beejay

No chance. The club needs unity now above all else and Kenny is one of the few who can achieve that. There won't be a permanent appointment until we have new owners

Kenny for sure. And he is exactly what we need now

Something had to give. Maybe we will gain some perspective now and pull together. Our club at all levels has been tearing itself apart for too long

Someone on TLW saying pay-off agreed and he's gone

Conor & Andre lift silverware http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/news/latest-news/coady-i-hope-glory-helps-us Not only that, there was an article in the Times world cup supplement yesterday w***ing all over Rooney but with a snippet mentioning that Rooney's "unbeatable" Schools goal-scoring record at u 11's had been beaten - by a little lad on Liverpool's books. His name's Gerrard as well but that's his 1st name. The future is bright if only we can find decent owners.....

This is one for SOS to jump all over. If Broughton is saying privately it will take 3 years to turn us around where does that leave his mission statement about a sale in months? And if our chairman is so close to Chelsea (who we're in direct competition with and who want to buy our best players) he's attending their Player of the Season Award and then makes comments about our best player should be leaving, then that's a conflict of ineterest and he should resign. It's bad enough having the worst owners on the planet slowly killing us but they seem to have brought in a guy to finish us off not save us. SOS should publically demand that he explains these comments

What? We need to get the message out loud & clear - the Echo & Times are doing exactly what we need at the moment, highlighting the black hole we are sinking into and putting the pressure on the b******s to sell. It will be RBS who get us out of this mess, they have to force them to sell and the Times, Echo etc are keeping the pressure on

I remember hearing at the time about all the assurances written into the offer yet when this was translated into the contracts they were non-binding. This included an initial £50m (ha f***in ha) set aside for transfers. Moores was stitched up good & proper but you also have to point the finger at all their expensive advisers, tw*ts.

Jack Rodwell? How did we foul up buying him (as the article alleges)? I've been in the Rafa-needs-to-go camp lately but got in a discussion at the pub last night with 2 other reds and found myself defending Rafa's record because the other guys were climbing into him. I've now persuaded myself that he should stay for another year

Story I heard is that the club think it is good business to sell, daft as it may sound

Whatever happens behind the scenes this summer, we are likely to see plenty of transfer activity. If Rafa stays he has to rebuild his authority and that means several players leaving, may be as many as 7 or 8. If he goes, any new manager will want to bring in new faces. If we are sold in time for new money to be available then next season's team could look a lot different from this year's. I have a bad feeling that, whoever is the manager, there will be one high-profile departure and it won't be Torres or Mascherano.

No quotes from O'Neill, just the chairman. It's all about compensation if you ask me. On both sides ie Rafa & O'Neill.

It's gone very quiet on the Rafa to Juve front hasn't it? No leaks from the various reported meetings with Broughton this week either. A return to dignified silence and steady progress behind the scenes perhaps

Before we all blame Purslow, Broughton et al, the strong indications were that they would keep faith with Rafa despite this plane crash season but he has cried wolf once too often and the trust has gone on both sides. He & his agent have been courting Juventus since Christmas let's not forget. He would have been given another opportunity to put things right but has chosen not to.

There comes a point when you question who he is fighting though. After Athens, he took on Hicks & Gillett and was 100% right to do so because of their broken promises which he highlighted for the 1st time. This is different ; the club are up for sale and the decision-makers at the moment are the management ie Purslow & Broughton. There is an argument to say that if he genuinely wants what's best for the club he has to work with these guys, not fight them or lay down criteria for him to stay.

There's a reason why he's been kept in the dark it seems to me. It's been a few weeks now since Broughton arrived on the scene and even at that stage it was more likely than not that we would be missing out on the champions league next year. They were also working on new ownership in 6-12 months rather than here & now. So we must have a contingency plan for the situation in which we find ourselves. I think they had every intention of keeping faith with Rafa, at least until the new owners are ensconsed, but his flirtation with Juventus has changed the landscape and now they are perfectly happy to see him go. Rafa's public sabre-rattling leading in to this meeting with Broughton and the club's silence can only lead to one outcome, there is no way the new chairman will be drawn into persuading him to stay by telling him anything new. Rafa's politics have done for him this time. I still think it's Rafa's choice though - either he backs down and is allowed to stay on Broughton's terms or he quits, because the club won't sack him.

All I know is that it's chinese-led, that's it but they are doing due diligence.

A chinese-led consortium are in due diligence now so I'm told. If it's them or DIC they will be picking the right moment, we are at ground zero now.

End of an era. He's gone that's for sure, so it's time to think about his successor. Would the board be that stupid to replace him with O'Neill? The wrong decision now and we are headed for the buffers big time.

Our bench was laughable last night but mainly due to injuries which throws up yet another f*ck-up in our plane crash season ie our medical team. IMO, our squad was decent enough to be 3rd or 4th at worst this season but due to a combination of factors we have massively under-achieved. If there is a single factor I would attribute to our shocking results it's one of Rafa's favourite axioms - mental strength. He spent much of his early years with us drilling the players into a system and mindset that meant if we took the lead it was game over. We have punched above our weight, especially in Europe, because of this cussedness and we took it to a different level last season when we won countless games with late, late goals by never giving up and believing we could still win whatever the odds. As contenders we also had our share of refereeing decisions (mainly sending off opponents) though nowhere near as many as the mancs. That instinct has disappeared down the plughole this year as we have found an amazing ability to lose from winning positions again & again & again through beach balls, a catalogue of awful refereeing decisions, through individual errors, collective panic attacks, injuries to key players etc etc etc. But mainly to our absence of team spirit, mental strength however you want to define it. Our craven away record speaks volumes for that plus the Riera outburst, the Torres tantrums, the Stevie sulks. The whole club has felt sorry for itself from pre-season all the way to last night. It needs a massive shake-up during the summer and a return to professionalism and taking responsibility on & off the pitch. A few new faces is a must but everyone one of them returning to the club for pre-season - players, management, staff - has to show a fresh attitude for next year or they should f*** right off

Those 3 have been my CM buys ever since January so great minds think alike and Rafa is one of them. Think we should try again with Silva who can operate on the left and in centre midfield. With a lot of sales,Rafa staying and new owners all that is achievable. But but but

The club has been destabilised, dysfunctional from pre-season it seems to me. Reina's words about levels of expectation before our 1st match resonated with defeatism because the manager & players knew they had given everything to over-achieve last year but still came up short and those levels of commitment & luck would be pretty impossible to reproduce given that the squad was weaker from the loss of Alonso. Promises of money being available came to nothing and the big signings to help us push on failed to materialise. A bad start put us on the back foot straight away and we have struggled ever since. The luck we enjoyed the previous year turned full circle and instead of winning games in the last minute or playing against 10 men ; instead we were conceding crucial goals at the death and having players sent off. In the background, as ever, has been the ownership crisis and the impression that nothing will improve while they are still around. The manager is only human and I think he has found it tough to lift himself yet alone the players this season. He has carried this club for a long time and he now does look to have run out of resources. As one of the journos remarked at one point, we have become an organisation beset with blame, where each of the constituents (manager/players/supporters) have their excuses. We are a club in limbo with little in the way of leadership, purpose or direction. Souness (& to a lesser extent, Riera) was right, we are drifting. Something major has to give, but it has to start from the top. If we go into next season with the same owners it doesn't matter who is the manager, we will still be on a downward spiral. It's even more depressing that Purslow's promise of new investment by now has come & gone with nothing to show for it. Not because there is no-one to buy us but due to Hicks acting the cowboy. Rather than debate the future of the manager we should just fast-forward to the end of July, open our eyes and if Gillett & Hicks are gone we can celebrate like we've won the title and look forward to a rejuvenated Liverpool FC.

1. Reduce the debt by at least £100m to pave the way for a new 3-4 year loan

It's a combination of all 3. We have to wait to see who blinks first

I was in row 10 and heard a few boos but it was muted and certainly not a big deal. The Birmingham fans were doing all the booing so most of us were hardly likely to join in. And by the way, there were also a few "Rafa, Rafael, Rafael Benitez" chants and they were loud with the majority joining in. The match-going fans are split at the moment, there's plenty saying he has to go and loads others who are still behind him. I sing his name, love the fella despite the fact he irritates the f*** out of me, but can see that this season he is looking very weary & is hurting. If RP is right and the club are looking to replace him with O'Neill then I remain very firmly in the Rafa camp. He is still our best bet if he is given some cash (that isn't taken away halfway through the transfer window) and returns from a good, long break with the resolve not to commit the same mistakes that have blighted this year. If Rafa does go, it needs to be a Mourinho or Capello to replace him otherwise any successor like O'Neill will soon lose the fans IMO because Rafa, like him or not, is a top manager who will do well elsewhere and we may soon learn to regret his departure.