The walters step over

This content is not viewable to guests.,This content is not viewable to guests.

It'd be interesting to know how Ayre tries to sell "performance linked pay" to prospective signings. Personally, I think it'd be easy enough for an agent to say to his player "they don't believe in you - x have offered twenty grand a week more, go there instead." If we lose Henderson and Sterling because we're trying to be clever then we might as well just fecking give up.

It's happened under every owner we've ever had, I don't think we FSG can be blamed for us missing out on Charlie Nicholas, Roy Keane,Dessailly,etc,etc. It's not really that difficult, he had a choice whereby he could either go and live in London and play for a team that plays in the CL every year or go to one that has qualified once in the last 5 years and just lost their best player.

It's weird how people still can't get their heads around the fact that a player we wanted didn't want to join us, as though it's never happened before.

Their original plan was for Van Gaal to be a mentor to a younger manager. Rodgers has come out several times and said that he told FSG that he didn't want anyone above him and he wouldn't sign unless they agreed to his demands.

And if there isn't anyone around that fancies spending a few hundred million on trying to get some reflected glory then what?

This content is not viewable to guests.,This content is not viewable to guests.

This content is not viewable to guests.,This content is not viewable to guests.

This content is not viewable to guests.,This content is not viewable to guests.

This content is not viewable to guests.,This content is not viewable to guests.

This content is not viewable to guests.,This content is not viewable to guests.

By "right owners" I take it you meen "willing to spend £200m+ over two summers"? Because that's what it seems to take if you look at Chelsea and City as examples. If there were a billionaire willing to do that and FSg are syaing "nah" then they deserve all the criticism but otherwise, what are people demanding? That they put us in debt chasing the dream? We had a chance to be taken over by DIC who had stated they would've gone big in the transfer market but (if the rumours were true) Moores was too big of a egotistical f*cking moron to take the deal and went with the two shysters who were buttering up his ego and offering a lifetime presidency. Me saying this doesn't mean I'm happy that 4th is the absolute best we can hope for or that I think the sun shines out of Henrys a*** but I am grateful that they took over because f*ck knows what would have happened had RBS had granted Hicks an extension. Administration, a player firesale and relegation were absolutely real possibilities for us so I can't get myself upset over FSg not being willing to spend two hundred million or pay the £300,000 a week wages it would take to turn us into a title winning team. There just seems to be an eagerness to be as negative as possible and when some start saying that the board have made bids that they know will fail for players just to say "look, we're trying" then it just seems to me like people are making things up to get angry about.

If he wants to go to Barca (and according to the radio interview his dad gave a few months ago, he does) then we would've ran the risk of having him not being fully focused on the games he was playing for us. Imo, that's too big a gamble to take on the most important position in the team. Then we would've had to sign a keeper next year knowing that any selling club would have us over a barrel when it comes to negotiaitions. I honestly can't see what else we could have done tbh. The fact that we haven't let other clubs know that he's for sale and sat back waiting for offers pretty much says that Reina knows where he'll be playing in 12 months time so we might as well put his wages towards a player that wants to be here.

This content is not viewable to guests.,This content is not viewable to guests.

This content is not viewable to guests.,This content is not viewable to guests.

They said that they didn't think Suarez was racist, but that wasn't the issue. To use words that can be deemed racially offensive is punishable no matter what the intent - that what their ruling on Suarez basically boiled down to. I would imagine had Suarez said it once, maybe twice then he would've been looking at a couple of games (whether or not you think that's sufficient punishment is by the by). The Fa will probably point to the words f*cking c*nt that surrounded the word "black" as being evidence enough that Terry is worth a ban, although they'll again point out that they don't think Terry's a racist as such.

After standing his ground in getting the job, if BR and the board will tearing lumps out of each other I don't think he's the type to suffer silently so I'm inclined to think he's not fibbing and that he does have a decent relationship with the board. It's possible that the right hand didn't know what the left was doing and as a consequence we ended up making a balls up of the last few days of the window. Doesn't neccessarily mean they're killing each other behind the scenes but it's obvious we need stronger leadership at the very top. It'll all come out in the wash I suppose but it means that any journalist with space to fill has an easy angle to write about when it comes to us.

Which is a clever line but unfortunately completely wrong. So far this season we've had posts talking about relegation,the manager isn't good enough,.this player isn't good enough,that player isn't good enough,worst team I've ever seen and so on and so on. We've had three games.

Isn't that what managers are supposed to do? If Sahin had been on the bench and we'd lost then people would have gone bananas. Seems to me as though there are some that are willing to jump on his back for any little thing - real or imagined. Same with Ayre. The majority view is that he's incompetant and incapable of working for a club our size. Nobody knows the ins and outs of what actually happens in the day to day running of the club but fingers get pointed anyway. Bascombe defends him, and instead of "well, he sees and speaks to these people every day,maybe Ayre isn't so bad" it's "Bascombes his mate". Yet when people go on twitter or on here and say "I've heard.." then it gets taken as gospel as long as it feeds the accepted narrative.

The £20m transfer fund for BR has been flagged up by Barrett a few times this summer. The £10m for kenny and his staff was again widely reported, including in the Echo - again, these figures may be wrong, but they make sense if you take in the average wages for a Premier league manager.

Which is fair enough, I don't know what's going on behind the scenes and tbh, I wouldn't know who was good at identifying young talent or not so any names mentioned haven't really meant anything to me. What I do think though is that we can only go off what we know FSg have done. They've changed managers twice since they took over which would've cost a lot of money to do - imo, they wouldn't have bothered doing that if they couldn't really be arsed where we finish as long as we're in the Prem year on year. They spent a lot of money last year on players to improve our position. It didn't work so they sacked the clubs biggest legend, again I don't see why they would bother doing that and the hassle it entails if they didn't genuinely believe that it was what they needed to do to improve the squad/team. Assuming BR has a budget of £20m (which has been widely reported, esp. by Barrett who seems to be clued up) when you add on the cost of Kenny and his staff going, along with Commolli and the hiring of BR and staff then they've spent well over £30m (and if it's true it cost £10m to pay off Kenny and his staff then we're probably looking at £35m+). Which other club in our position has spent that sort of money to try to improve? Everyones got their own opinion on whether their decisions to hire/fire who they have have been the right ones but I honestly don't think they can be called on the money spent trying to improve the situation. They could get an overdraft and have a big splurge on players but what if it didn't work?What would we do then and perhaps more importantly how much do people think we should be spending every year?

Everybody wants us to win titles. I was a teenager last time we won it, and believe it or not when Kenny left and we missed out under Moran/Souness me and the lads I used to go with were not really that disappointed because "we'll just win it next year instead" - that's how spoiled with success we used to be and it's hurt watching us on the downward slide. I can't speak for anyone else that defends (if that's what you want to call it) FSG on here but my view is,I think,one of realism. FSG were clear that they weren't able/willing to do what City/Chelsea have done. They said they would increase revenues and that money would be used on the team to hopefully bring success, personally I think they've pretty much done that. If Carroll had turned out to be the monster we wanted, with Adam pulling the strings and Downing bombing down the wing then we could've added a couple of players as the finishing touches this summer. Unfortunately, it didn't happen and I don't want to see us gambling money we have to borrow in the hope that this years transfers will work out better. Newcastle and Spurs have shown that you don't need to get yourself in hock to spend £50m a year on transfers. You need a good manager and a system that can identify bargains. Unless there's a billionnaire out there willing to take on Chelsea, City and utd (and there weren't any when we were for sale for 5 or so years) I don't see what the alternatives are.

But we've got to be realistic in where we want to go and the time it'll take to get there. We were on the brink less than 2 years ago and Broughton had to give assurances that we could afford to fulfill the seasons fixtures. G+H seemed to be doing the same as the Glazers in taking money out of the club, the difference being that we hardly had any to begin with. It just seems to me as though a lot of people are saying "yes, I know it was bad but .." without taking into account what an effect it had on us. Besides FSG who was in for us? Evans went hard on a Chinese bid but there's no way of knowing whether they would have been spoofers like the Hollywood producers lot, disasters like the Venkeys or if they'd have piled in money like Mansour. FSG said from the first minute that they weren't able to pump in hundreds of millions for transfers and let's be honest, a lot of fans reaction to that was "good, as long as we're run well and the money we make goes back into transfers then that's all we're asking for". They didn't siphon off the Torres money for themselves like the Glazers, which ordinarily isn't something to applaud - "thanks for not ripping us off lads" - but if they were short term asset strip, make our money and feck off types then we wouldn't have spent the amounts we have done. Not only on players but on changing staff off the pitch. For a club that haven't been playing CL football these last few years we've spent more than most clubs in Europe but we could never hope to compete with City/Chelsea/Utd in the market without seriously gambling with our future and as fans we have to realise it'll take time because let's be honest,what's the alternative?

This exchange about us is just unbelievable..! Bill :"When was the last sale of a major football club?" Barry:"Liverpool" Simon: "Blackburn" Bill:"you would want Blackburn..?" Barry:"Liverpool" Bill:"No,no Liverpool weren't sold, they took over the debt." Barry:"They were sold...now they're showing ambition." Bill:"I'm not arguing with you if you call that buying a football club. Blackburn, well I wouldn't want a Blackburn.." If I were a Blue I'd be going mad over that, he sounds deluded.

This content is not viewable to guests.,This content is not viewable to guests.