Rafa - is he any good? ;)

[rage]

then he should have sold crouch last summer

[El Jefecito]

then he should have sold crouch last summer

And Torres aside, who could he afford? Hell he had to bring his 4th striker on a free transfer, we were that short.

[Craig_H]

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.

If you agree with him, why did you say all we need is a striker to attack the crosses?

A striker to attack crosses wouldnt be the difference between winning the PL or not either.

[bigfooty]

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.

Most of the time that's because there aren't players around him or breaking forward as we play so defensively and without the necessary pace to go beyond Crouch. Still, I'd rather have Crouch holding up the ball and attracting some defenders, which leaves space for others, than it bouncing off Kuyt in random directions.

If you look at the variety of goals Crouch has been involved with in his seasons at LFC he is not nearly as one-dimensional as some people seem to think.

[Nicey]

Thought this was a wind up .... sadly I can see its not

[CAD]

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...

All is relative. Compared to us and the other two Wenger hasn't spend much at all.

The point is that Wenger plays a very different kind of football. He seems to have some sort of plan and a clear idea what he wants from his players. Look at the Arsenal team today. They can all play football. They don't have a lot of players who are all more or less crap on the ball (hoof hoof hoof) but wonderful when they are not in possession. All the players in the back can play football.

It's the philosophy. The collection of players brought in by Wenger. They all fit into somekind of vision.

Does Rafa have that kind of vision? It seems to me that there is not many Arsenal players that Rafa couldn't have brought. Instead he has spend a fortune on players who seem average at best and who doesn't fit into our team at all. If there is a masterplan it's hard to spot.

I'm just not that impressed and IF Rafa were to leave, well it wouldn't be the end of LFC.

Surely we can agree that there are others out there who could do as well as Rafa with the budget at hand?

[Diego]

wenger is a very good in the transfer market but has spent a few bucks he has spent according to an arse site 135.600.000 on players, a number that is probably closer to 150.000.000 if total fees for reyes and walcott are included. but he has sold players for 116.984.000 meaning that wenger has bought players in his 10 year reign for about 35 million net, thats what makes him a brilliant, he makes money of his buys, anelka went for 23 million, overmars for 25, viera for almost 14 and henry for 16. the point is that he always makes his buck back. but he has bought squad players just like rafa that have failed, he has spent on good and bad. and here are a few examples



Pennant Notts Co £2,000,000
Kanu Inter £4,500,000
Sylvinho Corinthians £4,000,000
Henry Juventus £10,500,000
Lauren Mallorca £7,200,000
Pires Marseille £6,000,000
Wiltord Bordeaux £13,000,000
Edu Corinthians £6,000,000
Jeffers Everton £8,000,000
Van Bronckh. Rangers £8,500,000
Wright Ipswitch £6,000,000
Cygan Lille £2,100,000
Gilberto Alt Mineiro £4,500,000
Reyes Seville £10,500,000 (that only the initial price, it well have been more like 15 mill that he paid in the end)
Adebayor Monaco £7,000,000
Walcott Southampton £5,000,000 (+ another possibly 7)
Rosicky Dortmund £6,800,000
Diawara Bordeaux £2,500,000
Luzhny Dynamo Kiev £1,800,000
Stepanovs Skonto Riga £1,000,000
Danilevicius Lausanne Spo £1,000,000
Cygan Lille £2,100,000
Gilberto Alt Mineiro £4,500,000

http://arsenal-mania.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=31663

there are a few players missing from that site like hleb that costed around 10 mill according to reports, so there might be a few missing millions, so the number might rise to 160 -180 million or more...

[dww]

I think the problem is that Wenger arrived in a relatively poor PL with few foreign imports. He introduced a change of bringing those players in when they were genuinely cheap and developing them - frequently selling them of for a profit - since the Anelka, Overmas & Petit sales he has not been as great looking in the nett spend stakes.

He has done well but really has the £15m-ish spent on Denilson, Diaby, Traore and Walcott paid dividends yet (not to say it won't)? In that context I think that Rafa deserves at least one if not two seasons to see if his more long term plans pan out in the way thar Wengers have.

[Johnny]

People may say that we're underachieving but are we really? We are routinely finishing 3rd or 4th which is exactly where we should be finishing - we will this year too IMO. The problem we have is that people's expectations are unrealistically high. Expecting to finish first or second is madness. Getting massively depressed about it when we don't is even worse.

As hard as it is, we just have to accept that it is 2008 not 1988 and we are no longer the top club in the country. We are though the third or fourth best team in the country, we have the 3rd or 4th best squad, income and spending and therefore finish 3rd or 4th. Expecting to compete with the likes of United is just unrealistic and setting ourselves up for a massive fall. If we are to ever compete with them we need either a huge injection of cash to buy the multiple £15-30m players that they have or we need to be very patient as Arsenal have been with Wenger over recent seasons and allow the manager time to find and bring though his own youth players.

Painful as it may be we are not in the same league as United, Chelsea or Arsenal and we have done very well in recent years to finish third twice. We're starting to get as delusional as Newcastle fans, expecting title challenges every year when there are no facts to suggest that we should. Some fans need a serious reality check.

Rant over

Best post I`ve read in a long time,it`s not our devine rite to win the league with such a small stadium and a manager who could not compete in the transfer market and who inherited a youth team full of Champship quality players.Rafa needs time.



On a negative note,He also needs to start with our best 11 in future.He takes rotation to a new level in the PL.

[Johnny]

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.

And as soon as that 25 million winger got an injury or needed a rest then we`d be ****ed.We need a big squad to handle injuries and a long season.

[Johnny]

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.

Crosses also come from Finnan,SG,Kuyt,Riise and Aurelio not just the wingers.