As silly season gets into overdrive, most Liverpool fans have their attention split between our world cup stars and the apparent pavement vomit that now best describes Liverpool Football Club. I can’t help myself focusing on the void that lays in front of our futures.
Walking past Anfield now I would half expect a scene from Escape from New York. A car sits on fire in the street, dirty faced kids cower in the allyways, in the brightly lit Anfield offices four shadowy figures sit around a table and discuss how they can best syphon the remaining life blood of the surrounding peoples souls…
Well, I digress, maybe things aren’t that hopeless but still… To many red blooded fans, this summer looks to be one of foreboding and doom. Is this promising but directionless team on the verge of being broken up for a credit rating? Will King Kenny come charging in with the LIght Brigade and deliver us from evil? It all remains to be seen and this is what makes it so hard.
A lot seems to depend on the would-be manager. The way I see it, if Roy Hodgson is appointed it shows the board lack ambition, it shows they don’t listen to the fans, it shows they want an ‘easy’ ride and most of all it shows we have as less money than we ever imagined.
While I completely respect Roy Hodgson, his CV pales in comparison to Benitez’s, if the owners were really expecting a sale soon, would they act on Benitez position? Paying out millions when they were about to see the back of him? It seems to me as though Rafa was the one fighting for the people in the boardroom. Rafa only cared about one thing, and that was the football. I’m delighted he ended up at Internazionale, I hope he proves just how good he is when he finally has the money to spend he always craved. If Hodgson is appointed, I would suspect the reason is he will do as he is told; work on a budget and befriend the media. I like Roy, but I don’t think he’s the man for the job.
The next leading candidate is Kenny Dalglish. A controversial choice it may seem, but if the board were savvy enough, they would make the appointment. Dalglish seems to be seen as some sort of Liverbird crested Ché Guevara. Many have this fantasy of The King coming in and making sweeping changes on and off the pitch. I can’t imagine his appointment would have that dramatic an affect while things off the pitch stay as they are.
Dalglish would be restricted in the transfer market while needing to mould his own team, he would have massive expectation placed on him and at the same time he will need to convince Benitez’s loyal players that he is the man for them. The one thing he definitely would bring, is complete fan loyalty. If the board gave Kenny the job, then the fans wouldn’t say a word against him, well, for a season or two anyway. Maybe the board are scared of what he could become? He really could become the Red Ché; loyal public support and a good cause to fight for.
Liverpool fans seem aimless at the moment, we don’t know what to expect, and because of that we have no expectations. Will the club be broken up? If so, expect no more than Europa League football for the foreseeable future. Will the club be sold to a rich yet savvy businessman who’ll appoint Dalglish? If so, expect a huge resurgence in support and expectation.
It’s hard to even look a week ahead in Liverpool’s future, I love speculating on ‘what ifs’, but now I’m scared. I feel like we’re teetering on the edge here and we’ve got one last shot to turn it around.
We’ve reached the fork in the road, down one path is the dark woods full of things that go bump in the night and bureaucratic moneymen, you know who I’m talking about *cough Purslow/Broughton cough*. Down the other path is the green field with the goals set up, just waiting for you to run on and enjoy what we love about football, the game itself.
I might be too old for fairy-tales but the goings on at this club border on make believe, I just hope this one has a happy ending.
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Football FanCast writer Oscar Pye-Jeary documents his time in South Africa following England in the 2010 World Cup. (England v USA).
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I totally agree with 2/3 of what you’ve said.
I agree with what you say about Roy Hodgson, I agree that the board/owners ver obviously don’t give a toss about the fans but I will never agree with you about Rafa Benitez!who, in my opinion, is the most stubborn, arrogant unliverpool-like manager we ever had! You talk like he was never given a penny, the man spent the guts of £250m on mostly dross! and don’t give me the gross& nett crap, most of the money he recouped was from selling the crap that HE bought, taking huge hits in the process! So, here’s the thing, he’s gone, get over it and start using this forum to champion king Kenny to take the reins, short-term, to steady the ship and rally the players
That about sums it up fella. Who knows what will happen. Blogs are good fun spouting ‘endless doom’ to ‘everythings fine at the club’ and all things in between. It’s the papers (fed with info from purslow and rent boy broughton) that are the poison. Our agenda as fans with a love for the club is it’s well being. The papers are anti rafa, anti lfc and spouting rubbish to add to our demise. Let’s just hope it’s good news in the end hey?
I think you’d be hard pressed to find a non-stubborn manager in the game today. Especially if you look at Liverpool’s past managers, where all stubborn.
I don’t know how you can claim Rafa bought mostly dross though. The majority of the dross you’re talking about are most likely <6m players. It's very hard to buy great quality at that price. His bigger signings, Torres, Kuyt (like him or love him he's still been successful statistically), Alonso, Mascherano, Reina, Agger have all been hits and increased dramatically in value since arriving.
The main problem was expectation. It's well documented that we've been unable to compete with wage and budget compared to other teams. Last season was a disaster yes, but last summer there was barely a bad word to be said about Rafa after Liverpool routed some of the biggest names in Europe.
Steve mcauley you are the man respect ! this is what we need more of all you liverpool fans read his email the man is spot on nice one steve
chris severs arsenal have not spent out big money and they have some very very good players you do not have to spend millions on players if your scouting system is working properly this club always looked for players with talent and we bought them on the cheep and brought them through the reserves all these multi millon pound players are out there waiting to be discovered well before we have to lash out millions for them so all the shite about 6 millon pound players sums up football today and if i am paying 6 million for a player i expect him to be decent who can pass a ball control a ball head a ball and half of the dross rafa bought couldnt do that so whos fault is that chris the player the club or the manager who bought them !
to chris severs- you just proved my point mate! all the players you mention and i agree are class (except kuyt) cost a total of around £70m, so out of £250m leaves £180m of crap
A dave dont think it is the right time to post about shooting people do you mate !
couldn’t agree more albey! a good manager can spot talent and develope them into multi-million pound stars, such as anelka and cesc to mention just 2, rafa scoured brazil and found lucas! i rest my case
LFC are not staring into oblivion. LFC are IN oblivion staring out!
Furthermore, most people in the world will soon be facing oblivion themselves under the bankrupt capitalist system so the problems faced by LFC (or any other football team) will pale into relative insignificance.
keep taking the tablets bombardier
To albey,
I don’t think Arsenal have won a thing since Rafa came to England so they’re hardly a model for sucess in the ‘Abramovich era’. They’re a good financial model for success but they’ve failed to win a trophy since 2004.
Steve, you talk as though Rafa was given £250m to spend in a budget. It’s not Footie Manager mate, you make gambles and you have to wheel and deal. Rafa has had to do that, his sales have been as important as his buys.
I guess it comes down to a matter of opinion but in my eyes Rafa transformed Liverpool from a UEFA cup regulars to Europes number one ranked team for over a year. (That last bit was fact, of course).
Last season as I’ve said was terrible but before that, the achievments made could not have been made with £180m of dross. 2 Champions league finals, a semi final, an FA Cup win, 2nd place finish, broke various scoring/clean sheet records in his time. Notched up some famous wins at Old Trafford, Bernabeau and the Camp Nou. I’m sorry but I could never agree his transfer record was terrible. That’s media spin and you’ve bought it.
chris we weren’t eluding to what arsenal had won, we were comparing transfer success in terms of judging talent.
as for your other points, cup comps require a certain amount of good fortune, of which we had more than our fair share in ’05, that team also had, in case you had forgotten, only TWO of rafa’s men! as for the FA cup that SG won after the hammers out-played us for most of the game, well that just takes me back to my point about cup comps and a bit of luck.
yes he took us to no1 rank for over a year, but where did he leave us? 7th! and a laughing stock!
he even compounded our embarrassment by listing the community shield among his achievements, how sad is that? i don’t believe i’ve bought into media spin. liverpool were once the dominant side in europe, sweeping aside all in their path, it seems you are happy with the odd great day out like you mentioned above, you may be content with mediocrity thats fine. however, i do think rafa left us with a decent first team and with the right man at the helm (ie king kenny) with the balls to try to win instead of trying to avoid defeat and able to man-manage properly in order to get the best out of his players, then i really don’t think we are really that far from challenging!
What good is talent if you don’t win anything though? Arsenal flatter to deceive.
You make your own luck in football, you should know that. To put Rafa’s successes down to luck seems somewhat simplistic. You forget that West Ham scored an incredibly lucky 3rd goal as well as a dodgy one in the 1st half. We’ve also had our fair share of bad luck in the champions league too. We outplayed Milan in 07′ and still ended up losers so that evens out Istanbul.
We’re certainly not a laughing stock because of Rafa mate, we’re a laughing stock because of the way we’re run from the top, it’s a disgrace.
That’s why I worry for Kenny. If he’s got to sell to buy like Rafa, how well can he actually do? If we keep hold of Torres we could still do well, but challenging for the league will be out of the question if he has to deal with his hands tied. Unfortunately that doesn’t look like being the case.
I only hope for the clubs sake that new and sensible owners come in, otherwise we’re due for more of the same.
To Mr McCauley, firstly were you at Ruskin College in 1997/98? Now on to LFC, yes we were once kings of all we saw but that goes back to King Kenny’s days. Since then we’ve had Sourpuss, Evans, Ged and Rafa Benitez, of all those Rafa has achieved the most the CL counts more than a League and UEFA Cup put together. He finished 2nd in08/09 then was promised £20 mill plus sales WHOOPS, yet another lie. The players he bought were risky purchases anything under £10 million is a risk nowadays. And he gained profits or broke even on most of them, he lost on Morientes, Pennant, Keane and I don’t recall who else at the moment (I’m sure there are others). However look at Ferguson Ralph Milne William Prunier, Massimo Taibi, Eric Djembs Djemba, Kleberson, Diego Forlan, Zoran Tosic, Anderson and I could go on. I had some issues with Rafa, not least his continual use of Lucas as a defensive midfielder (he looked so much more of a player when he was a box to box midfielder). But I’m now hearing people talking about Murphy coming back!!! WTF Murphy could at times do something brilliant but then he could give the ball away worse than you or me, Rafa Benitez until 09/10 had done at least well but the injuries proved the depth in the suad was weak. I don’t blame Rafa for that, I blame the yanks for the lack of money and Parry for screwing up deals like Simoa and Dani Alves before that.
andy, i respect your opinion even though i don’t agree with it. i really don’t think comparing us with the dominant team of the 90’s & 00’s holds much water mate. as for saying CL counts more than a league well i think you’ll find that 99.9% of Lfc fans would disagree, i for one would give up a CL to prevent slur alex knocking us off our perch!
we could argue day and night about the job rafa done, so i say let’s move on and concentrate on getting dumb & dumber out and getting our beloved club back on track.
as for the college question, had i attended college, i would probably be on a rugby site. ONLY JOKING BEFORE YOU ALL GET OUT OF YOUR PRAMS!
hey Mcauley – yes you would love to change the argument once you start losing it. £250 million my foot. If you dont understand NET spend by now go and learn you 3r’s. The man has had less than £2 million over the last 2 summers to compete in the richeest league on the planet. U morons keep saying istanbul was a fluke. How about going to the final again. Or beating Barca, Juventus, Inter (home and away) and Real madrid (home and away including 4-0)? How about getting us ranked no1 in Europe? If istabul was lucky then CL 07 was unlucky. As for talking about Arsenal, please tell me what they have won in the last SIX years? Liverpool were dominanat when they were breaking transfer records you fool. Your arguments are so childish is unbelievable. One bad season and you fairies start crying. Well guess what you guys got your wish. As many of us have been warning for some time, no world class manager will touch LFC with a barge pole. Good luck with good old ROy who’s best achievement was NEARLY winning the micky mouse cup and getting Blackburn relegated.
abdul stop talkin b****ks! you really do have rose-tinted glasses on, you p***k! net spend is absolutely irrelevent, you can talk about £2m all you like, the facts are he spent £20m on sicknote and £18m on glenn johnson that’s 38m in my book so shove that up your 3r’s! and the name’s steve dickhead!
and i didn’t say the CL was a fluke, i said cup comps required a slice of luck which we got! i accept benitez is a good continental manager, proved by your mention of barca, juve, inter and madrid, shame the tactical genius couldn’t mastermind wins against pompey or stoke or birmingham, you know, those giants of world football! and, by the way, if you’d been reading these sites, you’d have noticed that i have been saying for 3 years that rafa wasn’t the man for Lfc
chris, re your comment (13) i did not put rafa’s success down to luck, i said cup comps require a bit, which we got. but, like i said earlier, i think he has left us some very good players and, as you pointed out, we have had some excellent days. believe it or not, i am seeing the glass half full!
if kenny gets the job, sells some deadwood, gets enough for maybe 2 quality signings then i think, with his management style and ability to inspire the lads, we could turn this around! the lads have proved that, on their day, they are a match for anyone and better than most, unfortunately there was no consistency, i believe kenny is the man to change that.
sorry mate, don’t think we’ll ever see eye to eye but it doesn’t mean we don’t love Lfc, we just have different views on how to get the best for it
Hey Mcauley- your simplistic view is embarrasing. Glen johnson is so bad that he is in the national English squad in the world cup. Aquilani was injured. guess what it happens. Alot of people were saying Nani was not that good and now look what he is doing at OT after THREE seasons. Aquilani showed some of his qualities near the end of last season. You fans with a primary school playground mentality want instant results. A mentality which would have seen many foreign players leave after a poor first season. So we lost against some poor opposition. It was a poor season in the league and CL. No one is denying that. A season with an abnormal number of injuries. But you playstation fans cannot have that. if Rafa had another poor season then we would ask for his removal. Not make knee-jerk reactions. So please choose his replacement and see what they can do with no money to spend against the likes of Chelski and City. Not to mention the likes of Spurs who are spending heavily.