Boro V Liverpool - Post match thoughts and rants

[ronniedrew]

6 actually!

jebus

[Morph]

Ferguson was kept on an extremely tight leash by the Glazer's after they took over until he won the title this past season. He may have spent 18M on Carrick last summer but he financed that by selling Van HorseFace, one of the best strikers the Premiership has ever seen who clearly is still up to the job given his performance in La Liga and in Europe.

It's about signing the right players for your team which Rafa just has not done.

i'm sorry remind me how much cash he pissed away in the last window?

And also how much paid for RVN in the first place, was it £19m, and what did he sell him for 12.5m, fail to see you point, appart from the fact that fergusson was allowed to spunk a british transfer record of 19m for a striker nearly 7 yrs ago

[dawmdt]

If Benitez picks the strongest line up available then we wouldnt drop points every week. Fact

Usual mistake of confusing fact for opinion.

Or provide evidence of clairovoyance on your part...

[dom9]

Its because the backline have no ball playing skills, add to them, Momo, Kuyt, Voronin, Crouch. The attackers have little pace bar Torres and Babel (who rarely starts) so the team are bloody clueless about how to break teams.

No pace and no slick passing = the current crap on show.

I would exclude Crouch from that list.

[Morph]

gerrard and mascher are not creative enough, cant control the tempo of the game, great players in their own ways, i think xabi must start and we need to play at least one real winger.

well xabi has been **** since he came back from injury, of course we must give him time to regain form, but that's not going to bring imediate results

rafa doesnt know his best team, continues to give players like voronin games, and when he picks players and they play woeful, he is too proud or stubborn to sub them, i would have made 2 changes at half time today and gave the team an absolute bollocking, i wonder if this happened,

i'm sure he gave them a good talking to, he made the sub he reckoned was nescessary, but the players today were capable of playing better than they did today, and they should all be given a good ****ing kicking for that performance in the first half, they aren't giving their all for the fans or the manager, gang of ****in wasters


Maybe rafa needs a sammy lee or someone with him for key motivational speeches, sometimes i believe we lack motivation etc and it rerely changes after half time, when watching the team lately , you can gererally tell how the whole game will go after about 5 minutes (if you know what i mean)

I do think he needs a replacement for pako to bounce ideas off, lets see what happens on that front, and i agree about being able to see how the game goes, although to be fair i fully expected a defeat after that first half showing

[Morph]

Yeah whatever. Stay in your deluded state as long as you like

Rafa is to blame for signing crap like Voronin, Kuyt, Benayoun and continually playing them when they clearly arent up to the standard required. He leaves Babel and Alonso on the bench and plays these poor quality footballers. Voronin isnt up to it and neither is Kuyt. Riise is well past it and the likes of him and Benayoun should be nothing more than bench warmers. And lets not get started on £7m that we wasted on Pennant as well

If Benitez picks the strongest line up available then we wouldnt drop points every week. Fact

he signed voronin on a free under the previous board because he had no cash, Kuyt to be fair has failed imo but every manager makes poor signings, forlan, schevchenko etc Nothing wrong with Benny.

Alonso on the bench i'm sure is because he's just come back from injury, Babel seems to be getting some sort of special settling in treatment i'll be honest I don't understand why, Rafa obviously thinks it's for the best tho.

He bought pennant under the previous board because we didn't have much cash, Riise had to start because Aurelio is injured and Kewell musn't be up to playing regularly yet.

There's my completely opposite sided arguement for you

[TheRedDragon]

I think we've been noticeably worse since the fallout and all the intense speculation about the manager. The attitude of the players seems different. Could be a coincidence, could be something else, could be the players have thrown in the towell now that we're 9 pts off the top.

Fortunatly I am not one of those "Blind Faith Brigadiers" I have my own view, and this is that Rafa is the best man for the job.

The guy as won things for us that nobody as done for over 2decades. Yet people still feel the need to question the guys ability.


Look at what he has achieved with Mediocre side, and then again 2 years after with a few mediocre recruitment's, and ask yourself what he could do with PROPPER MONEY to buy the types of players he wants.

[alunevans]

So Luton can play as well as they did while not getting paid, and under the threat of the club going completely out of business, and our poor cherubs can't cope with newspaper speculation?

A cop out.

[ronniedrew]

he signed voronin on a free under the previous board because he had no cash, Kuyt to be fair has failed imo but every manager makes poor signings, forlan, schevchenko etc Nothing wrong with Benny.

Alonso on the bench i'm sure is because he's just come back from injury, Babel seems to be getting some sort of special settling in treatment i'll be honest I don't understand why, Rafa obviously thinks it's for the best tho.

He bought pennant under the previous board because we didn't have much cash, Riise had to start because Aurelio is injured and Kewell musn't be up to playing regularly yet.

There's my completely opposite sided arguement for you

cant argue with most of that ,


i am not convinced by benny though, he's o.k. but not enough of a winger for me, hasnt got enough pace, and a bit predictable

[Kopite_Colin]

I'm absolutely sick to the back teeth of hoofing it.

Peter Crouch's detractors like to cite this imaginary fault of ours that we "suddenly start launching it when Crouch is in the team".

Hello?

We hoof it whether he's in the team or not.

Spot on Shaggy. It needs to stop. However, what puzzles me even more is that there's no evidence on the park that Rafa is trying to coach that out of them. I could even forgive the odd error giving a goal or two away because we were trying to play it out from the back - but even that isn't happenning.

[Morph]

I'm absolutely sick to the back teeth of hoofing it.

Peter Crouch's detractors like to cite this imaginary fault of ours that we "suddenly start launching it when Crouch is in the team".

Hello?

We hoof it whether he's in the team or not.

carra's one of the main culprits here, we'd have to drop him out the team, rafa did say skittles is a carra type, is agger/skittles the future?

[bigfooty]

i'm sorry remind me how much cash he pissed away in the last window?

And also how much paid for RVN in the first place, was it £19m, and what did he sell him for 12.5m, fail to see you point, appart from the fact that fergusson was allowed to spunk a british transfer record of 19m for a striker nearly 7 yrs ago

Pissed away in the last window? You mean after he won the title?

[ronniedrew]

carra's one of the main culprits here, we'd have to drop him out the team, rafa did say skittles is a carra type, is agger/skittles the future?

i would imagine they are (agger/skittles ) the combination in years to come, but not right now, we will see the back line and their distribution improve 100% when agger is back, carra & agger for the next few years for me

[Kopite_Colin]

We've dropped 12 points in the last 21

...had we picked up another 6 points we'd be well in this race. I really can't fathom why we've pissed our chances away in such a short space of time.

I AM beginning to agree with AFII..maybe it IS time to bring Nemeth in slowly, just to freshen things up. the lad is clealrly in goalscoring form this season. Maybe even bring Izzie back from Palace (if we can).

Even playing the likes of Kewell and Babel up alongside Torres can't be as impotent as that which we're currently seeing.

[Armchairkopite]

I made this post in another a thread, but it's better suited here:

my observations and a few things i've noticed this week:

Rafa in his press conference talking about all the prices he was quoted for players, would this happen with the mancs and chelsea? Would it ****, fergusson and abramovich would say i want x player get him now - case closed player signed. In our case the papers were reporting our mamoth 6.5mil signing as a record breaker, ****ing sad really.

If there's four certainties in Rafa's league life it's we won't beat Boro away, we won't beat a team managed by Steve Bruce, we won't beat the mancs hom/away, and if any team above us ****s up then so will we. We'll soon be able to add get ****ed over at stamford bridge and the emirates to that list.

One week we've got a squad full of quality and players who would get into any team in the world, the next we've got players lucky into a team managed by Roy Keane, is there a more up and down side in the league than us?

If we do sack Rafa will it really make any difference, unless we unearth an Arsene Wenger from somewhere, then whoever gets brough in will need cash for transfers, which we won't be able to provide, not in any great quantites anyway.

It's obvious we need a few wingers why can't we just go out and buy them and deal with the debt another time, or why don't the yanks take the debt on themselves, which brings me to...

Don't trust the yanks as far as I could throw them (not very far), imo not too interested in the team side of things, want to build the stadium, which we won't see any cash benefits from for about 4 years, thats a long time to go without winning the league is cash = league titles, i'd wager Rafa will not still be here.

Id we do perform **** this season and Rafa stays, does it show lack of ambition by the owners?

How can so many players all be out of form/eternally **** at the same time (Kuyt, Voronin, Alonso, Finnan, Riise, Sissoko)

Is Carra overrated and is Agger/Skrtel the future, i know he'll always give his all and defend for his life, but his clearances are really not very good and just heap pressure back on us, when what he needs to do is be a bit more intelligent with the ball sometimes.

Does Rafa still need to replace Pako Ayesteran, or at least someone to bounce tactical ideas off?

Are these questions only coming out because we've had another **** result in the league?
__________________

Has Gerrard lost interest?- just thought i'd add that.

Good post Morph.
There have been many factors surrounding our down fall this season ,the phsycological blow of the Chelsea goal at Anfield plus Stevie playing for England when not 100% for which he suffered a dramatic dip in form plus the owners messing around, but most importantly by losing Agger when the team where playing really well we have had to adjust our playing style to accomadate for a lack of pace at the back. Opposing teams look at us and spot our weak points, they try to stop us from playing football so they put their pacey forward on Sami and keep him and Carra under pressure because they know if Sami and Carra are under pressure they will hoof the ball forward as they are not comfortable enough on the ball, and thats meat and drink to most Premier League defences imo this goes some way to explaining our lack of possession and poor passing. Also with the defence so far back it isolates our forward line and gives our midfielders too much work to do exposing our need for proper outlets on the wings we concede possession with our narrow play(its all way too congested on the middle for fluent passing).

I could go on and on but you get the jist.