Benítez says he needs fresh investment to compete for title

[Mike]

We've conceded only 6 goals more this season, that's a damning statistic. We haven't been doing that badly defending at the end of the day, we've just been caught up by other teams strengthening and having better quality squads.

Still a few games left to concede goals though.

Its our attacking that has let us down, without torres we are average.

[Exiled_red]

Honestly speaking 90 million over 5 yrs is good enough to get you players to win the League.

Everyone knows we wont be getting any money any time sooner. So how about zipping it up and getting on with it rather than moaning at every single opportunity?

He built this squad from scratch barring Carragher and Gerrard and how good are we? You're seeing this season.

I really don't think it is, not these days unless you are starting at a point were you are very close to challenging anyway.

Also there is a huge difference between having £90m at one go and having £90m over 5 years that averages out at £18m a season.

[Guest]

Still a few games left to concede goals though.

Its our attacking that has let us down, without torres we are average.

We were the best team attacking wise last season, don't know what happened this year, I just think that our forward players never showed the same quality this year, with Benayoun, Gerrard, Kuyt, Riera etc below par. We simply lack strength in debt and with the injuries, it really kicked in and broke our season.

All in all, I think we're about the 5th best team in the league, or maybe worst. Teams have overtaken us and the league says it all. Without money we won't go anywhere.

[the rev leeroy brown]

it embarress's me to see lfc fans "make do" with scrapping like we do under rafa. i love this club as much as is physically possible without going to the scary levels. to me, rafa has ****ed up so many times in his lfc career it is beyond a joke now. i may have been out of order calling him fat earlier in the thread but he is still a **** who is so stubborn and set in his ways that he cost us the league title last year and has blown any chance of CL next year. we will be in europa football again next year if "we're lucky". there is no two ways about it.........we will never be a major force under rafa and i dont want any new investors stumping up cash for rafa to spend. i want it to go to a manager who gives a toss.

[destinydude]

Tell that to Man City

over 5 yrs?

[destinydude]

Ignoring the established players that were here when Rafa arrived (Gerrard & Carra) you are suggesting that an average of £10 million a player is enough to get you a squad to win the league, and that's assuming that those 11 players play every game, uninjured obviously, which is unrealistic. So really, he'd need to buy another 5/6 players with that £90mill...that's 14/15 players required, so you honestly believe that if we spent, on average, £6-6.5mill per player we would be a title winning side?

First of leaving Carra and Gerrard aside, we still had enough players on the pitch when Benitez arrived and I'm rating them under par at 4m a player. And barring Johnson our highest signing for a defender was 7 million.

You do the math. Not all players costed you 10 million. Some in defense + GK costed you no more than 7million at best and then add the 10 million to the already placed 4 million player. You get a 14 million player in midfield and a 20 million play upfront.

According to Rafa's words "It's the same team that came second last season and scored the most no.of goals in England," with the same 90million he spent or say 80+ million.

So, why suddenly the extra 60million investment to win a title?

[destinydude]

I still dont get what you are trying to prove

You criticise the manager for being defensive, he coaches a team that scored the most goals last season yet you bring up us not scoring in 5 games

WTF!!!

So what we only lost 2 games last season (this season we've lost 10), Chelsea have lost 5, we conceeded 27 goals last year (33 so far this)

It could be argued that this season our biggest failings have been, not being as tight at the back as previous years

You see how easy it is to manipulate statistics to mean whatever the **** you want??

First of I havent manipulated any stat. It was a straight forward question. Why the duck did we not win the League last season despite out scoring many other teams? It's because we havent scored a goal in 15% of the games and when we did score we were on a roll.

But surely not being able to score in 15% or say 13% of the games shouldnt be looked upon.

[destinydude]

Anyway I'm off for a bit. Be back laters.

[MrMichael]

We were the best team attacking wise last season, don't know what happened this year, I just think that our forward players never showed the same quality this year, with Benayoun, Gerrard, Kuyt, Riera etc below par. We simply lack strength in debt and with the injuries, it really kicked in and broke our season.

All in all, I think we're about the 5th best team in the league, or maybe worst. Teams have overtaken us and the league says it all. Without money we won't go anywhere.

Agree with that.

over 5 yrs?

tbh, 5 years isn't really relevant. We were still owned by Moores 5 years ago. Rafa had money to spend in his first 4 seasons, quite a lot of it (although arguably never quite enough at the right times, hence mising Alves etc). Whether he did well enough with that is possibly debatable, however we improved year on year in the legaue, won a CL and an FA cup, and got the the CL final another time. Plus that was at the time of Chelsea and ManU's biggest spending, so no matter what we were not really on a level playing field.

Rafa's improvement in the league with us seems like it culminated last season, when we came bloody close to winning it. However, at that point he was already 12 months into a spending freeze, which has continued since. In the last 2 years, 4 transfer windows, a sensible estimate of our net spend puts us more than £5m in profit. So he's had less than nothing to spend in 2 whole years. Under those conditions, can we expect to remain league challengers whomever the manager is? If you're not going forward and all that.

I'm not saying rafa's getting what he should be out nof what we've already got, but to say his spending should have won us the league under current conditions i cannot agree with. If he'd been given £25m+ last summer rather than the rug having been pulled, and things had still turned out the same, then you might have a better argument.

[Scratch]

Did Rafa have a lot to spend, really? He still, as i recall, had to sell to help buy...we couldn't have got Torres if we hadn't have sold Bellamy for example. We haven't had the luxery that City or Chelsea have had, of being able to splash the cash, or of United in that they have an established squad and can spend vast sums on few players to complement your squad.

[Craig_H]

Neither have arsenal.

Forget the title for a minute.

Our squad is not so ****, that we should be looking at 7th place.

Our squad is not so ****, that we cant win at Pompey, Wolves, Wigan etc.

Our squad is not so ****, that we should be losing 10 league games.

So why have the above things happened? Because we have not got the best out of our squad and seen it perform to it's maximum capability.

We do not need spending like Chelsea and City, to just be in the top four. Teams who have spent far less than us have managed to win at Wolves, Pompey and Wigan. Teams who have spent far less than us, have lost comfortably less than 10 league games.

We're in the mess we're in, because our current squad, whilst being good enough to be in the top 4, has not been used properly.

[Guest]

The league table never lies.

[Exiled_red]

I think people are also underestimating the impact of time, you can't just say that over 5years we've had £90m to spend, because the manager would not just be judged at the end of 5 years he'd be judged at the end of every year. Otherwise the could say, I've got a crap/average squad, but for the next 5 years I'll get £18m a year Year 1 will go on top class keeper and centre backs, year 2 on full backs, year 3 on centre mids... etc At the end of 5 years I'll have a top class team.

He is judged every season, and there has to be progress every season, this means small incremental steps.

Also add to this that the players you signed at the start are 5 years older by the end and may need replacing...

[dww]

Rafa's improvement in the league with us seems like it culminated last season, when we came bloody close to winning it. However, at that point he was already 12 months into a spending freeze, which has continued since. In the last 2 years, 4 transfer windows, a sensible estimate of our net spend puts us more than £5m in profit. So he's had less than nothing to spend in 2 whole years. Under those conditions, can we expect to remain league challengers whomever the manager is? If you're not going forward and all that.

I'm not saying rafa's getting what he should be out nof what we've already got, but to say his spending should have won us the league under current conditions i cannot agree with. If he'd been given £25m+ last summer rather than the rug having been pulled, and things had still turned out the same, then you might have a better argument.

I think it is also worth pointing out that the frequent uselessness of Gerrard this season is a real problem. Last season we had both Gerrard and Torres out a lot but when they were available they produced the goods. It is more or less true of Torres this season but Gerrard has under performed relative to previous years.

I'm not sure that any manager could have compensated for that loss whilst making a profit.

I'm inclined to think that this seasons failings are a perfect storm of bad circumstances; injury, loss of form, need to replace previously key players, desire to change the way we play which have led to a big dip in performance.

For me the only real question is whether we made sensible gambles in the summer in going for Aquilani and Johnon rather than more direct stylistic replacements or in the case of Aquilani a player who would definitely be available. I tend to think that most people were of the opinion that signings with the maximum potential impact rather than conservative signings designed to bumble along were what was needed. It's what we tried and in many ways the lack of strength in depth has hurt us as much as the limited impact of the two signings directly.

It does seriously raise questions about our scouting. Johnson has been at times genuinely horrific in defence and, at least from an outside view, Aquilani's attitude seems to be a part of the problem availability-wise and Riera has shown himself in a bad light too. Whatever else you level at Wenger his scouting network seems to be generally good at getting players who are intelligent and have the right attitude to have a good chance of making it in the PL even if he doesn't always get transfers right.

I'm in favour of keeping Rafa but I do think he needs to have a plan to deal with the scouting issue and to have a plan a/ to get Torres an Gerrard on the pitch more often and b/ to investigate whether our injury problems this season are due to systematic changes in preparation from previous seasons alongside the more obvious plan to refresh the first team personnel.

[Exiled_red]

Neither have arsenal.

Forget the title for a minute.

Our squad is not so ****, that we should be looking at 7th place.

Our squad is not so ****, that we cant win at Pompey, Wolves, Wigan etc.

Our squad is not so ****, that we should be losing 10 league games.

So why have the above things happened? Because we have not got the best out of our squad and seen it perform to it's maximum capability.

We do not need spending like Chelsea and City, to just be in the top four. Teams who have spent far less than us have managed to win at Wolves, Pompey and Wigan. Teams who have spent far less than us, have lost comfortably less than 10 league games.

We're in the mess we're in, because our current squad, whilst being good enough to be in the top 4, has not been used properly.

The problem for me has more to do with strength and depth, which we lack, we've had a disproportionate amount of injuries this season and the lack of depth in the squad has cost us, yes players have failed to perform and the manager has made some poor decisions. But we just don't have enough options sto change things and remain competitive. Our squad is good enough to get 4th and I believe that if it weren't for the excessive amount of injuries we would have got it. The lack of striker options was the major problem, if Rafa had known the true financial budget at the start of the summer I believe the signings we made would have been different.

Also its the performances over the season not individual results that define our level