida's parry from Pennant's shot, we would have been 1-0 up. And I don't speak to many fans who don't believe that had Gerrard scored in the second half to make it 1-1, we would have gone on to win.

In other words, if we had won (which we could easily have done), everyone would hail Rafa's continued tactical genius.

[Phil Eel]

haven't been on much since the match...

have had a good scan around and you're right - there seems to be a lot of criticism/concern about rafa and his recent statements about transfers etc... some might say that these problems have been obvious for a long time and i know people whose concerns haven't changed one jot since the day he took over - in fact they've been confirmed. i'm not one of those by the way but people i work with are and they're more knowledgeable about footie than me so i value their opinions

Rafa's annoyed and frustrated at Parry's lack of action (remember when Gerrard nearly left ?) And Rafa wants what we want - a team capable of playing exciting footie and challenging for the prem. We're boring (let's face it, we are) because Rafa uses what he has in the best way tactically, allowing us to continually punch above our weight in Europe - and that will not last forever, because class will ultimately tell