dear god... hicks : we lined up klinsmann

[Rocket]

vis-a-vis

get your phrase book out fella

[The Glove]

any ideas on whats happening tomorrow night vis-a-vis the yankee dogs

Yeah they'll be on sale but you'll have to ask them for onions and the mustard.

[Flake]

He's got more experience in management then Kenny did when he took over, and i expect he learnt a lot from the man who assisted him in the world cup. I'm not saying he would have been a good choice, but i don't think he's anywhere near as bad as some would have us believe.

And if Bayern succeed in Europe because of him, would we rue a missed opportunity?

wtf? haven't we succeded in europe under rafa?

[reddragon]

vis-a-vis

****s sake you hillbillies are uneducated ****s arent you?

[reddragon]

Yeah they'll be on sale but you'll have to ask them for onions and the mustard.

that must've taken all of 2 seconds to think up

seriously though, we cant let this ****e pass off can we?!

[Scratch]

Hicks is either thick as bull **** or he is trying to hound Rafa out. Either way the man is showing how much of a tool he is.

Or he had to respond to the comments coming out of Germany, and did so.

[Scratch]

wtf? haven't we succeded in europe under rafa?

Yeah, and no where in my post have i said we hadn't. However, y'all seem to think that Rafa is leaving, and my point was if Rafa left and say O'Neill came in, and took us nowhere, would we kick ourselves IF Klinsmann went on to be a success?

At no point do i think Rafa should be sacked or let go just yet. But if we continue to play the bland, uninspired football that we are currently witnessing, then something needs to be done, whether it's a change in manager or just a change in the manager's game plan; less cautious, more attack minded. Stop worrying about the other team, let the other team worry about us.

[Scratch]

Rafa shouldn't really have any pressure on him to finish in the top four or win anything this season after this mess. How many points have our owners cost the team? Probably the difference from us challenging for the title and now being in fourth place and it will continue to cost even more points.

****ing clowns.

Disagree here. Even at the start of the season, we stuttered. Yes, we were unbeaten, but we rarely played exciting football, and we drew too many games (admittedly, some poor reffing cost us dear). But no, when the chips are down, Rafa's team selections...and formations...are baffling. He, and the players, are costing us points. He needs to stop worrying about stiffling the opposition, and start making them worry about stiffling us.

[AFII]

Defiant Benitez will not resign after Hicks comes clean on Klinsmann

Rafa Benitez will resist attempts to force him out of Anfield, despite Liverpool co-owner Tom Hicks' shock admission on Monday that the manager's job had been offered to Jurgen Klinsmann.

Confirmation of a secret meeting with Klinsmann — since appointed manager at Bayern Munich — at Hicks' holiday home in California nearly two months ago increased speculation that Benitez may be forced to accept that his positon has become untenable.

But it is understood he is ready to stand firm in what is turning into a war of attrition between the Spaniard and Liverpool's American owners, Hicks and George Gillett.

As Anfield chief executive Rick Parry set up a meeting with Benitez to try to reassure him over his future, it emerged that the one-time Valencia coach may even have a case for constructive dismissal over the way Klinsmann was sounded out about replacing him.

Ex-Liverpool players such as Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson expressed their dismay at Hicks going public on his approach to Klinsmann, but Benitez was in no mood to play into his bosses' hands by walking away.

His agent, Manuel Garcia Quillon, underlined his defiant response by saying: 'Rafa wants to stay at Liverpool. He is happy with the club, the fans and the city. He does not want to leave.'

A parting of the ways still seems probable at the end of the season, though, according to Anfield insiders, but Benitez will dig his heels in for now and make the most of the public support and sympathy that is sure to follow the latest threat to his three-and-a-half year reign.

Confirming Sportsmail's account on Saturday of how Klinsmann was presented with a 'detailed' contract offer prior to accepting a proposition from Bayern to succeed Ottmar Hitzfeld in the summer, Hicks said: 'In November, when we were in danger of not advancing in the Champions League, not playing well in the Premier League and there were communication issues between Rafa and ourselves over the January transfer window, George and I met with Jurgen Klinsmann.

'We attempted to negotiate with him as an insurance policy, to have him become our manager in the event of Rafa leaving or our communication problems spiralling out of control.'

Hicks added that no agreement was reached and claimed that Benitez could now count on his and Gillett's support after a 'great improvement' in lines of communication.

Even so, the implication that Benitez would have been sacked had Liverpool failed to qualify from their Champions League group leaves a cloud over him, with a last-16 first leg meeting with Inter Milan barely a month away.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...e_id=1779&ct=5

[Darth Marty]

Im tired and irritable now but sad also, i think bad thoughts, please dont let tomorrow, or anytime soon for that matter, be Rafas last day in charge. Come on ye football gods, give us a break here, we are the good guys yeah.......

[AFII]

Straight-talking Americans risk being divisive in any language
Yesterday's developments added further strain to the already difficult relationship between Rafa Benitez and Liverpool's overseas owners. Ian Herbert and Nick Harris report
Published: 15 January 2008

Last November was a hectic month at the ranch in south California which is Tom Hicks' second home. Hicks enjoys doing his sport business there so he invited over Torii Hunter, the baseball centre he wanted to lure from Kansas City Royals to the Texas Rangers side he owns. Hunter could not be persuaded and yet there were higher hopes still for an engagement with the individual Hicks believed could help him sort out the chaos which was beginning to engulf a purchase he was becoming increasingly comfortable with – Liverpool Football Club.

Jürgen Klinsmann, better known to Hicks' business partner George Gillett than to him, arrived at the ranch with his Californian wife Debbie on a Thanksgiving weekend which coincided precisely with that now famous Thursday afternoon sulk in Liverpool during which Rafael Benitez repeated the words "I am focused on training and coaching my team" 15 times after he had been refused permission to wheel and deal in the transfer market.

It is unclear how long the meeting, involving Hicks, Gillett and Klinsmann, lasted but it was against that backdrop of strife the German was told he was the man the Americans wanted to take over if – or when – Benitez walked out. Klinsmann returned to his Orange County home aware of Hicks' irritation with the Spaniard, on whose conduct the American would make his views clear. It was on Thanskgiving Friday that Hicks ordered Benitez, in a message, on Liverpool's website, to "get the best out of the players we already have".

A provisional contract is understood to have been drawn up with Klinsmann there and then, though it seems to have been a subsequent drift of events – rather than a breakdown in negotiations between the parties – which contributed to Klinsmann not signing it. Benitez was talked around, Liverpool embarked on their Champions League escape act and, perhaps most critically, Hicks saw in the fans' pro-Rafa march along Anfield Road before the match with Porto just how much they supported the manager.

Hicks revealed tellingly, in a little publicised US interview only last week, that the passions of Liverpool supporters have taken some understanding. "My involvement happened relatively quickly, so it wasn't like I had been studying this for months. I did not have any appreciation of what the Kop was and how it is really the soul of the club," he said. The march seems to have persuaded him that firing Benitez would not be as straightforward as his shock decision, also in that hectic November, to sack his Dallas Stars ice hockey manager Doug Armstrong.

So that, for the time being at least, might have been the end of the Klinsmann connection, had not sources at Bayern Munich suggested late on Friday that a contract had been on the table for him at Liverpool. At first, Hicks had no plans to respond to the comments. The focus of questions put to him on Sunday morning was a newspaper report suggesting that he and Gillett may be ready to sell Liverpool to the Dubai Investment Company, a financial vehicle ultimately controlled by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, one of the world's richest men, which came close to buying Liverpool a year ago.

Hicks was busy and did not immediately respond to this, or to a subsidiary question about Klinsmann, but within five hours he provided the written statement to the Liverpool Echo which he seems to have thought might satisfy fans seeking some transparency, but which served only to astonish them and had prompted plans for a "get the Americans out" online petition by last night.

Hicks has a habit of speaking with a candour which, refreshing though it may be, seems not to augur well for Benitez. His assertion the day after Liverpool crashed to the 2-0 defeat in Besiktas, for example, that "[we] should be winning things. If [we're not], we'll have to have a meeting at the end of the year and understand what happened" was in the same bracket. But this is the most extraordinary of all. A club so used to civility that it parades ousted managers – Gérard Houllier – on the pitch before waving them off does not tout for a replacement while an incumbent is in place – and then reveal the fact on its website.

The club's former players were understandably astonished yesterday. "I haven't got a clue why he has come out and said this," Alan Hansen said. "Maybe the story was going to come out and he thought he'd be better off making a statement first. Whichever way you look at it, though, these events cannot do anything but undermine manager Rafael Benitez."

Benitez did not respond yesterday but there are only so many questions about the Americans' failure to back him properly that he can answer. Though he was angered by Sunday newspaper reports nine days ago that he believed he faced the sack, the reports were the product of a genuine sense of gloom he was conveying.

There was some daylight for him on Sunday when Jose Mourinho's representative, Eladio Parames, rejected suggestions that he might be in line for Benitez's job now that Klinsmann has gone to Munich. But after yesterday's developments, what scant trust that remained between manager and owners has gone and Benitez will surely soon be on his way.

http://sport.independent.co.uk/footb...cle3339106.ece

[AFII]

James Lawton: Benitez given a raw deal by owners who fail to understand Liverpool's rich heritage
The overture to Klinsmann puts Liverpool in Newcastle territory
Published: 15 January 2008

There was a time when you didn't audition or even interview for the job of managing Liverpool. It came to you because you knew how the place worked and you had proved that you had absorbed all of its lessons. You knew about loyalty and the difference between building a team and chance and speculation. Shankly, Paisley, Fagan, Dalglish weren't just a series of managers. They were an apostolic succession.

More than a decade of change separated Rafa Benitez from those days when he arrived at Anfield as a man of high achievement and passionate nature, but he seemed to understand what he was inheriting, give or take a few lost years.

He had some big lessons to learn about English football and even his warmest admirers would concede that he has still to master some of them, but a Champions League win, another appearance in the final, and the FA Cup won him entitlement to more than a little patience and respect.

At least that was until yesterday when the apostolic succession might have been a wet leaf trampled into some obscure pathway in Stanley Park.

Now it seems that in the eyes of Liverpool's owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, the manager of Liverpool Football Club has one overriding purpose. It is to say yes to the owners. Of course they don't put it so bluntly. They talk about the need for communication – and what happens when it breaks down. Hicks spelt out the effects of such a denouement yesterday. He even had it on the Liverpool website.

What happens is that you line up an alternative manager – in this case Jürgen Klinsmann. Perhaps this was the most astonishing aspect of yesterday's development – not the confirmation of the approach to the former coach of Germany, who is now taking up his first post in club football with Bayern Munich, but the pious, self-congratulatory public revelation of it.

This wasn't a news item. This was a threat to the independence of a football man who, before winning the Champions League and the FA Cup for Liverpool, won two Spanish titles, under the shadows of the hugely financed Real Madrid and Barcelona, and the Uefa Cup for Valencia. "Klinsmann," said Hicks, "was an impressive man."

He is also a stick with which to beat Benitez if he gets up the nerve again to tell the owners who he believes should be signed if Liverpool are to move on to be legitimate challengers to Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal. It was Klinsmann when relations between the manager and the owners cooled last November. Who will it be next time? Perhaps Jose Mourinho if he is still in the market or, given the apparent lack of feel for the traditions of Anfield, perhaps even Big Sam giving the long ball another airing in another new and unreceptive pasture.

Reading the statement of Hicks yesterday, you couldn't but go back to his joint outpouring with Gillett when the takeover deal was made less than a year ago. It was a mellifluous little entreaty, almost a love song to the Kop. Here is the key passage: "Liverpool is a fantastic club with a remarkable history and a passionate fan base. We fully acknowledge and appreciate the unique heritage and rich history of Liverpool and intend to respect this heritage in the future."

But how do you respect something properly if you don't really understand it? How do you "acknowledge and respect" a heritage if you don't know how it happened? Liverpool have won the English title 14 times in the 80 years since Newcastle, who are supposed to be the joke entry in the senior list of contenders, last got their hands on it. That's a title arriving at an average of every fifth or sixth year. In Europe Liverpool's five titles leave them in third place, behind Real Madrid (nine) and Milan (seven), and this, no more than the accumulation of domestic glory, has nothing to do with managers willing to doff their caps whenever they meet a director.

The brutal fact is that the confirmation of the already poorly kept secret about the overture to Klinsmann put Liverpool nowhere more firmly than in Newcastle territory.

Newcastle have an owner who gets his inspiration from the banter that accompanies the drinking of Newcastle Brown and the wearing of souvenir shirts. Liverpool have a joint command who presumably believe that their candour over the Klinsmann move is going to enhance their reputation for strong, wise leadership. It is quite hard to know who is further away from the realities of making a successful football club.

Certainly, those who have fretted over Benitez's recent erratic behaviour – and will never endorse what sometimes seems an egocentric preoccupation with rotation for its own sake – are now much more inclined to rally to his somewhat tattered banner. He left Valencia with tears in his eyes, which is not always the most convincing sign of a man in charge of his ambitions, but his intensity now adds to the belief that he is suffering in a way that he does not deserve.

It was also instructive to go back to the seeds of the crisis which emerged last November. Then, Benitez explained quite chillingly, saw the change of climate. He said: "We had a meeting on the day of the Arsenal game [when Liverpool were denied what would have been a huge victory by some late brilliance from Alexander Hleb and Cesc Fabregas] which was really positive. After this something changed. They told me to focus on coaching and training because Rick Parry will be looking after the signing of players."

This wasn't a shift of policy. This was a death sentence for a manager's belief that he controlled, in the way of a Ferguson or a Wenger, the destiny of his team.

Here is the Hicks' website version of the fissures which developed when the financing of the new stadium in Stanley Park came into conflict with Benitez's anxiety to seal up the back of his midfield with the £17m permanent signing of Javier Mascherano: "In November, when it appeared we were in danger of not advancing in the Champions League, and were not playing well in our Premier League matches, and Rafa and we [Hicks and Gillett] were having communication issues over the January transfer window, George and I met with Jürgen Klinsmann.

"We wanted to learn as much as we could about English and European football. We attempted to negotiate an option, as an insurance policy, to have him become manager if Rafa left for Real Madrid or other clubs that were rumoured in the UK press, or in case our communication spiralled out of control for some reason. After George and I had our meeting with Rafa following the United game [lost 1-0 at Anfield] we put all our issues behind us and received Rafa's commitment that he wanted to stay with Liverpool. We had not reached agreement on an option with Jürgen and we are both pleased for him that he has a great opportunity to return to Germany as coach of a great club. Rafa has the support of both of us and our communication has greatly improved."

There is nothing like an ultimatum as an aid to communication. The one made public by the ownership of Liverpool is not quite spelt out in black and white but Rafa is surely not in desperate need of any help from the decoding department of the secret service. In the unlikely event that he is, an amateur offering might well be sufficient. It would say: "Forget about winning the Champions League and the FA Cup and that loyal fan base that we were extolling on the day we took over, there are plenty more hands to hire out there."

Another reality is that in those days of glory, when Liverpool ticked along as if by remote control, the club had, as Hicks and Gillett so recently said, its own unique place in the football world. It wasn't a cash cow. It was an expression of belief in a passionate commitment to doing all those things that had guaranteed such brilliant success for so long. Chief among them was a belief in the judgement and the integrity of the man in charge. You gave him respect. You certainly didn't tell the world you had been hawking his job behind his back.

http://sport.independent.co.uk/footb...cle3339096.ece

[rage]

ouch!

[CAD]

Thanks for posting the articles AF

[AFII]

A picture tells you more than 1000 words....from RAWK....