The walters step over

I think that's a reasonble thing to expect. Spurs and Newcastle (and us, under Rafa) have shown that it's possible to get close with the right transfer strategy and a manager that can get the best out of what he has.

Agree with you here. It's just weird to me that being so close to being in administration is written off by some people as seemingly not being that big a deal, I've said it before but most supporters on here and that I spoke to just wanted us to be run in a sensible fashion. Revenues raised and those used to supplement the transfer fund, players not being sold against the managers wishes because we had a fecking great big debt to pay off - anybody that said they wanted a City style spree was told that that was somehow against the way Liverpool do things. It took City more than three years to win the league even though they could blow everyone else out of the water, FSG were never going to do that, they said that when they took over. The fact is we've been out of the CL for a comparitively long time but we've still spent more than most - how many teams that aren't in the Cl and who aren't owned by Sheikhs have spent more than us since FSg took over? It's not their fault Kenny and Commoli p*ssed it up the wall, and yes Kenny shoulders a lot of responsibility in my eyes because he would have had the final say in transfers and for some reason to protect criticism of kenny FSG are are suddenly to blame for last years fiasco. I'm not saying FSG should be praised, they'r in it to ultimately make money, we knew that when they came in but what do people want? Which owners do you think have done more for their clubs since FSG took over us? How much do you think they should be spending?Should we use overdrafts and loans to bring in players? And finally, how much do people think they should be spending per year, and where should they be getting that money from?

Your original point was that you believed that Carroll was being moved on to save his wages and imo there's nothing at all that indicates that is true. That bit in bold is happening far too often on here imo, obviously everyone's wary after the fiasco of the two c*nts being in charge but again you have no proof at all of their intentions and yet you choose to go with the worst case scenario and start running with it. FSg have bought the club because they want to make money - unless we had become a sugar daddies plaything to impress his mates then every single potential buyer would've had the same plan, build us up and sell for large profit. We knew that the day they bought us so I don't see why knickers are getting twisted now. A lot of the assumptions don't, imo, make any sense. Why would they be so concerned with getting Carroll off the wage bill when they spent 4 years worth of his wages changing management team? Why would they interfere in player recruitment (dempsey) when BR has already shown them he's not afraid to go against them, especially since he had Spurs after him and could've made FSg look like right C8nts by walking out after a couple of weeks in the job? If they were after shirt sales, wouldn't it make more sense to go for an Asian superstar where there's a guaranted market? Look back through the thread on the G+H courtcase. How many people use this site? I'd put my mortgage on there being no more than two or three posters at the time hoping for a Sheikh or oil baron coming in and throwing hundreds of millions on players, the vast majority of us just wanted someone in charge that would increase revenues and spend what we earned. I believe that's the type of owners we have now, the downside to that is it will take time and if mistakes are made it delays progress massively. If people want a sugar daddy to speed up the process then fine, nothing wrong in that, but I can't for the life of me work out why all these worst case doomsday scenarios are being put forward when we've got what we were screaming for since Moores was in charge and it becames clear he was a clueless imbecile.

I know you're not saying that Walcott is as good as Pedro but from what I've seen of Walcott he doesn't have the intelligence to know when to run into space. Others have said it as well but if we're playing at home against a packed defence dropped deep then I haven't seen anything from Walcott that shows he would know how to break them down. Look, if he joined then great, he'd get everyones support but my worry is that he's worked with Wenger for years and doesn't seem to have improved at all - he's still all about knock it past the defender and run like f*ck.

If their main aim was to save money at the expense of squad strength then surely the easiest thing to do was not sack Kenny in the first place? It cost about £10m to pay him and his staff off, then add whatever it took in compo to Swansea and contracts for the new staff and we're looking at close to £15m without any change on the playing side. They could have easily said to Kenny "you have to get the best out of what you spent big on last year" and given him the £15m on top as well as sales knowing that he would be arguing from a weak position if he demanded more. They also knew that there was a cat in hells chance that the fans would get on Kennys back so imo your argument falls down because if they were all about watching the pennies they could've just kept things as they were and saved themselves a bundle. There isn't a manager in the world that would've joined us without some sort of guarantee of funds and from what I've seen/heard fromBR if he'd been lied to we would've heard about it by now. Letting BR get rid of Carroll for such a huge loss instead of forcing him to keep him and try to get the best out of him indicates to me that they're backing the managers judgement and no player will leave or come to the club unless BR wants him.

I'd say more likely cynical and utterly absurd tbh.How many shirts do you think Dempsey would shift in America? When the board asked BR top take part in an interview process he told them to get lost. When they said that their plan was for a DoF like V.Gaal he told them said no, he wanted full control but now they can force him to buy players just to raise our profile in the U.S? Can't see it at all.

That bit in bold isn't true. Real would've been happy to keep Owen, he had the best goals to minutes ratio for most of that year, there's no way they would've frozen him out. His wife was apparently desperate to come home and it was WC year and it was widely reported that Newcastle agreed a clause that would allow him to join us the following year for £12m (and apparently the year after as well) if they failed to reach the CL, he thought he'd be back here by the start of the 2006 season but obviously his cruciate fecked that up. Why should Carroll go to a midtable club like W.Ham or Fulham just because it would suit us financially?What leverage do we have? threaten him with the bench for 3 months whilst we watch his value fall even further? He now knows that he probably won't get many minutes with us but I don't think there's a chance in hell that he wants to play every game so desperately that he'll take a backwards step in his career just to make that happen. Unless Spurs come in for him or a big club on the continent then there's no reason at all why he shouldn't dig his heels in and sit tight with us until he gets what he wants. I hope we don't cave in to Newcastle bacause Andy would be a decent option from the bench but we're paying the price for last years desperately poor deals.

A lot of it has to do with not wanting to be seen as being critical of Kenny, G+H were rightly hated but nobody blamed them for the money we spent on Konchesky or Poulson. Last summer If stories had come out that Kenny had wanted to pay £36m on Downing and Henderson and even though the money was available the board had said "no" then every single fan board/phone in would have gone mental. You can imagine what would have been said, and all of it would have been along the lines of "give the manager a budget, let him spend it how he wants".

Read about this last week. The analysts in the piece are pretty certain the money will almost exclusively used to pay down debt, but not so they can eventually sell or free up cash for transfers. According to this American stock market guy that knows the family Malcolm Glazer has every intention of keeping the club in the family and when he snuffs it his sons will own it - there's no chance of them leaving the club for many years yet. Everyone seems to assume that Mourinho will go there when ferguson retires but I can't see that happening if he will have only limited funds to do the rebuilding job.

It's hardly slight criticism though, is it? Comparing the current owners to the feckers that nearly took us under is very harsh especially considering that you're not basing your theory that Carroll has to go on anything other than guesswork. If Suarez was the one being told he's off then you would possibly have a point but the fact is we have had very few good performances out of Carroll since he joined. Add on that BR has said many times how he wants to play and it's not hard to work why he would think Carroll doesn't have the skill set he's after for a striker and add to that the fact that football has moved on from his type of play. In the last twenty years how many successful teams (in any country) played with a big man in the box waiting for the crosses to be slung in from the wide men? I can think of Kennys Blackburn, that's it. You could've just as easily said FSG are showing faith in BR by letting him get rid of their record signing without them trying to force his hand to get some value for their money. Instead there's some on here that would rather jump to conclusions and then use something they've made up to have a go at FSG. When FSG act like money grabbing c*nts, then call them money grabbing c*nts but I don't see what's achieved by coming up with something off the top of your head and then saying "see, told you they were c*nts".

But what was the alternative? We were facing administration, the chairman had to give assurances that we could afford to fulfill that seasons fixtures and Rafa had to wheel and deal with pretty much feck all in the transfer market and G+H wre pulling every trick they could think of to keep their claws into the club (and getting us into more and more debt) in the hope that they could somehow persuade some billionaire to give them a nice profit for running the club into the ground. Look back at the threads on here and elsewhere that year, fans were absolutely petrified over what was happening to the club because we were on our knees and it's certain that if G+H had hung on until Jan they would have sold Torres and anyone else in order to buy themselves more time with the banks. You're right FSg didn't buy us for a laugh, they bought us to make money - they were open about that, they were also open about not spending City levels of cash to try to achieve success. But in the process they've at least taken away that horrible feeling of wondering what sort of state the club will be in when you wake up and read the papers the following morning. edit - as a general question, what would be a satisfactory amount of money spent on players this summer?

I know it's off topic but really? Lawrenson wages would equate to a fraction of one pence of the telly fee you're paying. How come when people talk about what a boring gobshyte Jamie Redknapp is they never talk about asking SKY for a refund on their box/connection fee/line rental/extra charge to watch sport?

The problem is though, if we've agreed a contract with him and his agent and suddenly give him more because he threatened to go somewhere else then every single player and their agent will try the same thing. It's a pain in the ar*e but if we'd have done that to the first player we sign this window then it sends out the wrong message that we're still the same soft touches we were last year. The blame lies solely with the player and his agent imo and unless one of VDV,Lennon or Bale leaves Spurs then he's going to be spending a lot of time on their bench next year when he could have been starting regurlarly for us.

I don't think there was an outcry as such, but I do remember a lot of questions as to why he was being wasted on the left of midfield in order to accomodate Lampard and his half dozen shots per game. Imo, it was a major failing of Svens to not try to build his team around getting the best out of Gerrard and Scholes, might still have won feck all but they would have been a hell of a lot closer playing a 4-3-3 with a Gerrard /Hargreaves/Scholes midfield - although that doesn't take into account that Beckham was guaranteed his place no matter what and therefore would never have happened. Interesting piece by matthew Syed in The Times, it's the first one to actually say mostly negative things about the way Hodgson went about the tournament. Basically says he's a long ball man out of his depth.

C.Ronaldo was apparently a massive Liverpool fan when he was growing up, as was Solskaer. Every player will do what's best for their career or family life no matter who he supported as a kid.

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The problem Spurs face is that the players who could replace Modric/Bale will almost certainly want CL football, which they haven't got, or massive wages to compensate not being in the CL,which apparently Levy won't pay. Redknapp is an irritating kn*b but you can't argue with the job he's done there and even if there were arguments behind the scenes I'm not sure what it is that think can be improved by bringing in someone else, unless they think they shoul've challenged for the title last season.

A lot of people are concerned, there's a lot of things that could go wrong. But it's also possible that this could prove to be an inspired move, until we get deep into the season we're not going to know. We've had three challenges for the title in 20 years, we're not in the CL and after spending big last year we had our worst league season for years. I don't blame them for trying something like this and whilst I can understand the nervousness the downright hostility that's flying around at the moment isn't going to do us any good at all.

This is obviously only my opinion but: If fans start protesting about a managers appointment before he's been given any time to impliment his plans,have the players bed in,the fact that he's not Rafa then wether they like it or not all Liverpool fans are going to be portrayed as whiney reactionaries that cry their eyes out because they want us to compete against three of the richest clubs in British footballs history. This will detract completely from things like HJC because we'll be painted as fans that believe they deserve special treatment. Imo, it'll be wrong to compare the two but you can guarantee that that's what will happen. Everyone will be tarred with the same brush and the experts that jump to RFH defence because of the nasty old Liverpool fans will have a perfect response "see, they protest at anything". We'll become a laughing stock and it'll make any genuine grievances the fans have almost impossible to bring attention to because the the notion aill become ingrained that we'd march to the ground if the pasties weren't to our liking. Again, what is there exactly to protest? If it had been anyone but Kenny in charge last season there wouldn't have been any question at all that a change of manager was needed. There's an argument to be had as to wether Kenny had learned a lot last year to make up for his time out of the game and could he have used that knowledge to get things right this year - but can anyone say that they honestly believe that FSG didn't have grounds to look elsewhere? Had they appointed rafa then they would have been in the same situation as they found with Kenny, fans favourite that if things had gone wrong FSG would've been seen as the bad guys had they sacked him. It's not that surprising surely that they wanted to look at someone younger and without ties to the club. Personally, I'm not sure that they've made the right choice and even though I thought Kenny should probably leave given the choice between him and Rodgers I'd rather Kenny had been given another go to fix things. But I'll get behind him because if he starts the season undeer pressure, that will only transmit to the players and there's a good chance that all the negativity will end up costing us on the pitch ~ this idea that protests should be organised because we haven't got a big name in charge is imo, childish and will do us some serious damage in terms of how the wider world thinks of us and more importantly it gives the players their ready made excuse for failure. Get behind the team, even if we don't win every game 3-0 and you never know, we might actually be in for a decent season. Boo every time something goes wrong and it'll cost us big time.

Firstly, no-one has the first clue who the manager's going to be so how can anyone possibly know how much there is to spend? Secondly, net spend of £28m for a club not in the CL isn't bad, in fact I'd be surprised if we've ever spent more in our history. And unless you're takling about the Sheikh owned clubs, I'd guess that there weren't many clubs in Europe who spent as much without CL money. Hazard has made it clear the type of clubs he wants to join - the ones that will pay him the most, even if we were in the CL we couldn't justify his wages. The bit in bold is symptomatic of what a lot of this thread is about - posters plucking statements out of thin air to have a go at FSG and managers that haven't even been appointed yet. I could just as easily say that if LVG is going to be DOF then that means we've got a big f*ck off transfer fund because surely he wouldn't come unless he knew we had the resources to do the rebuild that he has been brought in to do.

Freddy Shepherd was a Newcastle fan and got them into so much debt because he wanted to sign big names and please the fans that they were really in the sh*t and could have gone under and eventually got relegated. Peter Risdale was a Leeds fan and did the same to them. There are plenty of examples of clubs being run by local lads made good and having it all go t*ts up. Not least here when imo, there's a direct link between David Moores taking charge and our decline from being title winners every other year to having three decent goes at it in 20 years. You could also make a decent argument for saying the day Moores took over the club was the single worst thing to happen to this club in terms of being able to compete for the title. It's not a bad thing to have a bit of distance at boardrrom level so decisions can be made with a cool head instead of doing short term fan pleasing things. It's been done to death on here but you can't judge them on the decisions they make until you actually know what those decisions are - and even then it'll be guesswork. You can only make a fair assessment of what they're trying to do after we've played a good chunk of the coming season but their nationality will have feck all to do with anything.

You don't think it's over the top to ask what will happen if we finish lower than 8th,lose 8-0 or state an opinion as fact that FSG aren't going to spend any money and our best players will definitely leave if Martinez is appointed despite having no evidence of that at all? I do. There's no point repeating myself by saying that people are behaving hysterically - it's pretty self evident. But here's a question for you: Do you honestly and truthfully believe that FSG wouldn't have looked for the best available manager or do you think they always wanted Martinez and just went through the motions of interviewing others?

How they can be accused of trying to get a manager on the cheap is beyond me, it just doesn't make sense. Kenny had two years left on his contract, even if they only paid up a year to sack him then with martinez's £3m you're looking at £5m+ to change manager. Add on what they would've paid Commoli and conservatively they're down £7m,and if they've paid up their contracts in full then the figure is probably closer to £9-10m then it is to £7m - if they were only after doing things on the cheap then why would they bother changing things, especially if they are doing what a few on here suggest and are just treading water until they can sell? They had the king in charge, they saw that even after a horrible dog of a league season there wasn't any pressure on them to change things from the fans so again, why would they change manager/DOF/other positions at huge cost when they could've just kept things as they are and have the perfect excuse for not going big in the market? For them to go against fans and get rid of Kenny and spend the money they will have spent on paying up contracts in order to restructure the club makes it pretty obvious that want the club to improve but to do that they felt they had to change personnel.They may make the wrong choice, but is it really that hard to wait and see what does happen instead of just making things up (doing it on the cheap,not going to spend on players,want to sell as soon as,what happens if we're in the bottom three,etc,etc) and then losing your mind over it?

I am, I think he'll get done big time for it.