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I'm guessing a few more people may head down tonight now...!

Look on Betfair - definitely true

I haven't read them, enlighten me. " We are currently not a Champions League team, and in six seasons out of the last ten, we have finished in the bottom half of the Premier Lague. That means we are not necessarily going to interest a manger already at a team playing Champions League football. " Deschamps isn't even in work at the moment so not likely to refer to him...

I put £2 on all the people that were over 500s... Safe to say if this comes off i'll be rather chuffed! Also, way way better appointment than Houllier. Bring it on!

Without a shadow of a doubt i'd take Hughes over Houllier. Rising Prem manager, almost 20yrs younger than Houllier, proved himself internationally and in the prem Vs France's Howard Wilkinson. No contest. It seems people have been blinded by the foreign effect.

Not sure if this is in here or elsewhere, but sums up just about everything i think about Houllier, style of play should stick out especially if Mort really wants someone to play 'carpet football', that someone is most definitely not Houllier ... Stolen from f365 as always... The Best... Winning The Treble Houllier's main achievement with Liverpool was winning the so-called 'Mickey Mouse' treble. After a disappointing start to his managerial career at Anfield, the Frenchman finally found success in the 2000-01 season winning the Worthington Cup, FA Cup and UEFA Cup, albeit with a hint of luck about each of them. After successfully ousting then-lower-league Birmingham on penalties to secure the League Cup, they rode their luck to win the FA Cup against Arsenal, Stephane Henchoz's goal-line clearance with his hand going unnoticed before Michael Owen popped up to score twice in the last ten minutes. The final and most dramatic success came in the UEFA Cup final at Westfalenstadion with a 5-4 victory over Alaves. Despite throwing a two-goal lead away to the Spaniards, who ended the game with nine men, Liverpool still managed to complete the treble thanks to Alaves defender Delfi Geli's own goal - not just any own goal but a golden own goal - giving the Reds their first European success since 1984. Houllier went on to win three more trophies at Anfield, capturing the European Super Cup, the League Cup and Community Shield. Famous Victories As any Liverpool fan will tell you, the biggest games of the season are against Manchester United and Everton. In his time at the club Houllier managed to put together a streak of five consecutive wins over United, including a 2-1 victory in the 2001 Community Shield, and a famous 2-0 victory over the Red Devils in the 2003 League Cup final. Against the blue side of the Merseyside Houllier managed to lose just once to Everton in 12 games, including six victories over the Toffees. Runners-up In The League Despite failing where every other Liverpool manager has in the last 18 years in the title race, Houllier did help Liverpool to their best league finish in 11 years. In 2001-02 the Reds finished just seven points behind champions Arsenal. The main consolation Houllier could take will have been finishing above Manchester United and breaking their cycle of finishing in the top two for the previous ten seasons. A Few Good Buys Whilst you can't call Houllier a master when it comes to the transfer market the French gaffer did make a few decent buys in his time at Anfield. The first one that springs to mind would be Sami Hyypia, who he bought for the bargain price of £3million from Willem II nine years ago. He also brought the influential midfielder Dietmar Hamann in 1999 for the substantial, but eventually worth it, sum of £8million from Newcastle. The German midfielder, nicknamed 'The Kaiser' by the Liverpool faithful, spent five years under Houllier at Anfield, in which time he won six medals. Finally, Houllier brought in Steve Finnan the year before he left the club for £3.5million from Fulham. Despite spending little time under the Frenchman's wing, Finnan has gone on to become a consistent figure at Anfield, making over 200 apperances for the club. Turning Down Bowyer In 2002 rumours were rife of Lee Bowyer arriving at Liverpool for the princely sum of £9million with a proposed contract in the region of £35,000 a week. But in a remarkable turnaround, Houllier decided Bowyer wasn't right for the club after meeting him, sighting his lack of hunger and desire as the main reason for turning down the midfield snapper. The sudden change of heart proved to be a smart move by Houllier, as the baggage-laden lunatic went to West Ham for just £100,000 a year later. And The Worst... The Signings Houllier spent a staggering amount of money on players that never even looked like cutting it at the top level. After Senegal forward El-Hadji Diouf had a bright World Cup campaign, Houllier astonishingly forked out £10million for the Lens man. He also brought in deadwood such as Salif Diao, Bruno Cheyrou (the 'next Zidane'), Titi Camara, Erik Meijer, Anthony Le Tallec, Florent Sinama-Pongolle, Frode Kippe and Djimi Traore. Overall he spent over £125million. Most notably it was he who signed Djibril Cisse, then promptly scarpered, leaving Rafa Benitez with a £14million striker he didn't want. Boring Football During his reign Houllier based his team upon a strong defence. The steel of Hamann in midfield and the strong defence including the likes of Carragher, Babbel, Hypiaa and Henchoz meant that Liverpool were hard to break down. The flip side of this though was the painfully boring football Liverpool were playing. Liverpool are a club steeped in tradition of playing attractive football, Houllier's play was anything but. Dull, one-dimensional, long-ball football up to the £11million man Emile Heskey was the way his side played, much to the dismay of the Koppites. Not Signing Anelka Permanently Hopes were high when Houllier brought the troubled yet exceptional talent of Nicolas Anelka to Anfield in December 2001. His loan spell from PSG was a good one and he was taking to the Liverpool faithful, who were sure that he would be snapped up on a permanent deal in the close season. However that wasn't the case, instead Houllier turned to the unproven talent of Senegalese flop Diouf. After paying £10million for him, his return was three goals at £3.33 million a goal. Probably not the best decision he's ever made. Never Really Challenging For The League Liverpool's failure to compete to the death for the Premiership title has been so often the case since the start of the Premiership. While every season was 'their year' at the start, Houllier's Reds never threatened to trouble the engraver. In the 2001/2002 season though they did manage to finish runners-up to Arsenal but they never really mounted a serious challenge. 2002-2003: A Season to Forget After finishing runners-up the season before, Liverpool were expected to at least make a respectable title effort. Unfortunately that was a million miles away for the Reds. They had a torrid league campaign including defeats to Sunderland and Birmingham, culminating in a fifth-place finish. They twice failed to beat Basle in a disappointing European campaign in which they were knocked out early, then went out of the UEFA Cup to Celtic. The season was epitomised when Liverpool were dumped out of the FA Cup 2-0 at home by a a poor Crystal Palace side that finished mid-table in the Championship that year. Houllier was lucky to keep his job that season.

Nothing really jumps off the page at you. That's worse than i thought. That's a shocking transfer record!

Only reason he pulled out of Bowyer deal was because Bowyer made it clear he wasn't interested. All the Pool fans i know both at the time and now would say they wanted to keep anelka Agreed, Smicer played well in the final, still think overall he wasn't exactly a top signing though. As we won't be in any CL finals any time soon i'd suggest we are better off looking for players who perform a tad more consistently I take your point on Cisse, he did look like he would be awesome Pongolle is NOT awesome, not by any stretch. Failed at Liverpool, failed at Blackburn Cheyrou was let go for free... £4.5m loss 3 good signings, one of which they stole off us... Not really the best record for about 5 years in charge?!

With all the work he put in helping develop Clairefontaine I think Houllier would be perfect for the criteria the club have set. I can see him running the club and Shearer taking charge on the training ground everyday, that's if they work together that is. But what about the style of play?! Did you guys not watch Houllier's Liverpool team?! Houllier's Lyon looked brilliant though. So Houillers Liverpool won the Champions league, Benitez inherited that? Err no... Lyon won the league for 3 or 4 seasons prior to Houllier's arrival, by some stretch. He inherited a title winning team. Benitez did not inherit a team that had previously won the champions league! no. Le Guen's Lyon looked brilliant and Houllier inherited that.

Houllier's transfer record is absolutely abysmal in English football - compare it to Mark Hughes (who i'm not overly excited about either and it's ludicrous). Cheyrou Salif Diao Sinima Pongolle (and that other lad who came with him) Smicer Cisse Traore He wasted so much on those players as well, they weren't cheap buys. He made allardyce look like a genius! Can someone please prove me wrong with a list of all the decent players he brought to Liverpool (under 35, so Litmanen and McCallister don't count!) and kept there (failing to secure anelka when they had him on loan, another error). I'm genuinely asking here, as i'd like to have my mind changed if it's likely he'll come in

With all the work he put in helping develop Clairefontaine I think Houllier would be perfect for the criteria the club have set. I can see him running the club and Shearer taking charge on the training ground everyday, that's if they work together that is. But what about the style of play?! Did you guys not watch Houllier's Liverpool team?! Houllier's Lyon looked brilliant though. no. Le Guen's Lyon looked brilliant and Houllier inherited that.

With all the work he put in helping develop Clairefontaine I think Houllier would be perfect for the criteria the club have set. I can see him running the club and Shearer taking charge on the training ground everyday, that's if they work together that is. But what about the style of play?! Did you guys not watch Houllier's Liverpool team?!

why? because he is sh**e. look what he has done with all that cash and backing at liverpool, never even close to the titlerace. at valencia, even i could have lead that team to glory. would be much worse than the keegan/shearer combo imo. dont really know about houllier tbh. got a real laugh at his time in liverpool, bringing in all sorts of bad signings, but he is way better than someone like hughes, arry and pearce. if we do bring in houllier, i dont think we can pair him with shearer though. keegan/shearer just might have the ability to attract som great players, and we will be guarateed entertaining football. perhaps theyre also smart enough to bench smith, who knows? Seems a bit weird you totally slate benitez then give Houllier credit. In my view Houllier is a very poor man's benitez.

In context, and in English football, yes. Agreed. Really hoping this Shearer / Houllier link up that is being touted around is just media rumour mongering. If people think KK / Shearer would be bad, this would be a whole lot worse. One suspects they would agree on nothing and it would end in a lot of tears.

I would put that more down to Benitez producing an amazing (and often v lucky, although i certainly wouldn't mind us having some luck) cup run with those players, rather than them being good signings. Benitez won the champs league for Liverpool despite those players, not because of them.

He plays feckin awful football and if his scouting network was so good how the hell did he sign Cisse, Cheyrou, Traore et al?! I would rather have Hughes than Houllier.

I think we could have got Hiddink had Russia not qualified for Euro 08 but there is no way he'll walk out on them prior to the Euro Championships and i don't really want Pearson in charge for the rest of the season, so i don't really see how it would work?

Where's all this shortlist info coming from? Something in the papers i've missed?! As for the British thing, SSN all of a sudden dropped it from their list of requirements then tried to peddle out some bollocks about how we had changed our criteria since Redknapp turned us down / went public...

First season with Man City he took them up with a record breaking points total and scored 125 (125!) goals in the process. The next season he took them to 9th in the Premiership. If someone did that now who wasn't Kevin Keegan, the media would be jizzing all over him. I must of missed the Steve Coppell wankfest then as he broke Keegan's record points total and took Reading to 8th in his first season in the Premiership with them. There kind of was actually, was he not heavily touted for / receive manager of the year? The problem with Coppell was that he couldn't handle the pressure when he got a big job like Man Ci... oh...

Of course. Everyone apart from most of the posters on this thread think he was our MOTM on Saturday and that he is one of the very best prem keepers but hey, what do they know. We must have the very best fans in the world for knocking confidence out of players and eventually driving them out of the club into another team where they are supported and hence perform better (Parker and Jenas the latest examples). Given pulled off an awesome save from Ronaldo in the first half. Tell me about the other wonderful things he did on Saturday. Once again i'll repeat, i really rate given as a keeper, i just don't understand how people can be so blinkered.

I now realise why we play in black and white… it’s the only way half our fans are capable of thinking if this thread is anything to go by…

I've established that you are a miserable man and/or your sole purpose on this forum is to bring everyone down to the level you are on with your negativity. People must get really bored of you. The fact people complain about Given astonishes me. He was our best or second best player against Man Utd. He has been with us for what 10 years? He's rejected advances from other clubs to remain loyal to us. We always expect players to be proud of the shirt they are playing in and to pay us back with what we put into our club. Given does this. Enrique and Taylor were, in my view, without doubt the best two players for us on Saturday. Given had a mare. I sometimes think that we don't deserve the loyalty Given has shown us. Dude, i'm saying he had a bad game... Just because he's been loyal makes him completely immune to any criticism whatsoever?! You'll see earlier in the thread i'm not advocating selling him, i just don't think he's had the best of seasons - by his own high standards especially. I would also question the whole 'amazingly loyal servant' label served up, after all as soon as he was out the team he spat the dummy and handed in a transfer request, not exactly loyalty personified. But again, my position is thus - harper had the jersey due to injury to given earlier in the season, harper did absolutely nothing to deserve to have it taken away, in fact he was in nets for some of our best performances this season. As given came back, our form has gradually declined (starting with Man City away), i'm certainly not saying it's all (or even mainly) his fault, i just think if you look back over the season there are a few instances where he has to be held culpable for goals conceded. All the rest of the defence take an absolute hiding on here (beye fairly excluded thus far) so i think it's only fair a modicum of blame falls with Shay if his performances aren't up to it. I'm not questioning his place at the club, just his place in the team for parts of this season (the same as I would with Owen).

Not self-depreciation, just realism i'm afraid. We have a goalkeeper who makes Paul Robinson look competent, a comical defence, a midfield that can't string two passes together and a striker who scores every solar eclipse. But you beat Derby... something we couldn't achieve!

I'm bringing my dad up for the match this weekend, he hasn't been to a game for a few years, he's just had the worst year of his life, lost both his parents and split with his missus and i'm taking him to this... I think this match might actually be more painful...

I've established that you are a miserable man and/or your sole purpose on this forum is to bring everyone down to the level you are on with your negativity. People must get really bored of you. The fact people complain about Given astonishes me. He was our best or second best player against Man Utd. He has been with us for what 10 years? He's rejected advances from other clubs to remain loyal to us. We always expect players to be proud of the shirt they are playing in and to pay us back with what we put into our club. Given does this. Enrique and Taylor were, in my view, without doubt the best two players for us on Saturday. Given had a mare.