Rafa Benitez issues Liverpool FC warning

[Woobus]

You wouldnt agree that Kuyt has generally been little better than Baros, for example?

Or Pennant/Benyoun being no better in terms of output, than Cisse?

In fact, the Cisse example works with Kuyt too. Both bought as strikers, both moved to right wing. In their respective last full seasons, Cisse scored 19 goals (and didnt play every game like Kuyt does), while Dirk scored 11.

In the league, Cisse scored 9 goals from 33 games. Dirk's return was 3 goals from 32 games.

Who's output is better?

Yet we sold Cisse for about half what we paid for Dirk.

Can hardly blame Rafa for the amount we received for Cisse, and I would take Kuyt over Cisse anyday. For one thing Cisse wasnt happy to play out on the wing and Kuyt is far more a team player and helps create the space for Torres and Gerrard to do their magic. He is also a great player for defending from the front, its great to have players with that type of dedication.
We could have got back what we paid for Kuyt during the summer if not a bit more. Also you mention Benyoun who we could have made money on during the summer if we had of choose to sell him.
Thats the big difference Rafas mistakes have cost us little or made us money in a right few instances. Houlliers mistakes cost us a fortune and if not for Rafas wise wheeling and dealing wouldnt have such a good squad now a days.

[Craig_H]

But you can.Football has moved on and Houllier didn`t have to compete against NEW Chelsea or the other 20 odd teams who have much more money to spend these days.

Nobody is saying Rafa has to overhaul the NEW chelsea and the likes of City when they spend big.

The criticisms are because he makes his own job harder by insisting that 3 average players who make a modest contribution are better than a Torres type, who obviously contributes superbly.

If he opted for less quantity, and more top quality, things would improve in my view. It might not win us the title but then it also might. The quantity over quality method hasnt, so why not just TRY it the other way?

My gripe isnt that we dont win the title, it's that Rafa (IMO) actually makes it even HARDER than it already is, with some (note, i said SOME) poor decision making.

I find that hard to swallow, but que sera sera. I'm definitely out now. Beat that, Bannatyne

[Johnny]

As i alluded to in other posts Johnny, Yossi, Dirk and Pennant cost £23m combined and their collective contributions are a fraction of that which a £20m player would have had, IMO.

That trio is the most obvious example that springs to mind.

But again, we're going round in circles here and it's the 'same argument over and over again' which is cropping up, and this annoys people, myself included.

The rafa backers will use the same 'excuses' and the critics will use the same 'mistakes'. Neither side will accept the other viewpoint and it'll go on and on and on forever, until the mods decide to ban the critics, even though they're behaving in the same way as the backers, albeit with a different point of view.

Nothing will be solved, so in the words of the legend that is Duncan Bannatyne, i'm out.

You`d would have a team without Benni,Kuyt and Pennant but keep Cisse and buy a 23 million pound player who may not be any better in our team than Kuyt,Benni or Pennant.We`d have a weaker squad and be in 10th place if you or Rashid were manager.

[Woobus]

Mate, when he buys Pennant, Kuyt and Benyoun for a combined £23m, how can you look at that and say he didnt have the £20m odd to buy a top class player?

You just cant compete without a large squad now a days, look at Arsenal their season fell to pieces last year due to having a small squad.

[Craig_H]

Cisse was a limited footballer with a dog**** attitude.

Sorry, but getting rid of Cisse and replacing him with Kuyt was good business IMO. I'm not Kuyt's biggest fan but Kuyt is a team player, Cisse is not

Benayoun is a class player.

Pennant isn't quite good enough for LFC.

Say he didn't buy Kuyt Pennant and Benni and bought a top class winger (such as Arsenal thought they'd done when they bought Reyes). And say for example that winger flopped or got injured or didn't settle. A bit like a Morientes situation.

Would we be better off?

Dirk is a very limited footballer with a super attitude. Which one actually produced more goals though? I guess it's down to what you prefer. You could argue that Maradona in 86 wasnt a team player, but i'm sure his team mates are delighted with their world cup winners medals

Yossi is a decent player, but class? Not sure. He doesnt get in the team on a regular basis and the option preferred to him is a striker who wasnt good enough to play upfront.

Why do you insist on taking the 'would have got injured or flopped' side of things though? Torres and Mascherano are the ONLY examples of when we've paid mega money for players, and they're both world class. The proof of the pudding is there in the number 9 and number 20 shirts.

[Red Chilli]

That's OTT Rashid.

Dire brand of football? What, like the CL final 2005, or the FA cup final 2006 or the Arsenal CL QF at Anfield last season?

Even Brazil don't "play like Brazil" every game. Whether you like it or not, football is a results business and if you don't have Ronaldinho, Messi, Deco and Eto'o in your team you might have to sacrifice a bit of attacking flair for the sake of your job. Rafa has to get the best results he can within the budget he has to play with.

As for money wasted, he's not wasted the money, he's spent the money trying to improve the team. It may not have been successful in every case, but he's not pissing money up the wall, he's trying to be thrifty and when your budget is 3rd/4th place you will be competing for 3rd/4th place.

[Woobus]

I said the same thing at the time and was against the sale of Cisse, Pongolle and Baros.. along with the sales of many others. I only wanted them sold if we were going to get in top quality replacements - instead we got in the same or at times worse.

So you think the forward line of Cisse, Pongolle and Baros is better than the forward line of Torres, Keane and Babel?

[Craig_H]

Bully for them,it`s easy to be an armchair manager without the pressures Rafa is under.

It could be easy for Rafa too if he tried it. He is overwhelmingly cautious though, both in playing style and in terms of the transfer market, he prefers the 'safe' option and in my view, it's the biggest obstacle in our way, when it comes to a title challenge. His safety method has been used for a few years and it just hasnt worked. Why he (and you, it seems) is so scared of trying the other way, is beyond me. But oh well.

[Redlife]

As Rashid would say though, it was the majority of that awful squad which won the CL and the FA Cup.

Having turned it into his own squad, Rafa has since won nothing.

Does that not make a point of its own, somewhere along the line?

You cant argue with the facts mate.

I would say that that the players Rafa brought in had a dramatic influence on winning those trophies, particularly Alonso, Garcia, and Reina. We wouldn't have got anywhere close otherwise.

Also, we did reach the CL final again under Rafa with even fewer of Ged's players.

[Johnny]

Nobody is saying Rafa has to overhaul the NEW chelsea and the likes of City when they spend big.

The criticisms are because he makes his own job harder by insisting that 3 average players who make a modest contribution are better than a Torres type, who obviously contributes superbly.

If he opted for less quantity, and more top quality, things would improve in my view. It might not win us the title but then it also might. The quantity over quality method hasnt, so why not just TRY it the other way?

My gripe isnt that we dont win the title, it's that Rafa (IMO) actually makes it even HARDER than it already is, with some (note, i said SOME) poor decision making.

I find that hard to swallow, but que sera sera. I'm definitely out now. Beat that, Bannatyne

I posted this before and got ignored by the Rafa Knockers.


IN Albert Riera Undisclosed Espanyol
OUT Steve Finnan Undisclosed Espanyol
OUT Andriy Voronin On Loan Hertha Ber
OUT Craig Lindfield On Loan Bournemth
OUT Sebastian Leto On Loan Olympiakos Pira
OUT David Martin On Loan Leicester
OUT Charlie Barnett Free Transfer Tranmere
IN Robbie Keane £ 19,000,000 Tottenham Hotspur
OUT Jack Hobbs On Loan Leicester
OUT Godwin Antwi On Loan Tranmere
OUT Adam Hammill On Loan Blackpool
OUT Scott Carson £ 3,250,000 West Brom
OUT Robbie Threlfall On Loan Hereford
OUT Peter Crouch Undisclosed Portsmouth
OUT Danny Guthrie Undisclosed Newcastle
IN Diego Cavalieri Undisclosed Palmeiras
IN Andrea Dossena Undisclosed Udinese
OUT Harry Kewell Free Transfer Galatasaray
OUT Paul Anderson On Loan Nottm Forest
OUT Anthony Le Tallec Undisclosed Le Mans
OUT John Arne Riise £ 3,960,000 Roma
OUT Besian Idrizaj Cancelled Contract
IN Philipp Degen Free Transfer Dortmund

Rafa streamlined the squad again this yr.

Rafa has been backed in only two off his five yrs here with big money.In both yrs he`s bought a 20 million pound player.Every other yr we spent the money we won from compitions or on sold players.

[Craig_H]

You just cant compete without a large squad now a days, look at Arsenal their season fell to pieces last year due to having a small squad.

We have younger players coming through who could be the squad fillers and, in my opinion, would do no worse than the likes of Pennant. They didnt cost £7m though and by saving on those types of transfer fees, we could be signing more players in the Torres/Mascherano calibre.

[Red Chilli]

Dirk is a very limited footballer with a super attitude. Which one actually produced more goals though? I guess it's down to what you prefer. You could argue that Maradona in 86 wasnt a team player, but i'm sure his team mates are delighted with their world cup winners medals

Yossi is a decent player, but class? Not sure. He doesnt get in the team on a regular basis and the option preferred to him is a striker who wasnt good enough to play upfront.

Why do you insist on taking the 'would have got injured or flopped' side of things though? Torres and Mascherano are the ONLY examples of when we've paid mega money for players, and they're both world class. The proof of the pudding is there in the number 9 and number 20 shirts.

All I'm saying is, nothing is guarenteed.
Just because you spend 20 million on a winger doesn't mean he will succeed.

Goals scored is not the only measure of effectiveness for the team, unless you think Carragher is ****.
Cisse often refused to chase balls down, I've never seen Kuyt give up a chase. Whether he emerges with the ball is a very short-sighted way of looking at it, he creates space for other players and he pressurises the opposition.

I'd actually take Kuyt over Cisse in terms of footballing ability. Cisse only wins on pace. In terms of finishing, Cisse was very poor, he came from the school of "close your eyes and blast it goalwards".

Cisse used to be offside about a dozen times a game, very disruptive for the team and shows a complete lack of awareness.

I'm not bashing Cisse, he was one of the heroes of Istanbul, but if you want to compare Cisse and Kuyt, I'd take Kuyt everytime. Cisse was a passenger

[Rashid]

So you think the forward line of Cisse, Pongolle and Baros is better than the forward line of Torres, Keane and Babel?

Cisse was replaced by Kuyt, Baros by Morientes and Pongolle by Voronin.

Torres is the belated replacement for Owen.

[gerbin11]

I think what we saw at the beginning of Rafa's tenure was him buying cheaper option players because he saw that the team required better quality across the board. I think the purchases of Kuyt and Bellamy, for example were to combat two areas. He saw them as plyers that could be used up front but also wide right. In buying these two he covered two areas that needed work. As I have said before we only saw players for 90 mins a week, maybe he didn't see this versatility in Cisse, maybe he saw him as not being good enough in either position. With regards to Kuyt the purchase of a foreign player is always going to be a gamble, he had excellent stats in the Dutch league. We see that if these gambles don't succeed the players tend to be quickly sold (mostly for similar money to what we paid, if not more) the Houllier buys seldom were sold at break even or a profit, does this not say something.
As the years have gone by Rafa is buying less quantity and more quality, as in Torres Mascher, Bable, Reina, Skrtle and Keane. We are seeing a change in the players he has targeted. Some are doubting Riera, we will see if the doubters are right or wrong at the end of the season, or next if we're willing to give him time.
To say we are stagnant in terms of ability and success, as I have said before is to look at the league in way too simplistic a way. There are so many variables which effect the success. If you want to look at a very simplistic analagy you could say that barring a referees decision against Chelsea, if we had performed better in the two games against Utd and had won them both we could have finished 3 pts above Utd and challenged for the league. I'm sure everyone on here would have a go at me if I suggested that it was that easy.

The transfer market is not easy, ask Utd fans about Kleberson, Veron, Saha, Djemba Djemba and with his injury problems you could even add Hargreaves to that list of expensive failures.
Ask Chelsea fans about Veron, Crespo, Maniche, Malouda, Kesman, Mutu
Ask Arsenal fans about Jeffers, Edu, Wiltord, Cygan, Senderos and Stepenovs.

[Johnny]

I said the same thing at the time and was against the sale of Cisse, Pongolle and Baros.. along with the sales of many others. I only wanted them sold if we were going to get in top quality replacements - instead we got in the same or at times worse.

Anyway, my biggest gripe with Rafa is not just the huge amounts of money wasted, but with the style of play and quite literally the dire brand of football he advocates.

You`d rather we play beautiful football like Arsenil who`ve won **** all in three yrs.