Voronin....

[sackparry]

Again, he didn't buy too many squad fillers last summer......I don't count Lucas as a squad filler by the way.

So you don't think the 13 million spent on lucas and benayoun should have gone towards a high calibre winger?

[MrMichael]

this prick is bleeding the club for a lot of wages every week.... and then when we cant get the likes of alves cos of lack of money people wonder why.....

Complete nonsense,.... but don't let that get in the way of a good rant.

Voronin was a free transfer, and his wages aren't even above the squad average

Alves would have cost £20m+

The 2 things have no correlation WHATSOEVER.

[frank the tank]

Oh ffs, I despair sometimes.

Every manager signs dodgy players. Every single one. Don;t make me list the Grimandis and Cygan's Wenger's played, or Djemba-Djembas and Fortunes Whiskey nose inexplicably gave outings to.

He was a free transfer, brought in when it looked like we had no funds to be a cover striker for a season. Does anyone have the stats on how many starts he's made this year... if its a dozen I'll be surprised.

I'm sure he'll be gone in the summer, Rafa's moved on nearly every buy he's made that hasn;t worked out very fast.... but it makes no sense whatsoever just to dump those players mid season as they're what we're stuck with till the summer - Morientes, Josemi, Kromkamp, Nunez, Pellegrino - all played right up to the day before they were sold virtually.

Bringing Voronin on as a sub, probably to help him regain fitness after a long layoff so as to assist his ability to pass a fitness test elsewhere in the summer, has absolutely nothing to do with Benitez ability to win the title. ****'s sake, anyone would think it was an easy thing to do listening to some people on here. "Supporters" my arse.

i wouldnt blame rafa for signing him..... after all he is a ukrainian international for free...on paper he could play in a variety of positions behind the mainstriker....it was a low risk move on rafa's part


he is a pile of ****e though.... and i cant wait until we give the number 10 jersey (and also the no. 7) to somebody more deserving

[MrMichael]

So you don't think the 13 million spent on lucas and benayoun should have gone towards a high calibre winger?

Who? Name one winger, available last summer for £13m, who we should have bought, that could also have covered central midfield when Alonso was injured. Or maybe we could have kept Sissoko to do that

[frank the tank]

Complete nonsense,.... but don't let that get in the way of a good rant.

Voronin was a free transfer, and his wages aren't even above the squad average

Alves would have cost £20m+

The 2 things have no correlation WHATSOEVER.

do you know what voronin is on??? i reckon about 30k per week considering he was a free......

also, alves would cost 20+ million now.....not when rafa first wanted to sign him about 3 years ago..... long before real madrid and barcelona became very interesting in the guy (similar scenario to gabby milito) i think the figures mentioned were about 12m at the time.... considering we spend 6.7m on pennent, then it is not outragous to suggest that a lot of wasted money on wages on players that add nothing to the team could be the deciding factor on our affordability of new players.....

[MrMichael]

i wouldnt blame rafa for signing him..... after all he is a ukrainian international for free...on paper he could play in a variety of positions behind the mainstriker....it was a low risk move on rafa's part

he is a pile of ****e though.... and i cant wait until we give the number 10 jersey (and also the no. 7) to somebody more deserving

Now that I do agree with

I just think that using Voronin as ammo v Rafa, or to say he's the reason we didn't sign players like Alves, is taking it too far. It was a low risk move that hasn't paid off, unfortunate, but that's about it. It made sense for the reasons you give; nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that.

He shouldn't ever have got the no 10 shirt though

[sackparry]

Who? Name one winger, available last summer for £13m, who we should have bought, that could also have covered central midfield when Alonso was injured. Or maybe we could have kept Sissoko to do that

im not a scout, nor do i play FM. I don't know which wingers were available and which were not. What i do know is those two have pretty much contributed **** all to this season, and that 13 million quid could have been used in this summers budget. These kind of signings are exactly why we have outspent man utd, yes out spent man utd but have a bench filled with **** players while man utd have a bench of 15 million plus players. They purchase quality, we purchase **** and lots of it. And then have the cheek to moan about being poor.

Lucas was a pointless signing - at the time we had gerrard, masher, alonso and sissoko (none of us knew just how **** he was going to get) so don't no i don't believe we needed him to cover for injury.

[pezzzer]

So you don't think the 13 million spent on lucas and benayoun should have gone towards a high calibre winger?

but then we wouldnt have beni or lucas, who both are coming on nicely and have both been required at times this season.

getting the right squad together to compete for the league is a massive task, it took fergie 5-6 years to get it in the right direction and his budget was massive, rafa's nearly there. patience and some respect for what rafa is doing is required from all of us

[The Erectile Banana]

Voronin can still confound you all and come good next season.

I think Rafa is slowly nursing him back to full fitness and is going to unleash him on unsuspecting defences next year.

I can see him being a revelation in the deep lying forward role behind Torres.

[Nic83]

Voronin can still confound you all and come good next season.

I think Rafa is slowly nursing him back to full fitness and is going to unleash him on unsuspecting defences next year.

I can see him being a revelation in the deep lying forward role behind Torres.

I can only assume you're on a wind up or havn't got a TV.

[marcus50bucks]

Voronin can still confound you all and come good next season.

I think Rafa is slowly nursing him back to full fitness and is going to unleash him on unsuspecting defences next year.

I can see him being a revelation in the deep lying forward role behind Torres.

ultimate piss take of a post! The guys second to sean dundee as the worst ever striker to player for liverpool. FACT

[The Erectile Banana]

I can only assume you're on a wind up or havn't got a TV.

Your first guess is accurate.

[The Erectile Banana]

ultimate piss take of a post! The guys second to sean dundee as the worst ever striker to player for liverpool. FACT

That's harsh.

Mad Erik was much worse as was Paul Stewart.

Feed The Crow and his waistline will grow.

[MrMichael]

do you know what voronin is on??? i reckon about 30k per week considering he was a free......

also, alves would cost 20+ million now.....not when rafa first wanted to sign him about 3 years ago..... long before real madrid and barcelona became very interesting in the guy (similar scenario to gabby milito) i think the figures mentioned were about 12m at the time.... considering we spend 6.7m on pennent, then it is not outragous to suggest that a lot of wasted money on wages on players that add nothing to the team could be the deciding factor on our affordability of new players.....

If we assume 30k/week is accurate, well I'd surmise that most of our squad will be on atleast that, and considering there was no transfer fee, paying him that for one year is really a minor concern. How long were we paying Salif Diao's 50k/week wages for? I believe we were also paying Diouf's the first 2 years he was at Bolton.

We tried to buy Alves and Simao several times, and each time the price was raised beyone what we could apparently afford at the time. That was not Benitez fault, if anyone's it was Rick Parry's, or the boards for not affording us enough cash. The Pennant signing was one of Benitez most bemusing moments, but Pennant had had a good season the previous year, and I do believe that Rafa thought he needed to buy players who knew what the Premiership was all about, plus that was about all we could afford.

Every manager makes bad buys, and "wastes" money. I know where you're coming from, but I do believe this to be a far lesser problem under Benitez than it ever was under previous managers at Anfield. Benitez has moved failed players on generally very quickly, and we really haven't had to take a really significant loss on anyone under him, at least none that couldn't be counter balanced by potential profits on other players. With hindsight its very very easy for us to go £7m Pennant + £5m Benayoun + £6m Lucas = £18m Alves (or whatever), but that doesn't mean that in practice the transfer market is so easy. What if Alves had come over and been **** in this league, then everyone would be criticising Rafa for putting all his eggs in one basket.

[frank the tank]

Now that I do agree with

I just think that using Voronin as ammo v Rafa, or to say he's the reason we didn't sign players like Alves, is taking it too far. It was a low risk move that hasn't paid off, unfortunate, but that's about it. It made sense for the reasons you give; nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that.

He shouldn't ever have got the no 10 shirt though

i think as a whole, rafa's record in the transfer market has been superb to be perfectly honest..... at this level, i would not judge a manager on "squad fillers" at all.... the likes of josemi, nunez, pellegrino, voronin all arived for little or no money and it was never crucial to our development that they became top class players...

when rafa got it really wrong, we didn't actually do that bad... people point out morientes singing as a disaster but lets look at the bigger picture, he signed for something like 6.5m and left for something like 4.3m..... hardly a case of crespo arriving for 18m and going out on a 2 year loan or veron for 30m..... gonzales was another example but we basically got our money back for him too..... and a lot of people easily forget that we made money on sissoko and bellamy despite them not working out

where rafas record looks good though is for players costing 5 or 6m upwards... agger, reina, skrtel, mascher, alonso, kuyt, crouch and torres have all been sound purchases.....

My original point made in this thread was basically highlighting the problem, that i think we have, of paying too much in wages to players that do SWEET **** ALL for the first team..... put it this way.... with the young players we have ready to make the break through into the first team squad (not necessarily the starting 11 but with 7 subs next year, then here's hoping that more of our youngsters get cameo roles....only then will rafa know if they have what it takes) then i would prefer to cut loose a lot of the ****e squad players in our squad that get paid a fortune (i accept it's not their fault) and replace them with even one more world class player for every 3 useless squad players........and the rest of the positions going to players making the break through...

Next season, picture the scene.... we are at home to stoke and are 4-0 up with 60mins gone (swap this seasons derby with next seasons stoke!) and with a midweek champions league game coming up, rafa decides to take off kuyt, torres and gerrard..... personally, i would prefer us to bring on players like nemeth, plessis and spearing rather than the likes of voronin, pennent and riise.....