goodrobotusses

Forgot about that clueless idiot. I wonder if Kaizer is on Twitter too. Him, Rashid and Ant could have an @'ing troll-fest.

But few were for massive fees. We were taking fairly low-cost risks on lesser known players from abroad. Many didn't work out – it happens. I'd rather spend £3.5m on Mark Gonzalez or even £11.5m on Ryan Babel (and I am no Babel fan) than £20m on Stewart Downing. At least the former two were considered to have potential. The world and his dog knew that Downing had already hit his (very low) glass ceiling when it comes to ability/performance. Riera at £6m was Downing's Spanish equivalent. Better technically and more intelligent too, albeit slower with it.

Aye. Wasn't getting beaten by Red Star Belgrade in 1973 the catalyst for implementing pass and move in the first place? Should have just kept the faith. None of this learning and adapting nonsense.

Someone should just tell FSG to forgo transfers this summer, then. They need to buy the '70s for the club instead.

I don't have an opinion on Comolli one way or the other yet. He bought some (eventually) excellent players at Spurs, he bought some s**** players at Spurs. A journo on Twitter the other day did comment that St Etienne's fortunes have turned around markedly since he left, but I'm not going to dismiss the guy as a complete hack based on that. He does come across a little as somebody who can talk his way into people's good graces, but a director of football, more than anyone, needs time to implement their scouting networks, etc. My contention is that Comolli's expertise – genuine or otherwise – has been wasted by limiting his remit to signing British-based players. What's the point in having an international scouting expert if that's the idea? Comolli might yet turn out to be a massive fraud (and I know there are many in the game who seem to suspect him of being as much), but he might just as much turn out to be a godsend in terms of unearthing gems and providing continuity down the years. Pared with an outward-looking, modern coach/philosophy, he might yet prove to be a huge asset. Or, at least I hope so. No-one can honestly say either way, though.

They've got a deal in place to sign Marco Reus in the summer and Gotze has signed a new contract. Never say never, but I think any club would have to pull out all the stops to get him (and probably should). Rafa said recently that he's really interested in this Dortmund team. Klopp seems to be like Rafa in terms of Sacchi-influenced high-pressure football, but Dortmund seem more attacking than either Benitez's Valencia or Liverpool teams were. Klopp's a bit of a mental on the touchline too, and apparently plays a bit more of a father figure role with Dortmund's young squad (one for the 'Rafa's a crap man-manager' crowd). They've done well to get their season back on track after a shaky start (post-Sahin teething problems?).

http://frenchfootballweekly.com/2012/03/29/marseille-surrender-to-bayerns-class/ They're ninth in the table: 20 points off the top, 10 points clear of the relegation zone.

Never fancied Deschamps when his name has been brought up before. Has done well at most places (this season aside, when Marseille have been a disaster), but I'm just not sure about him.

OK, not moot. Batting names back and forth based on their CV's relative merits is boring, not moot.

This CV argument is pretty moot. Sven-Goran Eriksson has a great CV. Wouldn't want him though. Arsene Wenger had a passable CV when he was hired by Arsenal. Wasn't a terrible appointment by any means.

Don't know if this is taken from my post, Wayne, but if so, please read the rest of it. Caveats, yes, but bottom line is that he f***ed up badly at Inter.

Also true. I think another thing worth considering when people 'justify' Rafa's actions is what they're faced with when they read about him in the press: sniping c**** who try to portray one of the best tacticians on the planet as a joke. Cause/effect.

I agree with this. He's a brilliant man and a world-class coach, but he made mistakes, as anyone would. The good he did far outweighs the bad, but I don't think he's faultless.

Rafa did c**k up at Inter. He let his ego and his feud with Mourinho get the better of him. I don't doubt he had promises broken about funds for recruitment (this was the point when Inter started their FFP-inspired period of austerity), but he basically tried to flip Mourinho's team from a deep-lying counter-attacking team into a high-pressing attacking team overnight. It was almost as if he said, "I'm going to do what Mourinho did, but in style." Some of it worked – Samuel Eto'o looked like a world-class attacker again, rather than a Kuyt-esque defensive winger – but their ageing, slow defence fell to pieces quite quickly. That first CL game against Spurs summed Rafa's Inter up: really aggressive and impressive first half, fell to bits under pressure in the second half. The balance was all wrong. He might have been able to turn it around with time and funds, but he should have been more pragmatic about what he had to work with. There were rumours that he'd gone a bit Clough and had references to Mourinho's CL win removed from the training ground. I don't know if that's true, but if it was, I doubt it would have helped relations with a squad that was 99% Mourinho's boys. Think he was on a bit of a hiding to nothing nonetheless. Mourinho has a bit of a scorched Earth policy when he leaves clubs. He gets everything out of players in their peak years (and rarely rotates) and tends to leave at just the right moment, with the tide about to turn. His tendency to keep texting players after he's left doesn't help his successors either.

Ha! Sorry, Saurez. My brain is Luis Enrique-sized toady.

That's a lovely block of text there. A veritable word skyscraper.

Playing him at DM is both a massive waste of talent and a massive risk to the team when things start to go awry in attack and he starts wandering. He needs to be told that he isn't a central midfielder. Or at least that he's a world class attacking midfielder but an average CM.

The bit before the dive was brilliant play. I was like, "Bloody hell, Andy!" And then he fell over. And spent the rest of the game being Andy Carroll.

If Rafa had got exactly who he wanted after Alonso left (Jovetic, Aquilani) we'd have had 'possibilities' and tinkered to suit the opposition/rotation game-by-game.

Again, Suarez. Did I miss a meeting?

Suarez. Anyway, just picking up on a few of the (fairly tedious) arguments that have been doing the rounds over the last pages. With respect to the fact that – as stated – there isn't a vacancy at the club yet, both Capello and Van Gaal have better CVs than Rafa, but I wouldn't want them either. Capello is a great manager but we'd likely play football even more turgid than the latter days of Houllier. Results are the most important thing, obviously, but if we're playing Champ Man and indulging ourselves in flights of thought for now, I'd prefer to think about coaches who'd make us worth watching at least some of the time. (NOTE: Capello's Roma were alright, mind.) Van Gaal is just player upset waiting to happen on a nuclear scale. He might (MIGHT) do OK for a bit, but the man is a massive c**k (in the figurative, not literal Hodgson's-member sense). We can be all hard-headed and say, "Well, f*** the players' happiness – it's what they deserve/need," and that would be correct to a certain extent. Just not a Van Gaal-extent.

I agree with this. People here will generally say that Rafa got treated like muck by the media (and he did), yet are a bit more willing to buy into the narrative that AVB is a myth based on a few months in the Chelsea snakepit. I think Benitez would fail there too. For what it's worth, Villas-Boas' Chelsea record is practically identical to Mancini's over the same period at City.

Disclaimer: I don't think Guardiola would come to Liverpool this summer because I think he'll probably stay at Barcelona for another season. And regardless, most theories are that he is planning to take a break from the game before he takes his next post. However, Guardiola made a point in his post-Barcelona playing career of compounding people with his choice of clubs. Most people in the press here assume he'll just go to a Chelsea, a City or a United (or a Milan, Juventus, etc). Don't be so certain though. Unlike Mourinho, I don't think he'd shy away from a real challenge. He seems to be an interesting character and in the right circumstances I think he'd be interested in us. But not right now, in my opinion.

Rafa is brilliant. Love the man to bits, felt he was treated by dirt – both by our hierarchy and the press in this country. He shouldn't come back though. We need a fresh start. There are players at the club who had probably become quite jaded with Rafa and his methods by the end of his time here. There are fans who had stopped believing in him and were completely against him in some cases. Those things will not have changed. We – club and fans – need to stop looking backwards all the time. Romance is lovely and all, and with a man of Rafa's talent there is more than just romance being offered, yes. But there are other things that would make his appointment divisive and potentially undermine us from the off. A fresh start is what's needed with a progressive, modern coach at the helm. We can debate the whos and whys at length should Kenny depart in the summer – I have names in mind that I'll keep to myself until that day comes – but I don't think we should succumb to nostalgia again. It clouds everything.

Saw that this morning. Obviously difficult to know the wider context of what he was saying but I really cringed at that.