Pack your bags Roy

[krade]

Surely there must be clauses in his contact to do with performance levels, league positions etc. If he doesn't meet them he has to walk for fractions of the payoff?

[barnes10]

So true. Here's a conversation I had some someone in work a few days ago:

A lad in work: "FFS sake will you Liverpool fans stop going on about Rafa Benitez, it's got nothing to do with him anymore!"

Me: "Ok then tell me why we're doing so **** this season."

The lad: "Well Rafa left Hogdson an absolute **** squad didn't he!"

Me: "Arrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhh! "

The best part is he was blissfully unaware of his hipocrasy. I blame it all on the media. He was just spouting exactly what he'd read in the paper and seen SS News. 95% of "football fans" are exactly the same these days :shake:

This is really turning me off the game. its not that its everywhere but the constant sh1t and drivel opinions churned out by ex pro retards is just so fooking dull. football has eaten itself.

[Fierce]

The revisionism of Aldo and yourself is on an epic scale

Rafa was sacked for supposedly not getting the most out of an underperforming side that "was certainly better than its 7th place league position suggested"

Roy was brought in to steady the ship and get this "underperforming squad" back into the top 4

Now that he has completely ****ed that up its Rafas fault for the squad that was left

Aldo is passionate but so is St John and a whole host of other former reds - doesnt stop them talking absolute ****ing bollocks mind

Well to both you and Aldo I will say this

IF the squad is so **** then surely Rafa worked wonders in managing to finish 7th yes?

The media appear to want it both ways, they wanted Rafa gone because of his poor performance with a decent squad yet now Roy (their chosen one) is completely ****ing things up they want to change history and offer mitigating circumstances

Its ****ing horse****

Rafa is gone, rightly or wrongly hes gone, blaiming him for the current situation is a ****ing ****house thing to do

IMO this squad is good enough to finish as high as it did last year, it wont get near that under Roy and no amount of blaiming Rafa is an excuse for that

This is a top, top post ------------




I'm not as vocal as others on here as to the merits of Rafa, but what we've seen so far is just nonsense.

Rafa - sacked for finishing 7th
Roy - rightly in this position because the squad isn't good enough to be any higher

Nonsense

[Kenneth]

To be fairish to Roy, he came in with mascherano going, no leftback, one decent striker, an expensive cripple in the middle and a number of very mediocre wingers. The squad was certainly in a mess. Now Raul was the only improvement, with CP and PK beig ****.

We were a team on the slide as it was, but Roy's incompetence is why we're in the bottom three.

[RedReet]

To be fair to Roy, he's managed to place three of the worlds best players in a relegation battle. Not many people can do that.

[RichC]

To be fair to Roy, he's managed to place three of the worlds best players in a relegation battle. Not many people can do that.

Wow what a depressing way to look at things!

[TheElephantMan]

To be fair to Roy, he's managed to place three of the worlds best players in a relegation battle. Not many people can do that.

It's quite some achievement making a decent team play so ****.

[The_weatherman]

To be fairish to Roy, he came in with mascherano going, no leftback, one decent striker, an expensive cripple in the middle and a number of very mediocre wingers. The squad was certainly in a mess. Now Raul was the only improvement, with CP and PK beig ****.

We were a team on the slide as it was, but Roy's incompetence is why we're in the bottom three.

Well he should have held onto Insua and used the money that went on Poulsen and Bombscare to buy a striker, Meireles and Joe Cole plus a striker last summer would have been enough IMO.

[Pablo]

Well he should have held onto Insua and used the money that went on Poulsen and Bombscare to buy a striker, Meireles and Joe Cole plus a striker last summer would have been enough IMO.

I expected better from you, I don't know why, but I did

[Kenneth]

Well he should have held onto Insua and used the money that went on Poulsen and Bombscare to buy a striker, Meireles and Joe Cole plus a striker last summer would have been enough IMO.

Wasn't insua being shipped out before Roy arrived?

[5europeancups]

The revisionism of Aldo and yourself is on an epic scale

Rafa was sacked for supposedly not getting the most out of an underperforming side that "was certainly better than its 7th place league position suggested"

Roy was brought in to steady the ship and get this "underperforming squad" back into the top 4

Now that he has completely ****ed that up its Rafas fault for the squad that was left

Aldo is passionate but so is St John and a whole host of other former reds - doesnt stop them talking absolute ****ing bollocks mind

Well to both you and Aldo I will say this

IF the squad is so **** then surely Rafa worked wonders in managing to finish 7th yes?

The media appear to want it both ways, they wanted Rafa gone because of his poor performance with a decent squad yet now Roy (their chosen one) is completely ****ing things up they want to change history and offer mitigating circumstances

Its ****ing horse****

Rafa is gone, rightly or wrongly hes gone, blaiming him for the current situation is a ****ing ****house thing to do

IMO this squad is good enough to finish as high as it did last year, it wont get near that under Roy and no amount of blaiming Rafa is an excuse for that

If Roy manages to give this squad a top 4 finish (a big If) but certainly possible) where would that leave Liverpool fans estimation of him?

I remember a certain Bob Paisely having an absolutely torrid start to one season and then we went on and won the league. That wont happen this season as I dont think Chelsea will drop so many points but a top four is still very much possible.

[Mattshark]

If Roy manages to give this squad a top 4 finish (a big If) but certainly possible) where would that leave Liverpool fans estimation of him?

I remember a certain Bob Paisely having an absolutely torrid start to one season and then we went on and won the league. That wont happen this season as I dont think Chelsea will drop so many points but a top four is still very much possible.

Yes, but when did Paisley ever have a 35% win ratio? (which is Roy's in the prem) When did Paisley match out worst start to the season since the 1920's? When did paisley have us in the bottom 3?
Roy is a second rate manager and always has been.

[Roboklopp]

Some articles from Snoozenow:

http://liverpool.theoffside.com/premier-league/roy-and-the-media-bffs-for-realz-yo.html

Roy and the Media: BFFs for Realz, Yo
By: Noel | October 18th, 2010


Oy! You! Support the manager!


No surprise, the media still loves them some Hodge. Says bastion of journalistic integrity Patrick Barclay: “Roy is the man for the job. You’ll see the difference by mid-December.”

Oh, that’s nice. I’m sure he just needs some time to install his ideas. When Torres mans up and starts playing like Zamora and the rest of the squad just hold their shape and defend passively enough we’ll be saved and manage a solid sixteenth place finish, perhaps. I, for one, can hardly contain my excitement.

Not so nice, though, is that when Liverpool’s followers had the nerve to disagree with Barclay he called them idiots for not seeing the wisdom of Roy’s ways. Which is also the wisdom of his ways, since Barclay is one of those in the media who pushed hard for Hodgson to get the position he’s looking less comfortable in by the day. At Fulham he may have been able to fly under the radar, but now he’s in the spotlight and badmouthing entire nations because somebody pissed in his cornflakes. Or because not everybody’s bowing down to his wealth of experience. Or something.

But anyhow, back to Barclay. The twitters did their ****tering for a while, Barclay picked up a hash tag you probably wouldn’t want to repeat in polite company, and at the end of the day OYB Nate summed things up pretty darn well: “Typical of the British media. Hodgson and Barclay are friends, ergo Hodgson can do no wrong and we’re stupid.”

That’s really about the long and the short of it, as far as some of these London media types are concerned. These are the sorts of men suddenly so concerned with making Liverpool a bastion of Englishness while we get to be the ones who watch the club plummet towards a point where relegation becomes a serious threat–if we haven’t reached that point already. It’s hard not to wonder if decades (or more than a century, even, as Liverpool’s first squad had all of one Englishman in it) of looking to quality, talent, and ability ahead of worries of nationality and through that becoming the most successful club in English history has left some of the media establishment–many of whom would have grown up supporting other clubs–inherently bitter, at the very least on some subconscious level. After all, now they either get to see their glorious England brought back to its proud roots, or they get to watch Liverpool fail spectacularly and cackle about the downfall–all the while blaming the dirty foreigners, or course.

It only sounds like paranoia until you start paying attention to the **** so many TalkSport calibre pundits come out with. Until you consider that they were the ones cheering loudest for Hodgson on the weight of a single run to the Europa League final as the highlight of a remarkably workmanlike thirty-five year career. Until you consider that they are now the ones arguing that Hodgson needs more time but that Torres is a failed Benitez signing and should be shipped out for a Carlton Cole or three as though that would be in the best long term interest of the club.

Some will say they don’t deserve time, they don’t deserve effort, they don’t deserve reply. To just ignore them. Which would all be well and good if they hadn’t led the charge to blacklist our former manager because he wouldn’t play nice in their old boys’ club. They’d be easy to ignore if it wasn’t for the fact that largely letting them get away with their **** before is part of why we’re mired in nineteenth right now: if everybody with two brain cells to rub together doesn’t stand up and say just how full of **** these people are every time they’re, well, full of ****, then there are some who will listen and nod and believe them. And that helps lead to a situation where it’s easier to sack a Spaniard and clamor for a good, English replacement (and as Roy has pointed out, the same people who gave world player of the millennium Ryan Giggs his lifetime achievement award said he was Manager of the Year, so he must be pretty damn good at what he does).

Maybe they’re simply pathetically xenophobic, or maybe they really do think the path to glory runs back through 1966 (Barclay was the man, after all, wisely proclaiming that England was going to take the World Cup this summer), but with the way Rafa got hounded–the same way they’re starting to hound Mancini, and the same way they tried to hound Wenger until it became clear that an early Prem title and a strong and supportive board meant it was a fight they could never win–it’s hard not to look at Hodgson increasingly cracking under the glare of the Liverpool spotlight and wonder how exactly it is he’s getting a free pass.

At the very least he deserves to be held as accountable as Benitez would have been if he’d just lost to Everton and was stuck in the relegation zone with fewer points than games played. Hell, with some of these people supposedly in charge of leading the public discourse I’d accept Hodgson being held as accountable for the spot he has the club in now as Benitez was for having them twelve spots higher.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

http://liverpool.theoffside.com/miscellaneous/more-media-asshattery.html

By: Noel | October 27th, 2010


(Re- Shoddy Times 8 game table:)


Compelling numbers for a Glory of ‘66 journo to hang a “Hodgson isn’t doing nearly as badly as some are making it out to be!” narrative on? Or just more of the usual bull****? Sorry, no prizes for guessing right, especially when it’s got the various LFC-obsessed twitters and forums all abuzz.

For the record, the Sunday Times has gone and compared Benitez’ point totals after six league matches with Hodgson’s point totals after eight and called it a day. Yeah, that seems like a bit of an underhanded way to make a point to me, too. If they hadn’t been blinded by their Benitez blood lust and had instead compared records for both after eight matches the totals would read 13, 10, 11, 16, 20, and 15 points for Benitez in order. Followed by Roy’s underwhelming six points after eight league games.
When you see the real numbers there isn’t actually a story here–well, aside from how poorly Roy Hodgson has started the season–and as much as a part of me wants to just blame lazy mistakes, and as much as at the end of the day it probably was simply a lazy mistake that got the ball rolling, this wasn’t just a throw-away line in a misguided article. I know I’ve made enough typos around here that I’d be foolish to look to string somebody up for an honest mistake. However, no matter its likely innocent beginning this wasn’t a stat that some writer got wrong and built a story around. Rather it got a nice little graphical mock up treatment, one that would have involved a number of people having to sign off on this piece of Rafa-bashing, Roy-boosting tripe before it saw the light of day. A whole chain of ugly excitement right down the production line and a rush to get it to print and knock their old adversary down a few pegs while giving England’s Next Manager a little boost.

They seem to say, See, it’s not so bad. He’s struggled a bit, sure, but it’s a tough situation with all the off-field issues and still he’s not that far behind anything that evil Rafa managed with his continental tactics. Heck, with a bit of luck third might still be within reach!

It may have been an innocent mistake when the first person latched on to the misleading numbers, but then the editor ran it to the art department and on to whoever else was involved, all of them too excited by the chance to hammer their bias down their readers’ throats to step back and ask themselves if something seemed a little off. Too excited for anybody to double check the facts. In their end it betrays an editorial need to see something that isn’t there.


Don’t stop believing.


I’m one drunken jackass screwing around with photoshop and my browser’s built in spell checker who’s never claimed objectivity–what’s their excuse?

***

As a part of an article I could excuse it. But that’s not what it is, and so I can’t. As it is, it comes across as another blatant sign of the media bias that helped get Liverpool into the mess it’s in right now. A media raised on a proper English footballing mentality that was never really part of the Liverpool way to begin with and has little place in the modern game regardles. Chelsea, United, and Arsenal all embraced a continental approach to tactics and possession to varying degrees to reach their current levels of success, and under Benitez so too did Liverpool, though he was doing it at a club with more than a bit of history using that approach.

Meanwhile the English national side, despite bringing in foreign managers, still insists on embracing that innate English desire for personal excellence at the expense of tactical, team-based coherence over and over again. And over and over again they fail. Yet certain sorts of pundits raised to venerate this outmoded approach remain too stubborn or too stupid to realise their folly and have now helped to saddle the most outward-looking side in English footballing history with their stale desires for good old days that can no longer exist. And now they’re invested in the situation and need to see it through to the end, even if that means an ending as bad as every World Cup’s for England. Not that they would ever believe, deep down, that the English approach could fail, despite all its setbacks. Shankly looked abroad to drag Liverpool to glory all those years ago and still there are people getting paid good money to offer their opinions who don’t have half a clue.

This latest episode is just further proof–as though any was needed–that many of the outlets that a large portion of those following Liverpool likely get most of their information from not only don’t have any idea what’s in the best interest of the club, they’re so willfully blind to how successful modern football is played that they probably have no right to suggest theirs is a “qualified” opinion for anything above the Colaship.

The real shame is that some will read such dross–even some of those aforementioned who support LFC–and go on to believe it without a second thought, and at some point it will be regurgitated just like the “Benitez spent £300M on ****ty transfers” narrative that pops up incessantly.

I half expect to hear cries of “Yeah, but he didn’t start off that much worse than that horrible Rafa!” any day now. Probably with an, “And look at the weak squad Roy had to work with after the fat Spanish waiter wasted all of that nice man Hicks’ money!” tacked on to the end for emphasis.

[The_weatherman]

I expected better from you, I don't know why, but I did

You really shouldn't though

[The_weatherman]

Wasn't insua being shipped out before Roy arrived?

It certainly took long enough and in the end we gave him away, Roy had ample time to say "no, I need this player."