Feeling towards G&H

[Venton]

No they walked away because Moores didn't inform them about what was going on, not that had the meeting and examined another bid. He gave them a gentlemans agreement and he broke it, so they walked.

And your evidence of this is what?

[Imy]

Why do they want to advertise Dubai? Corporations are shagging themselves up the arse to get office space over there at the moment. They're not selling trainers here. They invest in businesses and make large amounts of money out of them. And if they see them failing they can afford to **** them off at the earliest opportunity as well.

Sheikh Mohammed has a strategy in place whereby he has transformed Dubai from a outpost to a metropolis of high quality, why? because he realises the oil his country pumps out will finish and thus relying on this is stupid, hence the mass building programme and heavy investment in other world renowned companies.

Don't get me wrong i also believe they would have treated Liverpool as a business, but as successful venture capitalist do you really believe they would have failed? If one of their objectives was to buy a world renowned club to advertise their brand do you not believe they would have attempted to sign world renowned stars? imagine the marketing machine of Ronaldinho advertising Dubai?

[captainfog]

BBC sports editor Mihir Bose told BBC Radio Five Live that he believed Sheikh Mohammed was angry with Liverpool's courting of tycoon Gillett who is expected to make a revised takeover bid.
Bose said: "Mohammed is a very angry man and that is why he has pulled out. He was given assurances by Liverpool that they would go with them but the talk of other offers has unsettled him and he has pulled out.

Anyway, I haven't written G&H off yet. End of the season will see a big transfer period and IMO a crossroads for LFC and G&H. Do they spend the money they promised to create a league winning squad or will they hamstring our manager? Only time will tell. I hope they back Rafa fully, I really do.

[Venton]

Sheikh Mohammed has a strategy in place whereby he has transformed Dubai from a outpost to a metropolis of high quality, why? because he realises the oil his country pumps out will finish and thus relying on this is stupid, hence the mass building programme and heavy investment in other world renowned companies.

Don't get me wrong i also believe they would have treated Liverpool as a business, but as successful venture capitalist do you really believe they would have failed? If one of their objectives was to buy a world renowned club to advertise their brand do you not believe they would have attempted to sign world renowned stars? imagine the marketing machine of Ronaldinho advertising Dubai?

Dubai is thriving for a lot of reasons - it's a nexus for energy trading not only for the middle east but across asia and africa too, as well as a hub for islamic finance transactions. My company set up an office there to be involved in this kind of business. Buying a football team doesn't come into it.

I agree with your point about them wanting to run it as a business and being successful, but that applies equally to G&H. Why would they want to buy in to us just to see it all fail? They already run sports franchises and have experience of building stadiums. They are all buying in to clubs like us in order to merchandise us to Asia and the States and to gain revenue when the next TV deal comes in and we sell our own games.

I don't have a problem with people who say we shouldn't have sold up - I didn't think we should have at the time (it was close though, I admit), but the evidence that DIC would be any better is laughable. And what after DIC when they don't pour in the billions? Bill Gates? Warren Buffet? The financial commentary I have seen on here is hilarious - they should have seen the credit crunch, they should have taken out a five year fixed rate etc etc.

Here we are with them.

I say give them a chance to prove themselves instead of fuelling all the distrust about the club at the moment. And if they prove themselves to be poor caretakers at the end of the summer we can judge them then. I tell you, the press are loving this and it sickens me day in day out.

[Venton]

Anyway, I haven't written G&H off yet. End of the season will see a big transfer period and IMO a crossroads for LFC and G&H. Do they spend the money they promised to create a league winning squad or will they hamstring our manager? Only time will tell. I hope they back Rafa fully, I really do.

Amen and shalom mate

[AFII]

Real earned over £300m on Beckham.

DIC would probably run us the Real way. Maximize the marketing on everything. They would get their money back plus a lot more if they signed expensive players thanks to excellent marketing.

The image rights are worth a lot of money. Ronaldinho for example is worth £10m-£15m/year in image rights alone.

IMO.

[twistnkuyt]

Real earned over £300m on Beckham.

DIC would probably run us the Real way. Maximize the marketing on everything. They would get their money back plus a lot more if they signed expensive players thanks to excellent marketing.

The image rights are worth a lot of money. Ronaldinho for example is worth £10m-£15m/year in image rights alone.

IMO.

Best reason I've seen to be happy they didn't buy us.

[captainfog]

Best reason I've seen to be happy they didn't buy us.

Is that the same reason they are currently top of their league?

[AFII]

Red Owners Must Back Benitez, good article about our current squad situation

Our 2-1 Boxing day victory at Derby, turned out to be a real struggle for us against the Premiership’s bottom club and to be honest, I found the whole thing to be a bit depressing. Of course, we can always choose to bury our heads in the sand and fall back on the old “if you can win playing badly” cliché, but the truth is that in some of our recent performances there have been very clear signs that we are just not good enough in certain area’s and our squad is badly in need of strengthening.

Yet another brilliant goal by King Fernando gave us a perfect start to the game and we really should have cruised home from there but instead of this we struggled to take control of the game, and the more we struggled, the more confident Derby became. Their equaliser goal in the second half was a bad one from a defensive point of view but they deserved it.

When Gerrard struck the underside of their crossbar in the 85th minute, I thought it was going to be one of those days and we were about to throw away another two points but then our skipper once again saved our asse’s with a 90th minute winner, when he was on hand in the six yard box to steer home a rebound from a Torres shot.

Torres and Gerrard are a pair of diamonds and are the two players that have played by far the biggest part in keeping our hopes alive in the Premiership, but beyond those two its difficult to find anyone that provides us with some inspiration. I hear a lot of people ask why we often fall into the routine of humping a lot of long balls forward, as we did far too often against Derby, and in my view the reason for this is simply because we have far too few players with the imagination and quality to do anything else.

There’s no doubt that Rafa has improved us year on year since he’s been here and I still believe that with our best eleven on the pitch we can match up to anybody, but in terms of winning the Premiership over the course of a season we can’t just keep relying on Gerrard and Torres to provide us with the quality. You can only get away with that for so long, but there are always going to be occasions over the course of a season where one or both of them will either be off-form or injured, and it is at those times that we need other players to kick in and play their part.

We all like to believe that we have a side good enough to win the Premiership this season but the truth is that without Gerrard and Torres, we might well have lost against the bottom side in the league. Some may argue that it was just a bad day at the office, but isn’t it strange that over the course of a season, we always seem to have more “bad days at the office” then our rivals.

There are always going to be some games in the season where a few of your players are a bit below par, but in my view our main rivals are better equipped to deal with such days then we are, because they have more quality throughout their ranks to call upon, then we have. As we’ve seen in the past, in one-off occasions such as cup games, we are more then capable of matching up to our rivals, but over the course of a season you need a strong squad to compete for the Premiership and I just think we still have too many ordinary players in ours, and badly need to strengthen in all areas.

In defence: Carra is still very much the leader of our back-line but he has missed Agger playing alongside him this season and I think it has effected his game. We hear Agger is close to returning to the side and this is excellent news because we badly need him. Hyypia has come in to replace him and while I have nothing but respect for Big Sami and the many years of excellent service he has given us, but his legs have gone and trying to compensate for his lack of pace sometimes destabilises our whole defence. It crazy that a big club such as ours should be so badly effected by one injury and I think it will be madness if we don’t bring in at least one centre back in the January window.

At full-back, I also think we are very short on quality. Finnan is usually our Mr Dependable but he’s not getting any younger. I also like Arbeloa because, while he may not be of the highest quality, he is an honest player and certainly gives it everything he has when he’s on the pitch, and his versatility will always make him an important member of our squad. But on the down side I don’t think Riise is good enough and I also have doubts about Aurelio. I think we badly need to add at least two preferably attacking full-backs to the squad as soon as possible.

In midfield: I think the options we have for the centre of our midfield is probably the strongest of any team but it is our lack of width that continues to be our Achilles heel. Riise or Aurelio sometimes play on our left wing, but neither of them are good enough for this position. Kewell at his best would certainly be good enough but you just cannot rely on his fitness. Babel is a promising young player but the lad is definitely a striker. Benayoun is a player I like, he has a bit of quality on the ball but he is a bit lightweight at times. Things are so bad for us on the wings sometimes, that there are times when I even miss Peanut!

It’s not that I think he is a particularly great winger but just because he is the only natural wide-man that we have. We have been crying out for at least one top quality winger for years now and until we sign one, we will continue to struggle to break down the sort of teams that park the team bus in front of the goal when they play us.

Upfront: All of the talk as we enter the January transfer window, seems to be about defensive cover along with the odd mention of a winger, and while this is certainly needed, I believe we also badly need a quality striker. Torres has proved to be a brilliant signing for us but we must pray that he doesn’t pick up any serious injuries in the weeks ahead, because we just do not have anyone who can come close to replacing him in our side.

Our other strikers, Kuyt, Crouch and Voronin will always put in plenty of effort on the pitch but in terms of quality and finishing, Torres is just on another planet from them. If Torres were not available for us, then Crouch would be our most potent goal threat and he will always chip in with a certain amount of goals but I just don’t think Kuyt and Voronin are good enough and will never be regular goalscorers for us. If we had to rely on those two, we would just have to create chance after chance and hope that eventually one of them would somehow bundle one of them in.

I take no pleasure in criticising a player such as Kuyt who works so tirelessly for the team, but at the end of the day he is there to score goals and if he can’t do that regularly, we’ve got to bring in someone who can. It maddens me when I hear of the likes of Anelka and Berbatov being linked to the likes of the mancs and the chavs when it really should be us that is making efforts to sign them. One of those two would not only be an ideal partner for Torres but would also score a decent amount of goals and be an ideal replacement if he wasn’t available.

These are the kind of signings I think we need to bring in to strengthen the squad and make us a genuine title threat rather then hopeful threat we are at the moment. This is not the fault of the manager because if he had his way we would be much further along in this department then we are now. Remember, he has tried to bring in the likes of Alves, Simao, Heinze and Kaladze etc in the past, and with the exception of Heinze, it was a lack of finance by the club that prevented him from doing so and forced him to gamble on cut-price alternatives, some of which have worked and some haven’t.

Can you imagine what kind of team we would have now, if Rafa had been able to bring in these players? This is one of the reasons why I continue to support the boss, because had he been given the proper financial backing in the first place, we might well have already won the Premiership by now. So as we are about to enter the January transfer window he must be given the backing to bring in at least some of these players.

We are still in with a shout of a Premiership title this season and two or three signings really could make a huge difference to us. Our American owners have received an awful lot of negative press recently but this January transfer window gives them an opportunity to win back a bit of favour among our supporters. As I see it they have two choices, either they back the boss or they get the hell out of our club and allow us to bring in some new owners that will. Either way, I think the action or in-action of Butch and Sundance during this transfer window should really tell us all we need to know about their true intentions for the club.

Keep the Faith

http://www.thisisanfield.com/kopblog/#134

[twistnkuyt]

Is that the same reason they are currently top of their league?

Fair enough but what about next season ? Who will be their manager? Will he be able to buy the players he wants rather than the "galacticos" ?
How often have the sacked successful managers?

I think you know what I meant

[Dan]

I ****in' hate reading

[AFII]

Fair enough but what about next season ? Who will be their manager? Will he be able to buy the players he wants rather than the "galacticos" ?
How often have the sacked successful managers?

I think you know what I meant

What I mean about run the club the Real way is only in marketing, not interfere in selling and buying players. That would be up to the manager.

[Venton]

What I mean about run the club the Real way is only in marketing, not interfere in selling and buying players. That would be up to the manager.

I am not sure you can rely on a team that has magically written off debts so many times to bolster your argument. Real Madrid don't really have the same rules as us do they? Maybe we can get the city council to buy our stadium and build us a new one for nowt?

[thekop]

Our 2-1 Boxing day victory at Derby, turned out to be a real struggle for us against the Premiership’s bottom club and to be honest, I found the whole thing to be a bit depressing. Of course, we can always choose to bury our heads in the sand and fall back on the old “if you can win playing badly” cliché, but the truth is that in some of our recent performances there have been very clear signs that we are just not good enough in certain area’s and our squad is badly in need of strengthening.

Yet another brilliant goal by King Fernando gave us a perfect start to the game and we really should have cruised home from there but instead of this we struggled to take control of the game, and the more we struggled, the more confident Derby became. Their equaliser goal in the second half was a bad one from a defensive point of view but they deserved it.

When Gerrard struck the underside of their crossbar in the 85th minute, I thought it was going to be one of those days and we were about to throw away another two points but then our skipper once again saved our asse’s with a 90th minute winner, when he was on hand in the six yard box to steer home a rebound from a Torres shot.

Torres and Gerrard are a pair of diamonds and are the two players that have played by far the biggest part in keeping our hopes alive in the Premiership, but beyond those two its difficult to find anyone that provides us with some inspiration. I hear a lot of people ask why we often fall into the routine of humping a lot of long balls forward, as we did far too often against Derby, and in my view the reason for this is simply because we have far too few players with the imagination and quality to do anything else.

There’s no doubt that Rafa has improved us year on year since he’s been here and I still believe that with our best eleven on the pitch we can match up to anybody, but in terms of winning the Premiership over the course of a season we can’t just keep relying on Gerrard and Torres to provide us with the quality. You can only get away with that for so long, but there are always going to be occasions over the course of a season where one or both of them will either be off-form or injured, and it is at those times that we need other players to kick in and play their part.

We all like to believe that we have a side good enough to win the Premiership this season but the truth is that without Gerrard and Torres, we might well have lost against the bottom side in the league. Some may argue that it was just a bad day at the office, but isn’t it strange that over the course of a season, we always seem to have more “bad days at the office” then our rivals.

There are always going to be some games in the season where a few of your players are a bit below par, but in my view our main rivals are better equipped to deal with such days then we are, because they have more quality throughout their ranks to call upon, then we have. As we’ve seen in the past, in one-off occasions such as cup games, we are more then capable of matching up to our rivals, but over the course of a season you need a strong squad to compete for the Premiership and I just think we still have too many ordinary players in ours, and badly need to strengthen in all areas.

In defence: Carra is still very much the leader of our back-line but he has missed Agger playing alongside him this season and I think it has effected his game. We hear Agger is close to returning to the side and this is excellent news because we badly need him. Hyypia has come in to replace him and while I have nothing but respect for Big Sami and the many years of excellent service he has given us, but his legs have gone and trying to compensate for his lack of pace sometimes destabilises our whole defence. It crazy that a big club such as ours should be so badly effected by one injury and I think it will be madness if we don’t bring in at least one centre back in the January window.

At full-back, I also think we are very short on quality. Finnan is usually our Mr Dependable but he’s not getting any younger. I also like Arbeloa because, while he may not be of the highest quality, he is an honest player and certainly gives it everything he has when he’s on the pitch, and his versatility will always make him an important member of our squad. But on the down side I don’t think Riise is good enough and I also have doubts about Aurelio. I think we badly need to add at least two preferably attacking full-backs to the squad as soon as possible.

In midfield: I think the options we have for the centre of our midfield is probably the strongest of any team but it is our lack of width that continues to be our Achilles heel. Riise or Aurelio sometimes play on our left wing, but neither of them are good enough for this position. Kewell at his best would certainly be good enough but you just cannot rely on his fitness. Babel is a promising young player but the lad is definitely a striker. Benayoun is a player I like, he has a bit of quality on the ball but he is a bit lightweight at times. Things are so bad for us on the wings sometimes, that there are times when I even miss Peanut!

It’s not that I think he is a particularly great winger but just because he is the only natural wide-man that we have. We have been crying out for at least one top quality winger for years now and until we sign one, we will continue to struggle to break down the sort of teams that park the team bus in front of the goal when they play us.

Upfront: All of the talk as we enter the January transfer window, seems to be about defensive cover along with the odd mention of a winger, and while this is certainly needed, I believe we also badly need a quality striker. Torres has proved to be a brilliant signing for us but we must pray that he doesn’t pick up any serious injuries in the weeks ahead, because we just do not have anyone who can come close to replacing him in our side.

Our other strikers, Kuyt, Crouch and Voronin will always put in plenty of effort on the pitch but in terms of quality and finishing, Torres is just on another planet from them. If Torres were not available for us, then Crouch would be our most potent goal threat and he will always chip in with a certain amount of goals but I just don’t think Kuyt and Voronin are good enough and will never be regular goalscorers for us. If we had to rely on those two, we would just have to create chance after chance and hope that eventually one of them would somehow bundle one of them in.

I take no pleasure in criticising a player such as Kuyt who works so tirelessly for the team, but at the end of the day he is there to score goals and if he can’t do that regularly, we’ve got to bring in someone who can. It maddens me when I hear of the likes of Anelka and Berbatov being linked to the likes of the mancs and the chavs when it really should be us that is making efforts to sign them. One of those two would not only be an ideal partner for Torres but would also score a decent amount of goals and be an ideal replacement if he wasn’t available.

These are the kind of signings I think we need to bring in to strengthen the squad and make us a genuine title threat rather then hopeful threat we are at the moment. This is not the fault of the manager because if he had his way we would be much further along in this department then we are now. Remember, he has tried to bring in the likes of Alves, Simao, Heinze and Kaladze etc in the past, and with the exception of Heinze, it was a lack of finance by the club that prevented him from doing so and forced him to gamble on cut-price alternatives, some of which have worked and some haven’t.

Can you imagine what kind of team we would have now, if Rafa had been able to bring in these players? This is one of the reasons why I continue to support the boss, because had he been given the proper financial backing in the first place, we might well have already won the Premiership by now. So as we are about to enter the January transfer window he must be given the backing to bring in at least some of these players.

We are still in with a shout of a Premiership title this season and two or three signings really could make a huge difference to us. Our American owners have received an awful lot of negative press recently but this January transfer window gives them an opportunity to win back a bit of favour among our supporters. As I see it they have two choices, either they back the boss or they get the hell out of our club and allow us to bring in some new owners that will. Either way, I think the action or in-action of Butch and Sundance during this transfer window should really tell us all we need to know about their true intentions for the club.

Keep the Faith

http://www.thisisanfield.com/kopblog/#134

Sad but, very true

[sonsofthedesert]

I am not sure you can rely on a team that has magically written off debts so many times to bolster your argument. Real Madrid don't really have the same rules as us do they? Maybe we can get the city council to buy our stadium and build us a new one for nowt?

AFII will be making a financial argument for that now you've stated it. It will be about building up the reputation of Liverpool as a city and haven't we all heard about councils doing that before.