Earn your wages rafa.

[steveheighwayrobbery]

good luck to the lad but torress looked **** in his last season in Spain apparently it is an odd league that one.

[willa1975]

gonzalez is playing some **** hot football back in spain again with betis. was last week being linked with bayern munich according to some papers (the times??) even scored against madrid. i think rafa just didn't play him regular enough to get the best out of him. before he cam to us everyone was raving about him and now he's left us they are doing it again. give babel a chance next year to play regular football (full 90 mins games) and in his best postion up front and then lests judge him.

I have serious doubts about Rafa's ability to coach attacking players. Every attacking player we've signed under Rafa, bar Torres (and Crouch to a lesser degree) has been a big disappointment.

Look at a guy like Adebayor...if he had signed for us, does anyone really think he'd be having the same impact as he is at Arsenal under Wenger?

It's painful to say, especially as I have no doubts about Rafa's commitment to the club and his desire to win things at LFC, but I just don't see us becoming a consistently potent attacking side with him as manager, regardless of whoever we may sign.

[dww]

I think the thing is that you have to have the raw materials and who other than Torres has Rafa had who realistically had what it takes in the PL for a top team? I would say really only arguably Crouch as a goalscorer and Garcia as an impact midfielder. The fact that Rafa seems less able to pick a striker/attacking player and less willing to gamble on his judgement in that area. I think he tends to value team play over individual ability and at the minute what we need is a bit of the latter in the right areas to give the team as a whole confidence they are going to win every time they get on the pitch. For me half the battle is in the mind and our players look unconvinced they are going to win a lot of the time and that has to be changed.

[the rev leeroy brown]

I think the thing is that you have to have the raw materials and who other than Torres has Rafa had who realistically had what it takes in the PL for a top team? I would say really only arguably Crouch as a goalscorer and Garcia as an impact midfielder. .

i might be reading this wrong (been on the booze for most of the day now so getting harder to read) but are you saying that torres is our only player who has what it takes for the PL?? what about gerard? at a push, what about babel? as for the crouch bit....being a goalscorer i hardly think so. he is not good enough for a top team in the EPL. garcia was magic and a great impact player but IMO more suited to the CL than the EPL . never really suited the english game.

[Rafa_el_Gafa]

gonzalez is playing some **** hot football back in spain again with betis. was last week being linked with bayern munich according to some papers (the times??) even scored against madrid. i think rafa just didn't play him regular enough to get the best out of him. before he cam to us everyone was raving about him and now he's left us they are doing it again. give babel a chance next year to play regular football (full 90 mins games) and in his best postion up front and then lests judge him.

Babel needs a run of games then i'd say.

So far I've not been impressed with him. The fact is, we shouldn't have brought a 'hot prospect' if we didn't have a quality player in place for him to eventually replace.

[Rafa_el_Gafa]

I have serious doubts about Rafa's ability to coach attacking players. Every attacking player we've signed under Rafa, bar Torres (and Crouch to a lesser degree) has been a big disappointment.

Look at a guy like Adebayor...if he had signed for us, does anyone really think he'd be having the same impact as he is at Arsenal under Wenger?

It's painful to say, especially as I have no doubts about Rafa's commitment to the club and his desire to win things at LFC, but I just don't see us becoming a consistently potent attacking side with him as manager, regardless of whoever we may sign.

I think Rafa will ruin torres. He'll turn him into a hard working kuyt type player eventually.

Also with the quality of football we play at the moment, the only thing Torres will improve is his neck muscles from constantly looking up in the air at the ball been hoofed up to him.