Guz

That's my point, we have too many players who are playing poorly and it may have gone past just replacing them with 3 players of a higher calibre. I have no doubt in my mind that the tension between the manager and owners has contributed to this but Rafa isn't blameless either and there just seems to be a chronic lack of confidence and desire to play. When it goes past just a couple of players playing poorly then you've got problems.

This club works in strange ways 12 Feb, 2005 Birmingham City Barclays Premiership A 15:00 0-2 22 Feb, 2005 Bayer 04 Leverkusen Champions League last 16 H 19:45 3-1 27 Feb, 2005 Chelsea Carling Cup Final A 15:00 2-3 05 Mar, 2005 Newcastle United Barclays Premiership A 15:00 0-1 09 Mar, 2005 Bayer 04 Leverkusen Champions League last 16 A 19:45 3-1 23 Apr, 2005 Crystal Palace Barclays Premiership A 15:00 0-1 27 Apr, 2005 Chelsea Champions League Semi Final (1) A 19:45 0-0 30 Apr, 2005 Middlesbrough Barclays Premiership H 15:00 1-1 03 May, 2005 Chelsea Champions League Semi Final (2) H 19:45 1-0

Would I trust him to spend the money wisely? Yes I probably would actually especially after the signings we made with big money last summer. But it just seems to me that there are too many average players in the squad who Rafa is just unable to get through to. Kewell, Kuyt, Crouch, Riise, Finnan and Alonso are all good players. They're not world beaters (Xabi is deffo the best of the lot though) but they've shown better form than they are at the moment and that's worrying because it's the same old players time after time. Yeah we can throw 3 big money signings into the side and to be honest I think Rafa would buy the right 3 big money players but something rotten has set into the mentality of the dressing room and it'll take a long time for that to be removed

Rafa has lost the ability to get the most out of the average players in the squad and we have too many of them. You can talk about rotation and tactics all you like (I think most of the debates about rotation are f***ing s*** to be honest) but it LOOKS like Rafa has lost the faith and support of most of his dressing room with a few exceptions. Once it goes beyond tactics and team selection it's a slippery slope and one that's very difficult to recover from.

We cant get knocked out on Tuesday....

I've been very supportive of the boss for the last 12 months but unless we win the CL I can't see how Rafa is going to be here next season, Yanks or no yanks.

Rafa has Tuesday night to save his job.

You mention the cups for Ged but only the league for Rafa - why?

I love the Dave Kirkby/Al Pacino video

Everton play Man City (A) Pompey (H) Sunderland (A) Fulham (A) in the same period before playing west ham at home and then us.

Thought we were alright today. Clean sheet and some decent posession plus a couple of chances where we could've nicked it. More than I expected that's for sure even if it was a s*** game. At HT it looked like it had an undeserved 2-0 defeat courtesy of a deflected goal in the 65th minute and a goal in the 85th minute when we were pushing up, written all over it. Defended and kept the ball in the last 2 games (well, 1 and a half games) a lot better than we did through January. Small signs of improvement.

Rafa = legend 1552: Rafael Benitez takes the opportunity before the match to set the record straight after a newspaper report that he is blaming Liverpool's American owners for their poor season so far. He tells Sky: "Everyone in Liverpool knows there are two newspapers in England you cannot trust and this reporter is lying. I never spoke to him, he is twisting my words from an interview I gave to a Spanish paper. It is a complete lie."

Kuyt is gonna f***ing dominate them c**** in blue today. Come on you reds

Terrible from the NOTW. Again. Where is the Rafa interview from, offal?

I don't think you can compare the youth system at Arsenal and here, where it is in its infancy. But where Wenger has had a lot of success is his medium price buying (under £10m). Adebayor, Sagna, maybe even Eduardo and a couple of others. Rafa has bought Reina and Agger (I'd say also Garcia) for about £6m a piece so has shown it can be done but if wecan't afford the sort of players United and Chelsea buy then we have to look for more players like Pepe or Danny

The point is they are limited players who have limited abilities. They all have some good qualities but if we're looking for ultimate consistency and end product they struggled to produce it on a regular basis. Agger, Reina, Gerrard, Torres etc. are not rotated because they're all good enough against all teams, in all conditions etc. The reason the rest are rotated are because they can't be trusted to perform consistently.

Silence doesn't really bother me. Gillet and Klinsmann were pals. Klinsmann, Gillet and Hicks meet in October/November and offer the German the Liverpool job. End of for me. There is absolutely no way that would've been done without the blessing of of both owners. Just because it was only Hicks who announced it doesn't make Gillet innocent in any of this. Just makes him more sly and secretive. Does us a favour George and f*** off with yer mate Tom.

That's fine. But we have too many positions where there is no pecking order. There is no obvious first choice and then backup for left back, left wing, right wing, 2nd striker or maybe even right back now. The players who are there now in those positions I would say are definitley good enough to be squad players there but they're not good enough for a whole season to be first choice there (Riise, Aurelio, maybe Finnan, Pennant, Yossi, Kuyt, Crouch, Voronin)

How come hardly anyone has mentioned Gerrard's performances over the last few weeks? Yeah people have moaned about individuals in our side but there's been a mass reaction to his performance today to the extent people once again saying he should've been sold, we won't progress with him etc etc. Why tonight? Why not after West Ham? Or Boro? Or Wigan? Do we have nothing new to moan about? Andy Gray and co. have shut up about Gerrard since the derby subsitution, trust ourselves, his supposed supporters to bring the whole issue up again. Bloody media/press b******s, always out to get and unsettle us.

So a journalist thinks Rafa will make a lot of changes to the playing staff over the summer but is not sure whether Benitez will keep his job or even who the owners will be at the end of the season. Thank god for sunday exclusives. We'd be clueless without them.

What the f***? Stopped reading there. A very deliberate attempt at making the protest look like it was aimed at the manager when it most certainly was not. s*** stirring.

He's absolutely brilliant and after a sloppy start has got better and better. Legend.

Hitting profits is a very difficult, long term thing to do. It's unlikely to work en mass but if it does it'll take a long time to be noticeable. A few thousand people marching in support of the manager (Porto) and a couple of thousand staying behind today singing about the owners immediately gets the message across in no uncertain terms.

Such as what? The ground before, during and after the game is the only place a mass of supporters can get their voices heard. It wasn't done during the game, it was clear who it was directed at, it was done in the presence of TV cameras and radio coverage, it wasn't one random bloke on 606 etc...I can't see how much more 'direct' it can be.

Shocking first half, really really poor. But job done in the 2nd half, just delighted we have a win.