mooks

Unless he's targeting a move to Everton

I was winding the old fella up, naturally He was crying out for it with his "I support the Liverpool manager" schtick

I thought Kenny was offered such a position and rejected it

Riley Cooper Excused from Team Activities to Seek Counseling for Recent Incident http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1725333-riley-cooper-excused-from-team-activities-to-seek-counseling-for-recent-incident?utm_source=cnn.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=editorial&hpt=hp_t2 The controversial saga involving Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Riley Cooper's unfortunate use of a racial slur at a Kenny Chesney concert took an interesting turn on Friday. According to a statement released on the Eagles' official website, Cooper has been excused from team activities to seek counseling for the incident: As we have said, Riley Cooper will be seeking counseling and we have excused him from all team activities. This is all new territory and we are going to evaluate this timetable every step of the way. He will meet with professionals provided by the Eagles during this period of time to better help him understand how his words have hurt so many, including his teammates. They're both terms of endearment in South America

Oh, just you wait ... I'm going to be accused of being a zoophiliac or something by the morning

Is right

Takes one to know one as they say

I meant the Second Coming ... you'd have to have been a space cowboy to have wanted Kenny sacked during his initial spell.

You packed a lot into that 12 months given that you wanted Souness, Rafa, Roy and Kenny sacked ...

Luis Suarez should pick Liverpool above Arsenal, says Ian Wright http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/23539678 By David Ornstein BBC Sport Luis Suarez should stay at Liverpool and turn down the chance to move to Arsenal, according to former Gunners striker Ian Wright. Liverpool have rejected two offers from Arsenal for the 26-year-old, who wants to play Champions League football. "I'd welcome him at Arsenal with open arms," Wright told BBC Sport. "But if I was Suarez, when you look at everything, it does seem strange he would want to go to Arsenal. I would give Liverpool another season." The Uruguay striker has spoken of his desire to leave Anfield despite only signing a new long-term contract in August 2012. He believes Arsenal's latest offer of £40m plus £1 triggered a clause in his contract that allows him to speak to suitors, but Liverpool dispute this and have no intention of selling until a £50m-plus valuation is met. While Liverpool have not played in the Champions League since 2009, Arsenal will feature in the competition for a 17th consecutive season this year. Reds captain Steven Gerrard ranks the Gunners among his side's rivals for a top-four finish and has questioned the sense in letting them recruit Suarez, who scored 30 goals in 44 games last season. "Gerrard is not someone who comes out and says things flippantly," said Wright, who scored 185 goals in 288 appearances for Arsenal and will co-host BBC Radio 5 live's football phone-in show 606 on Sundays with Kelly Cates from next season. "If you look at Arsenal - not won anything in eight years, just challenging for fourth place, not really any players there who will make him say 'I'm going to play with him and him' - Gerrard has got a point." Suarez is banned for the first six domestic matches of the new season as he completes a 10-game ban for biting Chelsea's Branislav Ivanovic. He was also suspended in 2011 after being found guilty of racially abusing Manchester United defender Patrice Evra. Liverpool boss Brendan Rodgers has reminded Suarez of the debt he feels the player owes the fans after two seasons of controversy - but Wright says this is the only reason Arsenal stand a chance of getting him. "Suarez is a world-class striker and if he didn't have all the baggage around him, I feel the Barcelonas, Real Madrids and Bayern Munichs would be sniffing around," said the ex-England international. "That's why I believe Arsenal should try to bring him in - because I feel it's the only time they could get someone like that. In another market, I don't think he'd even look at Arsenal." Arsenal's only summer signing to date is the free transfer of 20-year-old French forward Yaya Sanogo from Auxerre, and Wright thinks that even if they bring in Suarez, more big names need to follow. "We need to see something I've not seen Arsenal do for many years and that is compete to sign players that Manchester United would want, that Manchester City would want and that Chelsea would want," he said. "But they're running out of time and I don't think, at the moment, they've got the ability to attract those players because they haven't won anything in such a long time. This is why Arsenal are in serious trouble right now. "I would like to see them go as far as they can to get Suarez, but they can't just buy him and not replenish the rest of the team. I think they need a goalkeeper, two centre-halves, two full-backs - for both left-back and right-back positions - another midfielder and two strikers. "It doesn't make sense buying Suarez for that money and not backing it up with other signings of the same stature."

Excuse me? When did Reina give interviews to the press about his desire to leave the club? In fact when has Reina ever acted like a c*** period?

Just to respond to this seemingly rhetorical question, there are in fact powerful and cogent reasons for restricting players' rights of mobility. From a North American perspective all the major sports have drafts where young players are required to play for the drafting team for a period of about 3 years. For most of their career after that they can be 'traded' to another team without any input on their part. Given the obscene salaries these players make and the fact they can switch to a 'normal' job with complete freedom of mobility whenever they want to it makes a great deal of sense to me. The reason why we need somewhat more mobility and freedom of choice in football is because of the global and historical nature of the game. The NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL are all restricted to North America. The clubs are 'franchises' and there is no relegation or promotion - smaller teams are 'farm teams' for the major leagues. This system wouldn't work under FIFA - but please spare me the moralising over Premier League footballers' right to do whatever they want.

Suarez saga leads to regret over Reina's Liverpool exit http://espnfc.com/blog/_/name/espnfcunited/id/8176?cc=5901 Posted by Rory Smith This week, Pepe Reina left Liverpool. He was the club’s vice-captain, after the retirement of Jamie Carragher, one of its longest-serving players, and one of the most charismatic, influential members of its dressing room. He was the goalkeeper whose penalty saves took the club to the Champions League final of 2007, less than a year after similar heroics had won them the FA Cup. He had his own flag on the Kop, an image of his face contorted in joy, scrawled with the slogan: “No pasaran.” They shall not pass. This week, Luis Suarez did not leave Liverpool. He may still, of course – that particular mind-numbing transfer saga has some time left to run – but this week, in the interminable matter of the Uruguayan’s future, not much has changed. Many of the news updates have focused on things that he has not done: He has not handed in a transfer request; he has decided not to ask the Premier League to arbitrate on the meaning of the clause in his contract which triggered Arsenal’s brilliantly sarcastic second bid of £40,000,001. He has not gone on strike. He is, according to Liverpool, not for sale to a domestic rival. So all-consuming is the focus on his fate, though, so wretched is the prospect to Liverpool of his departure and so enthusing is the idea to Arsenal of his arrival, that even as nothing happened, the wrangle over Suarez still managed to cast such a shadow over Reina’s departure that it would have been easy to think the Spaniard was nothing more than a fringe player, squad filler, an afterthought. That is not the case. Indeed, in terms of how posterity will remember the two men – if, indeed, this is Suarez’s last summer at Anfield – then it is Reina who is of more significance. He has the medals, he has that victory against Chelsea, he has the fond place in Liverpudlian hearts. Suarez is the club’s best player, of course – that is not in doubt – and his loss would affect Liverpool’s future more keenly, but the sum total of his achievements in his two-and-a-half seasons on Merseyside is that he scored quite a lot of goals for quite a poor team. History’s perspective is often very different from our own. History will judge Reina as a more important player for Liverpool than Suarez. It is a shame, in that sense, that the goalkeeper slipped out of the door comparatively unnoticed. Suarez, when he goes, will attract far more column inches, far more opprobrium, far more slavering outrage and far more trembling fear. It is a shame, too, because the circumstances of his departure are instructive. There was Brendan Rodgers’s blatant mistruth upon the signing of Simon Mignolet – insisting the two would compete for a place – and the subsequent clarification of what the truth was: that Reina had asked for a move, should Barcelona seek his signature, and that Liverpool decided at that point that they needed to sign a replacement. All of that is understandable. That is how all clubs work; they rarely make their intentions plain until they know exactly what the consequences will be. Even then, they may choose to omit salient facts; in Liverpool’s case, that Reina had not been performing to his best – a bugbear, here: the club had not adequately replaced Xavi Valero, his trusted goalkeeping coach, with whom he will work once more at Napoli, thus effectively allowing him to stagnate – and was not justifying his £110,000-a-week wages. Fenway Sports Group, the club’s owner, wanted a more economical goalkeeping option. Reina did ask to go to Barcelona if they came in, but the decision had long been made for him. Liverpool wanted rid. Reina attempted to get that version of the story out there, publishing a commendably frank open letter on his website, thanking Liverpool for the privilege of playing for the club and explaining to the fans that he was “disappointed” at the owners’ decision to “loan me to Napoli without telling me first; I thought I deserved better than that.” That is not an attempt to judge which version of the story is correct: truth is a fluid concept, and even Reina and Liverpool may not have a complete picture of what actually happened, what decisions were taken, by whom and when. But what we do know is that Reina was aware of what the club had said and took swift action to make sure his image was not tarnished in retrospect by allegations he considered unfair. This is the second significant element of Reina’s departure: that clubs and players, in the course of a transfer, are engaged in a war for control of information, to make sure their fans, or former fans, believe they have acted correctly. Supporters’ default position – though it is hard to speak of them as one homogenous mass – is Panglossian: they believe their clubs act in the best possible way for the best possible reasons. That is not always the case; pretending it is, though, is a powerful tool. By far the most interesting lesson of Reina’s exit, though, has to do with the concept of loyalty. It is convenient that the Spaniard left, accusing Liverpool of engineering his departure, just a few days after Rodgers tried to explain to Suarez that he owed the club a debt of loyalty. The irony is clear: do as we say, not as we do. If a club – any club – wants a player out, they get him out. They do not think about all the things he has done for them; suddenly, the contract that binds footballer to football team is a mere business arrangement, to be cancelled or amended as they see fit. When a player wants to go, though, the view is very different: They owe the club, they should love the shirt, they should be grateful for the chance we gave them and the love they received. This is not just ad hoc moralising. It strikes at the heart of how we see players. They, understandably, see themselves as workers, and as humans, and as such they feel they are entitled to take their services elsewhere if they decide they wish to do so. The rest of us can do that – whether we have contracts or not – and our employers are unlikely to be richly compensated when we do. Why shouldn't they? Because, from a club’s point of view, they are chattel. That was how they were seen in the early days of the game. In the era of maximum wages, players were not even entitled to leave a club if their contracts were not renewed and their salaries not paid. Though the power shift between the two parties is almost total now, that sense still lingers. Players do not work for clubs. They belong to them. This is absurdly old-fashioned. It has been quite refreshing that, throughout the sagas over Suarez and Gareth Bale, nobody has cried about either man being “tapped up,” or illegally approached by a suitor. Of course they have been. Everyone is, all the time. Players know their market worth and how much they might stand to earn elsewhere. That is a basic right. You have it; so should they. The idea that they might not is slowly but surely being eroded; everyone is being altogether more adult about it than they used to be (mainly because even football clubs are not quite that hypocritical, they’re all approaching players all the time). The logical next step is to assume that, just as you working for your employer is a mutually beneficial deal – they pay you in exchange for your services; nobody, except in certain circumstances, owes anyone anything, as long as that arrangement remains in place – so is the relationship between a player and a club. Neither one owes anyone any loyalty. If we understand that, then the information war comes to an end. We can simply thank them for their service, their help and their time, and wave them on their way.

Is "negrito" on the list?

Hardly - I am simply responding on the topic that's being discussed. If you asked me about Sturridge or Coutinho or the way Johnson and Gerrard stayed healthy through the season or the general way Rodgers has conducted himself in club affairs I would be very positive and you would accuse me of being determined to find the positive no matter what. I disagree with the way he has handled Skrtel. You say I am talking nonsense - I say you are talking in antiquarian terms about "dropping" players and treating half a season as friendlies. The modern game is a squad game and (IMO) a modern manager should handle the squad accordingly. Unless the player has truly lost their abilities or the manager is sending a message to a player with disciplinary problems.

Not really - it's all one package. Treating a player as though he is a million miles from the first team both reduces their value and, in the vast majority of cases (including this one) is a huge overreaction to a run of poor form that all players go through. I guess we'll see how well Martin does at his new club ...

Okay, then why did Skrtel, our defender of the season in 2011-12, perform so badly under Rodgers? I, for one, don't believe he became a poor player overnight.

I said loaning out Skrtel and Reina could be said to putting the club's interests ahead of his own ... Ideally the two are aligned but not always. Spending for the short-term may benefit a manager but not the club (David O'Nearly at Leeds, for example). Exactly what I said

It started with m and rhymed with gooks as far as I recall. Yours?

Fair enough. None of us are entirely objective when it comes to the club and the individuals involved. But also to be fair to me I said well before the end of last season that BR had done enough to get another season in charge. And when we're realistically assessing where Rodgers is at over the next few months we have to keep in mind that he is in his second year of a three year contract. Another season like last and he will be history with FSG. In that sense, he could be said to be putting the interests of the club ahead of his own agenda by loaning out players like Skrtel and Reina. He's not a bad guy in any sense - I just continue to have doubts about his ability at the highest level.

Pretty desperate? Go ahead and point me to your more reliable source. I'd really appreciate it especially given that I don't have more than a few minutes to do google searches. And come to think of it I would be most obliged if you could point me to the posts I made last season that blurred the lines between supporting Liverpool and supporting Rafa - or was that just a desperate dig at me? I've actually admired DH since the old K**talk days over a decade ago when he was one of the staunchest supporters of Houllier. He talked a lot of sense back then. I would say he's getting some things right and struggling in other areas. If that justifies a witch-hunt then burn me at the stakes ...

It's called 'flexibility'

A Rodgers hate-fest? Since when does pointing out some weaknesses become a hate-fest? You're right, you do have some crazy notions. I don't believe it. But that's the only figure I've seen reported. And I do believe we paid a loan fee that was more than nominal.

I'm saying that is a factor that cannot be ignored. It is far from the first priority. That is exactly what I was implying. What else do you understand by Liverpool "promising a £5 million fee AND to cover all salary and relocation costs"?

Ha! I've never seen Gerrard the same way since the first Chavski flirtation, let alone the second. But then I had absolutely idolised him ever since he broke into the team so realistically there's no way he would get back on that pedestal.