We wont win the league again

[Woodsyla]

with any manager under the current ownership.

 

Knox had it in a nutshell this summer, he said we needed 6 players to kick on (this included keeping Alonso). What did we get, a net spend of £1.5m.

 

Say what you want about Rafa but the facts are we don't have the money to compete any more. City will spend another £200m in January with the new boss so there wont be an opportunity to bring in any quality in January because we can't promise CL football. If we miss out on the CL one of our star players (£20m+) will be sold to balance the books.

 

Gerrard may well see his career out here but he wont win a league title if he does.

 

If we had signed for example

 

Johnson

Turner

Barry

Doyle

David Silva

 

in the summer and had Alonso and Arbeloa leave it would have been about a £40m net spend but we would be in the title race. As we made nearly £30m on our CL run it's not a collossal amount to find.

 

But no we spend £1.5M.

 

We need to get rid of the owners this season before we lose the likes of Agger, Torres and Reina.

[New York Red]

We need to get rid of the owners?

 

How does that happen exactly?

[Tones]

It cost £14m to get rid of GH and his staff. How much to get rid of Rafa and his staff? £25m. Maybe more? Plus a new massive contract for a new manager, possibly paying a release fee for him and his backroom staff. Hes going to want a transfer budget too. Youre talking possibly up to £50m there. If we have that sort of money to make the changes then we should have given that money to Rafa to improve the squad.

 

We need new owners. That is a greater priority than a new manager.

Edited December 20, 2009 by t1971

[Gunga Din]

some shocking over reaction about today

[Davvo]

If we had signed for example

 

Johnson

Turner

Barry

Doyle

David Silva

 

in the summer and had Alonso and Arbeloa leave it would have been about a £40m net spend but we would be in the title race.

 

That's some heavy duty champ manager nonsense right there.

 

Doyle ?

 

According to Rafa's comments, he wanted Turner instead of the Greek, and ONE more player, variously reported as Silva or ?Jovatevic? . I'm not sure that would have been such a massive improvement on what we have now ? It would also have represented around £20 mill-ish net.

[Tones]

That's some heavy duty champ manager nonsense right there.

 

Doyle ?

 

According to Rafa's comments, he wanted Turner instead of the Greek, and ONE more player, variously reported as Silva or ?Jovatevic? . I'm not sure that would have been such a massive improvement on what we have now ? It would also have represented around £20 mill-ish net.

 

Turner over the greek is a massive improvement on its own. Add a Silva in there and we would have been better off. No doubt.

[Gunga Din]

with any manager under the current ownership.

 

Knox had it in a nutshell this summer, he said we needed 6 players to kick on (this included keeping Alonso). What did we get, a net spend of £1.5m.

 

Say what you want about Rafa but the facts are we don't have the money to compete any more. City will spend another £200m in January with the new boss so there wont be an opportunity to bring in any quality in January because we can't promise CL football. If we miss out on the CL one of our star players (£20m+) will be sold to balance the books.

 

Gerrard may well see his career out here but he wont win a league title if he does.

 

If we had signed for example

 

Johnson

Turner

Barry

Doyle

David Silva

 

in the summer and had Alonso and Arbeloa leave it would have been about a £40m net spend but we would be in the title race. As we made nearly £30m on our CL run it's not a collossal amount to find.

 

But no we spend £1.5M.

 

We need to get rid of the owners this season before we lose the likes of Agger, Torres and Reina.

 

Turner and Doyle, neither are good enough for us. sweet jesus man. next someone will be suggesting we sign that Davies fella from Bolton

[David Hodgson]

It cost £14m to get rid of GH and his staff. How much to get rid of Rafa and his staff? £25m. Maybe more? Plus a new massive contract for a new manager, possibly paying a release fee for him and his backroom staff. Hes going to want a transfer budget too. Youre talking possibly up to £50m there. If we have that sort of money to make the changes then we should have given that money to Rafa to improve the squad.

 

We need new owners. That is a greater priority than a new manager.

 

I found this post on RAWK that somebody had resurrected from March 2004. Interesting parallels abound :

 

my point is not about whether GH should stay or go,

 

but actually how many people actually know what or who they want in his place.

 

Do you want to sack him now? if so who's gonna come? at this stage of the season , no decent manager will risk us not making the CL and therefore losing a major asset in owen.

 

not to mention the fact we would have to pay compensation for them, and risk causing issue connected with 'poaching'

 

all the managers on most peoples short lists are with decent clubs doing well thank you very much, and if they're not then do we really want them?

 

so , you want to sack our manager now and destabilise the club as we enter the most vital part of the season.

 

hmmm thats must make you a genius.

 

Even if another manager did come now, do you really think that it would be an immediate fix?....surely a new manager would want to bring in his own ideas and players...oh except there'e no transfer window so he's stuck with what he's got, and how long will it take to get the new training regimes and tactics in place?.....how long have we got?

 

thinking ahead yet?

 

oh yes sorry, i forgot Thommo and sammy...they can take over cant they.....so you want to sack the guy that leads them and gives them the ideas, and leave the headless chickens in charge of the club..

 

 

[Davvo]

Turner over the greek is a massive improvement on its own. Add a Silva in there and we would have been better off. No doubt.

 

Better off ? clearly. Significantly so, to the extent the current squad would be full of confidence, and playing good football, creating chance after chance ? I'm really not so sure. Our footballing problems run much deeper than the adequate replacement of last season's 4th choice centre back, and a 'potentially' top class attacking addition.

[John am Rhein]

(devil's advocate)

 

the transfer window argument implies the time to change managers would be about now

 

I don't think we should change managers, though, because the one we have is better than the one we'll get.

[Maldini]

I said in the summer Doyle was a great back up to Torres, he plays exactly the same as him, just not as well. He'd have fit into our squad very well. We couldn't even stretch to £6m for him though.

 

When you look back at this summer there were some right bargains about in Kranjcar, Turner and Doyle.

[David Hodgson]

Turner and Doyle, neither are good enough for us. sweet jesus man. next someone will be suggesting we sign that Davies fella from Bolton

 

...also, where are people getting this idea that Rafa would have used this missing £35m to turn us into Champions ? We are a million miles off the top spot already, and £35m more would not have kept us in contention. Obviously all managers have their ups and downs in the transfer market but Rafa is looking an increasingly unsafe pair of hands on that score.

[Tones]

...also, where are people getting this idea that Rafa would have used this missing £35m to turn us into Champions ? We are a million miles off the top spot already, and £35m more would not have kept us in contention. Obviously all managers have their ups and downs in the transfer market but Rafa is looking an increasingly unsafe pair of hands on that score.

 

He got us pretty close last season. Theres no guarantee £35m would have made us champions, but thats the case with any manager and any team. There are no guarantees. We would have been better than we are now though, i have no doubt about that. We needed to push on from last year and improve the squad but Rafa wasnt allowed to do that.

[Gunga Din]

...also, where are people getting this idea that Rafa would have used this missing £35m to turn us into Champions ? We are a million miles off the top spot already, and £35m more would not have kept us in contention. Obviously all managers have their ups and downs in the transfer market but Rafa is looking an increasingly unsafe pair of hands on that score.

 

the brand of football we are playing right now, it wouldnt matter who we have in the side. its not the players that are the main reason we are so far behind. its the style of play, and the tactics. we could have Ribery, Silva, Villa and Maraf***ingdona in the team, and they would be stiffled by our tactics and playing style at the minute.

[Earl Hafler]

the brand of football we are playing right now, it wouldnt matter who we have in the side. its not the players that are the main reason we are so far behind. its the style of play, and the tactics. we could have Ribery, Silva, Villa and Maraf***ingdona in the team, and they would be stiffled by our tactics and playing style at the minute.

 

3 of them would be on the bench

[pipnasty]

the brand of football we are playing right now, it wouldnt matter who we have in the side. its not the players that are the main reason we are so far behind. its the style of play, and the tactics. we could have Ribery, Silva, Villa and Maraf***ingdona in the team, and they would be stiffled by our tactics and playing style at the minute.

 

 

some shocking over reaction about today

[abc]

(devil's advocate)

 

the transfer window argument implies the time to change managers would be about now

 

I don't think we should change managers, though, because the one we have is better than the one we'll get.

 

You said this about 5 years ago, even after Rafa joined that you still thought Houllier was the right (and better) man for the job.

 

Except that this time round, I agree with you...

[Maldini]

I know I'm probably in a minority of one on this, but I think Alonso would still be here if it wasn't for our financial troubles. I don't think Rafa ever really wanted him to go when that move was first proposed, but in the summer before last he knew he had nothing to spend and so had to try and be creative so he came up with the proposed Barry-Alonso swap to free up a few million quid, weaken one area of the team slightly to drastically stengthen another. We've never really been in a position where we haven't had to take risks. People talk about Torres like he was a sure thing, but he was far from it!

 

Ironically Keane was the only "sure thing" we've been able to sign during Rafa's tenure.

Edited December 20, 2009 by Maldini

[abc]

the brand of football we are playing right now, it wouldnt matter who we have in the side. its not the players that are the main reason we are so far behind. its the style of play, and the tactics. we could have Ribery, Silva, Villa and Maraf***ingdona in the team, and they would be stiffled by our tactics and playing style at the minute.

 

IMO it's not any poorer than some of the rough patches we hit in the past few seasons.

 

Except that in the past we would go through a bad month, flush out the garbage and go on to have decent runs. We all thought we'd gone through that after winning 4/5 in a row earlier this season. And then after that turned a corner when we beat Man Utd 2-0 in a superb performance. And then again vs Everton but this time with a pretty poor showing.

 

I seem to have this awful memory of Houllier's 10/11 matches in a row without a win. We couldn't string more than 3 passes together in some matches, literally. Now that was absolute garbage. Against Wigan which was just a few days ago mind, we played some very good stuff early on, and then again in the 2nd half.

 

But I do generally agree with you - the tactics and style of play is what's preventing us from playing our way into form. Watch Man Utd and Arsenal when they are hunting for goals. They usually have around four players level or ahead of the play when they are in the final third. Our wide men get into good positions, but they hardly ever have enough targets to put in an early ball. There's not enough gambling with late runs into the box. Our strikers hardly ever dart towards the near post - Crouchy was the last one to do that.

 

It's also got a little bit to do with personnel I reckon. But mainly, the way we set out and the attitude of the manager...

[Crazy Horse]

I found this post on RAWK that somebody had resurrected from March 2004. Interesting parallels abound :

 

my point is not about whether GH should stay or go,

 

but actually how many people actually know what or who they want in his place.

 

Do you want to sack him now? if so who's gonna come? at this stage of the season , no decent manager will risk us not making the CL and therefore losing a major asset in owen.

 

not to mention the fact we would have to pay compensation for them, and risk causing issue connected with 'poaching'

 

all the managers on most peoples short lists are with decent clubs doing well thank you very much, and if they're not then do we really want them?

 

so , you want to sack our manager now and destabilise the club as we enter the most vital part of the season.

 

hmmm thats must make you a genius.

 

Even if another manager did come now, do you really think that it would be an immediate fix?....surely a new manager would want to bring in his own ideas and players...oh except there'e no transfer window so he's stuck with what he's got, and how long will it take to get the new training regimes and tactics in place?.....how long have we got?

 

thinking ahead yet?

 

oh yes sorry, i forgot Thommo and sammy...they can take over cant they.....so you want to sack the guy that leads them and gives them the ideas, and leave the headless chickens in charge of the club..

 

Whoever that was certainly knew their onions. Perhaps we can make it a sticky here to be used as a template for cut and pasting.

[Paul]

I know I'm probably in a minority of one on this, but I think Alonso would still be here if it wasn't for our financial troubles. I don't think Rafa ever really wanted him to go when that move was first proposed, but in the summer before last he knew he had nothing to spend and so had to try and be creative so he came up with the proposed Barry-Alonso swap to free up a few million quid, weaken one area of the team slightly to drastically stengthen another. We've never really been in a position where we haven't had to take risks. People talk about Torres like he was a sure thing, but he was far from it!

 

Ironically Keane was the only "sure thing" we've been able to sign during Rafa's tenure.

 

Wasn't Rafa willing to sell Alonso to Juve for £18m last season and then wanted to pay Villa the same amount for Barry.

[Maldini]

Wasn't Rafa willing to sell Alonso to Juve for £18m last season and then wanted to pay Villa the same amount for Barry.

 

No, he's already the plan was to get £20m+ for Alonso and pay £12m for Barry but obviously neither ever happened.

[John am Rhein]

You said this about 5 years ago, even after Rafa joined that you still thought Houllier was the right (and better) man for the job.

 

Except that this time round, I agree with you...

 

Exactly - Benitez 'proves' the point wrong then and right now.

 

The general point is that it's a very unwise gamble to get rid of a good manager and just because we got lucky once, doesn't mean we will again. What's more the ownership situation of the club means we are far less likely to get lucjky now than we were then.

[Paul]

No, he's already the plan was to get £20m+ for Alonso and pay £12m for Barry but obviously neither ever happened.

 

Yes, the initial plan may have been that but later he was willing to sell Alonso for £18m and fell out with the owners bacause they wouldn't pay £18m for Barry.

I don't think this deal was about releasing funds.

 

I seem to remember a reporter asking Rafa last season is he glad he didn't sell Alonso now that his form had been so good this season and he response was something along the lines of 'do you not think we'd be doing as well with Barry'. That tells it's own story

[Ed the Wool]

I found this post on RAWK that somebody had resurrected from March 2004. Interesting parallels abound :

 

my point is not about whether GH should stay or go,

 

but actually how many people actually know what or who they want in his place.

 

Do you want to sack him now? if so who's gonna come? at this stage of the season , no decent manager will risk us not making the CL and therefore losing a major asset in owen.

 

not to mention the fact we would have to pay compensation for them, and risk causing issue connected with 'poaching'

 

all the managers on most peoples short lists are with decent clubs doing well thank you very much, and if they're not then do we really want them?

 

so , you want to sack our manager now and destabilise the club as we enter the most vital part of the season.

 

hmmm thats must make you a genius.

 

Even if another manager did come now, do you really think that it would be an immediate fix?....surely a new manager would want to bring in his own ideas and players...oh except there'e no transfer window so he's stuck with what he's got, and how long will it take to get the new training regimes and tactics in place?.....how long have we got?

 

thinking ahead yet?

 

oh yes sorry, i forgot Thommo and sammy...they can take over cant they.....so you want to sack the guy that leads them and gives them the ideas, and leave the headless chickens in charge of the club..

 

The other massive difference between then and now is we don't have a board who will give a manager money, and we don't have a club that earns 20-30m a season to be invested in the team.