Dr Venkman

it hasnt been a disaster like, just not good enough

To be fair we hammered them llast season without him, i'm sure we can do the same again Who scored a hat trick in that game again ? And is he still here ? You're right, I forgot the only way to beat a team was to put out exactly the same lineup from the last time you beat them and wait for the exact same match to happen again. It might be to hold on to one of your best goalscorers to give yourself a better chance in the next game. Nah, would rather not have to rely on a bloke that was blowing out his arse after 60 minutes of most games to be hoenst. Better off replacing him with proper athletes. Fair enough as far as it goes, but how many of these proper athletes(presumably the close season signings) have you seen play and what are their goalscoring record like ? Well Demba Ba's isnt too shabby to be fair is it? Lets not forget, Nolans goals dried up big time when Carroll left, what was it, 2 after he left? And when he didnt score he didnt contribute, or contributed very little at least. It might have been a good idea to make some attempt to hold onto Carroll as well. SILLY MONEY

awareness of what?

there is, unfortunately its the one thing thats impossible to get going because of various reasons. dont go to the match

yep

lack of sell on value ffs. he should be judged primarily on whether we think he'll benefit the squad and by how much. considering our attacking options need significantly upgrading i'd say sell on value matters little.

Defoe and Ba would be tasty like

:lol: What's funny? The bit in bold is correct. Carroll made what, four league appearances for Liverpool? He was unplayable against Citeh. Why not compare the way Carroll was playing in the first half of the season, for us, to how Ba played for West Ham?! Because it's completely irrelevant as support for my point that Ba is being underrated even though we can't compare the quality of the two players in the abstract? fwiw i dont feel like i'm under-rating him, i think he looks like a great prospect. i've got concerns over his knee, that's all.

you dont like it? it's fucking lunacy. 2 were available on a free and one had a release clause under 5 million and has never played in england, i'd have been fucking livid if we'd spent 30m on those 3

then why would golfmag say it was a specific part of his remit?

The reason for the Carroll deal was that the amount of money was too good to turn down. That's it. Only if you're prepared to spend it. Which is the crux of the matter and the reason for the discontent atm. What I mean is, when you get an offer for an asset that is that crazy you pretty much have to sell. If the club was financially healthy and/or Ashley was prepared to continue to pump money in, we could have said no. But neither of those things is true. So you're suggesting we had to say 'yes' to keep the club going? He probably didn't literally "have" to say yes, we obviously wouldn't have gone bust without the Carroll sale (but you know that). What I'm saying is that if you have a club that is making regular losses, the owner is subsidising it with big loans, and there is a chance to bring in massive money for an overvalued asset, then you might well think it's a good idea. I'm not saying anyone "had" to sell Carroll, I'm saying I understand why it was too good a deal to turn down. So we could have kept him and still signed Ba, Cabaye, Marveaux and Abeid. That was my point - we had a choice and decided to take the cash and not invest any of it back into the playing staff. Yes, probably, I've never denied we made that choice. All I'm saying is that choice isn't entirely wrong... or at least not necessarily. good old ian

He knows fine well though that if a key player leaves, his squad can cope or he'll be allowed a decent replacement. We don't have that luxury I don't think that comes into the picture though. It's purely about the stature of the club and no player can damage it. Even regardless of that, I think we have been able to find a 'decent replacement', as you put it, for Carroll in Demba Ba. Carroll was on his way to attaining the stature of commanding said wages though, as Liverpools willingness to pay him those wages will attend to, is the clubs stature so important that we wont pay what people are worth? It seems that way. I can think of a bloke who's done his fair share of damaging the stature of the club recently btw, and i've never seen him playing football. God forbid Carroll should expect being paid well to do something that actually helps.

i've been saying this for weeks. some will tell you you're not allowed to judge the deal in hindsight though. that it's folly to judge how astute the deal was by taking into account what you do with the money you got for him, the compensation you receive for losing such a player. it's utter bollocks. last season Carroll was banging them in for us and looking like a world beater, personally i dont care that he asked for a pay rise, he should've been given one. great players are paid great money, and if you dont like it sell the club at the loss, fuck off and let someone with even the tiniest clue about football run things. also if any players have a problem with a great player being paid more than them they can ship off to wigan or any other countless number of clubs who cant attract players worthy of high wages. i've also said this before but selling Carroll was the catalyst for Enrique's unrest and we've heard even more about it recently, whatever Carroll does at Liverpool the fact remains that in this team with our players around him he looked un-playable at times, but we've got money to pay for tarmac and agents fees now, class mike, fucking class. we could and should have done every piece of business we've done this summer without selling Carroll. and now we have to wait for smith and xisco to go before we bring in anyone who can actually play football because we dont want to pay them for doing nothing? we've been doing that for years!! so it's next summer again is it? mint, i'm looking forward to it. And here's me thinking AC had got a payrise last year. Silly me. when he was offerred a new contract?

It's nothing to do with money, he simply doesn't like the direction the club is going in and the lies that go with it Then why mention the contract and wages he's been offered? It's all about the money. because he was highlighting the fact that they'd made an offer to him that was of no wage increase and gone on about it in the press like we'd offerred him the earth

Will you earn £60k this week? This Month? This Year? Thought not. When did you last get a 20% pay rise? I've never ever had one that big. I got a 3% rise last October and that was the first rise i'd had for 3 years due to the economic downturn. He needs to take a big reality check. you need the reality check, he plays football for a living. they earn quite a lot you know.

i've been saying this for weeks. some will tell you you're not allowed to judge the deal in hindsight though. that it's folly to judge how astute the deal was by taking into account what you do with the money you got for him, the compensation you receive for losing such a player. it's utter bollocks. last season Carroll was banging them in for us and looking like a world beater, personally i dont care that he asked for a pay rise, he should've been given one. great players are paid great money, and if you dont like it sell the club at the loss, fuck off and let someone with even the tiniest clue about football run things. also if any players have a problem with a great player being paid more than them they can ship off to wigan or any other countless number of clubs who cant attract players worthy of high wages. i've also said this before but selling Carroll was the catalyst for Enrique's unrest and we've heard even more about it recently, whatever Carroll does at Liverpool the fact remains that in this team with our players around him he looked un-playable at times, but we've got money to pay for tarmac and agents fees now, class mike, fucking class. we could and should have done every piece of business we've done this summer without selling Carroll. and now we have to wait for smith and xisco to go before we bring in anyone who can actually play football because we dont want to pay them for doing nothing? we've been doing that for years!! so it's next summer again is it? mint, i'm looking forward to it.

That £10m was just for the striker though, there was the Neil Taylor interest that coincided with it at the time. So that's at least £11m for pure transfers and goodness knows how much else when every other aspect under the sun has been included in the figure (which tends to be the way we're doing things on here these days). As I keep saying, I'm happy enough with another quality striker, cover for left-back, a replacement for Jose if he goes and then a further centre-back and right-back. However, things should have been better than that considering the wedge we got for Carroll. Can't see more than two from that list coming in, which isn't enough IMO. I seem to be one of the few, but it is genuinely the backline I'm most worried about. I'm perfectly happy with the five senior ones we do have (even Danny boy), but there's literally fuck all backing them up. i share the concerns about the back line, not only is there fuck all back up Taylor is a liability and will be found out for about the 70th time in the first few games.

fair comment. he's not far off though

you think, let's see where we finish next season. it's a squad game after all. the only striker we've brought in has a history of failing medicals and the bloke we signed on a free as an alternative to going for n'zogbia has a worse injury record. our other 'new signing' ben arfa is now out for 6 weeks as well. he's gonna be playing catch up all season no. i personally would like to see the squad improved to the best of our ability. absolutely nothing you say can persuade me we've done that so far this summer, the n'zogbia/marveuax scenario is a perfect example of this no. see above. at this point i'd be happy with an under-spend. at least it would show we're actually willing to use some cash to improve the squad and there might be light at the end of the tunnel, rather than this half arsed injury blighted free transfer release clause no ambition but we've got tarmac and water bore bollocks. we sold the most promising centre forward of his generation. for this?

Cabaye? Just won the league in France and gave up the opportunity to play in the Champions League to sign for us. How is he not a "quality player"? I think Jose's made himself look a bit stupid and petulant tbh. Yes but we didn't spend £35m on him, so regardless of how good he is it doesn't matter. If we spent £35m on him everything would be alright though. nah that would be daft. spending 35 million on making the team better would be a canny idea though. you know, the team? the one you watch every weekend and would like to get better at playing football.

i'd say it's even more disrespectful to the club to continue to give ashley the benefit of the doubt but whatever floats your boat

this will surely come back to haunt them, what they should've done is sign someone for free who's never played in this league and has a dodgy injury record. sucks for them that they're dead against paying outrageous agent fees

which bit? that he's antagonistic, a bell end, or the sun's NE journo?

but with the ariel prowess of Andy Carroll does Carroll wash the kits like?

I think we might tread water if we sign Erdinc and replace Enrique. Given that we were one kick away from 9th anyway, I don't see why that's not a fair, realistic expectation. strikes me as being fair that we aim for higher really, given the money we SHOULD have at our disposal to make the squad stronger