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Liverpool 3 - 0 Hicks & Gillett HT NESV Goal 1' High Court Goal 39', 44' A comeback from this situation would be impossible.

Oh noes, since H&G took over they have only finished 3rd, 4th, 2nd & now the ignominy of 7th. Hellish by any standards! They had £45m of debt when H&G took over, have spent around £30m net on transfers and will have £0 debt when they are bought by NESV, and still have a squad most clubs can only dream of. Fortunately we were much luckier with Ashley who has only more than doubled the debt, got us relegated, thinned the squad to the bare bones making a £20m transfer profit, and will probably spend at least the next 5 years using any operating profit we make to pay back his debt (assuming we manage to scrape by staying in the PL for the next 5 years). Liverpool truly are the unluckiest club in the world, I'm welling up just thinking about it. I'm not saying H&G ran the club well, but they are the ones taking the biggest hit not the club itself. Liverpool were always going to be the weakest runt in the "big 4" litter to drop out once some other team got their act into gear. If it hadn't of been last year, it would have been this with the money Man City have spent, just like we were always going to struggle to stay in the top 4 once Chelsea started to get bankrolled.

4.04pm: Judge says it would be a "little ambitious" for the case to be settled by Friday. (In reply to Broughton's QC saying board would desperately like a verdict by then).

Sounds like the lawyer for the Liverpool board has resorted to bigging up LFC (a "unique asset"), childish name calling (Hicks son = "Hicks Minor"), and victim syndrome (H&G guilty of "slippery behaviour"). So doing a spot on job of representing his clients so far. Just waiting for hundreds of surprise witnesses to flood the courtroom causing the people in the gallery to be crushed and for him to blame the court bailiffs.

Looks like someone's marked your house on google maps http://maps.google.co.uk/?ie=UTF8&ll=53.510867,-2.390277&spn=0.007669,0.013325&t=h&z=15 Chris will of course have gotten his team captain to drive him.

Back to Woy, it seems the long suffering Liverpool fans on RAWK have had enough after 7 league games of long suffering (though to be fair some are willing to give him up to 8). He just doesn't understand the Liverpool way it seems. http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/index.php?topic=264227.msg7500158#msg7500158

Theoretically "taking" 17th is about being realistic about the quality of the squad, and not wanting to trust to good luck with injuries and poor form from rivals to keep us in this division. It wouldn't be like that at all. It would be like asking a City fan if he'd take finishing 4th, or asking a Chelsea fan if he'd take coming 2nd if they could win the CL. With the resources of this club, if we do only finish 17th, it's not the manager and players you should be very angry with.

No, 19 free kicks conceded. Nearly half of those are through balls where the recipient was offside. For comparison's sake, Carroll has conceded 20, all of which were fouls.

I agree almost completely with bobyule's last few posts. That's not something I thought I'd ever type. Unfortunately it will probably go over most people's heads and just get lost in amongst the "Nolan's shit but he'll never drop him" rubbish. It's nowhere near as cut and dried as people are making out that putting Ben Arfa in as a the 2nd striker or free-role-linking-midfielder, or whatever will be the answer to all our problems. I'm quite happy that Hughton isn't the sort of manager that people on here seem to want him to be, and will chop and change a team which won a difficult away game the previous week just to try out players in new positions on a whim in important games because it looks like it might work in theory. It may well end up that Ben Arfa takes Nolan's position, but if he does I'm sure it will be after it has been tried, tested and practised in training. The problem in the second half on Saturday had nothing to do with who our 2nd striker was, it was that Stoke instead of allowing us to dominate possession, soaking up pressure and hitting us on the break like they tried in the first half knew they had to come at us a bit more. It's disappointing that they found it so easy to do so, but not really surprising. That's not really Hughton's fault though, it's down to the quality of the players he has in the squad. How should he have changed the midfield to stop that happening? When Ben Arfa was on the pitch he didn't stop it happening, and when Gutierrez came on neither did he, so where's the thinking that having both of them on the pitch at the same time would have suddenly stopped Stoke come from?

Is that what he did to get a couple against Villa like? Just pointing out that a graph showing how much ground he covers doesn't mean much if he's chasing shadows. But then some people swear by stats so good luck to them. I know words aren't your strong point so I thought a pretty picture might help, I forgot you would need to be able to read SOME words to make sense of it though. It's actually the passes he made, so not just "chasing shadows" but actually contributing significantly to the control of possession we had. Don't let that stop you thinking how fat and clapped out he is though. :colo: http://easycaptures.com/fs/uploaded/464/2432721219.png

I'm not sure Hughton instilled the team spirit, more like Nolan, Smith and Harper had some harsh words with the squad after last season's hammering at Orient and pulled the dressing room together, after encouraging the makeweights to fuck off. I'm still not convinced Hughton is top class management material, but whilst he's got the backing of a united dressing room and learns quickly from his mistakes he's the best man for the job at the moment. And the quality he's brought to the squad recently won't do his long term job prospects any harm. It takes a strong manager to allow that to happen and still keep control, it's actually a very effective way of doing it if you have the right kind of leader in the dressing room, and hopefully the massive amount of evidence to the contrary is now starting to get through to even the thickest of heads that he is not afraid to drop "his favourites" when they are not performing. A weaker man would have needed to use his position as boss to stamp that out to make sure everyone knew who was in charge. There's a long way to go before he's proven he's a top manager, but he's passed pretty much every test he's been handed so far. I've always thought he had what it takes tactically, he adapts but he doesn't knee jerk, but he's far surpassed my expectations of him when it comes to man management and getting the team to bounce back after a defeat or a bad performance. I'm not convinced he has much to do with transfers other than saying the positions and type of players we need though.

Is that what he did to get a couple against Villa like?

Didn’t realize that, I thought Carrol was just helping out the defence on his volition but if that was Hughton's instructions, then he deserves credit. I still think however that his main weakness is his inability to use subs properly and at the right time. He prefers to let the team work things out for themselves which can sometimes backfire (though in this case it did not). 2 specific instances against Everton 1) In the second half when Everton was dictating the game and attacking us in waves around the 60-75 minutes, he should have done something. Ideally putting on a more defensive midfielder in place of a knackered Nolan would have been good to add more steel to the midfield but since our only other ‘defensive midfielder’ is Alan Smith, he should have still taken off Nolan and put in Jonas or Lovenkrads. At the very least their pace would have prevented Everton's defence from moving so high up to join their midfield/attack and ease the pressure on us. 2) In the last few minutes of injury time, when we were again at risk of conceding, he should have wasted some valuable time by making a sub. Even the Jonas for HBA sub seems more like enforced coz HBA was already limping when the sub was made. So he deserves credit for having the courage to start both HBA and Tiote but he has to use his subs more strategically. We won but on another day his inaction could have lost us 2 valuable points. It's easy to be a manager playing what if. 1) If Hughton panics and subs off Nolan at the first sign of pressure from Everton (which didn't actually amount to any significant chances in that period), then he's not on the field to get what should have been a pen to wrap the game up, and he's not there to deflect Yakubu's shot onto the post. Would Lovenkrands have been there for both those incidents and done better than Nolan otherwise? Possibly. Would Gutierrez? Not a chance. 2) Everton are attacking and we're under constant pressure. Sub comes on & trots into box, not had a kick, doesn't know who he's supposed to be picking up, loses his man or has an adrenaline fuelled rush of blood and gives away a pen. 1-1, Hughton's fault for trying to waste 10 seconds.

Fat lazy Nolan being carried by Tiote: http://easycaptures.com/fs/uploaded/464/3653442585.jpg

"Bringing Alan Shearer back to Newcastle United was the best decision I have made," said Ashley. "Alan and his staff did all they could to try and keep us up in the short space of time they had. "Talks are now ongoing between us about how we can take this club forward again." "We want him to be the manager 110%," he said. "He's very good at what he does and he's a straight-talking guy - we like that. He would be the perfect appointment. "We are trying to sort something and we will give the public some information as soon as possible. "Alan has put a lot of work into the job at Newcastle and we are talking to him now."

Is Kevin MacDonald the most indecisive man in Britain? He might be or he might not be, I can't decide if he is or he isn't, but I think I may at some point come to a possible conclusion.

Because I always believed that Keegan came back for the money. And Houllier was gonner work for free cos he loves the club so much? Keegan was only interested in the money when he came back, Houllier wanted to manage Newcastle as he wanted to be back in the premiership. I'm also pretty sure it would have been one of Houller's ambitions to work under and have his players bought and sold for him by someone so highly qualified and respected as Dennis Wise.

So you predicted 2 out of 4 results incorrectly and this is supposed to instil confidence in your predictive ability.

It was actually a 2-1 defeat to Hull - you forgot Xisco's consolation goal. That Hull game was very different circumstances though - Keegan had just walked, and the crowd were baying for Ashleys blood, the 'cockney mafia' banners going round the ground, threatening 'Boycoutts' [sic] and the whole place was in turmoil. The situation now is hardly the same as was then. Lets hope they (the players) learn from it, and move on. So being in turmoil on and off the pitch and losing 2-1 at home to a relegation rival is a worse situation to be in than being buoyed by the great team spirit and momentum of being promoted as champions and losing 2-0 at home to a relegation rival?

Gaelic, gallic, garlic, it's all smelly and foreign to me.

But if Ben Arfa replaces Nolan, you're talking about sticking with the same system anyway. Kevin Nolan may get 8 goals and assist 3 or 4. Gutierrez will typically get 1 or 2 goals and 3 or 4 assists in a decent league. So who would Ben Arfa most beneficially replace? Someone who scores goals, or someone who "creates space" and "relieves pressure"? By my count Ben Arfa has 18 careerer assists over 6 seasons and 170 appearances btw, so I don't know but perhaps hoping he's going to get 15 this season is maybe expecting a little too much? I guess as long as Ben Arfa adapts quickly to a new position, team, country and league, hits the form of his life, maintains it, stays fit, can create his own chances, doesn't let his head drop when we're losing, when he's not getting the ball, or when he's targeted by the opposition, and has the typical strong gaelic mentality and maturity to handle the pressure of carrying the rest of the team, we'll be fine. On the other hand, I hope we haven't put our single egg in a basket and counted it as a chicken already. So much of our hope for this season seems to be pinned on this lad. Thank goodness no-one wanted to buy him.

It's not like Nolan is standing there while the rest of the team plays this high energy attacking football around him. We simply don't have the squad to play like that, and one new player will not magically turn the rest of them into a team that can play like that. We have to live with that fact for this season at least, and Hughton has to try and put together a team that works effectively week in week out with what he has. Nolan is playing as a forward. His job is to get into positions to get chances, to score goals and set up others. He did it all last season and he's been doing it this season. As long as he keeps doing that, and as long as he keeps putting some of them away, then he's doing his job. If there's someone in the squad who can do that better than Nolan then fine - Shola? Lovenkrands? Ranger? - but I'm not sure why everyone is so keen to shoe-horn Ben Arfa into that position when he's been a midfielder most of his career. You say "we looked far more threatening after his introduction". Well he replaced Gutierrez, not Nolan. Perhaps that's why we looked better.

I am merely trying to put into context what Ashley bought to counter blanket statements like "he put in the money to keep the club running" that imply we would have made the losses we have under Ashley regardless. In the first couple of years the money he put in paid for his buy in full, sell on credit policy. Last year the money he put in covered some of the cost of relegation. The year we finished 14th, we had the biggest injury crisis I can ever recall at our club. We had a constant 10 or more first teamers injured for over half the season. There were complaints then that we hadn't spent enough money to have a big enough squad. We still finished fairly comfortably nowhere near relegation. I dread to think what kind of team we could put out now if we had a similar injury crisis, and finishing anywhere near 14th this season I believe will require us having a pretty injury free season. The description of the players we have brought in was tongue in cheek of course, but I think people are getting well ahead of themselves in saying how good a transfer window it has been.

The £30m loss figure is an accounting loss, and is somewhat misleading. I think a lot of people believe it means we spent £30m more in that year than we received. It doesn't mean that at all. It is massively weighted by the amortisation of the squad value (£25m that year I believe - and £7.5m of that was writing off Luque who wasn't actually sold until the year after). We spent a lot of money on players in the previous years which inflated the value of the squad in the accounts, but unless you keep spending the same amount on players year on year, the value of the squad in the accounts will inevitably reduce and will reflect badly on subsequent years accounts. The valuation of the club will reduce, so this is a "loss", but it doesn't mean that the club is paying out that kind of money to creditors, all it means is that when someone comes along to buy your business you will get less for it. The actual amount we overspent by in that year was around £9m as reflected in the increase in the debt, which as I said previously, due to the increased TV revenues should have meant we were quite capable of being run without incurring further debt in subsequent years. Of course there are issues if the club becomes insolvent, but that is a separate matter, and while it may have been a problem for the previous owners (though not an insurmountable one IMO) the point I am trying to make is that it was not a problem for Ashley, and in no way affected or hindered his running of the club. Although I believe there was actually no necessity to borrow more money, the argument that there were no assets left to borrow against is quite obviously a false one as this statement in the 06-07 accounts shows: This unplanned immediate cost would also have reflected badly in the accounts produced under Ashley's direction for the last year of the previous ownership.