Liverpool Rumours And General Discussion 2007/2008

Tusky

I always liked Jose and even when he was at Chelsea I said this. However, I think it would be extremely sad for Rafa if he was replaced by Jose, seeing as they had such a big rivalry so I dont think Id want that.

Jose is a top coach though and Ive no problems with him personally. I always found his entertaining.

herbieflowers

it would be hilarious though, and it would piss Rafa off to no end, seeing as he was probably the only manager to consistently get results against Chelsea, the irony!

Chong

From the looks of it I dont think Alan knows what he wants

_blank_

Mr Alan wrote: »

You could be right

No, I am right.

Mr Alan wrote: »

But i would like to think Liverpool as a club have a class about them that Jose doesnt exactly embody

Get over yourself.

José is one of the best managers in the world, he's won the CL, his own domestic league AND the PL.

herbieflowers

I think he meant on a personal level

Guy:Incognito

DesF wrote: »

rofl.

At this stage I think Liverpool fans would take a league win even if Hitler himself was the manager.

Yes but not if Diouf was involved, never diouf.

Tusky

Whatever about their skills as coaches, Rafa is far far more respectable and classy than Jose.

zing

Tusky wrote: »

Whatever about their skills as coaches, Rafa is far far more respectable and classy than Jose.

Not many would disagree with that

herbieflowers

would that matter to Pool fans? (I know it would for Mr Alan)

mayordenis

yes it would

Stky10

herbieflowers wrote: »

would that matter to Pool fans? (I know it would for Mr Alan)

Depends. Defending the players when they're obviously in the wrong is ok as it helps the team bonding etc. Getting up to what he did against Barcelona though is a no no.

Also, he could have had any player he wanted while at Chelsea and yet they played dull negative football. Look back at the CL semi-finals where his plan b consisted purely of bringing on Robert Huth, sticking him up front and knocking high balls in to him.

herbieflowers

Still, his record speaks for itself...actually does anyone really beleive tha Rafa will get the chop? Personally I think if it's gonna happen it'll happen at the end of the season

Ruskie4Rent

Tusky wrote: »

He was a fitness coach. I wouldn't read too much into it.

I don't think you're giving him enough credit. There is loads that a good fitness coach can contribute to a teams performance. I know that he was highly regarded at Valencia and that their late showing in their title winning season was helped by his work on the players diet and general fitness ect.
Even as an assistant he may have had an influence. Take a look at the role Quiroz has at united, and Chelsea's form since the appointment of Ten Cate. Strong managers also need a strong backroom staff.
Wasn't there also rumours of some Liverpool players not being happy at his departure.

Stky10

Ruskie4Rent wrote: »

I don't think you're giving him enough credit. There is loads that a good fitness coach can contribute to a teams performance. I know that he was highly regarded at Valencia and that their late showing in their title winning season was helped by his work on the players diet and general fitness ect.
Even as an assistant he may have had an influence. Take a look at the role Quiroz has at united, and Chelsea's form since the appointment of Ten Cate. Strong managers also need a strong backroom staff.
Wasn't there also rumours of some Liverpool players not being happy at his departure.

One of the reasons thought behind him leaving was that much of his role had been given out to two new arrivals last summer. These being Paco de Miguel (fitness coach) and Angel Vales (Head of Technical Analysis). So its not like we don't have a fitness person anymore. In fact there are two fitness coaches working purely on that.

Coaches don't have to be liked, they have to be respected. But who knows whats going on behind the scenes, there seems to be more "spinning" going on than in your average political party at the moment.

mike65

Jose and Paco would be teh win! Really.

Mike.

Jesus Wept

I dislike Jose in the extreme.
He is a child of a man. I thought he was quite funny at first in a panto type way, but it turns out he wasn't actually joking, or he started out joking but then believed his own bullsh1t.

The incredible sulk, he sulked through the last Champions League meeting at Liverpool and gave up, he looked thoroughly beat.
Towards the end he whined about everything, referees, pitch quality, any excuse, reminded me of Ged Houiller.
I hope he doesn't manage us, it will take a long time to warm to him, if ever.

Unearthly

As a Man Utd fan, I'd hope Benitez was manager over Mourinho for Liverpool anyday of the week

Villain

It never seizes to amaze me the way people don't understand the way Jose used the
press etc to get people talking about what he wanted them to talk about, he used psychology every week and was by far the most intelligent manager in the Premier league I don't know whether its people lack of intelligence that doesn't allow them to see that or if they just get so caught up in his psychology that can't see what he did.

yayamark

As a liverpool fan who was in short shorts the last time we won the league i couldnt give a rats bleedin ass who is our manager AS LONG as we win the league.

I predict we scrape 4th position and rafa makes a dignified exit at the end of season.

CL? I dont know such a classy competition its hard to predict, rafa seems to have a handle on it but anything is possible semis maybe

Stky10

Villain wrote: »

It never seizes to amaze me the way people don't understand the way Jose used the
press etc to get people talking about what he wanted them to talk about, he used psychology every week and was by far the most intelligent manager in the Premier league I don't know whether its people lack of intelligence that doesn't allow them to see that or if they just get so caught up in his psychology that can't see what he did.

Bit of a myth I think. At the end of the day, the supposed psychological antics of the opposition manager would mean little on the pitch when it comes down to that level of player. It might get the odd manager and a lot of supporters riled up a bit, but thats about it. They had such an enormous advantage in terms of players that they could sign anyway that it shouldn't have needed to be done.

Its like Kevin Keegan and the famous "I would love it if we beat them" incident that supposedly showed that Ferguson was a psychological genius. The truth is by then that Newcastle were beaten anyway. They'd lost the 12 point lead that they'd had at christmas, and their form was gone.

event

Mr Alan wrote: »

do you not concede that it may be a factor in our poor form?

i'm not saying it is, just saying its a possibility

ah here, rafa has had no worse writen about him than wenger, fergie or jose has. When this happens, usually you can create a siege mentality within the squad. I fans start to blame the media for (maybe) rafa getting sacked, well then ive heard everything

Villain wrote: »

It never seizes to amaze me the way people don't understand the way Jose used the
press etc to get people talking about what he wanted them to talk about, he used psychology every week and was by far the most intelligent manager in the Premier league I don't know whether its people lack of intelligence that doesn't allow them to see that or if they just get so caught up in his psychology that can't see what he did.

this isnt a dig at pool fans, but a lot dont like him as most of his mind games were against their club. if he never mentioned liverpool, im sure most would have laughed at his antics

p.pete

I would have thought the most important part of sports psychology would be to get a performance from your players. Rafa's crap at it!!

Villain

I'm more talking about off the field media management, when the pressure was on his team he always was able to deflect the attention to him by making comments that got everyone talking about what he wanted them to talk about.

el rabitos

zing wrote: »

My problem with Rafa has nothing to do with rotation or bad buys or any of the usual stuff that's sells the rags every day of the week. I just don't see him as a motivator and I don't think tactics alone will win the prem - might be fine for La Liga where the football is more technical, etc.. But I do hope he proves me wrong on that.

The game plan is always more about playing to exploit other teams weaknesses rather than sending out a starting XI (whichever XI that may be) who have had it hammered into them that they are the best of the best and can beat the rest of them. Playing to our players strengths should be far more important that playing to other teams weaknesses. Even if the other team put XI men behind the ball you should have the confidence in yourself and your team mates to be able to find a way through.

anyone that watches us play often enough and uses their brain and forms their own opinion will/should come to this conclusion. its exactly whats going wrong at the club.

i dont think its any great shock that currently we're in a slump. once we lost to reading and utd, combined with all of our draws; our chances of winning the league were again effectively over.

now if your a liverpool player and again your league winning hopes are gone at xmas wouldnt u be a little less arsed? a little less motivated? because thats how we look right now, unmotivated.

how we're playing right now is reminicent of 2005, couldnt string more than 2 or 3 wins together, dropping points to poor teams. its embarassing that despite the money spent that we have to rely on 2 players so heavily, of course every other team has 2 or 3 players they rely on, but none more so than us imo.

liverpool fans are patient when they think the team is progressing but a minimum of 4th place is always required, always. futhermore, if rafa has any hope of holding onto his position then we need to finish 4th comfortably, if we get there scratching and clawing and pissing about a la houllier in 2004 then the axe will drop on rafa....for sure, no?

yayamark wrote: »

As a liverpool fan who was in short shorts the last time we won the league i couldnt give a rats bleedin ass who is our manager AS LONG as we win the league.

+1

could give less than a fcuk who the hell is in charge, could care less if he turns us into enemy no.1 as long as we win premiership after premiership.

i'm sure on the day utd overtake us to number 19 that liverpool boards will be lit up with talk of how dignified a club we are. fcuk that

zing

Mourinho (well an agent of his anyway) strongs denies any contact with Liverpool or a desire to take over should Rafa get the bullet

http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11661_3044705,00.html

Guy:Incognito

zing wrote: »

Mourinho (well an agent of his anyway) strongs denies any contact with Liverpool or a desire to take over should Rafa get the bullet

http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11661_3044705,00.html

He should be in his office in Melwood and spending money by mid July so.

Mr Alan

event wrote: »

ah here, rafa has had no worse writen about him than wenger, fergie or jose has. When this happens, usually you can create a siege mentality within the squad. I fans start to blame the media for (maybe) rafa getting sacked, well then ive heard everything

Failing to remember anything major being written about either Wenger or Ferguson in the last ten years?

When Jose started having all the hassel from the press last year, its worth remembering they didnt win the league or CL. Siege mentality obviously didnt work.

event wrote: »

this isnt a dig at pool fans, but a lot dont like him as most of his mind games were against their club. if he never mentioned liverpool, im sure most would have laughed at his antics

I agree that one of the reasons i dont like him is because of the ****e he spouted about Liverpool in an attempt at getting Rafa into a war of words before our two CL semi finals and FA cup semi against Chelsea. But again, its worth remembering that the physcological "genius" Jose, won none of those games. Rafa forever!


wat was rafa quote? something along the lines of,

"we had a good relationship, then we started winning, and he started talking"

Stky10

Interesting article - well articulated

http://www.anfieldroad.com/news/200801132773/owners-welcome-to-leave.html/

Tusky

"It is unacceptable that the unscrupulous press uses the name of Mourinho when they try to create or profit from current controversial situations in different teams as has happened recently," he added.

Here here. Media making up stories again.

oobydooby

http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,2240166,00.html

From the guardian website. If the club was unhurt I wouldn't mind seeing these two clowns get burnt. If they up and out with a 75m sterling profit each that sickens me! Might be good to get rid of them though, they've caused nothing but hassle in the camp and they're stingey.

Sources in the Middle East have confirmed that DIC remain as keenly interested in buying Liverpool as they were one year ago. DIC last night refused to comment on the matter, but they appear best placed to resolve the financial problems affecting the club's competitiveness in the Premier League. A mooted valuation of £1billion has been ridiculed, but an enterprise value of around half that figure might prove acceptable, allowing the Americans to exit with a profit of £75m each.

Tusky

I always said I preferred DIC. I can imagine them investing more into the team than the Yanks. Dont know if theres any truth in the story though.

event

Mr Alan wrote: »

Failing to remember anything major being written about either Wenger or Ferguson in the last ten years?

i have no idea what you are saying there

lads, different topic. anyone know if torres is any good at free's?
liverpool dont seem to have a proper free kick taker, most times its roll it to gerrard or riise. has he ever taken them at atletico?

Mr Alan

gerrard has scored 3 from frees this year, i actually think he has gotten much better at them this year than he has been in the past

Tusky

I had a dream that this happened.

Crouch - 12m
Kuyt - 7m
Riise - 5m
Sissoko - 12m
Carson - 10m
Finnan - 5m

---

51m + 50m the Americans gave Rafa to spend in the summer (Well it was a dream).

He bought, Sergio Ramos, Daniel Alves, Pato & Benzema

---

Reina

Alves----Carra---Agger----Ramos

---

Alonso---Mascherano

---

Gerrard

---

Benzema

---

Pato

---

Torres

Needless to say, I woke up with a boner. Although Ramos is a right back aint he ?

jesus_thats_gre

herbieflowers wrote: »

Still, his record speaks for itself...actually does anyone really beleive tha Rafa will get the chop? Personally I think if it's gonna happen it'll happen at the end of the season

The only part of his record that sets him apart from Rafa is winning the PL after inheriting a squad that just had 200 million spent on it and then going to spend another 200 million on it..

What Ferguson and Wenger has done is impossible to question. Jose's record in the PL is easily dismissed as being done so with money and only money.

event

Mr Alan wrote: »

gerrard has scored 3 from frees this year, i actually think he has gotten much better at them this year than he has been in the past

i know, but a lot of his are blasters, sometimes when its closer in you want sometimes a more deft touch, like berbatov, tevez etc

just wondering if he could take one, he seems gifted at most other things

PHB

Joses record in the PL maybe isn't amazing, it's pretty impressive, but not amazing. Joses record before joining Chelsea is amazing.

kryogen

ramos is a centre back who can play at right back tusky

jesus_thats_gre

PHB wrote: »

Joses record in the PL maybe isn't amazing, it's pretty impressive, but not amazing. Joses record before joining Chelsea is amazing.

It is certainly impressive but combining that and winning the PL with a squad that had 400 million spent on it in the space of 2 years does not give any more of an impressive CV than Rafa.. This ****e that some people are spouting about how he knows how to win the league is complete toss.

Tusky

kryogen wrote: »

ramos is a centre back who can play at right back tusky

Dont think thats correct. I was aware that he was more of a RB than a LB but I have seen him play LB on occasion. If he has played CB its only been to fill in. Hes a full back for sure. Thats where he plays for Real anyway.

jesus_thats_gre

Anytime I have seen him, he has been in the centre.. From wikipedia:

Playing position Right-back / Centre-back/ Defensive Midfielder

Unearthly

Ramos is an excellent defender. I've only seen him play centre back and right back though

PHB

I think the idea of the money spent dimishing Joses achievement is kinda crap to be honest. They might havbe spent 400 mill or whatever, but that was catch-up. They achieved a squad that was on similar levels to United, but the difference was that Jose was able to get the best of Fergie, which really is an impressive achievement, since it's been done only by two other managers in the league. Not only that, but he was able to find a system and motivate his players to a level that they weren't previously at. I doubt some of you would remember how poor Joe Cole was compared to the player he was under Mourinho. His tactical ability, his motivational ability cannot be doubted, not only in the league, achieveing record points tallys, but in cups aswell. A truly fantastic manager, whose only blemish is the boring style of football.

jesus_thats_gre

I dont exactly disagree with you.. However, considering what he had at Chelsea, you cannot say with any certainty how he would do with Liverpool working with a completely different budget. In my opinion, part of the reason why he would like to go somewhere like Liverpool is that he would get the credit if he won the league with us whereas as things stand, winning the league with Chelsea in recent years was like driving a Rennault Williams F1 car in the 90's - a degree of inevitability about it..

Jesus Wept

Stky10 wrote: »

Interesting article - well articulated


http://www.anfieldroad.com/news/200801132773/owners-welcome-to-leave.html/

^^^^^
'Their takeover saw shareholders paid around £1000 more per share than they would have under DIC. The owners didn’t pay that. The loan did.'

---

Does that sound insane to anyone else (and do correct me If I have it wrong, I'm trying to make sense of it, I never gave it a lot of thought till now).

The new owners made a better offer to LFC shareholders than DIC, they took out a huge loan to buy the club and now are trying to transfer that debt onto the club itself.

They manage to buy the club by offering £1000 more to shareholders and it's not even their cash that they offered, it's turned out to be LFC's cash in reality.

They own the club but have nothing invested themselves and have no personal risk, just potential gain?

What astute business men. Bit concerning. Good old Rick Parry did his homework as usual.

redspider

el rabitos wrote: »

i dont think its any great shock that currently we're in a slump. ... because thats how we look right now, unmotivated.

liverpool fans are patient when they think the team is progressing but a minimum of 4th place is always required, always. futhermore, if rafa has any hope of holding onto his position then we need to finish 4th comfortably, if we get there scratching and clawing and pissing about a la houllier in 2004 then the axe will drop on rafa....for sure, no?

I definitely think that this season could be Rafa's last if things pan out in a certain way, and it is a probable way.

First, the club has new Owners and new owners like putting in their own managers, whether its sensible or not. The new Owners are under financial pressure, so change of personnel can be a way to improve performances on the pitch and as a consequence financially, so they may use that option.

Second, if Liverpool dont get success, the the Rafalution will be seen to be failed. But 'success' is a a relative term. This season, it was stated from the outset that the league was the target. That does not look likely now. Success in the FA Cup would help, a good run in the CL would also help, although I think that for many fans being 2nd again would not be good enough. I think it would be an achievement in itself like last year yet nothing to get too worked up about. A 2nd or 3rd place in the league is also a measure of success, but these dont seem achieveable either. 4th is the bare minimum acceptable to most Liverpool fans, and clearly it is attainable unless we implode.

I expect the manager to optimise for the CL, the FA Cup (against better teams) and then the league.

If Liverpool do finish 4th, and reach the last 8 in the FA Cup and the CL, would Rafa still be sacked at the end of the season? I think there is a stong possibility of that. I wouldnt choose that option necessarily because we have seen so many changes each season, and another 'rebuilding' season wont get us anywhere per se, so Rafa could have one more season in him. However, as a club we could attract the likes of perhaps a Martin O'Neill, whom I sure would take on the Liverpool task, and many others of high calibre too numerous to mention.

choices, choices ....

Redspider

HashSlinging

Did rafa actually come out in a press interview and state liverpool were going to win the league, I seriously doubt that. I think the prediction was to narrow the gap between us and them.

jesus_thats_gre

In fairness, I want the league but I would wet myself if we got to another CL final, nevermind win it..

Dont be at yourself

Pretty much everybody in this thread at the start of the season wanted to keep in touch with the top teams in the league. Very few people expected to win the league, and after 2 finals in 3 years, the CL wasn't the number one priority.

The jury is still out on this season, but we may will rue these last few games. Had we won our last 3 league games, we'd be in a much stronger position. We didn't, and it's now up to the team to bounce back. If they do, and can put a run together, reign in the sides above us and be within 7-8 points of the top come May, I'll be relatively satisfied.

Of course, if we don't get a run together, and continue to lurch from game to game as we have been doing recently, then I think many Liverpool fans will be unhappy.

kryogen

honestly tusky, hes a centre half who can play equally well at right back, never seen him at left back tbh, ramos that is!

hey if you dont believe me or google or wikipedia just consult football manager!!! cant steer you wrong and according to my scout reports his best position is centre half but is equally adept at playing right back and can also play defensive midfield!