wacko

You'd best have this, while I'm at it. http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/6964/carrathumb.jpg

He's built up a bit of a reputation I think, stuff like the Talksport clip above. That and the fact he abandoned his international career but if stories are to be believed fancies another crack at it now there's a tournament about to start. A reputation for sticking up for himself? Or is it just the, admittedly annoying, high-pitched Scouse whine when he's stressed. Regarding the tournament, they called him, not vice versa. He wasn't pimping himself in the press: the England set-up contacted him. You can hardly blame Carra for that. Or should he tell Capello to fuck off out of spite towards McClaren? Inviting someone down to the training ground so you can do them is a bit beyond sticking up for yourself like. He also suggests he'd have had Lucas Neill done if it hadn't been for David Thompson being there. Seems fairly reasonable that some people might think he's a wanker. The invitation was to come and call him a bottler to his face, I believe. No punch was explicitly promised. Nevertheless, you are right, of course.

It's already been confirmed that we're seeded for the qualifiers. So a safe passage then? How come you are seeded? Is it down to the strength of the league rather than your euro record? Yes and no. Your ranking is primarily based on your own performances in Europe over the past five seasons, with, I believe, a few bonus points based on your league's overall ranking. The league bonus is worth next to nothing on its own. Everton were fucked when they got in the CL in 2005 because they had won practically zero European games in the previous 5 seasons, and so had a pathetic ranking of just the 23 or so points you get just for being in the EPL. Obviously, they were one of the stronger teams in the round, but their non-existent ranking dumped them in the shitty side of the draw and they had the bad luck to draw Villareal. In the CL, it really pays to have won your games in the UEFA Cup, because you really want to be in pot 1 or 2, given the way the set-up heavily favours side with a recent history of success in Europe. Spurs have been no great shakes in Europe over the past few seasons, but they've done enough to get into the top half of the 3rd round draw, and thus be seeded. If they do make it through to the CL group stages, they'll almost certainly end up in pot 3, and thus be likely to get a difficult draw. The site for Euro rankings is here: http://www.xs4all.nl/~kassiesa/bert/uefa/seedcl2010.html DISCLAIMER: this is all based on the extremely extensive research I did in 2005 after the whole CL qualification debacle. Things may have changed in the meantime.

Considering we're not in the CL, yeah, but otherwise I don't think it's far off what other clubs have signed in the last few years.

He's built up a bit of a reputation I think, stuff like the Talksport clip above. That and the fact he abandoned his international career but if stories are to be believed fancies another crack at it now there's a tournament about to start. A reputation for sticking up for himself? Or is it just the, admittedly annoying, high-pitched Scouse whine when he's stressed. Regarding the tournament, they called him, not vice versa. He wasn't pimping himself in the press: the England set-up contacted him. You can hardly blame Carra for that. Or should he tell Capello to fuck off out of spite towards McClaren? Not that Lucas Neill isn't a twat himself, but this is one of the many, many reasons to hate Carracunt: http://www.thespoiler.co.uk/index.php/2008/09/04/carragher-nearly-had-lucas-neill-assaulted Probably my most hated individual player in the Premiership (and I don't really harbour any special animosity towards Liverpool), including other prize cunts such as Kieron Richardson, Lee Catermole and Gary Neville. Always been WILDLY overrated as a footballer as well. It will disgust me if he is on the plane to South Africa. He didn't have Neill assaulted; his mates asked him if they should avenge him. Again, not the same thing at all. Wouldn't your mates do the same? Personally, if someone broke my leg, I'd be more than happy to see them get theirs broken, too. How is he overrated? He has never received anything like the plaudits that Rio, Terry, Woodgate or Campbell have, despite being an integral part of a defence every bit as good as theirs. He might not be as big as Terry or as skilful as Rio or Woodgate, but he's still a top-class defender. Not that Lucas Neill isn't a t*** himself, but this is one of the many, many reasons to hate Carracunt: http://www.thespoiler.co.uk/index.php/2008/09/04/carragher-nearly-had-lucas-neill-assaulted Probably my most hated individual player in the Premiership (and I don't really harbour any special animosity towards Liverpool), including other prize c***s such as Kieron Richardson, Lee Catermole and Gary Neville. Always been WILDLY overrated as a footballer as well. It will disgust me if he is on the plane to South Africa. i remember him when he was just breaking into the liverpool team and stamping on more than one player up here. horrible overated twat of a footballer (but whisper it i vaguely know someone who vaguely knows him and he's a smashing lad apparently) He absolutely is, albeit very rough around the edges (you may remember him pulling a moonie to the camera during Owen's documentary--Carra had been sleeping on his sofa). He's been given the freedom of his home borough for charity work, and famously sold the photos of his wedding to the Kop magazine for a pound, in contrast to your average Prem player.

What's with all the animosity towards Carragher? I could understand it with Gerrard or Masch, but Carra?

Sad but true

Yeah. He seemed to spring fully-formed from the plane five times the player he was at Atleti. I never expected him to be anywhere near as good as he is. Sensational player. With fucked knees Fahked. We'll have to wait and see what these wanker owners do. It they sell up fast (as they have promised the banks they will do), we might be okay, but they're such greedy fuckers, I can see them flogging Torres.

That was last summer... It all depends on what happens now re the owners. If new owners come in by the summer, he might stay. If not, he's off. Personally, I hope he stays. Why do you think he's still the man to take you to success? Completely honest question. Admittedly can't think of many managerial alternatives to him. Mostly this. That was last summer... It all depends on what happens now re the owners. If new owners come in by the summer, he might stay. If not, he's off. Personally, I hope he stays. Out of Gerrard, Torres and Reina staying or leaving which combinations of the the three would you feel would be your best and worse case scenario? Easy! Best: none leave. Worst: all leave. Torres is obviously the most important one, he's just so insanely good, but would I rather have Torres or £70m to spend on the rest of the side? That's much more difficult. If we're talking about the kind of value for money we got on Aquilani or Johnson, then Torres must stay.

Not even players wearing the Liverpool shirt play for your team. Still, they're not shooting their mouthes off, either. It could always be worse.

I reckon, for every point you get on your licence or crash you cause, you should have to be run over by a car doing 5-10mph (or put in a device that does something similar). That should see drivers start paying a bit more attention to driving.

It's funny because he doesn't play for my team.

That was last summer... It all depends on what happens now re the owners. If new owners come in by the summer, he might stay. If not, he's off. Personally, I hope he stays.

My understanding was that Rafa wanted Keane to link up with Barry, but when he didn't get Barry, he had no use for Keane.

Lol. He's a worse diver than C. Ronaldo.

Top quality rape joke. Well in that man!

A classic case of works better in theory. Disagree. It's a better system. Man-to-man puts attackers under more pressure, but zonal marking leaves fewer gaps and keeps the side better positioned for a second ball or counter-attack.

In the first league-winning season (51 goals). They scored 71 the second time, two years later, just one goal shy of top-scorers Madrid, who came fourth. The fitness thing largely holds true for his Liverpool side, too. Our form under Rafa has almost always improved as the season goes on, and we have typically hit the business end of the season firing on all cylinders. Notably, in 2005, we went into the Chelsea CL semi with more or less a fully-rested squad at full fitness, while Chelsea turned up knackered and missing their wingers, because Mourinho had been sending out his A-team week-in, week-out. You're quite right that it's more effective in Spain, though. Apart from the very high fitness of EPL sides, overall, over recent seasons, the leading teams simply haven't dropped enough points for our great season-end form to compensate for the slow start. Does he get the same stick he did in Spain for his zonal marking? Up to this season your defensive record was pretty good (and it is pretty decent this year considering your table position). He got mocked often here with the "grass doesn't score goals" thing. Hell yes. Every time we concede a goal, the pundits blame it on zonal marking. There's no player they can blame for failing to pick up their man, so they blame the system. Incredibly short-sighted.

In the first league-winning season (51 goals). They scored 71 the second time, two years later, just one goal shy of top-scorers Madrid, who came fourth. The fitness thing largely holds true for his Liverpool side, too. Our form under Rafa has almost always improved as the season goes on, and we have typically hit the business end of the season firing on all cylinders. Notably, in 2005, we went into the Chelsea CL semi with more or less a fully-rested squad at full fitness, while Chelsea turned up knackered and missing their wingers, because Mourinho had been sending out his A-team week-in, week-out. You're quite right that it's more effective in Spain, though. Apart from the very high fitness of EPL sides, overall, over recent seasons, the leading teams simply haven't dropped enough points for our great season-end form to compensate for the slow start.

Yes and yes. Sort of. Not cautious and defensive per se, but as a side-effect of being too analytical and controlled, yes. Chess grand-mastery doesn't help you when the other guy's playing British Bulldogs. Under Rafa, most of our best domestic football has been played when the situation is so desperate that the team has had to abandon Rafa's hyper-disciplined style and played with guts and balls. The flipside of that is why Man Utd's success in Europe has been limited compared to their domestic success. They play too English. You have to play possession football in Europe. Rafa's spent too much on the squad, and not enough on the first team. In particular, he's walked away from a couple of pretty much done deals with very good players (Simao and Dani Alves) after last minute price hikes of 1-2 million, and then spent the money on a couple of £7m makeweights instead. Thing is, who could we bring it that might be better? Given that there's basically fuck-all to spend at the moment, the only top-class manager that could work well under those conditions is probably Wenger. A case well made. Wasn't up on his transfer hijinx to the extent you are obviously...What I always hated analysing him is the way the full backs would only come up in the last 10 min if a game really needed pulling out of the fire. Give Sammy Lee a go. Yeah. Those are my two major bugbears with Rafa. He's too cautious when we're playing lesser sides who we could easily blow off the pitch if we cut loose, and he's too conservative in the transfer market. In fact, he's just a bit too conservative. For the Premier League, at any rate. That said, he is learning. Last season's great league performance was largely due to his taking note of players' observations that his rotation meant the side wasn't getting into the groove till we were already out of the title race.

Yes and yes. Sort of. Not cautious and defensive per se, but as a side-effect of being too analytical and controlled, yes. Chess grand-mastery doesn't help you when the other guy's playing British Bulldogs. Under Rafa, most of our best domestic football has been played when the situation is so desperate that the team has had to abandon Rafa's hyper-disciplined style and played with guts and balls. The flipside of that is why Man Utd's success in Europe has been limited compared to their domestic success. They play too English. You have to play possession football in Europe. Rafa's spent too much on the squad, and not enough on the first team. In particular, he's walked away from a couple of pretty much done deals with very good players (Simao and Dani Alves) after last minute price hikes of 1-2 million, and then spent the money on a couple of £7m makeweights instead. Thing is, who could we bring it that might be better? Given that there's basically fuck-all to spend at the moment, the only top-class manager that could work well under those conditions is probably Wenger.

So very true. Nah. Rafa seems to have a Mourinho-esque problem with playing kids. He won't tolerate the mistakes they make while developing, so they don't get the chance to develop properly. That said, we almost always turn a profit selling on youngsters Rafa never used (and with most other players, too). As for wingers, how many top-notch wingers are there at the moment? They're like rocking-horse shit, and correspondingly cost an arm and a leg. Gerrard is a 20+ goal/season winger, so that's a very strange criticism to make, and while Kuyt may be a shit winger in the classic mould, he works very well with an attacking fullback. Is right. Whatever your criticisms of Rafa's performance in the league, he has created a very formidable European side. It's a lot easier to stomach losing to the likes of Burnley when the flipside is beating the likes of Barcelona and Inter at their grounds, and subjecting Real Madrid (God, I hate them) to their worst defeat in living memory. We are not being kept afloat by the £300m debt: we are being dragged under by it. That debt is the money Hicks and Gillet used to buy the club, much like Man Utd's debt. The difference is that the debt is not held by the club, but by the club's owners. They want the club to pay down the debt, so they don't have to, but it's their debt, not the club's. The price they're asking is to pay off that debt and the rest is their profit from their little venture. The wankers. You can, because the clubs you're competing against consider £18m the going rate for a squad player. £18m was far too much for Johnson, but it makes sense in a way. It increases the number of English players in the squad (with a view to UEFA's new regulations), which was also the motivation behind trying to get Barry and Keane in for Alonso, and it was meant to provide a good balance between attack and defence on the right in combination with Kuyt. An attacking winger to replace Kuyt would have likely cost far more. While I agree that Rafa has brought in and moved on far too many sub-standard players (instead of splashing the cost of 3 on 1 good player), he has rarely lost money on a transfer, as Houllier so often did, and as Man Utd almost invariably do. So you may accuse him of buying too much dross (and most LFC fans would agree), but there's little foundation for accusations of throwing away money.

Honest question. Despite the leveraged purchase stuff, how's the yanks general stewardship of the club been? I mean, as much as they curse the Glazers in Mancunia, the club has grown a lot under them (even if the debt might undo all that at some point). Liverpool fans, on the other hand, lay the blame squarely at the Yanks' feet, not at Rafa's. The long-and-short of it is, they spouted a load of lies to gain control of the club, and then reneged on everything. While not guilty of criminally bad management of the club, like Ashley, financially, they have been a disaster for us. Moores sold the club because he didn't have the resources to finance the new stadium. Hicks and Gillett (the evil one) were supposed to bring the financial muscle to get that off the ground. Instead, they've put is in a slightly less scary version of Man Utd's situation, where the club is expected to pay down the loan used to buy it. Instead of the increased resources we need to compete with the likes of Man Utd and Chelsea, we're even more skint than ever. We finished second last season, and instead of £30m to make the big push, they tell Rafa he has to sell before he can buy. So, we blame the American owners for the current situation on the grounds that they're a cancer on the club, and not Rafa, because we know he's still one of the best managers in Europe. He hasn't lost the plot, he hasn't lost the dressing room.

Sure, they get silverware, but imo runner-up in PL is more "succesful" then winning the UEFA cup....so yes I think they could sack Benny even if the get "better" silverware. Yeah that's right, but it just shows how the CL has warped football. UEFA Cup, not the CL. Sure, I'd rather we finished second in the league than won the UEFA Cup, but it's better than nothing. CL vs league is relative. You guys would far rather win the league than the CL, because you haven't won it in an age. Same goes for us. But if you're winning the league regularly like Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal have been, you crave the CL (so I'm told), because it's the icing on the cake. Fergie's Man Utd sides were English greats, but not European greats, like the current Barcelona side will probably be.

We'll get in as defending champions, same as 2005