Buyer would need £1 billion to make Liverpool successful

• Rooney9

  17 Jan 10, 14:30

  Out of the League Cup, out of the Champions League, all but out of the title race and now, to cap it all, Liverpool are out of the FA Cup after being outplayed and beaten in front of their own supporters by Reading, a side languishing in 21st position in the Coca-Cola Championship.

  It wasn’t a case of losing to a fluke goal. Rafael Benitez’s side were outplayed by their lower-league opponents and, but for steadier finishing, could have comfortably been beaten in normal time.

  Is it quite true there were extenuating circumstances: Liverpool lost their two most influential players, Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard, to injury in the first half. The penalty award that handed Reading a lifeline in stoppage time was soft, but if Yossi Benayoun decides to make a foolish lunge with no hope of getting the ball, some might argue he got what he deserved.

  Liverpool are left with just the Europa League to keep their interest for the rest of the season, and there is no guarantee the way they are playing that an early exit will not come their way in this competition  too.

  This is indeed a sorry state of affairs for the five-times champions of Europe and one which must be difficult for the supporters to take.

  The fans have been loyal to the Spaniard throughout his reign, blaming all the club’s problems on the co-owners, George Gillett and Tom Hicks, but has this not been a convenient smokescreen for a failing manager to hide behind?

  It was not the owners’ decision to unsettle Xabi Alonso by trying to bring in Gareth Barry to such an extent that one of the club’s few creative players looked for a way out last summer.

  It was not the owners’ fault that the club in the summer paid £20 million for a player, Alberto Aquilani, who was injured and not able to perform when his club really needed him.

  Yes, it was a purchase for the future, but with true quality players in such short supply at Anfield, wasn’t it far too big a gamble?

  The question then, is, this: Benitez signed a new five-year contract when things looked much rosier at Anfield last February and it would cost a king’s ransom in compensation to cut him loose, money the club simply does not have.

  But no matter how much it would cost, shouldn’t this latest embarrassment cost Benitez his job?

• reyes

  17 Jan 10, 14:46

  yes

• Rock^Star

  17 Jan 10, 14:49

  I thought in liverpool, one will never walk alone? Even I man u fan listen to the song also hair can stand, then this fella won them the european cup and now they are going thru shit patches, they're nt standing by him.

   

  Bah.

• reyes

  17 Jan 10, 14:57

  never walk alone if winning trophy mah. celebrate together.

   

  if you dont win trophy, i bet you are on your own liao.

   

   

• Rooney9

  17 Jan 10, 15:14

  whose fault was it when he tried to buy gareth barry and unsettle alonson in the first place?

• reyes

  17 Jan 10, 15:26

  thwat y he should go

• Rooney9

  17 Jan 10, 15:28

  who was responsible for the zonal marking system? who was responsible for buying the likes of lucas, insua, johnson, ngog etc.

• Rooney9

  17 Jan 10, 15:35

  to be fair, why not lists down the errors, pros and cons during his tenure and see if the errors and cons are more than the pros.

   

  I will start first.

   

  Pros - Won the CL, supercup and fa cup, bought players like torres, reina, benayoun, alonso, kyut. did well in CL every season except for this season.

   

  Cons - Negative and defensive tactics, diastrous zonal marking system, rotation of players, bought dud players like ngog, voronin, glen johnson, insua, lucas, babel etc. trying to buy barry and unsettle alonso, and ultimately alonso's departure for RM.

• La Nina

  17 Jan 10, 19:23

  May i clarify something? Gareth Barry was never bought to unsettle Alonso. Rafa wanted to accomodate both of them in the team but limited transfer funds meant that he had to let either Mascherano or Alonso go. Mascherano at 25 is one of the top defensive midfielders in the world while Alonso himself is 29 and has always maintained his desire to return to Spain. Anyone in the right mind would let Alonso go since that was his wish and Rafa wanting to sell him only inspired him to gave his all in his last season. Seasons before that, Alonso was pretty much shit.

  I won't go into the debate of zonal marking vs man marking. Each system has its own pros and cons so its hard to decide which is better. And for fuck sake, people need to stop buying the lies concocted by the media. Sir Alex Ferguson rotated his team and the stats were published in the DailyMail. He was hailed as a genius even though Man Utd weren't getting results. Rafael Benitez rotated his team 2 seasons before that and he was called a fool who has absolutely no idea of what he is doing. Typical English hyprocrisy.

  Ngog was playing regular first team football for PSG and they were fuming when Liverpool bought him for just a mere 1.5m. He's young and learning his trade so kudos to you for writing him off early.

  Andriy Voronin was bought on a free transfer because Rafa did not have additional funds to sign another striker. He's sold recently for a 2m profit.

  Glen Johnson haven't even played a string of games for Liverpool and you are calling him a flop. Great. Then there's Insua. He cost Liverpool nothing considering he's brought up through the Academy. Attacking wise he was a huge improvement. Defensively, he should be doing better although i tend to agree that he is always ball watching. But no, he's not a transfer flop.

  Then there's Lucas. The media's scapegoat. Lucas at a mere 20 when he was captain of Gremio. He was the youngest winner of the Brazilian player of the year award. Liverpool fans booed him at his every touch and that can only shatter the confidence of someone at 20. But not Lucas. He built on his physique and silenced most liverpool fans including me. He was an attacking midfielder forced to play as a defensive one and defensive players hardly shine. Watch him play against Stoke and he was immense. Easily the Motm. But then again, he's Lucas Leiva. Global warming is probably his fault.

• schi_zo

  17 Jan 10, 19:44

  La Nina - Typical Red Scouser

  I hate it when people go reminiscing about the past. ' Ngog was playing regular first team football for PSG'   'Lucas at a mere 20 when he was captain of Gremio. He was the youngest winner of the Brazilian player of the year award'

  Do you want to add that Liverpool has the highest EPL wins ? (oops man utd too)

  A flop is a flop, no matter how good someone is at his previous club, if he doesn't perform at his new club, then he is a flop.

  Once Rafa Benitez is out of the way, you can say goodbye to people like Lucas etc..

   

• Rooney9

  17 Jan 10, 19:54

  Originally posted by La Nina:

  May i clarify something? Gareth Barry was never bought to unsettle Alonso. Rafa wanted to accomodate both of them in the team but limited transfer funds meant that he had to let either Mascherano or Alonso go. Mascherano at 25 is one of the top defensive midfielders in the world while Alonso himself is 29 and has always maintained his desire to return to Spain. Anyone in the right mind would let Alonso go since that was his wish and Rafa wanting to sell him only inspired him to gave his all in his last season. Seasons before that, Alonso was pretty much shit.

  I won't go into the debate of zonal marking vs man marking. Each system has its own pros and cons so its hard to decide which is better. And for fuck sake, people need to stop buying the lies concocted by the media. Sir Alex Ferguson rotated his team and the stats were published in the DailyMail. He was hailed as a genius even though Man Utd weren't getting results. Rafael Benitez rotated his team 2 seasons before that and he was called a fool who has absolutely no idea of what he is doing. Typical English hyprocrisy.

  Ngog was playing regular first team football for PSG and they were fuming when Liverpool bought him for just a mere 1.5m. He's young and learning his trade so kudos to you for writing him off early.

  Andriy Voronin was bought on a free transfer because Rafa did not have additional funds to sign another striker. He's sold recently for a 2m profit.

  Glen Johnson haven't even played a string of games for Liverpool and you are calling him a flop. Great. Then there's Insua. He cost Liverpool nothing considering he's brought up through the Academy. Attacking wise he was a huge improvement. Defensively, he should be doing better although i tend to agree that he is always ball watching. But no, he's not a transfer flop.

  Then there's Lucas. The media's scapegoat. Lucas at a mere 20 when he was captain of Gremio. He was the youngest winner of the Brazilian player of the year award. Liverpool fans booed him at his every touch and that can only shatter the confidence of someone at 20. But not Lucas. He built on his physique and silenced most liverpool fans including me. He was an attacking midfielder forced to play as a defensive one and defensive players hardly shine. Watch him play against Stoke and he was immense. Easily the Motm. But then again, he's Lucas Leiva. Global warming is probably his fault.

  yes fergie was rotating his squad every week, but he has 3 titles as track record, rafa got his 2005 CL as his record I know. so far fergie didnt manage too badly this season is he, as united is still second after all the injuries to his defenders in december. yes its true that united didnt played well, but they are not out of the title and rafa liverpool is. true that united is out of the fa cup, but they are still in the league title and CL, not to mention the league cup. liverpool? out of all the cups and league title in January, there are still another 4 more months to go before the end of the season to finish top 4.

• Poignant

  17 Jan 10, 19:57

  Buyer would need £1 billion to make Liverpool successful

  Finance experts have questioned the attraction of Liverpool to any would-be buyer.

  The price of buying out co-owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett and bringing Liverpool back, on and off the pitch, to the standard of a world-class club, was revealed this week to be in the region of £1billion.

  “In the current market, finance for football club buyouts is brutally hard to come by and there are no investors out there saying, ‘I’m desperate to lend to the football sector’,” leading football financial consultant Harry Philp told the Sunday Times. “The cost of buying Liverpool and building a new stadium is £800m before you start on players. Given Arsenal, who already have the Emirates, are worth £800m, that doesn’t seem great value.

  “Twenty-five per cent of Liverpool is on offer but I don’t see why anyone would buy that minority stake. You’d pay £100m into getting one quarter of a dysfunctional football club and your money would go straight to the bank, to service Hicks and Gillett’s debt.

  “The prospect of investment is made even slimmer by the presence of the sheikhs at Manchester City. It’s that much harder to buy a club and compete when faced with such a rich competitor. Three or four years ago, I was working with American investors and they all asked, ‘What happens if another Abramovich appears, and there’s another Chelsea in the Premier League to dislocate the transfer market?’ These people were savvy, the owners of NBA and NFL franchises, and they just couldn’t live with that risk. You’d have to say, with City, their worst fears have come true.”

• Poignant

  17 Jan 10, 19:59

  Liverpool co-owners split over Benitez support

  Tom Hicks is totally behind manager Rafa Benitez remaining in charge of Liverpool.

  The News of the World says co-owner George Gillett wants to review Benitez's position immediately, but Hicks is standing by the five-year contract given to the manager last year.

  Like Benitez, Hicks is sure the fans remain feverishly resistant to a change of manager, which is why he's become the chief supporter of the perennially under-siege Spanish manager ever since the ill-fated plot to oust him two years ago.

  It was Gillett who inspired that campaign, backed enthusiastically and unanimously by the rest of the board at the time, only for it to backfire horribly when the talks with Jurgen Klinsmann were exposed.

  A Reds source said: "George Gillett believes the warnings about giving the manager a new five-year deal last season have proven true. He feels he was railroaded into making that decision and the team is now suffering because of it.

  "At the very least, he believes the board should be having a healthy debate about the manager's position but it's evident Liverpool have backed themselves into a corner by publicly insisting it's not even up for discussion."

• La Nina

  17 Jan 10, 19:59

  No need to get personal and touchy. I didn't question your intelligence or rather lack of when you referred to me as a 'scouser'. You can only be a scouser if you come from Liverpool, so please just call me Typical Red.

  And if you bother to let your brain possess what I wrote instead of coming out with all guns firing, you would have understand that i wasn't reminiscing about the past. What I wanted to highlight was that these players are rated at their old club and now at their new club and are by no means a flop. As a striker, they judge you by your goals. Ngog has 1 goal every 2.25 games which is better than some established strikers like Bellamy and Eduardo. How can he be a flop?

• MaNyZeR

  17 Jan 10, 20:00

  please do away with benitez, though i am not a liverpool fan, but then again, liverpool will continue to falter under the hands of benitez.. this season they will not be in the top 4.

  last season was just a one off lucky season for pool and benitez..

• La Nina

  17 Jan 10, 20:03

  The players are currently playing without the desire or heart to win any games. It might be because of the fact that they've lost confidence in Benitez. In that case, Benitez must go. But what i was saying all along is that Benitez isn't a bad manager in any case. He is a victim of his own success.

• Rooney9

  17 Jan 10, 20:06

  success as in CL and supercup winner in 2005 and fa cup winner in 2006 in 6 seasons? is finishing runner up last season a quantified success as well?

• La Nina

  17 Jan 10, 20:14

  Success in this case was last year's runner up position. Liverpool were only two points behind Man United and they claimed the scalps of both Man Utd and Chelsea. These events contributed to the fans expecting more even though Liverpool had a significant weaker squad compared to Man Utd, Chelsea, city and even tottenham.

• Medicated Oil

  17 Jan 10, 20:17

  I think no players would want to play to lose.

  But, the defensive tactics is not helping Liverpool to score goal and to win.

  Ah Ben need good players to deploy his tactics but his tactics also hinder the players in expressing themselves.

  That is why some of the players decided to leave.

  A point to note is that Ah Ben won his cup with Ah Hou's players.

  Ah Hou's players like Hyypia and Riise are much more reliable than Ah Ben's recruit.

  Ah Ben have basically caused his downfall with his lousy recruits and his kia see tactics and his stubbornness to change does not help also.

  It pained every one even other fans to see Liverpool play like shit and not doing anything to improve themself.

  They are just in the stage of self-destruction.

• Poignant

  17 Jan 10, 20:39

  even with determination and desire, the team wont make it, because that's a limited to what they can do on the field, the quality of the squad is lacking.

• brokenluv

  17 Jan 10, 23:08

  Quality should always be compensated with hardwork and i dont see that in the team now. Totally not playing with a purpose.

• zocoss

  17 Jan 10, 23:45

  Originally posted by La Nina:

  May i clarify something? Gareth Barry was never bought to unsettle Alonso. Rafa wanted to accomodate both of them in the team but limited transfer funds meant that he had to let either Mascherano or Alonso go. Mascherano at 25 is one of the top defensive midfielders in the world while Alonso himself is 29 and has always maintained his desire to return to Spain. Anyone in the right mind would let Alonso go since that was his wish and Rafa wanting to sell him only inspired him to gave his all in his last season. Seasons before that, Alonso was pretty much shit.

  I won't go into the debate of zonal marking vs man marking. Each system has its own pros and cons so its hard to decide which is better. And for fuck sake, people need to stop buying the lies concocted by the media. Sir Alex Ferguson rotated his team and the stats were published in the DailyMail. He was hailed as a genius even though Man Utd weren't getting results. Rafael Benitez rotated his team 2 seasons before that and he was called a fool who has absolutely no idea of what he is doing. Typical English hyprocrisy.

  Ngog was playing regular first team football for PSG and they were fuming when Liverpool bought him for just a mere 1.5m. He's young and learning his trade so kudos to you for writing him off early.

  Andriy Voronin was bought on a free transfer because Rafa did not have additional funds to sign another striker. He's sold recently for a 2m profit.

  Glen Johnson haven't even played a string of games for Liverpool and you are calling him a flop. Great. Then there's Insua. He cost Liverpool nothing considering he's brought up through the Academy. Attacking wise he was a huge improvement. Defensively, he should be doing better although i tend to agree that he is always ball watching. But no, he's not a transfer flop.

  Then there's Lucas. The media's scapegoat. Lucas at a mere 20 when he was captain of Gremio. He was the youngest winner of the Brazilian player of the year award. Liverpool fans booed him at his every touch and that can only shatter the confidence of someone at 20. But not Lucas. He built on his physique and silenced most liverpool fans including me. He was an attacking midfielder forced to play as a defensive one and defensive players hardly shine. Watch him play against Stoke and he was immense. Easily the Motm. But then again, he's Lucas Leiva. Global warming is probably his fault.

  
  Your post seems to have lots of misinformation... If anyone watched United's matches the last 3 yrs, They will notice that when Ferguson rotated his team, he usually does it with the midfielders only... and sometimes the strikers. The back four of Rio, Vidic, Evra and right-back position are hardly rotated.... Neville was there before his injury. Then Brown took over for long periods before his own injury... That meant Rafael step in and played there regularly. Injury to Rafael also meant O'Shea took over the position last season and made it his... And more time than less they got a good result.

  And are you clarifying something or distorting it? Gareth Barry was indeed one of the reasons that unsettled Alonso... It is well known that Pool was touting Alonso across Europe with the intention of raising funds to purchased Barry... Your "Rafa wanted to accommodate both of them in the team" is rather odd... From Juve to Arsenal clubs were keen on him but the fee prevented them from acting therefore Barry's deal also fall off and Alonso stayed back.

  And on Lucas... You said "Liverpool fans booed him at his every touch and that can only shatter the confidence of someone at 20. But not Lucas. He built on his physique and silenced most liverpool fans including me." 

  I don't think most Liverpool fans booed him at his every touch, they gave him lots of chances at the start but... you can only understand their feelings... And you sure he has silenced most liverpool fans?

  And also it was 4 points and not 2 as you mentioned last season....

   

• schi_zo

  18 Jan 10, 00:06

  To La Nina, you said 'Ngog has 1 goal every 2.25 games which is better than some established strikers like Bellamy and Eduardo.'

  How many games have Ngog played compared to Bellamy and Eduardo. By your theory, can i safely assume that Mame Biram Diouf has 1 goal every 2 games? This means he is much better than established players like eduardo and bellamy right? delusional.

• xingg

  18 Jan 10, 00:35

  *shakes head.

  typical *cocky man u fans bickering with liv fans.

  liv fans: just ignore those criticism.results will shut them up

  man u fans: stop being so cocky just because you're winning now.so yea.glory hunters.

  no point argueing over such stuff.just watch the game and enjoy. in the game of football,there will definately be times when a team win and lose.so what? it is suppose to be like this.

• Rooney9

  18 Jan 10, 00:36

  I think the players deserving to wear the liverpool jersey are Reina, Gerrard, Torres, Carragher, Benayoun and to a certain extent Kuyt. the rest are flops and misfits, who do not deserve to wear the jersey.