So Lawro was on the radio today and was asked......

[sonsofthedesert]

Well, it works for Man U, Chelsea, Real, Barca, Inter, Lyon, Bayern, Celtic, Rangers and many more clubs in other leagues. The teams that wins and compete for the title.

AFII leave it mate, he just likes abusing people, he is just trying to get you to argue.

[AFII]

AFII leave it mate, he just likes abusing people, he is just trying to get you to argue.

[bigfooty]

Back Rafa and he will deliver fantastic players. It's all about what ambition G&H have.

Compete for the title........more than £50m net/season if Rafa need that.

Compete for a CL place....around £20m-£30m net/season.

If G&H want us to challenge for the title, keep Rafa and back him.
If G&H want to challenge for a CL place, then Rafa will walk anyway, he won't stay and not be able to challenge, not a chance. That will cost them in the end a lot more than to splash out £50m net a season or two and that is what we need until the youngsters are ready.

IMO.

You are quite fond of the "net" term. Can you tell me the players you wanted us to keep that we were forced into selling to pay for new arrivals under Rafa? Not including Owen, Pongo and Luis of course as they, by all accounts, wanted to move on.

Setting aside that trio, personally I can't think of any player that has left under Rafa who I think we're a poorer team or squad for them going. Certainly if you look at those who went for reasonable fees then we're talking Cisse, Bellamy, Murphy, Diouf, Diarra, Nunez, Baros, Djimi, Nando, KromKamp, Kirkland, Warnock, Gonzalez and Paletta. Almost £50M all told in revenue, a figure that could easily rise if the likes of Momo, Riise and Carson depart this month which seems entirely possible.

I'd be interested to know which of that lot you think we need back at Anfield to help us in our title push.

[AFII]

You are quite fond of the "net" term. Can you tell me the players you wanted us to keep that we were forced into selling to pay for new arrivals under Rafa? Not including Owen, Pongo and Luis of course as they, by all accounts, wanted to move on.

Setting aside that trio, personally I can't think of any player that has left under Rafa who I think we're a poorer team or squad for them going. Certainly if you look at those who went for reasonable fees then we're talking Cisse, Bellamy, Murphy, Diouf, Diarra, Nunez, Baros, Djimi, Nando, KromKamp, Kirkland, Warnock, Gonzalez and Paletta. Almost £50M all told in revenue, a figure that could easily rise if the likes of Momo, Riise and Carson depart this month which seems entirely possible.

I'd be interested to know which of that lot you think we need back at Anfield to help us in our title push.

I have never said that I wanted us to keep any of the players in bold. That is players that Rafa had to sell and sold because they are not good enough and he needed the money to sign other players.

If he hadn't sold them then he would have been left with a £7m-£8m transfer budget. That means that he for example could have signed Pennant and no one more in a window. Selling the players that wasn't good enough gave him the possibility to spend more money but not on expensive players, £15m+, because he needed to build a squad and that means signing more than one or two expensive players, he had to sign five or six players to replace the not good enough players or else he would risk losing out on a CL place if the new expensive players got a long term injury.

[FatTony]

I'd be interested to know which of that lot you think we need back at Anfield to help us in our title push.

I don't know where you're coming from with this? I can't see where he's said anything about us being forced to sell some of our best players, simply that we need to be given the funds to bring in a few world class signings. 2 or 3 players for £50m.

The net figure is a fair argument because we've been selling squad players to fund the majority of our transfer kitty which actually weakens the team. Players like Bellamy, Pongolle, Garcia, Cisse, whilst not great players would still strengthen the side.

To compete, I'd say we need the majority of the squad we have now, plus 3 proper signings, potential match winners and the type of players to worry the opposition consistently. Rafa needs to be given a decent kitty with no demands to sell. If he sells someone, it should be his decision.

I'm not a blinkered Rafa fan by any stretch of imagination, if we don't finish 4ht or 3rd then IMO he's failed.

[AFII]

I don't know where you're coming from with this? I can't see where he's said anything about us being forced to sell some of our best players, simply that we need to be given the funds to bring in a few world class signings. 2 or 3 players for £50m.

The net figure is a fair argument because we've been selling squad players to fund the majority of our transfer kitty which actually weakens the team. Players like Bellamy, Pongolle, Garcia, Cisse, whilst not great players would still strengthen the side.

To compete, I'd say we need the majority of the squad we have now, plus 3 proper signings, potential match winners and the type of players to worry the opposition consistently. Rafa needs to be given a decent kitty with no demands to sell. If he sells someone, it should be his decision.

I'm not a blinkered Rafa fan by any stretch of imagination, if we don't finish 4ht or 3rd then IMO he's failed.

Rafa need to sell some players if he signs new ones, except in the central defender position, because we have a very big squad. Rafa can't just sign player after player.

Take Sissoko and one of Crouch/Voronin/Kuyt. We can sell them without replacing them because of our big squad.

Babel would replace on of the strikers and we already have Gerrard, Xabi, Masch and Lucas in central midfield.

[bigfooty]

The argument is though that he's gone for too many squad players, quantity over quality and so on.

As I mentioned before if you look at the players he obtained in Summer 2006 - Kuyt, Bellamy, Aurelio, Paletta, Gonzalez, El Zhar and Pennant - not one of those is of a standard that warrants a permanent fixture in the LFC side with most having left or fans wanting them to leave in January. That's a shocking state of affairs for a window when Rafa spent 24M and recouped about 8M of it back. Even by sheer dumb luck you would think one of those 7 would turn out be good enough to make a place in the team their own.

[FatTony]

The argument is though that he's gone for too many squad players, quantity over quality and so on.

As I mentioned before if you look at the players he obtained in Summer 2006 - Kuyt, Bellamy, Aurelio, Paletta, Gonzalez, El Zhar and Pennant - not one of those is of a standard that warrants a permanent fixture in the LFC side with most having left or fans wanting them to leave in January. That's a shocking state of affairs for a window when Rafa spent 24M and recouped about 8M of it back. Even by sheer dumb luck you would think one of those 7 would turn out be good enough to make a place in the team their own.

I agree that some of his purchases have been poor, but of those I'd say that Bellamy, Aurelio and Pennant are worth squad players, but as you say, you'd expect one of them to be good enough for the starting line up. Then again, Torres doesn't make it into the starting line up 100% so they may as well pack their bags now.

[AFII]

The argument is though that he's gone for too many squad players, quantity over quality and so on.

As I mentioned before if you look at the players he obtained in Summer 2006 - Kuyt, Bellamy, Aurelio, Paletta, Gonzalez, El Zhar and Pennant - not one of those is of a standard that warrants a permanent fixture in the LFC side with most having left or fans wanting them to leave in January. That's a shocking state of affairs for a window when Rafa spent 24M and recouped about 8M of it back. Even by sheer dumb luck you would think one of those 7 would turn out be good enough to make a place in the team their own.

No one knows how much of £24m spent on the above players Rafa will get back before he has sold them. He had to buy quantity over quality to secure a good squad that could qualify for the CL because he needed the CL money.

It's only this season that he can start to build to take the next step if he is backed by our owners. That means replacing some of the quantity players with quality. That will cost a lot of money.

[tomasjj]

The argument is though that he's gone for too many squad players, quantity over quality and so on.

As I mentioned before if you look at the players he obtained in Summer 2006 - Kuyt, Bellamy, Aurelio, Paletta, Gonzalez, El Zhar and Pennant - not one of those is of a standard that warrants a permanent fixture in the LFC side with most having left or fans wanting them to leave in January. That's a shocking state of affairs for a window when Rafa spent 24M and recouped about 8M of it back. Even by sheer dumb luck you would think one of those 7 would turn out be good enough to make a place in the team their own.

Wow....quite a lack of respect.
Hindsight and all that.

Besides your numbers on money recouped are wrong, not to mention that some of those players are still at the club and could be sold for good money too. Try to not have a go at Rafa with everything you post, or if you insist, please try to get stuff right.

FWIW, I agree that he has spent too much on squadies where he could have gone for more quality and filled in the holes with youngsters. But due to budget constraints maybe he had to gamble more with some of his buys to see if it worked out.

[FatTony]

Rafa need to sell some players if he signs new ones, except in the central defender position, because we have a very big squad. Rafa can't just sign player after player.

Take Sissoko and one of Crouch/Voronin/Kuyt. We can sell them without replacing them because of our big squad.

Babel would replace on of the strikers and we already have Gerrard, Xabi, Masch and Lucas in central midfield.

I'm not saying Rafa should be given a free cheque book, but there must come a time for a season or two when he's happy with his squad, in that he doesn't need to bring in any more potential or fringe players and is then given the funds required to bring in 2 or 3 world class signings. The cream on the top. If he wants to sell a few players he's not happy with fine, but if we want to bridge the gap we're still going to need to have a big squad but with more class.

[bigfooty]

Wow....quite a lack of respect.
Hindsight and all that.

Besides your numbers on money recouped are wrong, not to mention that some of those players are still at the club and could be sold for good money too. Try to not have a go at Rafa with everything you post, or if you insist, please try to get stuff right.

FWIW, I agree that he has spent too much on squadies where he could have gone for more quality and filled in the holes with youngsters. But due to budget constraints maybe he had to gamble more with some of his buys to see if it worked out.

Perhaps you misunderstand. I meant 8M recouped in that particular window from the sale of KromKamp, Nando, Traore, Warnock and a couple of others.

[tomasjj]

Perhaps you misunderstand. I meant 8M recouped in that particular window from the sale of KromKamp, Nando, Traore, Warnock and a couple of others.

Ahh.
Apologies. My mistake.


Still, your last sentence leaves a lot to be desired imo.

[bigfooty]

Maybe you are right and if he can ever get injury free Auerlio might be our regular LB for a few years to come.

However, most people deride Houllier for his shocking Summer of 2002 and point to that as the window where his reign went from the cusp of great things to us absolutely nowhere as far as the title is concerned. He spent 18.5M then and the following Summer he got just 11.5M to spend whereas, by comparison, Rafa got 24M and 45M in the corresponding windows.

[CAD]

Let's not forget that Rafa was denied Alves and several others due to lack of funding. Fair is fair...