wacko

Yes, he has. For one qualifying match Didnt they drop into the Uefa Cup as a result of losing that then get knocked out of that as well? Yup. I laughed my arse off. In fairness, though, they were dropped right in at the deep end in the crappy half of the CL qualifying 3rd round. They were pretty much guaranteed a hard draw against a side with European experience and were ultimately unlucky not to beat Villareal, who got to the semis that year. That was a big ask for a side's first season in Europe, and they've got a lot better since. I can't stand Gollum, but he has done a hell of a good job at Everton. I'd actually like them to win the UEFA Cup and us the CL.

Didn't Sunderland get the lowest number of points of any team in the Prem ever?

what are your reasons for wanting him gone and who do you think will do a better job? Thats the same question loads of our own fans have asked me, because ive been quite vocal. First the reasons i want him out. Basically i think his team selections are completly dubious. Yes he picks his best players 90% of the time. But how players like Kewell, play regualr, when we have good young players like Babbel on the bench amaze me. Babbel is still learning the game but the only way to learn is to play often, although to be fair last night was his 3rd consecutive game. I will never understand why he constantly plays our crap reserve keeper in cup matches, its not as if Reina is going to get tired. Also all to often we only see the best of Liverpool in the last 20 minutes of the game when we start proper attacking, why we carnt do that from the first minute i dont know. And basically i think although he has done wonders for the club, remember Liverpool and Newcastle were in very similar posistions, when we played you on the last day of the season. Houllier left then and Rafa come in, Robson left a few games into the next season. But i do belive he has took us as far as he ever will, and someone needs to come in and take us up that next step before we go backwards. Who to take over, honestly i dont know, but if that attitude stopped us from changing managers we would still have souness. To be honest i think we missed the boat a bit with Ramos, spurs have gone from being in the worst Three teams in the premiership in September (remember how bad they were against everton) to in my opionion, looking better than Liverpool look now. Then theres Jose, people say he was good at Chelsea because of the amount of money he spent, but i dont remember him spending that much at Porto. What i will say in favour of Benitez, if you look at all the players he bought, and all the players he sold, he has spent less than 20 million a year. About the price of an average Manchester united midfielder. The only players he has spent more than 10 million on, are Torres, Alonso and Babbel, Two very good players, and one who may be in the future. I hope im proved very much wrong about Rafa, but i seriously doubt it. Babel. Babbel left years ago. So your reason for wanting shot of Rafa is that he only picks he absolute strongest side 90% of the time, quite likely in response to factors of which someone outside the club couldn't possibly have an idea?

That's not actually true. Thus far, O'Neill has spent very little money. If you looked at the net spend of clubs last season, I bet Villa are in the bottom 7 or 8. Bottom 19... http://www.purelymancity.com/wp-content/5yearspendingtablefeb08.jpg Different story this season tho... http://www.purelymancity.com/wp-content/0708Premierleaguetransf.jpg Those figures are certainly way-off for Liverpool. For example, in 2003-04 our net spend was £5m, not the £16.25m quoted. I dare say the others are pretty wide of the mark, too, but I couldn't say by how much. I worked this out for LFC a while ago (I wanted to know the cost of our squad vs other clubs'). Liverpool Transfer Spending 03-08 SeasonNet Spend 2003-04£5m 2004-05£16.75m 2005-06£12.5m 2006-07£9.93m 2007-08£24.8m Total£68.8m I calculated current squad costs (before the Jan transfer window) as follows: ClubCost of current squad Chelsea£227.76m Man Utd£176.00m Liverpool£123.80m Spurs£94.6m Arsenal£73.59m Newcastle£65.60m and net spend: Net Transfer Spending by Club 2004-2007 ClubNet spend Chelsea£162.93m Man Utd.£79.17m Liverpool£65.43m Spurs£57.05m Newcastle£51.85m Arsenal£8.12m I believe they're based on pretty iffy numbers apart from the LFC ones, and the only conclusion I'd draw from them is that Wenger is a fucking genius in the transfer market.

Hard considering I haven't looked at a copy in ten years. My opinions of you are mostly based on reading this board. While a lot of you obviously disagree, I still believe that Newcastle fans lack a bit of patience and have a high expectancy of entertaining football. For the record, I don't think, nor did I say, that NUFC had a crap defence under KK. I think I would rather win 5 - 4 one week and lose 5 - 4 the next week. Compared to the football I've seen in recent years this would be fantastic and in any case I dont suscribe to this winning at all costs mentality. For me Liverpool are one of the most negative and boring teams to watch in the premiership, particularly away from home, they are light years away from playing the sort of free flowing attacking football that Man U and Arsenal deliver on a regular basis and hopefully they will finish outside the top 4 this year No we're not. We're two or three top-quality attacking players away. We've absolutely demolished a few teams this season, but no-one seemed to notice. They were too busy swooning over Man U or Arsenal having beaten someone else by a lesser margin. I admit that Demento and Wenger are more attack-minded than Benitez, but let's not forget Arsenal defending their way to the CL final in 2006 or Man U coming to Anfield to defend this season. It's not as black and white as all that, and there's more to attacking football than passing the ball around in triangles in front of the opposition defence. so you gave someone a hammering while arsenal and man utd could only beat others......convinces me,liverpool are the best. I didn't say we're the best, I said we're not light-years away. Big difference. I expect to get some grief on an oppo board for some of the things I say, but is it too much to ask that you read my posts properly before diving in two-footed? Firstly Rafa is not as good as Fergie or Wenger. But he's a lot better than the last few plonkers we've had around here. So you will understand that we are pleased to get Kev as he is many levels above the dross we've had recently. Building from the back and keeping it tight is rubbish and utter shite incidentally. Allardyce changed his backline every week, even though he bought most of the players in it. Souness payed money for Boumsong, and oversaw some ridiculous defending. Roeder... really. Would you have him? Lastly, a win every second week would get us a hell of a lot more points than we'll get this season. So you're damn right I'd take it. Brilliant! I suppose you would have more points that way, sadly. I have to concede you're right that Rafa certainly isn't as good in the league as Demento and Wenger. He's had long enough to get his head around it now, but he doesn't seem to have entirely managed. He's one of the very best manager there is in the European game, though. As you say, he's definitely in a different class to the last few managers that you've had, but I was surprised Allardyce failed so miserably. I thought he'd do a fairly good job.

That's fantastic. Makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Hard considering I haven't looked at a copy in ten years. My opinions of you are mostly based on reading this board. While a lot of you obviously disagree, I still believe that Newcastle fans lack a bit of patience and have a high expectancy of entertaining football. For the record, I don't think, nor did I say, that NUFC had a crap defence under KK. I think I would rather win 5 - 4 one week and lose 5 - 4 the next week. Compared to the football I've seen in recent years this would be fantastic and in any case I dont suscribe to this winning at all costs mentality. For me Liverpool are one of the most negative and boring teams to watch in the premiership, particularly away from home, they are light years away from playing the sort of free flowing attacking football that Man U and Arsenal deliver on a regular basis and hopefully they will finish outside the top 4 this year No we're not. We're two or three top-quality attacking players away. We've absolutely demolished a few teams this season, but no-one seemed to notice. They were too busy swooning over Man U or Arsenal having beaten someone else by a lesser margin. I admit that Demento and Wenger are more attack-minded than Benitez, but let's not forget Arsenal defending their way to the CL final in 2006 or Man U coming to Anfield to defend this season. It's not as black and white as all that, and there's more to attacking football than passing the ball around in triangles in front of the opposition defence. so you gave someone a hammering while arsenal and man utd could only beat others......convinces me,liverpool are the best. I didn't say we're the best, I said we're not light-years away. Big difference. I expect to get some grief on an oppo board for some of the things I say, but is it too much to ask that you read my posts properly before diving in two-footed?

He's on loan from West Ham... Isn't he on loan from MSI or whoever? But yeah, I get your point, he only really moved there to raise his profile and to hold out for a bigger move in England, like Tevez did. Technically, yeah, MSI. I think. Who knows after what WHU and MSI got up to. There might be a few more players like that out there, though. Obviously, they weren't going to stick around at WHU, what with Masch warming the bench the whole time and them coming within a corrupt decision of going down, but they might have stuck around at a club with European footie.

? He's their head coach/manager (that's why they sacked Matthäus who didn't want to be just Trap's assistant). I agree with the rest of your post though. Quite right. Thanks for the correction. I particulary love the way that 30 seconds later in the middle of talking about something else he just screams out 'immer verletzt' again.

Gouging fuckers. I'm surprised you can copyright something that is essentially a list of dates.

I think I would rather win 5 - 4 one week and lose 5 - 4 the next week. Compared to the football I've seen in recent years this would be fantastic and in any case I dont suscribe to this winning at all costs mentality. For me Liverpool are one of the most negative and boring teams to watch in the premiership, particularly away from home, they are light years away from playing the sort of free flowing attacking football that Man U and Arsenal deliver on a regular basis and hopefully they will finish outside the top 4 this year No we're not. We're two or three top-quality attacking players away. We've absolutely demolished a few teams this season, but no-one seemed to notice. They were too busy swooning over Man U or Arsenal having beaten someone else by a lesser margin. I admit that Demento and Wenger are more attack-minded than Benitez, but let's not forget Arsenal defending their way to the CL final in 2006 or Man U coming to Anfield to defend this season. It's not as black and white as all that, and there's more to attacking football than passing the ball around in triangles in front of the opposition defence.

There is a reason that he's co-trainer at Red Bull Salzburg, and it's that he's past it and not very good anymore. He'd already lost the plot when he took over at Stuttgart in 2005 and that all ended in tears after only 20 games. Trapp's greatest contribution to football in the last decade was probably his utterly insane legendary two-minute, full-on gesticulating-Italian-madman rant at his own players when he was in charge of Bayern. Search the youtube for 'trapattoni subtitled'. Not to be missed. In fact, on the strength of that rant, I'd love to see him hired at Ireland manager. Indeed, I'd love to have him in the Prem. But not at my club.

He's on loan from West Ham...

i think you've been reading too many shite articles about us in the media. Not really. I mostly just read this board. I'm talking from the perspective of a Liverpool fan here. You DO have little patience with managers relative to us and you do demand attacking football relative to us[\b]. Liverpool fans in the main won't judge a player or manager before his second season; you lot are often baying for blood after a few months. In fairness, Shepherd did have a habit of signing shite managers, though. Patience ? You have no idea of what patience is mate. Not knocking you but you think going 17 years without winning the title is some sort of disaster, with a few FA Cups and the European Cup thrown in as consolation. Thats what johnny means, I think, apologies if it isn't, but this along with the comment about attractive football is what you don't understand. You don't understand that managers who bore the pants off us only last as long as they are winning, and we have got rid of the ones who did this because they were losing games as well as boring the pants off us. Whats to bad about that ? I don't think any of us would really have cared about Allardyces style of play if we were in the top 4, or in the League Cup Final next week, but even realistically, we were increasingly looking at a manager who didn't know what he was doing, even ones who were happy with him when he took the job, like myself. I understand that completely. For all our cups, in those 17 years we haven't recovered from what Souness did to our club. It's a hell of a lot to expect that Allardyce could sort yours out after that dick's reign with one transfer window, as Roeder hardly brought you forward. The thing about boring football is, winning or losing, without a great defence you won't win anything, ever. The top sides in the league, and particularly the Champions League, are the ones that concede the fewest goals not the ones that score the most. You think losing 4-3 is better than losing 1-0 but it isn't.

i think you've been reading too many shite articles about us in the media. Not really. I mostly just read this board. I'm talking from the perspective of a Liverpool fan here. You DO have little patience with managers relative to us and you do demand attacking football relative to us. Liverpool fans in the main won't judge a player or manager before his second season; you lot are often baying for blood after a few months. In fairness, Shepherd did have a habit of signing shite managers, though.

I don't know what to make of it, myself. Wouldn't want Keegan anywhere near my club as manager, but Geordies are such an odd bunch of fans. You've got next to no patience with managers who try to build up from the back and start from keeping it tight, and I get the impression you'd much rather win 5-4 one week and lose 5-4 the next all season than sneak all 38 games 1-0. I think Ramos might have fit the bill, but who else is there other than Keegan? Wenger? Rijkaard?

Sorry.

Not really. When you consider he's a fixture in the Argentine side, one of the best defensive midfielders in the world, and he's only 23. Chelsea paid £16m for Makelele when he was over 30, Man Utd. just paid the same for Owen Hargreaves, who is 4 years older and not as good. It's not a bargain by any stretch, but it's not over-the-top, either. Having said that, I think NUFC could spend £17m better elsewhere, and, in truth, I felt the same about us before we sold Momo. Given limited resources, I'd rather have seen us splash out on a top-quality winger rather than another central midfielder, no matter how good.

Players bought from better teams with better managers who no longer want them are bound to disappoint. Owen and Duff both had their best days long behind them when they signed for NUFC. That's not to say they're not still great players, but the Owen of 2001 is long, long gone.

Fuggedit. He's ours.

Arschficker von Scheisse. Bastardo.

A top class striker is papering over the cracks. As noted in the OP, Owen will score bags of goals given the right service. And there's hardly been a striker in the history of football who scored bags without decent service. First and foremost, a side needs quality in midfield to dominate territory and possession. Buying a really, really good striker and telling everyone else to hoof the ball at him whenever they get it never got anyone to the top of the table.

Bit of a conflict of interests, though. Imagine being the manager at a club owned by one of the players, especially if he's not a very good player. A mate of mine plays Sunday league. There's one team of 10 pretty good guys and one really old, really rich dude. Whatever happens, the old dude gets to score in every game and then he buys both sides drinks all night.

One week's losses would hardly make a difference.

He'll leave if he doesn't get money this January to fund an ambitious title assualt or he'll get sacked if they end up with nowt at the end of the season, or anything other than the CL or League or both. He was brought in to mount a proper championship challenge and they aren't any nearer nearly three years later. They've been spending goodish amounts of cash as well. The real problem lies in his overly defensive style, which is alright for the odd cup run but long term the supporters have grown tired of it and its ability to deliver the big one. He's not defensive, it's that until Torres, he hadn't bought an attacking player that has any business in a top 4 side. We have as many shots on goal over a season as nearly any other team in the league, but our shots:goals ratio has been more in line with relegated sides. The best attacking performance from any of our strikers or wingers since Rafa arrived was the season spent on the wing by the central midfielder he inherited. With his fetish for central midfielders and organisation, we can dominate games against Europe's biggest sides, but we don't have the attacking quality to break down the best sides or take our chances against weaker opposition. Fair comment. Your shots on goal ration suffers probably cause Gerrard shoots from anywhere at least 6 times a game. When will he get the boot? No idea. Moores would still be backing him to the hilt, but the Americans are an unknown quantity. Rafa might just as easily walk away; it's not like he wouldn't get a lot of good offers.