Why wait until the end of the season?

[gerbin11]

We are Liverpool Football Club. Maybe you've forgotten? We don't need big spending guarantees to attract a top manager. Nevermind the fact that if Rafa had spent the millions and millions he's spent wisely, we wouldn't be in this mess. We're so far down in it now that folks like you are forgetting what where we really should be.

You've forgotten that we're here to win, not to be happy when we can finish 4th. I get so pissed off when I read comments from people like you that make all these excuses for Rafa. The Alonso mess, Mascher not being focused on the club this season, the debacle that is the Acquilani transfer, etc. are all Rafa and Rafa alone.

We are one of the world's biggest clubs. If we need a manager, even as a caretaker until the end of the season we'll find one. When you're as deep in the **** as we are now, just standing there covered in crap is no solution!

Thanks mate, appreciate the support. Mainly thanks for actually reading the post.

[Slinky Skills]

How is Mascherano having his head turned by Barcelona Rafa's fault? Jesus the guy has his faults and even I'm questioning what to do but some fans seem to want to pin absolutely every problem on him

It's by no means just Rafa's fault.

The owners and players need to take a long hard look at themselves.

Rafa loves this club and it's fans I have no doubt about that but maybe he's not right for us and we're not right for him but by no stretch of the imagination should he be held solely accountable for the mess we're in.

[RedSince1964]

he needs to go now. hes had his time. how much longer do the players like carra and gerrard accept this. rafa will never win the title- he never learns his lessons

If Rafa does go! and its a big IF, i personally like to see David Moyes have a go. Seriously, he has shown what he can do with a budget even lower than ours and manages to get the best out of his players, ok, their having a tough time at the mo but, i'm sure that taking over the squad we've got plus a little finance to play with, he'd show what he can do given the chance of running a big Club such as ours.

Realistically though, i think Rafa should be given the chance to pull things round as this is the first major blip he's had since he took charge and with the amount of Injurys we've had this season (and not havin the squad to cope with it), i think we should just hang fire just now and see what happens

[herpritmann]

I have said for a long time last 20 years Liverpool problem hasn't been players or managers as such but more to do with how the vclub has been run. The yanks don't help and before them it was that other prat and Rick Perry... We need ex players to stay on... It's to late for that now so the only thing I can think of is sack rafa

[BigChief]

Grant is a better manager than Robert fricking Mancini. And better than any other manager we're likely to get if Rafa finally goes. Not so funny now.

[badpiggy]

I absolutely do not get that argument. We have had a bad patch during every single one of Rafa's seasons with us. The pro-Rafas like to accuse the antis of having short term memories and kneejerk attitudes, yet themselves seem to rewrite our previous seasons under the man. His first season was an absolute shocker Premiership-wise, the following 3 were 4th-place scrapers and last season, when we had the lead at Xmas and the opportunity to take advantage of other team's bad patches, he indulged in a mid-season breakdown. He is unstable and unreliable, and takes advantage of the Kop's faithful attitude and our by now quite frankly moronic "We are not a sacking club" ethos.

don't agree fully but i agree with the general chickens coming home to roost argument . reasons as follows:

1. I was a total rafa sceptic for the first 3-4 years. thought he was incredibly lucky to win the CL and that performance after performance - in patches - showed a negative, cautious, system-obsessed,seriously boring football approach. i based this on my own observations as a fan of 30 years and also the analysis of pundits i respected - that would mainly be johnny giles in ireland.

2. gilsey has become a bit lazy in his analysis for the last couple of years and i also kinda gave up trying to figure out exactly what rafas approach was as it seemed that when we played badly we were beyond awful - just like we are now - but that when we played well we ****in steamrolled teams - like the second half of last season. so i supported rafa almost unquestioningly more out of what i felt was my own lack of understanding than any real conviction.

3. this season has seen all my concerns about rafa as a manger come back for obvious reasons and they're all the reasons that us rafa-sceptics had a few years ago which i've already explained in point 1.

4. i totally accept that the ownership situation and the money situation is totally ****ed up and it's amazing that rafa has stayed and kept us in the CL etc... but now it seems that this is more that a slump. gilesy always says that a point comes where a manager has nothing left to say to his players. they know what he wants and how he wants them to do it but he can no longer inspire them to do it. and i'm beginning to think we're there.


someones posted really well either in this thread or another post-portsmouth thread about rafa's ideals being 100% based on the ac milan team of scacchi (sp?) and how that worked really well in spain for him but that it can't and doesn't work here. i also agree with another poster who suggested that chelsea would have finished above us last season if hiddinck had been there all season.

so - for me, it's not the results, it's not the personnel, it's not the owners or the money. it's the way we play that suggest that rafa can no longer get it out of the players. i would love to see him turn it around but i think that if i was purslow/hicks/whoever, there's a big call to be made here. not making the CL nest season is basically disastrous and we have to face that above all other things. unfortunately.

[Exiled_red]

I absolutely do not get that argument. We have had a bad patch during every single one of Rafa's seasons with us. The pro-Rafas like to accuse the antis of having short term memories and kneejerk attitudes, yet themselves seem to rewrite our previous seasons under the man. His first season was an absolute shocker Premiership-wise, the following 3 were 4th-place scrapers and last season, when we had the lead at Xmas and the opportunity to take advantage of other team's bad patches, he indulged in a mid-season breakdown. He is unstable and unreliable, and takes advantage of the Kop's faithful attitude and our by now quite frankly moronic "We are not a sacking club" ethos.

I agree we have had bad patches in most seasons under Rafa but never really for more than a month, hence why I said "we're having a bad few months but this is really the first time in 5 years". Every club goes through some sort of bad patch each season. The one we are in at the moment is particularly bad.

[Exiled_red]

If Rafa does go! and its a big IF, i personally like to see David Moyes have a go. Seriously, he has shown what he can do with a budget even lower than ours and manages to get the best out of his players, ok, their having a tough time at the mo but, i'm sure that taking over the squad we've got plus a little finance to play with, he'd show what he can do given the chance of running a big Club such as ours.

Realistically though, i think Rafa should be given the chance to pull things round as this is the first major blip he's had since he took charge and with the amount of Injurys we've had this season (and not havin the squad to cope with it), i think we should just hang fire just now and see what happens

There's no way Moyes would come to us

[el matador]

Unfortunately for rafa he's now really up against it. He doesnt have any sort of relationship with the players and he isnt a motivator.

once you lose the senior players then it doesnt matter whether its now, at the end of the season or at the end of the century.

At what point does his tenure become 'untenable' ?

[FatTony]

don't agree fully but i agree with the general chickens coming home to roost argument . reasons as follows:

1. I was a total rafa sceptic for the first 3-4 years. thought he was incredibly lucky to win the CL and that performance after performance - in patches - showed a negative, cautious, system-obsessed,seriously boring football approach. i based this on my own observations as a fan of 30 years and also the analysis of pundits i respected - that would mainly be johnny giles in ireland.

2. gilsey has become a bit lazy in his analysis for the last couple of years and i also kinda gave up trying to figure out exactly what rafas approach was as it seemed that when we played badly we were beyond awful - just like we are now - but that when we played well we ****in steamrolled teams - like the second half of last season. so i supported rafa almost unquestioningly more out of what i felt was my own lack of understanding than any real conviction.

3. this season has seen all my concerns about rafa as a manger come back for obvious reasons and they're all the reasons that us rafa-sceptics had a few years ago which i've already explained in point 1.

4. i totally accept that the ownership situation and the money situation is totally ****ed up and it's amazing that rafa has stayed and kept us in the CL etc... but now it seems that this is more that a slump. gilesy always says that a point comes where a manager has nothing left to say to his players. they know what he wants and how he wants them to do it but he can no longer inspire them to do it. and i'm beginning to think we're there.


someones posted really well either in this thread or another post-portsmouth thread about rafa's ideals being 100% based on the ac milan team of scacchi (sp?) and how that worked really well in spain for him but that it can't and doesn't work here. i also agree with another poster who suggested that chelsea would have finished above us last season if hiddinck had been there all season.

so - for me, it's not the results, it's not the personnel, it's not the owners or the money. it's the way we play that suggest that rafa can no longer get it out of the players. i would love to see him turn it around but i think that if i was purslow/hicks/whoever, there's a big call to be made here. not making the CL nest season is basically disastrous and we have to face that above all other things. unfortunately.

Our net spend may not be the best (or quite the opposite according to another post), but the value/worth of our current squad is right up there as an established top 3 team and therefore, we really should be finishing in the top 3 each season. Everytime we've finished outside of the top 3 its been an under achievement. Likewise, when we've finished above 3rd its been a credible over achievement.

That IMO is the only way to gauge Rafa as our manager. You cannot always point to what other sides are spending, you have to look at the realistic value of the current squad we have and with players like Torres, Gerrard, Mascherano, Johnson, Aquilani and Reina, we should be doing a lot better than we are.

If we finish outside of the top 4, I'm afraid to say that its inexcusable, and its already happened once in his 6 years.

The goal posts are forever being moved to support Rafa, but there's not a lot of free ground left to move them too. Some say that a managers job is not to motivate as multimillion pound players don't need that. Well I say that multimillion pound players need more motivation than others. Some say that Rafa doesn't have enough money to compete, well, to that I'd say he's had enough to compete for 3rd, but hasn't always delivered that either. He's not the genius a lot of people believe, and I really don't think a lot of top managers would do any worse. Mancini is now at Citeh, lets just hope that the "crazy" decision to change managers mid season doesn't pay off as we may pay the price of their courage.

[Joe King]

Being cautious never wins titles - to play a defensive side against the bottom team suggests everything about the manager's inability to take the game to WIN games.

[EwarWoo]

How is Mascherano having his head turned by Barcelona Rafa's fault? Jesus the guy has his faults and even I'm questioning what to do but some fans seem to want to pin absolutely every problem on him

Because the Alonso debacle highlighted rafa's man management skills (or lack there of) and as a result he seems to have lost the faith of all the players and any ability to motivate them, which no doubt is playing at least some part in why Mascher had his head turned.

Grant is a better manager than Robert fricking Mancini. And better than any other manager we're likely to get if Rafa finally goes. Not so funny now.

I don't mind the guy, and thought he did a fantastic job for Chelsea, taking them from a very low eb onto a great run. He's now managed to get Portsmouth playing well too.

I'd take him over maureen any day of the week.

[qabiri]

Because the Alonso debacle highlighted rafa's man management skills (or lack there of) and as a result he seems to have lost the faith of all the players and any ability to motivate them, which no doubt is playing at least some part in why Mascher had his head turned.


I don't mind the guy, and thought he did a fantastic job for Chelsea, taking them from a very low eb onto a great run. He's now managed to get Portsmouth playing well too.

I'd take him over maureen any day of the week.

I 'm not having that Mascher wants dosh full stop that's why he's agitating.
While i'm on the subject if Rafa is soooo bad at man management then why do so many of our players praise him the only ones that i've read criticise him are players like Pennant[basically dross].Even Alonso doesn't bear a grudge then why do you lot?
It comes to something when in times we need support our own supporters are willing to throw our manager to the wolves.
I mean do you lot really think Fergie is mates with his players,do you think in the off season he goes around their houses for dinner with the family maybe the pictures?
Do you lot think that after Fergie assaulted Beckham with that boot in the face that Becks made him godfather to one of his kids?

Look were not doing well at the moment but really do you believe that Fergie thinks the scum are on top of the world at the moment.
We've lost 7 they've lost 5.
I do not wear rose tinted specs i realise we have problems but some of you lot go short memories for instance we are out of the champions league but qualifying year after year for the knock out stage is a relatively new thing i bet you can tell me when it started?
And now some are seriously asking for guys like Coyle to be our next manager i despair.
This is a freak of a season so far and the team need a lift at the moment everyone at the club seems subdued but then again do you lot in your infinite wisdom really think Rafa has turned into a bad manager in the last 5 months really?
Those yanks need to throw some money at this situation for so many reasons.
The club needs to treat every game as if its the champions league final full stop.
Rant Over
YNWA
::

[EwarWoo]

He's not turned into a bad manager but I think he as lost the players. And that puts him and us in an impossible position.

[vlahka]

Like to point out recent teams that changed managers and doing well. The obvious one we just played, and also the greek team Panathanaikos. The guy that took over coached the under 21 team of greece and kept telling the managers to stop buying poor players from overseas when they had better younger local players they could be using instead. 2 games in charge now, both were 3-0 victories I think. Now to see how Hughs replacement does and that could be 3 good changes in 3 teams. Why exactly SHOULDNT we get a new manager? Most of you act like theres no replacement out there, that Rafa is the best we can get. Thats a disservice to all the other managers out there who are good that we dont know much of.