Toni

if u are not, and rightly so, te answer is still in my post. (not enough cutting-edge, due to lack of quality players,)

cos Rafa' s is one of the few managers around who has won in his career major trophies. replace him with who? we need money sooner than a change of manager.

to You just cant single games out, over the course of a league. Over the course of the whole season we shown so far tahat we do not have enoug cutting edge in the final third of the pitch, reason being we dont have enough quality players in the squad. If we had a couple more of these qulaity players we would have won games more easily, perhaps scored more goals, which would have served to build that habit in the players of winning, and that we were genuinly on eof the best teams in england. If u obstinatley want to single out the wigan games, see my post on page 1 of this thread

Sacking the manger this season or the next would be a huge mistake. We are a couple of quality players short from finally fielding a geninue quality team and able to compete genuinly with the top clubs. We were never going to win the league with the current squad. It simply does not havee enough quality. It is not the managers fault that our squad does not have enough quality. Rafa missed on targets such as alves, evra, vidic, simao and who knows who else. He had to settle for the likes of pennant etc. If a new manager comes along, he will come with another useless 5 year plan, cause discontent amongst the squad and will take us longer to win the title. I am certain that if the American owners stik theur hands up their a*** and give Rafa enough money to buy the quality players needed, we would win title, with Rafa at the helm. Unless managers are backed by serious money it is useless appointing new ones.

Considering our defence is rocked by injuries, the 11 shots on target vs their only one, i think it was the right formation. rafa protected the leaky back 4 with mash and alonso replacing off-form kuyt with a roaming gerrard. We were a tad unlucku but still no excuse for drawing vs wigan at anfield. But is it the manager s fault? Today the story of the whole season repeated itself. we do not have enough cutting edge and the reson why is that we lack a couple of quality players. Whose fault? failure to compete financially with top clubs

cos we were under a chairman who although loved the club, simply didnt have enough money to buy 20 mill players. In LFC history how many 20 mill have we bought?

It is all easy to say in hindsight. Pennant was bought before kuyt cos we badly needed a right winger after missing on alves due to lack of funds. Kuyt was a goal machine in holland and perhaps it was a mistake by Rafa. Due to lack of funds Rafa lost out on players such as evra, vidic, kalhadze and who the f*** knows who else. Couple of years ago we wouldnt have bought torres either.

Our team has character, competitiveness etc Look at Gerrard, Masch, Alonso, Carra. reina These are all players who absolutely play with their heart on their sleeve. You can easily witness that they love the club. Manure do not have a great number of players who play with a passion for their club. Apart from shrek, neville, i cannot think of another manure player who goes out there and battle for his team-mates. The differnce is thet they spent 70 mil on their already league-winning squad. What do you expect? As for pennant under steve bruce. Some players bottle up when faced when they feel the pressure ther is when playing for a club who wants to genuinly compete in all major competitions. Look at crouch etc.

if the board gives you limited budget you can only buy 7million buys and hope 4 d best.

i just dont think it is the manager s fault. rafa is brilliant in the champions league. Why? cos he is a very good manager who with a less quality team is able to beat the opponent over a two-legged game because he cam outwit the opposite manger. However in the league its different. Over the course of a whole season the quality and a bit of luck overwhelm everything else. the league table never lies. So why bring a new manager in? its pointless. We need to board of directors to come up with the required funds, which should amount to add another a of couple of 20 mill buys. that is the only solution.

no manager will ever be able to win the league with our current squad and with the competition, we face in the league. rafa hasnt had enough funds available to compete fairly with maure a*** and chelski. we need more quality players in the side 7million buys will not form a squad to win the league. Wenger had 10 years to sout throughot the world to from his team. manure and cheslki just spend dosh around when they need. one cannot expect that gerrard and torres will carry the whole team on their shoulders.

We certainly need a winger who is able to perform better than kewell s game vs city. It may be a bit a premature but we will never see the kewell of old (leeds years). As Kaizer rightly says kewell lost pace which due to his age will never reach his youth pace again. Now if kewell is able to do a figo who although he lost pace he will remain a hugely devastating winger with his extreme ball control, and pin-point crosses, that is another matter, which still may evolve but which personally i highly doubt. Yesterday kewell result of accurate hollywood passes from midfield managed to break a couple of times in the clear and cross from behind the full-back but every time he failed to deliver a dangerous cross. in one on one situations he never manged to get past the full-back, so yes he had a poor performance yesterday and in fact was subbed by rafa. he needs to better his game considerably, if he wants to extend his contract. Also after central cover for defence and praying aurelio stays fit, in my opinion our prime target should be a winger not a striker. We need both but wre really struggle to create quality clear-cut chances. Most of our chances come through gerrards boots or individual brilliance fro the few quality players we have. Bringing a quality tricky winger to use kaizer s words someone that can go past the fullback with his eyes closed, someone that can put a great cross in, will certainly transform us into a more quality side, and we will see the likes of kuyt voronincrouch bang in more goals. if we are able to create really quality chances the team will score goals.

-----------------------Reina------------------------------ Finnan----------Carra------------Sami---------------Arbeloa Gerrard--------Masch------------Alonso-------------Kewell ----------------Babel---------------------------------------- -----------------------------------Torres------------------- In my opinion with Agger in the side this is the best possible 11 of our current squad.

As long as they give Rafa the dosh he needs I dont care less what Hicks say. link “We will continue to work, like every club, to improve our squad. “We will try to do the same; if we can find the right players at the right price maybe we can do some business. “If we cannot, we will try to improve what we have. But I believe I can go to the board and ask if the right player comes along - and I think they would say yes.

Why are these stories beinf printed then? from the daily mail. link But off the field, the failure so far of efforts by American owners George Gillett jnr and Tom Hicks to refinance the £220million they borrowed from the Royal Bank of Scotland to fund their takeover of the club 10 months ago is pushing Liverpool towards an unprecedented period of uncertainty. The American owners have missed a selfimposed deadline to strike a deal with RBS before Christmas. The bank will not allow the club to go under but the problems facing Gillett and Hicks could hasten their departure — and see Dubai International Capital, the state-backed investment firm who were in pole position to buy Liverpool before the arrival of the Americans, back in the market as potential new owners. Despite revelations last week that talks with RBS and American bank Wachovia over a new £350m loan had stalled, Kekst, the American owners' New York-based PR firm, continued to brief that a deal would be done before Christmas. But Friday, the last day for business before the festive break, passed without announcement and although it is understood that negotiations will continue, banking sources on this side of Atlantic believe an impasse has been reached. Hicks and Gillett have until February to refinance the £220m they borrowed from RBS to fund their takeover, plus the interest which has accrued in the past year, the credit notes used to buy Torres and Ryan Babel, and £60m to cover initial work on a new stadium. If they are unable to strike a deal before the deadline and unable to persuade RBS to take up the option of extending the existing loan for another year, the bank stand to become the de facto owners of the club.

A net spending in the region of 62mill is not much in three and a half years. Manure spent around 70mill mark only this summer. They also have spent huge amounts on the likes of Rooney and Ferdinand, not to mention Chelski. Wenger on the other hand was given the time to assemble a squad by investing in many youngsetrs which to his credit the majority of them made the grade. We have also lost out on targets such as vidic. So the finanancial power is mainly that asset which seperates us from the big teams. We need one major boost in financial terms to be able to perform consistently with top clubs. we need to add a couple of more torreses into the squad. The other differnce is the pulling power of our club. Many players choose cheslki or manure to play with. With Rafa at the helm our club increased and enhanced its image, also by the CL victory and now we have players like torres who chose us over the others.

Rafa wants to stay. He clearly loves the liverpool way, i.e. the fans respect, anfield atmospehere, and hopefully imo he will stay here for many years to come. We also know that He also reads the net.

How do you explain the fact that Rafa managed crown the likes of djimi traore and igor biscan with a champions league winning medal? I do not agree that it is a problem of mentality. With the current team we will always struggle to score goals when faced with a good defence such as uniteds due to lack of inventive players as said. Teams like manure United on the other hand will most probably score more goals against such defences because if one of their 'upfront inventive players' (like rooney, roaldo and giggs were vs us) is off form they will manage to nick that goal from their other 'inventive' player.

By upfront i mean on the wings as well. Kewell Yossi Pennant Voronin and Kuyt for different reasons are avreage players. We need to substitue a couple of palyers from that list with world class players.

It is a trophy which simply adds nothing to the clubs' prestige or status. If we were west brom, sunderland etc then yes...but in the liverpool scenario we aim to win the most prestigious trophys.

We just need to add a couple of quality players up front. We are a very solid compact team. We just lack those players who possess flair and invention. Signing torres and babel was a step in the right direction but not enough to transform in league winners. Today although we dominated for long periods during the match, we just could not creack utd s defence due to the fact that we do not have enough quality inventive players upfront. EDIT: I hope Gillett and Hiks who were at Anfield witnessed, and admits this fact and give Rafa enough money to buy the players we need.

bench?

Nah. In Kuyt and Voronin we have very two hard-workers who although playing uo front were continously needed to track -back down the wing today. Yossi/babel/crouch would not hve benna ble to offer or matchj their tremendous work-rate. I critise Rafa however for not putting on babel instead of alonso. Arbeloa was not match-fit and it was too early in the game to defend a one nil result. I like Yossi and am sure he will feature much more now that pennant is injured. Babel musnt be rushed too much. As for Crouch think he s only good for the last 15mins whenb we want to score. His frame can pressure opposition defenders to commit mistakes.

Pattern of play is One thing most of us agree that must be adressed immediately. In my humble opinion our play willi improve immensely if our full-backs will decide to attack much more in a game and help our play to be spread all over the park. Look at evra brown clichy sagna they are continously helping the team with every attack. Both JAR and Finnan are too static.