Rafa - is he any good? ;)

[rage]

If you bought a new car for 6k and sold your old for 4k, can you work out your spend, or is your net/gross/or staged regardless????welcome to the bank of rage!
Hope you never enter the business world mate
For someone who "knows there facts", i would like to inform you that we haven't signed mascherano, and people in the real world, well all except you, tend to regard net spend as important.
And i don't doubt, that, for arguemants sake, rafa brings in up to 30m from selling players, that he will have 50 m to spend over 2 transfer windows, under anyone.

don't think we'll agree on this one. oh and i'd not been seen dead driving a car worth 6k.

pointless discussion anyway, if hicks stays he'll be gone in the summer.

[dww]

Apologies if you look like an arse now CAD but I had to take this debate out of the DIC thread where your post (now at the top of this thread) had some context.

[le2red]

I cant believe what im reading here. For those of you that are prepared to make excuses for rafa benitez by saying that he hasnt been able to get his top targets - what other manager has such luxury apart from maybe the scum and the chavs? Just because he cannot get his most wanted players does not excuse the fact that we have been extremely poor this season, with many performances lacking in any kind of cohesion, fight and passion.

Rafa is a great fella and in many ways has everything one could want from a manager apart from the ability to have his team play consistently well in the premierleague. The proof is in the results gentlemen. If DIC want to replace rafa then I personally can see their decision being justified.

But the only managers to have a better record than Rafa since he arrived are..... Ferguson (?) and Mourhino, the ones who have had the luxury of getting their top targets...

[Diego]

4 years. Funding is not the problem. Look at Wenger. Look at the players Rafa has bought. I doubt he will ever win no.19. I'm just saying that it wouldn't be the end of the world if we got a new manager

Sky generation

it's not remotely simmilar, wenger took over a good team, he admitted himself that he didn't need to change it much when he took over and won his first title. wenger has had 10 years of building a squad and apart from that title he won with the squad he inherited mostly (not saying he didn't do a brilliant job achiving that) he's won 2 titles since that and that in almost 10 years. in total he's won 3 in 10 years. he's not the second comming...

wenger has spent a fortune in his years building up his squad it's not like he's spent nickels and dimes. rafa inherited a weak squad that he has had to build up and compete with the biggest spenders on the planet. our team is 10 times better than the one he inherited but it still isn't good cause we need more money to buy better players...

[CAD]

Apologies if you look like an arse now CAD but I had to take this debate out of the DIC thread where your post (now at the top of this thread) had some context.

Had to admit that I went WTF!

[vonk]

Spot on. And if we look at the big picture Rafa has done very well in refreshing the whole club, the youths and reserves as well and hopefully we'll reap the dividends from that in the future.

So did Houllier and his "gems". If you are content with Rafa because of what you hope happens with the reserves then you are easily pleased. The reality is that very few of these reserves make it. Nemeth has a chance, maybe Spearing but that's about it.

In terms of the quality of our football and our ability to challenge for the premiership we are as close now as we were the day Rafa joined. The Cups are great and I love Rafa for these, but he will never win us the premiership playing the way we play. Never. There are no signs of improvement in how we play from year to year. We started out as hard to beat 4 years ago and thats why we got to Istanbul. He tried to play the more expansive, fluid attacking style that is required to win the league and failed. We are back to being hard to beat.

Oh, and one or two players is not going to suddenly change our inconsistency.

[El Jefecito]

no i think we haven't prioritised these positions. We didn't need to spend 2 million on leto and take a gamble in a priority position. I'd rather we put that 2 million to the 6 million for lucas, 6 or 7 for yossi and 11 million for babel and had 25 odd million for a quality winger.

That quality winger was Alves and Sevilla wouldn't sell

[CharlieMansonsSquint]

I don't really care. Rafa is hardly the Messiah. Let's be honest about this. We need new blood.

The crux of the matter is whether you believe that the way Benitez currently manages will eventually lead to success in the league.

The evidence so far suggests not.

And for once, let's ignore what Benitez is capable of in Europe, because that's not how most fans judge him, and it's isn't a factor in his league performance.

I'm in no way underestimating the achievements of Benitez in Europe since he's been here, but I've always believed that the league is the true barometer of a club's quality, and that of it's employees.

You have to be consistent, mentally and physically, be committed and have the necessary quality to succeed. It's completely different from knockout football where form is of less importance.

My point is that his methods aren't consistently successful.

4 years on and we haven't made any progress in the league, no style of play has been developed, the standard of football hasn't improved, and a few individuals aside the team isn't better, and most worrying of all our manager hasn't adapted where necessary to gain results.

All this after 3 and a half years and £150m plus spent on players.

How much more time, money do you give him, and does he deserve it?

Time is the uncertain factor, how much is fair? But money isn't the be all and end all, Arsene Wenger has proven that you don't need to spend massive amounts to field a side that can compete for the league title. So let's put that excuse to bed right now.

Considering the calibre of managers likely to be available in the summer, I think Rafa is in a weak position currently. After bringing in 2 world class players in Torres and Mascherano, to only be fighting it out for 4th with the likes of Villa and Everton who've spent quite a bit less than ourselves is nothing short of embarrassing. Perhaps he can save himself with a cup win. But I return to my original question, has he shown enough to suggest he'll be able to win the league with more time?

I'm prepared to listen to arguments for and against.

[El Jefecito]

The crux of the matter is whether you believe that the way Benitez currently manages will eventually lead to success in the league.

The evidence so far suggests not.

And for once, let's ignore what Benitez is capable of in Europe, because that's not how most fans judge him, and it's isn't a factor in his league performance.

I'm in no way underestimating the achievements of Benitez in Europe since he's been here, but I've always believed that the league is the true barometer of a club's quality, and that of it's employees.

You have to be consistent, mentally and physically, be committed and have the necessary quality to succeed. It's completely different from knockout football where form is of less importance.

My point is that his methods aren't consistently successful.

4 years on and we haven't made any progress in the league, no style of play has been developed, the standard of football hasn't improved, and a few individuals aside the team isn't better, and most worrying of all our manager hasn't adapted where necessary to gain results.

All this after 3 and a half years and £150m plus spent on players.

How much more time, money do you give him, and does he deserve it?

Time is the uncertain factor, how much is fair? But money isn't the be all and end all, Arsene Wenger has proven that you don't need to spend massive amounts to field a side that can compete for the league title. So let's put thate xcuse to bed right now.

Considering the calibre of managers likely to be available in the summer, I think Rafa is in a weak position currently. After bringing in 2 world class players in Torres and Mascherano, to only be fighting it out for 4th with the likes of Villa and Everton who've spent quite a bit less than ourselves is nothing short of embarrassing. Perhaps he can save himself with a cup win. But I return to my original question, has he shown enough to suggest he'll be able to win the league with more time?

I'm prepared to listen to arguments for and against.

To my mind we only need one more player to be competitive, we need someone that can attack the plethora of crosses we put in. We never score from set pieces because we don't have that kind of player. We could easily get an extra 15-20 goals a season and that would make a big difference. Luca Toni would have been ideal.

[rage]

babel can't cross a ball to save his life and pennant only has that floated chip cross in his locker. i really don't know what plethora of crosses you're on about. and we need far more than one other striker to be competitive, we need wingers and/or improved fullbacks and another striker.

[El Jefecito]

babel can't cross a ball to save his life and pennant only has that floated chip cross in his locker. i really don't know what plethora of crosses you're on about. and we need far more than one other striker to be competitive, we need wingers and/or improved fullbacks and another striker.

Babel is an inside left, he's not supposed to be a crossing expert. Kewell is supposed to be our outside left.

Re: Pennant, it's the striker that makes a cross good or bad!!!! Crouch makes them all bad by just standing there, instead of attacking them.

[rage]

no i disagree if the crosses were whipped in with more pace then pennant would have a better assist rate.

so you agree that babel can't cross and kewell's hardly played for the last 3 years where's this plethora of crosses?

we need wingers, ffs we've needed wingers from when houllier came.

[El Jefecito]

no i disagree if the crosses were whipped in with more pace then pennant would have a better assist rate.

so you agree that babel can't cross and kewell's hardly played for the last 3 years where's this plethora of crosses?

we need wingers, ffs we've needed wingers from when houllier came.

No, I agree with you, I just think think we could get more with what we have, if we had a striker that knew how to attack the ball. Would we be even better with driven crosses, sure. Would that be the difference between winning the EPL and not. I don't think so.

[rage]

so why on earth has rafa not gone out and bought a quality winger? and if we need a better striker why didn't he sell crouch and buy someone in the summer instead of hardly playing him this year?
for me rafa's made too many mistakes at critical times in the transfer market.

i wouldn't let him spend a penny this summer unless it was to fill certain positions.

seeing as this thread is about rafa i think he favours kuyt over crouch at the bemusement of most and his public criticism of alonso was unacceptable. in fact i reckon his man management skills are awful and someone should hire him a number 2 whether he likes it or not. the man is a control freak and in 4 odd years hasn't learned from his mistakes in the league.

[El Jefecito]

so why on earth has rafa not gone out and bought a quality winger? and if we need a better striker why didn't he sell crouch and buy someone in the summer instead of hardly playing him this year?
for me rafa's made too many mistakes at critical times in the transfer market.

i wouldn't let him spend a penny this summer unless it was to fill certain positions.

seeing as this thread is about rafa i think he favours kuyt over crouch at the bemusement of most and his public criticism of alonso was unacceptable. in fact i reckon his man management skills are awful and someone should hire him a number 2 whether he likes it or not. the man is a control freak and in 4 odd years hasn't learned from his mistakes in the league.

Quality wingers are hard to come by, we've been priced out of 1) SWP 2) Simao, 3) Alves, 4) Mancini, 5) Quaresma.

Can hardly blame Rafa for that.

The problem with Crouch is that he slows down our attacks, he either nods the ball on to an area where our other attacker is NOT, or he lays it back to the midfield. Neither of which are conduicive to Rafa's attack swiftly approach.