meredithmathieson

Woke up this morning with that feeling of dread and fear that I haven't known since the last Stevie G wobble. Checked Newsnow for all the headlines. Rafa's still there. Just need to be able to show our support for him tomorrow night (and NOT turn it into an Anti-American rally) and I hope that we can all turn back from the abyss. ps Does anybody else loathe themselves for the way that they let something over which they have no control/say whatsoever so completely dominate their lives?

Am I right in thinking that Alan Brazil was spat at by Man Utd fans in the Paddock whilst a Man Utd player, warming up as a substitute?

Has somebody at the Club had a word with him,seriously? His reports used to be snide dig after dig, always putting the worst spin on a situation. Now we get: "FERGUSON OUT OF LUC By David Maddock 27/07/2007 LUCAS LEIVA revealed last night that he turned down overtures from Manchester United to move to Anfield. Sir Alex Ferguson admitted yesterday that he lost out to Liverpool in the race for Fernando Torres." Not so long ago he would have written the same story as 'Sir Alex spotted them before anybody else in the galaxy, oh yessirree bob, but then decided that they weren't good enough to play at The Theatre of Dreams, and left them for a desperate club to pay over the odds' etc etc Under Houllier he used to be vitriolic to the point of being poisonous about us (yeah, I know he's Godfather to Robbies's kid and all that) Noticed the same sympathetic, dare I say positive!, spin a lot over the last few months. Just seems strange.

Interesting that the Echo refers to Tevez as a 'fellow Kop target' after a big article on how near the Torres deal is to finalising.

Can't help but think that Cisse's number was up with Rafa when he was pounding the ground in frustration at Old Trafford when the ball came back in and he didn't realise.

Fair point FYDS, I hadn't actually read it that way but I see what you mean. Although he does say 'business' and not 'club' or 'team'. And, by the way, I am time served. In fact, I am of that age that only recently has come to terms with the fact that the Mancs are not just mere imposters for our crown!

? ? This business has to do with fan affinity and brand devotion. It doesn?t necessarily have to do with winning.? Might be taken out of context, might be totally inaccurate for all I know, but it does open up the possibility of our owners having a business model that doesn't necessarily require us to win trophies, with the huge funding implications that would go with it. Why spend £35 mill on an Eto'o, when a striker for £15 mill will get us into the CL etc. Not being negative, just posting something I saw that would appear to be of relevance to us.

Googled Mr Hicks and came across this blog. Some of the comments do not make for great reading, but as to the veracity of the content I have no idea: Tom Hicks: It doesn?t necessarily have to do with winning ?All of these teams have become businesses in the past 20 years,? Hicks said. ? ? This business has to do with fan affinity and brand devotion. It doesn?t necessarily have to do with winning.? This is from Tom Hicks owner of the Dallas Stars and Texas Rangers. The Dallas Business Journal reported this last Friday. Why haven?t I heard about this until now? Why hasn?t this been all over local media? I haven?t heard it. Tim MacMahon just posted this at 12:43pm today over at stars.beloblog.com This only confirms everything we have suspected for some time now. Bob and Dan have been all over Hicks for years now (Search Bob?s Blog for Tom Hicks payroll). Bob, just let me know what segment you will dissect this on Friday! Please, will someone buy these teams from Tom Hicks!!! Also: Tom Hicks flew in here from Liverpool, England, on Monday, presumably with the $10 million he saved by not re-signing Gary Matthews Jr. this past off-season jingling around in his pocket with a few extra British pounds in his loose change. What the Angels got for their $10 million was Matthews' usual spectacular defense in center field and a three-game sweep of the Rangers to open the season. I'll let you figure out who got the best end of the deal. Wouldn't you know it, on the day that USA Today came out with its annual report on major league payrolls, damning information that should leave Hicks red-faced with embarrassment, Matthews was showing us exactly what an extra $10 million here or there can buy. Considering that he regularly did the same thing for the Rangers last season, it shouldn't have come as any surprise when Matthews leaped high at the fence to rob Michael Young of a home run in the first inning of Wednesday afternoon's 5-3 Angels victory. In the dugout, manager Ron Washington and his Rangers could only slap their foreheads and say, "Oh, no, not again!" Over these opening three games, every time it seemed that the Rangers might spark something offensively, Matthews was there to make another circus catch and help put out the fire. "It's like he's in our heads," Washington said, shaking his own George Jefferson-'do from side to side. "He knows exactly where he needs to be. We hit one, and he's standing there. "He is what he is. He took a home run away from Michael. He seems to make every play out there." Suddenly, the $50 million the Angels will pay Matthews over the next five years doesn't seem quite so extravagant, especially in light of the payroll listings that show the Rangers ($68.3 million) a distant fourth in their own division and more than $11 million behind the notoriously low-paying Oakland A's ($79.4 million), who just let Barry Zito walk. The Angels and Mariners, also AL West rivals, check in at $109.3 million and $106.5 million and are two of seven teams in the majors with payrolls exceeding $100 million. The Rangers' payroll, on the other hand, is ahead of only three other American League teams: perennial bottom-feeders Tampa Bay ($24.1 million) and Kansas City ($67.1 million) and young but talented Cleveland ($61.7 million). That's downright shameful, but Hicks' pat answer is simply to lay it off on Rangers fans. Buy more tickets, pay more excessive parking fees, drink more expensive beer, eat more $5 hot dogs, and he might consider raising the payroll. Asked how he might have spent an extra $10 million this season, general manager Jon Daniels, not wanting any part of the discussion, just shook his head, so let me answer for him. He could have had Matthews in center, making those spectacular catches for the Rangers again. He could have signed left-hander Ted Lilly ($6 million a year with the Cubs), or kept Adam Eaton ($7.2 million with the Phillies) or Kip Wells ($4 million with the Cardinals), perhaps even two of the three. He could have even used it as a kickoff point for negotiations with Mark Teixeira. Ten million dollars, obviously, can make a huge difference. It's helped Hicks buy a soccer team in England, for instance, and fly back and forth across the Atlantic to watch it play. What's improving his chances of winning a baseball championship compared with that? According to the USA Today, here are the payroll amounts in 2007 ? 1. New York Yankees $ 189,639,045 Boston Red Sox $ 143,026,214 New York Mets $ 115,231,663 Los Angeles Angels $ 109,251,333 Chicago White Sox $ 108,671,833 6. Los Angeles Dodgers $ 108,454,524 Seattle Mariners $ 106,460,833 Chicago Cubs $ 99,670,332 Detroit Tigers $ 95,180,369 Baltimore Orioles$ 93,554,808 11. St. Louis Cardinals $ 90,286,823 San Francisco Giants$ 90,219,056 Philadelphia Phillies $ 89,428,213 Houston Astros $ 87,759,000 Atlanta Braves $ 87,290,833 16. Toronto Blue Jays $ 81,942,800 Oakland Athletics $ 79,366,940 Minnesota Twins $ 71,439,500 Milwaukee Brewers $ 70,986,500 Cincinnati Reds $ 68,904,980 21. Texas Rangers $ 68,318,675 Kansas City Royals $ 67,116,500 Cleveland Indians $ 61,673,267 San Diego Padres $ 58,110,567 Colorado Rockies $ 54,424,000 26. Arizona Diamondbacks $ 52,067,546 Pittsburgh Pirates $ 38,537,833 Washington Nationals $ 37,347,500 Florida Marlins $ 30,507,000 Tampa Bay Devil Rays $ 24,123,500 As you can see, that puts the Angels at #4, the Mariners at #7, the A?s at #17, and the Rangers at #21 in baseball payrolls. Even if we allow the Rangers to add in the A-Rod money, it puts them no higher than #18. As it stands, they somehow actually spend less money on players than the MILWAUKEE BREWERS, MINNESOTA TWINS, and OAKLAND A?s???? Here are the payroll totals for the Rangers since the 1999 Division winner ?The middle column is median player salary: 2007 $ 550,000 $68,318,675 2006 $ 750,000 $ 68,228,662 2005 $ 650,000 $ 55,849,000 2004 $ 550,000 $ 55,050,417 2003 $ 1,150,000 $ 103,491,667 2002 $ 2,000,000 $ 105,726,122 2001 $ 800,000 $ 88,633,500 2000 $ 1,100,000 $ 70,785,000 1999 $ 2,225,000 $ 81,301,598 As indicated above, the Rangers have not moved their payroll at all from 2006. Kinda sad. I?m just saying? [source: The Texas Blog].

Seemed to be split between Scousers 'rule the country' or 'rule in Europe' today. This might evolve as it goes along? Think we needed a new anthem for our European 2007 campaign, and we certainly have that now. But is it too late to have the whole ground bouncing to it for the Chelsea second leg?

Had to bale into the paddock, the queues for the rest were just mad. My Dad, me and my crate to stand on. At the end a lad nearby proposed to his girlfriend, she accepted, even more mad cheering... it was just that kind of night!

Another advantage of our new owners over the Mancs' surely is that neither Gillett nor Hicks look as if they have ever eaten possum.

Funny that David Lacey, the respected Guardian journalist, had a right 'go' at Ferguson after the 96 Final, accusing him of being so scared of McManaman after the two League games, that Ferguson basically ruined the Final by setting out to stop McManaman/Liverpool.

So was it Rick or David who applied the Crocodile Dundee test?

I never mentioned placards, nor protests outside the ground. Nor did I say I supported any such action [and therefore feel no need to go any other clubs sites, thankyou]. I merely posed a question. I don't think it beyond the realms of possibility that you would have heard something along the lines of 'What the f**k is going on?', today, if we weren't playing the Blues****, that's all. And if anybody thinks this is being up my own a*** etc. etc. then fair enough, but when was the last time Liverpool had to go Front Page in the Echo with 'Trust Us' , when was the last time Bascombe had a real go at the handling of things, when was the last time the Stalinist Loyalty squad of Richie Pedder & Les Lawson publicly criticised the club? There are a lot of confused and angry Liverpool fans out there at the moment. This I would regard as stating a fact, not getting into the rights and wrongs of whether or not they should be. Can't decide whether the best analogy is from 1984 [DIC our allies, Gillett bad. No, Gillett has always been our friend, DIC are the enemy] or whether we are the pissed bloke in the nightclub who, after nearly hitting it off with the dead fit bird who you've been chatting to for ages, has been blown out/cocked it up and realises that it's approaching the slowies so is desparately looking around for whatever's going.

Because otherwise, if we were playing the Portsmouths/Readings of the world, I really think we could have seen vocal crowd dissent towards the pair of them after this debacle.

Do you reckon that there is a certain age of elder fan who went through the whole 'No Colours'/ 'laughing at the Mancs because they were still in colours' bit and find that they just can't go back to taking a scarf? Remember our end against the Mancs at Wembley in the League Cup in 1983? You'd be hard pressed to find a scarf - even in the victory celebrations- as it was potentially something that could get you a hiding. FWIW I take a Justice scarf.

That's not a joke about Brazil, mate. The old Manc paddock used to spit on him as he warmed up, because they thought that he was s****, to the extent that they had to go to print in order to stop it.

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When we signed Mark Lawrenson, it was for £930,000, but as a separate (but linked) part of the deal Jimmy Case went to Brighton. As I recall, Case was ludicrously undervalued (£300k?), because Bob Paisley had said that he would never pay £1 million+ for a player.

Babb for me is an overwhelming example of why nobody should ever take any heed whatsoever of 'Carling Opta' type statistics. He used to have, on the face of it, far and away the highest 'successful pass completion' statistics of the whole Liverpool team, never mind just the defence. The fact that Digger had to routinely drop that deep to ensure that he got the ball off him that he practically took it off his toes was irrelevant to the statistics.

Wasn't it Houghton who ballooned over a shot at the Kop end with a few minutes to go against Arsenal at Anfield in THAT game in 1989, which would have made it 1:1 and the League would have been ours?

Don't want to sound greedy or anything, but given the financially prudent/cautious way in which the club is run, I can't imagine for a second that the money for Kuyt is coming from any potential CL qualification, but rather from existing money 'in the bank'. On this basis, could we still be in the runnning for another buy, given a favourable result in Kiev?

My Mrs. knows Phil Thompson through work, and he completely,flatly denies the 'photo set-up' incident at Melwood as described in Robbie's book. Not only that but he says that Jamie Redknapp also denied to him (Thompson) that he had ever said to Robbie that he (Robbie) had been done up like a kipper by the incident. Suffice to say that Phil Thompson postponed the print run for his autobiography whilst he re-wrote the bits to do with Robbie having read Robbie's book. Can't help feeling that my opinion of 'young Robert' has actually lessened having read his book, but the mere fact that Maddock was involved probably meant that it was tainted beyong repair anyway.

And compared us to Tenerife fans after the last Cup Final homecoming!?!

Were they both cunning stepovers? Fooling the defender that he was going one way before going the other?