Mikey

Berbatov for £30M+ USA USA USA

Please try and keep up Kuyt = all workrate and little ability Pennant = decent ability, good crossing, mentally weak, bit of a poof. Give Pennant Kuyts workrate and you'd have a better player than both of them currently are, OK? NEITHER of them are currently good enough.

Why? Beckham's finished and Bentley aint exactly World class RM in 4-4-2!

At what apart from running prodigous distances? If you take away Kuyts workrate he's worse than Pennant, if Pennant had Kuyt's workrate he'd be playing for England. To clarify though I'm underwhelmed by them both.

To be fair Rafa's spent major money over the last few seasons transfer windows and bought some quality players - it is no excuse to moan about not spending enough, its now down to how he uses them. Reina, Skrtel, Agger, Dossena, Lucas, Alonso, Mascherano, Babel, Kuyt, Keane, Torres, - all cost serious money. And he inherited possibly the best footballer in Europe as well.

Thats a massive change for a start playing a defensive midfielder in the link striker position, we also had a striker playing on the left when the player who filled that position last season was sat on the bench forn the whole match. Surely anyone can see that the only change should have been Keane in Gerrards place? And if we're gonna play 4-4-2 then Pennant on the right is a better option than Kuyt.

Replacing Torres after 20 minutes with an untried youngster when you have a Dutch international striker sat on his @rse for the whole match seems strange anytime. Unless that Dutchman is Kuyt!

How much will we have spent by the end of this transfer window? Over £40M if we buy Riera so its actually a luxury we currently do have! Its not always right to bleat on about "Its not fair because United and Chelsea have more money than us" - sometimes its about which players you buy with the money and how you utilise them. Chelsea bought 3 wide players and used them in their best positions to great effect, we had £30M worth of STRIKERS playing wide for us at Villa, if we wanted wide players then why didn't we just buy them and play them there?

No-one mentioned Rafa being sacked until you just did, the point I replied to was the assertion that Rafa's record in the PL was beyond question - which it most certainly isn't. Houllier got loads of stick, and rightly so, for playing players out of position and buying poorly especially the Diouff, Diao, Cheyrou fiasco which ultimately cost him his job. Rafa plays as many players out of position, if not more, and has spent over £100M since he arrived here on a side that was comfortably in the top 4 in the PL and produced a side that is no nearer improving its league standing. His record in the CL is way beyond question.

By far the most successful team in the PL have won all of their titles by setting out to batter everyone home and away, it doesn't matter so much if Wigan score in the last minute if you're already 4 up. Chelsea won their titles by being more negative but they still played in a more attacking way than we did and the players that made the difference for them were, Robben, Duff and Cole - genuine wide, flair players playing in their best positions.

So the net result after 4 years and spending over £100M is that Rafa's record in the PL MIGHT be slightly better than the man who was sacked because his record wasn't good enough?

And why are we employing yet another new system after finding one that worked so f***ing well the 2nd half of last season?

So did Houlliers so why did we replace him with Rafa?

Your opinion mate but if everything you post is true then what exactly did he do that was "more than his job"? I personally think he plays in a safety zone around our defenders - picking the ball up off a CB, passing it to a FB, getting it back and passing it to the other FB. Easy, safe passes that look great when its posted about his 80+% pass completion rate. Masch yesterday tried to change the game, he went the extra yards to try and win that game in the 2nd half and Alonso didn't for me.

I would seriously question this statement. And as the third biggest spender in the PL we actually are one of those teams that establish superiority by buying the best players!

Knowing Rafa's fetish for square pegs and round holes Quaresma probably didn't fancy playing alongside Mascherano in the centre! And a bosman sicknote doesn't really count Now you've done it, MFletcher is gonna be really mad with you!

I thought Dossena was pretty good to be honest, caught out defensively a couple of times but got up and down all day and made an impression as an attacking force.

What did Alonso do that was "slightly more" than his job exactly?

I've got no idea, is it related to penis size?

Its late, I'm tired. Bosingwa was announced as signing for Chelsea well before the end of June as all the details were in place. Dossena wasn't because if memory serves he hadn't actually passed his full medical and therefore all the details weren't in place. FWIW I couldn't give a rats @rse about what you think about my arguement. Regarding the Barry saga dragging on I would call it a huge embarassment to Liverpool football club, a fiasco, a farceetc, etc HTH

From when it was announced that we had made an approach for Dossena, which was before the Italian squad for Euro 08 was announced, until he signed took well over 3 weeks. If that aint the very definition of dragging on then I don't know what is.

Top, top quality from Thommo there, brings tears to my eyes seeing the love that man holds for our club! Can I just say that as an Out Of Towner I want the new ground so I can take my 15 year old Son to 'Anfield' to see the team that we both love play football more often. I'd also like Kaka to play behind Torres and it would help with that of course.

You're jesting surely? Didn't he have time to get married and go on honeymoon while it dragged on? So you're saying that what I said was true then yeah?

Don't ever feel you need to apologise for that!

You're jesting surely? Didn't he have time to get married and go on honeymoon while it dragged on?