Bindippers demise

[john@staustell]

Am I the only one who doesn't want U***d and Liverpool to be in total utter shit quite yet.

I would prefer to win our first title against them properly rather than have them artificially weakened

But....I'll take any title if that's what it comes to

no you aint the only one mate. this is how i want it to go.

That's two of you then.

Fuck 'em I say.

[blues-clues]

Torres may be changing his tune

Demanding money to buy more players and insisting the only way Liverpool can rescue their season if to finish fourth. No threats yet but looks that way to me

http://fourfourtwo.com/news/england/46102/default.aspx

[Trautmann]

he shouldn't resign. he should be fired.

Interesting one. In an ordinary business if a middle manager performed badly after doing well for a few years then his manager, in accordance with that persons contract of employment, would start a disciplinary process to asses his competence and identify training needs or other issues that needed addressing. If after the process was completed the performance did not improve, the employee may be sacked on the basis of performance - no compensation just "we have explored all avenues open to us but you are still crap - off you go sunshine".

For senior managers who are critical to the performance of the business it is assumed that they are up to the job and the people who appointed them knew what they were doing. If they need an immediate improvement in performance and choose to do this by appointing someone else then they have little choice but to dismiss that person and compensate them for breaching their contract of employment. Just firing a senior officer of a business just doesn't happen, it is almost always done "by mutual consent" which means the employer and manager have reached an agreement over how much compensation will be paid. Unless Rafa has another job lined up he aint gonna walk away from that pot of dosh. [strike]This is football.[/strike]This is the premier league.

I agree that senior managers usually have a golden parachute in place. But the "mutual consent" you quote is a matter of etiquette more than reality. The performance of this manager could not be meeting expectations, and we have already heard hints of that from the boardroom. They may announce a mutual parting of the ways and thanks for all the hard work, but the essence of it will be he is ejected, and the parachute kicks in.

[Vhero]

Torres may be changing his tune

Demanding money to buy more players and insisting the only way Liverpool can rescue their season if to finish fourth. No threats yet but looks that way to me

http://fourfourtwo.com/news/england/46102/default.aspx

The problem is they are now at the moment a weaker side than us in depth and would need to probably spend in excess of 100+ million to transform into a title winning side. I honestly can't see them winning the title with anything less. The problem with that is obvious the owners would never pump that kind of cash into the club and Rafa would blow it on 5 Robbie Keanes

[blues-clues]

They are not trying to win the league just yet.

They have to finish 4th or a massive lump of cash disappears next year. What Torres is saying is that the owners need to splash cash now or the season is lost because they wont finish 4th. Torres is backing Benitez and asking the owners to to the same. I reckon while the ownership stays as it is there is no chance they will do that - pouring good money after bad as many posters have already said. Letting good players go and signing shit ones. Dilemma for the owners is that if they get rid of the Waiter then they will have to find money for the new manager. DO it now while the window is open or leave it to the summer when nobody will come because they are out of the CL and half the team want to leave.

Not our problem....thank fuck!

[Vhero]

They are not trying to win the league just yet.

They have to finish 4th or a massive lump of cash disappears next year. What Torres is saying is that the owners need to splash cash now or the season is lost because they wont finish 4th. Torres is backing Benitez and asking the owners to to the same. I reckon while the ownership stays as it is there is no chance they will do that - pouring good money after bad as many posters have already said. Letting good players go and signing shit ones. Dilemma for the owners is that if they get rid of the Waiter then they will have to find money for the new manager. DO it now while the window is open or leave it to the summer when nobody will come because they are out of the CL and half the team want to leave.

Not our problem....thank fuck!

Its great they are fucked as no europe this year and none next means they will be down so much money they cannot afford to buy new players its catch 22. It's why the top 4 has had to be so tight for so many years as once your out of the top 4 its gonna be impossible to get back in without some serious cash backing.

[kinkylola]

I thought it was not rafa who bought keane and that's the reason why he wouldn't play him. not his man. stupidly stubborn, keane, at that time was a consistant top forward year in, year out.

Anyway ... I thought the johnson injury was a big blow for lpool ... this is masive

[irblinx]

Torres out for 6 weeks, Benayoun for 4 weeks and Gerrard for 2 ;o)

Should all be back and probably new manager by time they come to our's though.

I rest my case, made of glass

[cdncityfan]

Many Liverpool fans obscene worship of Rafael Benitez is almost comic, especially as he has now inherited the fate of Gerard Houllier which brought him the job in the first place. Houllier himself won trophies in the beginning of his time at Liverpool, bought many from the European leagues to build his side and then went into decline, being dismissed for getting no closer to winning the English Premier League or being more competitive in Europe. That Liverpool are back in the Europa League/UEFA Cup is a nice touch to the portrait.
The problem of Rafa as a manager is not that he has failed to build a strong Liverpool team, but that he has failed to do so several times. Rafa tore apart Houllier's Liverpool, then tore apart the side he then built and has yet to find a strike partnership which is capable of delivering goals. Liverpool are more akin to a team in the bottom half of the table than one challenging for the Champions League places, utterly dependent on Gerrard and Torres, rather than having the supposed depth which is a clear reason for why the top four are more consistent and competitive than the rest of the pack.
It is even more amusing when you look at the amount of money he has spent and the number of players he has moved on. According to Liverpool fansite LFChistory.net, since 2004, Benitez has spent at least (as some fees were undisclosed) 228,976,000 pounds to acquire 56 players and has sold 66 players for at least 151,600,000. The fact that in that time he has not found one striker capable of pairing (or at least taking the place during injury) of Torres is amazing.
The honest truth is player-for-player, Liverpool are an inferior team to us, Spurs and possibly even Aston Villa. How the team performs on the pitch can make up for such deficiences, but even in Liverpool's last season, so many of their victories were desperate last minute goals not reflecting the performances of the teams on the pitch.
We can only hope Liverpool enjoy the Europa League this season as with Benitez, they may be seeing alot of it in the next few seasons...