Rafa Benítez (now unemployed)

[WarrenBartonCentrePartin]

Baffling why Mbemba was randomly frozen out and why he insists on flogging a dead three-legged Spanish horse up top. Too slow to make changes today too.

 

That said, if we'd backed him we'd potentially be doing as well as Watford are. Daft.

 

Horselu, lu, lu, turn the cunt to fucking glue.

[Guest reefatoon]

Baffling why Mbemba was randomly frozen out and why he insists on flogging a dead three-legged Spanish horse up top. Too slow to make changes today too.

 

That said, if we'd backed him we'd potentially be doing as well as Watford are. Daft.

 

Horselu, lu, lu, turn the c*** to f***ing glue.

 

Cuntelu, lu, lu, misses sitters when put through

[Ketsbaia]

Honolulu, lu, where we'll send this cunt off to.

[Wallsendmag]

Wrong team selection today. I know he's picking from a group of mainly Championship standard players but when he's putting Diame and Joselu in the starting XI people are within their rights to ask questions of him.

[Guest The Little Waster]

Its all a cunning plan to make Fat Mike sell asap at a decent price

[Sima]

His reluctance to make any significant changes before 65 minutes is worrying.

[TRon]

Wrong team selection today. I know he's picking from a group of mainly Championship standard players but when he's putting Diame and Joselu in the starting XI people are within their rights to ask questions of him.

 

 

The Diame selection was forced on him to some extent due to Merino and Hayden being out, but the refusal to use Mitrovic is the one I can't get my head around. I'm not his biggest fan, but he's got more goals in him than Joselu.

[Guest chopey]

His reluctance to make any significant changes before 65 minutes is worrying.

 

He has done that his entire career

[Sima]

His reluctance to make any significant changes before 65 minutes is worrying.

 

He has done that his entire career

 

Doesn’t make it okay.  As soon as Watford scored their first we were second best.

[Tsunami]

Mitrovic and Merino had to come on at ht, we were being being pissed on all

all over the the park. I was very worried by his formation today. We got absolutely battered, and Rafa has to take his fair share of criticism for it:

[Crumpy Gunt]

Anyone not blinded by the light that shines out his arse like they were a few months ago?

[tmonkey]

As with Graham Carr, I don't think it's reasonable to criticize someone's transfer activity by just mentioning individual failures. General failure rates in the transfer market are pretty high, and I'd harbour a guess that even the best of the best, e.g. Fergie, Wenger, Guardiola, etc, have signed as many duds as they did stars, if not more. Even managers with massive budgets able to sign experienced and established top tier players from the top leagues, i.e. as close to a guarantee of success as you can normally get, consistently make bad signings. And the lower down the feeding trough you go the higher the percentage of failures because short of exceptional circumstances it's slim pickings and inherent gambles at this point, especially if we're talking about signing youngsters for the future or players with zero experience of football in this country.

 

Whilst that doesn't mean managers and scouts should be excused for high failure rates and ridiculously wasteful spending, it does mean any criticisms need to be within context. There's no use naming individual flops Rafa has signed if it's not within the context of (a) establishing what you think a reasonable success rate in the transfer market should be, and (b)identifying what the current success rate actually is and how it measures to expectations.

 

For example, imo Rafa's bad signings (players who outright failed here) so far would be Sels, Joselu, Manquillo, Lazaar, Hanley, and possibly J.Murphy, though he's arguably one for the future. His average signings (and by that I mean players who have done the job required of them at the point of signing) have been Gayle, Atsu, Ritchie, D.Murphy, Diame, and Gamez. Good signings (i.e. PL calibre players) have been Merino, Lejeune, Clark, and Yedlin. So that's 5 or 6 bad signings out of a possible 16, with 4 of them being good and 6 being decent, which in my books is a 62% success rate in transfers.

 

And before we factor in prices paid, it needs to be remembered that most of these were signings made whilst in the Championship. Rafa has only had one transfer window as a Premiership team, and in that window where Ashley clearly decided he didn't want to spend as he is going to sell the club, Rafa had a ridiculously small budget (given the recent explosion in player valuations and transfer fees), and then on top of that he was duped, misled, and lied to by Ashley, Barnes and Charnley with respects to the preferred targets. Of course we over paid on paper for Murphy et al, in the most recent window.

 

So in short, it's a tad nonsensical to say Rafa has been wasteful in the transfer market at this point in time. You'd need at least the January and Summer 2018 windows, assuming he has money to spend, to even begin to have a reasonable judgement.

[Si]

Anyone not blinded by the light that shines out his arse like they were a few months ago?

[HaydnNUFC]

Not being funny, but a few more bad results and the fat c*** might start getting an itchy trigger finger on a sacking. Which would not surprise me in the slightest.

Takeover hinges on Rafa being here. No.

[Guest Howaythetoon]

Rafa Out...

 

 

[The College Dropout]

Re transfers: everyone bough in the Champo was meant to get us promoted. The PL is another beast entirely.

 

 

Lejeune has done nothing to suggest he’s a good signing.  Looks a bad one for now imo.

 

 

[Vedder]

Not being funny, but a few more bad results and the fat c*** might start getting an itchy trigger finger on a sacking. Which would not surprise me in the slightest.

 

We're only a Rafa resigning away from the club imploding IMO. I think Ashley realises this and is why he's after a quick sale. No way is he getting sacked at this stage.

[Guest Howaythetoon]

Seriously, let’s not panic. This isn’t fucking Pardew, McClaren or Carver we are talking about. Rafa is due a bad run in football/here and this is that time. He needs to drop Joselu though, he is to scoring what Trump is to diplomacy. A fucking disaster.

[Kanj]

never been so mad with him; trying to remind myself that this is Rafa fucking Benitez and I need to calm down but I'm furious with that result, performance and his selection today.

[Guest Howaythetoon]

Perhaps a statement to Ashley to hurry the fuck up...

[TheDonis]

As a seasoned Rafa watcher, I'm confused about why he's changed formation. The football might have been turgud, but his 4-2-3-1 makes you hard to beat at least. And occasionally you nick it. Why change to a formation which leaves you more open? Very very un Rafa-like to go in search f goals and ditch what was (sort of) working. I wonder what gives.

[Bimpy474]

As a seasoned Rafa watcher, I'm confused about why he's changed formation. The football might have been turgud, but his 4-2-3-1 makes you hard to beat at least. And occasionally you nick it. Why change to a formation which leaves you more open? Very very un Rafa-like to go in search f goals and ditch what was (sort of) working. I wonder what gives.

 

I think it was Perez losing form and playing so poorly that brought the change. We have no other 10, something Rafa was desperate to buy. Personally i think we should have gone 4-5-1 for the last few games with Merino and Shelvey breaking from midfield with Hayden holding. Merino's injury stopped that option too though if it was something Rafa might have tried.

[Varadi]

As a seasoned Rafa watcher, I'm confused about why he's changed formation. The football might have been turgud, but his 4-2-3-1 makes you hard to beat at least. And occasionally you nick it. Why change to a formation which leaves you more open? Very very un Rafa-like to go in search f goals and ditch what was (sort of) working. I wonder what gives.

 

I honestly think there's a chance he's doing it on purpose to try hurry the takeover along - we've been so wide open the last couple of games it almost has to be deliberate.

[TRon]

As a seasoned Rafa watcher, I'm confused about why he's changed formation. The football might have been turgud, but his 4-2-3-1 makes you hard to beat at least. And occasionally you nick it. Why change to a formation which leaves you more open? Very very un Rafa-like to go in search f goals and ditch what was (sort of) working. I wonder what gives.

 

It might be because he's not got a lot of confidence in the defenders at the moment. Even with the 4-5-1 we were giving some daft goals away, although since we changed formation, that's gone much worse. I think he'll be very pissed off at some of the defensive displays in the last couple of games regardless of us having nothing up front.

[Parky]

As a seasoned Rafa watcher, I'm confused about why he's changed formation. The football might have been turgud, but his 4-2-3-1 makes you hard to beat at least. And occasionally you nick it. Why change to a formation which leaves you more open? Very very un Rafa-like to go in search f goals and ditch what was (sort of) working. I wonder what gives.

 

Maybe people have been getting onto him about 'boring football'. We don't have the players for a 442 and expansive football he knows that and always knew that. He knows.