wacko

Well, he was probably bored to tears in that treatment room. He had to do something.

He cost less than Suarez, a bit more than half of what Carroll cost, and 10% more than we paid for Downing. *shudders*

Would be lovely to win, but Kopites don't need any placating. It's King Kenny. He just isn't getting much in the way of stick from our own fans, and you know what LFC fans think of the media …

Of course. Even I know that. But the guys holding the purse strings still said yes. Also, and this is the important bit, it's King Kenny.

Rather the gay-looking bloke than Kuyt.

What I meant by that is that as long as we're within the budget and within what the board wants in terms of performance, they don't seem to be overly arsed about paying way over the odds for individual players. If what I'm saying doesn't make sense, that's because I don't understand it either … As far as I'm concerned, you can cut it up any way you want, but Kenny has still spent £112m in just one year and doesn't have a great deal to show for it.

He's a very, very long way from that. He's King Kenny. A lot of the criticism is placed elsewhere (Comolli and the board cop the stick for the silly prices paid, which is kind of fair, seeing as it likely was their doing), and Kenny only really gets criticised for getting his tactics and selection wrong in individual matches. That said, I get the impression that anyone calling for Kenny to be replaced on RAWK would incur the ban hammer, so it's hard to gauge the actual level of support.

From what was said, I got the impression that we said to Chelsea that they can have Torres (who wanted out anyway) provided we get the replacements we want. Dalglish and/or Comolli decided upon Carroll and asked Ashley how much he wanted. Ashley pulled a ridiculous figure out of his arse, and instead of trying to negotiate the price down to something reasonable, we just whacked the difference on Torres's price, rang Abramovich and he said yes. If he'd refused to go above £40m, we'd certainly have come back offering £25m. I mean, £35m for Carroll was fucking ridiculous, but so was £50m for Torres. Perhaps not the Torres of 2007-2008, but certainly for the Torres they actually bought. According to Werner, Carroll's actual ticket price was never a concern. He didn't care if we were overpaying for Carroll, as long as we weren't screwing up our squad and the bottom line was acceptable, and it was certainly worth paying £7m just to replace Torres with Suarez. Whether our board actually considers Carroll to be £35m pissed into the wind is not clear, but it's certainly not the story they're telling. And the heaps of cash they've spunked on "potential", to put it kindly, more or less backs up the idea that they're not interested in getting value-for-money in the transfer market, but rather the bottom line vs return (i.e. points). Personally, I see it as a massive waste of money. And it's not just Carroll we overpaid for. Torres was actually performing decently for you guys before you sold him though (well not performing decently, but still scoring) - so I have no doubt that if you still had Torres you'd be a better team for it than now. Sure, but he wanted out.

I prefer to think of it as "we got Suarez for £7m plus Carroll to wash the kit." In all honesty, we'd never have given you £35m if Chelsea hadn't effectively been picking up the bill. Fantastic bit of business by Ashley. I bet he gave himself a big, fat pinch and did a little cum in his pants when we said yes. If only Rafa had been given that kind of money. He bought his fair share of flops, but Dalglish makes him look like Wenger in the transfer market. Rafa's turnover of players was ridiculous. It was. Rafa's big problem was his obsession with the squad. He'd rather have two okay squad players than one solid first-teamer. What's more, he walked away from several deals (Alves and Simão spring immediately to mind) when the price was bumped by a couple of million at the last minute when it would have nevertheless still been a relative bargain. And instead he bought a couple of makeweights for his squad.

From what was said, I got the impression that we said to Chelsea that they can have Torres (who wanted out anyway) provided we get the replacements we want. Dalglish and/or Comolli decided upon Carroll and asked Ashley how much he wanted. Ashley pulled a ridiculous figure out of his arse, and instead of trying to negotiate the price down to something reasonable, we just whacked the difference on Torres's price, rang Abramovich and he said yes. If he'd refused to go above £40m, we'd certainly have come back offering £25m. I mean, £35m for Carroll was fucking ridiculous, but so was £50m for Torres. Perhaps not the Torres of 2007-2008, but certainly for the Torres they actually bought. According to Werner, Carroll's actual ticket price was never a concern. He didn't care if we were overpaying for Carroll, as long as we weren't screwing up our squad and the bottom line was acceptable, and it was certainly worth paying £7m just to replace Torres with Suarez. Whether our board actually considers Carroll to be £35m pissed into the wind is not clear, but it's certainly not the story they're telling. And the heaps of cash they've spunked on "potential", to put it kindly, more or less backs up the idea that they're not interested in getting value-for-money in the transfer market, but rather the bottom line vs return (i.e. points). Personally, I see it as a massive waste of money. And it's not just Carroll we overpaid for.

I prefer to think of it as "we got Suarez for £7m plus Carroll to wash the kit." In all honesty, we'd never have given you £35m if Chelsea hadn't effectively been picking up the bill. Fantastic bit of business by Ashley. I bet he gave himself a big, fat pinch and did a little cum in his pants when we said yes. If only Rafa had been given that kind of money. He bought his fair share of flops, but Dalglish makes him look like Wenger in the transfer market.

9th http://www.sportszest.com/top-10-most-expensive-football-transfers/ Zlatan and Crespo's fees include the estimated value of the players exchanged with them, no? Thus not making the transfer fee "pure", meaning Carroll is in fact the 7th most expensive transfer up front just money? Carroll's fee should include Torres's, as Chelsea bought him for us. I REFUSE TO BELIEVE OTHERWISE.

The only positive thing i can think of regarding Dalglish is that he bought Given.... Thats it. And Solano and Speed. but yeah that is it. Didi Hamman as well DIDI FUCKING HAMMAN!!!

More than usually, but not always the thing they're being accused of. At any rate, I hope, but doubt, that Suarez will learn from this and stop being suck such a cock. EDIT: haha. Freudian slip.

I think you will find that the use of words that refer to the colour of somebody’s skin in the midst of a heated argument is actually racially inherent language, that’s what is known as a fact, as is the definition of inherent, you cannot therefore claim different. That’s just how it works. Only if you're arguing... Evra started the argument with "your sister's cunt" (in Spanish), but the commission found that Suarez hadn't heard him. So, if you believe Suarez said what he claims, it wasn't during an argument because he wasn't aware he was having one. At any rate, the FA drew the distinction, not me. By the way, you've got your definition of "inherent" arse-about-tit. For a word to be inherently racist, it cannot not be racist. This is clearly not the case with the Spanish word "negro". No, I said I was biased at some level, not the commission. Really. Go read it again. It is what it is. We've all felt aggrieved at some point because we felt unfairly judged. In the terms that the FA applies, Suarez was quite reasonably found guilty. I don't have a problem with that (if it's good enough for civil law, I guess it's good enough for the FA), but I suppose I am implying some kind of justification for the continued protests by the club and fans. That was not my intention. Perhaps I'd had a beer or two too many when I wrote it. The line about lawyers telling him what to say/not to say is awful. I didn't mean that the lawyers told Suarez to lie, but that they will have coached him extensively on how to give his evidence, and will have told him what information he should and shouldn't volunteer unless explicitly asked. At any rate, the important bit was that I think Suarez tried to bullshit the commission and make himself out as a goody-two-shoes. I am absolutely certain that LFC's lawyers will have expressly told him not to do that, i.e. they told him to tell the truth. Either Suarez didn't stick to the game plan or that was his story from the word go, and our lawyers had to work around a client that was bullshitting them. Suarez claimed the whole time that he was being conciliatory and trying to diffuse the situation. I don't believe that for a second. You don't believe that for a second. I doubt even RAWK's most deluded or his own mother would believe that. And the commission sure as shit didn't. And with that, his credibility was gone, and nothing he said could be reasonably believed in the face of contradictory evidence from apparently more credible witnesses. The commission cast doubt on almost everyone's testimony at some point, but none more so than that of Suarez. (Apart from Kuyt, who contradicts everyone and everything. I think he might have been high.) My tl;dr: Suarez probably had a winnable case, but torpedoed it himself by trying to bullshit the commission, and possibly his own lawyers, too.

No, not inherently (the only thing both parties agreed on is that Suarez used the word "negro"). Some of what the language experts said in the report (it goes on for a couple of pages): The report also emphasises that Suarez was not charged with and found guilty of "racially offensive" language, but of using "abusive or insulting words or behaviour which included a reference to Mr Evra's ethnic origin, colour or race." I understand that to underline that he wasn't charged with using inherently racist language. In view of the above, it basically came down to the context in which Suarez said "negro" and whose version of events would be believed. I posted above what Suarez claimed he said and what Evra claimed was said. In a nutshell, the commission favoured Evra's testimony overall over Suarez's because it was more consistent, more detailed and gelled better with the accounts of others and video evidence. Comolli's testimony at times agreed with that of Evra and at others contradicted it. The same goes for Kuyt, only much more so. The following is my interpretation, so you should take it with the amount of salt you deem necessary, and ideally at least read pages 88-96 of the report for the judgment and reasoning, and perhaps go back for the relevant testimony from there. Having read a lot of, but not all of the report, my reading of the case (which is almost certainly biased at some level, as much as I'd love to think it weren't, but it is at least somewhat informed, as I've read much of the report) is (and here I'm assuming, perhaps wrongly, that Suarez is not a complete idiot rating 10 on the Rooney scale—and this is important in the wider context of the full report) that while Suarez and Evra are both cunts when it comes to football, Suarez was doing his level best to wind up Evra the whole time (which we can all agree is entirely in character for him), but tried to present himself to the commission as a nice guy, a wouldn't-hurt-a-fly kind of bloke, whereas Evra was happy to admit that he'd started the argument with an insult, and generally did a better job of presenting a plausible case. The commission's members, being significantly smarter than Suarez, rightly pulled his testimony to bits, and thus preferred Evra's version of what happened. Hence my previous statement that the case might well have gone differently had our side's case been better prepared. After further consideration, this was partly wrong, or at least overly vague. There were things LFC's lawyers could/should have mentioned but didn't, but I think there's no doubt that LFC hired decent lawyers, nor that these lawyers told Suarez exactly what to say/not to say. But from my own experience of interpreting at arbitration proceedings, you can spend hours drilling your client/expert witness, and once they sit down in front of the court, they fuck off everything the lawyers told them to do/not do, and seize their chance to "shine", like a fucking 5-year-old. Essentially, Suarez tried to bullshit the commission, and for that they rejected more or less everything he said where it contradicted what other witnesses that they deemed more reliable said. (It's worth noting that the FA had deemed Evra an "unreliable witness" in previous proceedings. Strangely, this was not brought up by Liverpool's counsel, and was thus not considered by the commission.) According to the analysis I linked earlier, the relatively low standard of proof required probably did for Suarez's. This is almost certainly why Terry is being investigated by the police with a view to prosecution under criminal law where the standard is "beyond reasonable doubt", but Suarez wasn't. The FA's standard of proof is like that of civil law: "the balance of probabilities". With regards to "beyond reasonable doubt", there isn't even a case to be made, let alone sufficient grounds for conviction (otherwise the police would be investigating). While the club and many other fans are, humiliatingly, busy besmirching Evra and the commission, this is the fact in which I, as a Liverpool fan, would find my no-he-didn't place if I felt I needed one.

Actually, the FA dismissed any arguments regarding intention out of hand. Their reasoning was that if they permit such arguments, it would be impossible to punish players for bad tackles. Paraphrased from the FA report (there's more, but this is pretty representative): Evra's contention was that when he asked Suarez why he had kicked him, Suarez said "porque tu eres negro" ("because you're black") and pointed at his skin. Evra threatened to punch Suarez if he said it again, and Suarez said, "dale, negro, negro, negro" ("okay, blackie, blackie, blackie"). Suarez claims that after he pinched Evra, Evra said, "Don't touch me, South American", to which Suarez replied "por que, negro?" ("why, blackie?", where "blackie" is a word commonly used to address anyone dark, even if they only have dark hair). Long story short, our side's testimony was contradictory and inconsistent, which lead to the panel choosing to prefer Evra's version of what happened. Had Liverpool prepared better and presented a more consistent case, it might have gone the other way. (Not from the report, but from the analysis by someone familiar with such hearings that I linked above).

I love to have a laugh at LFC as much as the next guy, but that's just.....meh Well, I lolled. Bad taste is great; simply bad jokes not so much. http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/5601/trainspotting1024.jpg http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/5628/evraliar.jpg Also this. Irrelevant but funny. http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7158/6441253477_64b5cab2f3_z.jpg

The UN says we're all right! I've given up trying to get through the FA's report. Reasons why Suarez lost are summed up very cogently here by someone familiar with such hearings. Long story short, Liverpool did at the hearing as they've been doing since: making a balls-up of it, particularly regarding the inconsistency of their evidence. I also wonder why, given their not being able to shut up about the whole thing, the club chose not to attempt to discredit Evra, especially as he had previously been called an unreliable witness by the FA. If the club had prepared properly, we might not have lost. I thought this was particularly interesting: Which pisses all over what I considered central the matter. I'm going to do what the club should do, and shut up about it now. Not happy with the length of the ban, but I'm otherwise quite satisfied by the above-linked analysis. Time for a pre-match beer. Not confident, tbh. Keep your fingers crossed for us! Haha!

One of the best replies I've seen! It certainly did a great job of avoiding answering the post

Showing solidarity, are we? What does that mean? When he sees wrong, he does wrong.

Showing solidarity, are we?

Except, of course, if you were just talking normally and not making racial slurs, there'd be no reason to remember exactly what you'd said, would there? Normal day, perhaps not. But it was hardly his birthday, was it? Also, learn where the apostrophe key is on your keyboard. You're hitting the acute accent key.

I'm slowly working my way through the FA report on the Suarez case, and I reckon I might U-turn again. In particular, this business of Evra's testimony being more consistent and therefore "preferred" may well be due to the fact that Evra was allowed to watch the video footage during his testimony while Suarez was not. I challenge anyone to describe without errors or contradictions exactly what they said on a given, normal working day two months ago without any aids. It's simply not possible. Certainly, I have so far been encouraged to continue reading the report due to the very lazy and selective way it was reported by the media (hey, the report was released on New Year's Eve--who'd want to actually read the whole thing then?) At any rate, it doesn't appear to be the open-and-shut case I and many others thought it was based on media reports at the time.

He did sign Barnes, mind