Are we really paupers?

[Rashid]

dww - great post mate and well reasoned. I agree that we had to improve the quality - I just think that he could have kept many of Houllier's players (I know they were not good enough for the first team but as they won a CL surely they could have been squad players?) e.g. there are several squad players here now who are no better than the ones Houllier left but who cost us money - money that could have been saved.

So he could have saved money rather than become obsessed with this revolving door attitude and having his "own players". 10 players every season is what he averges - just look at last summer - we signed loads and went from 3rd to 4th.

Sometimes signing less keeps squad harmony and only signing top players gives us more quality without changing the team too much.

This thread isn't about all that though, I just want to touch on the fact that we are not paupers, we have spent serious money under Rafa, and will do so again this summer. I understand according to Bascombe he wants Rieira, Dossena and Barry - that lot will cost £25m+ - wouldn't it be better to just pay the money for a Quaresma or a Ribery with that and improve the team 10 fold?

Just a thought.

[Shaggy]

I understand according to Bascombe he wants Rieira, Dossena and Barry - that lot will cost £25m+ - wouldn't it be better to just pay the money for a Quaresma or a Ribery with that and improve the team 10 fold?

Just a thought.

No because Quaresma's ****ing ****.

So if you were manager you'd go out and blast the majority, if not all, of our budget on some stepover ****e with a fancy name.

Ribery would cost us £35m+.

This isn't Football Manager pal.

[Cormack74]

This thread isn't about all that though, I just want to touch on the fact that we are not paupers, we have spent serious money under Rafa, and will do so again this summer. I understand according to Bascombe he wants Rieira, Dossena and Barry - that lot will cost £25m+ - wouldn't it be better to just pay the money for a Quaresma or a Ribery with that and improve the team 10 fold?

Just a thought.

Do those players want to come to us ?

Will their clubs sell them ?

If they are for sale, what's to stop us being outbid by the Chavs, Scum etc

Sadly Fantasy Football League is not real life.

[Cormack74]

No because Quaresma's ****ing ****.

So if you were manager you'd go out and blast the majority, if not all, of our budget on some stepover ****e with a fancy name.

Ribery would cost us £35m+.

This isn't Football Manager pal.

Beat me to the same sentiment.

[Sarb]

Don't think Reira will be any good, but I'm for signing Barry and Dosenna

[Rashid]

Don't think Reira will be any good, but I'm for signing Barry and Dosenna

Yep Barry would improve us no end from the team that finished 4th. He is a HUGE improvement on Alonso.

[FatTony]

I think there are some valid points there to be honest.

Whilst we can't really compete with the Mancs & Chavs, we're hardly watching the pennies. I also have to agree that sometimes I feel that Rafa wants to play safe and bring in 3 players when 1 top purchase would do. We end up all too often with a player who's a jack of all trades but master of none.

I hope that this transfer season will be different in that Rafa now has the squad of players he wanted and now just needs to add the quality in a couple of positions to finish it off, but then I see us being linked with Barry & Deggen and think same old, same old.

I can see us having a clear out of some average players like Pennant, Riise and Crouch only to roll in like for like.

[Sarb]

Yep Barry would improve us no end from the team that finished 4th. He is a HUGE improvement on Alonso.

Signing a guy who can do a good job in two or three positions and has been recommended by Gerrard apparently.

Not for selling Alonso, but if that's what needs to be done to get a better balanced squad then so be it

[dww]

dww - great post mate and well reasoned. I agree that we had to improve the quality - I just think that he could have kept many of Houllier's players (I know they were not good enough for the first team but as they won a CL surely they could have been squad players?) e.g. there are several squad players here now who are no better than the ones Houllier left but who cost us money - money that could have been saved.

So he could have saved money rather than become obsessed with this revolving door attitude and having his "own players". 10 players every season is what he averges - just look at last summer - we signed loads and went from 3rd to 4th.

Sometimes signing less keeps squad harmony and only signing top players gives us more quality without changing the team too much.

This thread isn't about all that though, I just want to touch on the fact that we are not paupers, we have spent serious money under Rafa, and will do so again this summer. I understand according to Bascombe he wants Rieira, Dossena and Barry - that lot will cost £25m+ - wouldn't it be better to just pay the money for a Quaresma or a Ribery with that and improve the team 10 fold?

Just a thought.

On the question of are we paupers - the answer to my mind is clearly no. In that we are financially capable of bringing in players that no other teams but the top four PL teams can. On the other hand I think within the top four we have the least stable finances year on year and certainly couldn't out bid head to head at least two of the top four. So basically everything is relative and the fact that we are currently behind three teams in the PL indicates that we require finances to close the gap more than they do to maintain it.

I think the thing is though that a lot of the Houllier era players had no place in the way Rafa wants to organise the team. Therefore keeping them would not have been hugely helpful. The weight of changes has to me had a lot to do with not having a know and secure size of transfer fund season on season - consequently Rafa has gambled with the money he has each window hoping that he will be able to improve players. Often he has but not enough to help us bridge the gap to United. I think that as a tactical manager he has required the variety of players we have slowly aquired.

Also, in general I think Rafa has made money on an individual basis on the players he has bought in and consequently sold.

This leaves the question of whether there is a general trend that we could have bought different players at times (possibly concentrating funds to a greater degree) and whether Rafas tactical methods can conquer the PL.

The answer to the second question to me comes in how many ideas are either in common with Mourinho or have been adopted in the last two seasons by Fergusson. For me the formation and shape of Fergusson's current team is built on ideas that Rafa has been employing and often seemed to be aiming for in his time here. For me Rafa and Mourinho's approaches differ really only in the treatment of players and emphasis on counter attack. As such I feel that Rafa's general approach is very capable of wining the league.

So that leaves could individual big signings have bought us further forward in the past or possibly now. I think the problem is that I don't think there have been many first choice targets who we could have bought in the past. Rafa wanted Simao and Alves but the prices were continually increased and the players were in the end both quite happy to stay where they were and sign lucrative new contracts. I don't think we could have afforded to buy these players including matching/bettering the increased wages, my suspicion being that this would have cost more overall than the players bought in in their stead.

In this context we have to look at more expensive second choices. I'm far from convinced that the added risk of second choices would have been worth it. The higher the fee the less likely you are to recoup it if they 'fail' at our team. Gambles like Bellamy actually allowed us to make money.

This seems like a complete RCDNW defense but I would like to say that I do agree that at times we have made to many changes overall season to season. This has been mitigated to some degree by the fact that they have often been in players who rotated in and out but I still think the disruption has at times counted against us. I have said repeatedly that I would like this season to see a 4 in 4 out sort of size of changes.

Unfortunately I think the stresses of this year have had a big effect on Rafa's faith in certain players and I really can't see us making less than 6 in, 6 out changes. I would like to hope that this is a one off with us now having established a strong spine and a quality reserve side (which with the new extra two bench spots we should have greater opportunity to develop).

[Rich]

I think the point that is often missed in this "we've spent more than United" argument is that we generally blow our budget on signing players every year (even taking a loan off Moores to sign Kuyt) we have no idea what kind of budget Ferguson has - he might have only spent 50% in the time we've spent 100% of ours.

We aren't playing on the same playing field; much like Everton aren't playing on the same field as ourselves.

[wishiwasascouser]

I know what you mean. I just move on when I see one (net/gross thread), but if I had to put a pound on it, I would say the scum have out spent us in the last 10 years...No?

Yeah almost definitley I would say.

[dww]

I think the point that is often missed in this "we've spent more than United" argument is that we generally blow our budget on signing players every year (even taking a loan off Moores to sign Kuyt) we have no idea what kind of budget Ferguson has - he might have only spent 50% in the time we've spent 100% of ours.

We aren't playing on the same playing field; much like Everton aren't playing on the same field as ourselves.

I think this is connected to the point I made about the consistency of the other teams budget. Fergie knows he will have N million each year, Rafa has had to assume that he might have to sell to buy. In which case it is key that he gets 'value' transfers at times.

[Rashid]

Yeah almost definitley I would say.

This is from Hermes resident stato on TLW.

Man Utd have only spent £30m more than us in the last 15 years, an average of £2m a season. Nothing to do with Rafa in the first 11 years but they haven't gossly out-spent us since the Premiership began. They sign quality players at high prices, we sign a multitude of average players who don't make it.

Where United have saved is through the 10 top class youth players that came through. BUT the money spent issue doesn't hold up, our managers simply on the whole haven't bought well....

[carlton]

The thing is that all of these figures are subject to huge error bars and the fact that they completely ignore wages, sign on fees, agents cuts etc. But for the sake of argument lets assume they are correct.

We then have to look at what has been achieved with that money and from what base level that happened. When Rafa took over we had a side that was nowhere near good enough to challenge and most of the players looked to have peaked already in their careers whatever their age (for example Heskey should theoretically have been reaching his prime years but we all know that we had seen as good as it was going to get from him). The squad also didn't suit the way Rafa wanted to play and the youth/reserve setup contained no players that were going to make the step up and a number of older players. IIRC we also had the second highest wages/turnover percentage in the league.

Rafa has spent money improving not only the first team but also the infrastructure of the club and from what I understand had to do that while asked to reduce the wage burden on the club (at least at first). We had to create a platform for the future that both United and Arsenal already had in place. The fact that he has had one summer in which he has been able to compete genuinely for his top targets seems a slightly harsh stick to beat him with.

In terms of the accusation that Rafa likes to spend money on lots of players rather than one or two top players - I think that it is a gross simplification. I think Rafa likes to have a pool of players a certain size. Since he has come here he has had to try and make that pool of the correct quality and the fact he has had restrictions on money to spend and wages as well as a lack of young players he felt good enough to draw on has made him have to gamble on a number of signings. I would think that if given two or three seasons of sustained (and importantly predictable) investment in the team he would be able to change that pattern. I don't see how one can make the statement that he prefers to buy many players without considering the context in which he took the actions he has.

Last summer he showed that if he though the squad would benefit most from putting a lot of our eggs in a smaller number of baskets with the likes of Torres and Mascher then he would do that.

Excellent post mate. Rafa's rebuilding approach has arguably been a success given the reserves won the title largely on the back of recruits brought to he club by rafa. Although its about developing players for the first team, ingraining a winning culture is what LFC is all about. We also have some cracking junior prospects too and even if only a handful make it this will save the club big $ in the future.

[RedSince1964]

Why just consider the last 2 years. Look at the state of the club when he walked in. For the first two years he had to do a Harry Redknapp style wheeling and dealing to ensure that he got in players who looked like footballers. Look at the squad of Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal when he walked in. Two of them had experienced managers with a ruthlessly efficient structure in place from top to bottom. When your comparing against Man U remember that they had a very efficient base to start from.

It has taken Rafa 4 years to build that base. Of course in hindsight he could have done better. But I think given the resources he had he has done a good job. In fact an excellent job.

Let us not just compare numbers spent in the last 2 years. Take into account the status of the squads of his competitors when he walked in. Make sure you account for that in the numbers calculation. You will find that Rafa has done a wonderful job.

Can't argue with that statement much, i would go as far as saying that its pretty much bang on mate