Football Fixtures 12-13th January **Spoilers**

nokkonwud said:
We didn't think Robben was worthy of such high wages at such an age, and we were proven right as he's a little money grabber with a bad attitude. As for buying Essien, we wanted him but weren't willing to pay above what we thought he was worth. We could have signed him, but opted to stick with what we had.
I don't rate Diarra (for us) as we don't need a player in his position, Liverpool do. I'd have Cahill at Man Utd, and I do think he's better than Sissoko or Alonso, but he's more offensive than Alonso and will get you goals too, which is what Liverpool need. For £2m too, you couldn't have gone far wrong. The reason I compared them is that they were signed at a time you were looking for midfielders, of which Cahill is.
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OMG Nokkon you are completely missing the point! Its not a case of finding minor improvements like Boa Morte or Ashton (though i disagree that either are better than Crouch or Benayoun) as we'd still be in the same position we're in now. I was asking how we could get players to the standard Utd and Chelsea have been signing (Ronaldo's, Rooney's, Drogba's, Robben's etc) with the money we've had available. You came up with a few players we could have signed; Arteta over Pennant, Petrov over Benayoun and McCarthy over Kuyt but the rest are either minor improvements, in some cases worse or were impossible for Rafa to sign.

As for Diarra, im not sure how you can say we need him when we have Mascherano and Alonso who are far better players. The same applys for Cahill, why would we sign him when he would be up against Gerrard for a place in the side? We had an attacking cm, we needed somebody to play alongside Gerrard and Cahill isn't and wasn't the answer.
 
moody said:
Has Kuyt played half of his games in Midfield then?
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Like others have said, the games he's played up top he plays just in front of our midfield and he has played a fair few games out wide as part of a 3.

edit\ Sunerland are 1-0 vs Pompey btw
 
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BaZ87 said:
So you're honestly saying that Houllier's squad didn't need much work on it? Houllier had a reasonable start with us but peaked the season we finished 2nd, from there the next 2 seasons were shocking where we were losing players like Babbel, Mcallister, Henchoz and Anelka and failed to replace them. With the likes of Owen and Heskey leaving we were left with a side roughly like this:
Dudek
Finnan Carra Hyypia Riise
Murphy Gerrard Hamann Kewell
Cisse Baros

With the exception of Gerrard, Hamann and Hyypia and you have to remember the age of the last 2, the rest of those players weren't up to it at the time though Carra and Finnan have been turned around under Rafa.

Compare that with now:
Reina
Finnan Carra Agger Aurelio
Pennant Alonso Mascherano Babel
Gerrard
Torres

We've now got an excellent keeper, top cb pairing to go along with a couple of decent fullbacks, excellent cm, a guy with great potential and a top striker. The problem is at the moment Babel is still finding his feet (and he may never) and the rest of the attacking players in our squad are squad players at best.
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As I said before it's my observations as an outsider looking into Liverpool. Only you guys can say if the squad is better under Benitez rather than Houllier. My point was that four or five years ago you could never predict the outcome of the a United Liverpool game home or away as there was very rarely much in it. Nowadays I don't think Liverpool offer the same threat to us in a game. They get easily found out and their tactics are very sterile.

The other thing lost on Liverpool fans where finances are concerned is that for the most part of Fergies tenure we had responsibilities to the stock exchange. So as much as Benitez's hands have supposedly been tied then so has Fergies to some extent
 
Loki said:
As I said before it's my observations as an outsider looking into Liverpool. Only you guys can say if the squad is better under Benitez rather than Houllier. My point was that four or five years ago you could never predict the outcome of the a United Liverpool game home or away as there was very rarely much in it. Nowadays I don't think Liverpool offer the same threat to us in a game. They get easily found out and their tactics are very sterile.

The other thing lost on Liverpool fans where finances are concerned is that for the most part of Fergies tenure we had responsibilities to the stock exchange. So as much as Benitez's hands have supposedly been tied then so has Fergies to some extent
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We had Super Danny Murphy then :D


I think it's to do with the individuals. You have more individual match winners than we do now who can unlock these tight games.
 
Loki said:
That name still sends a shiver down my spine :p
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I think back then we had, as we do now, a tight defensive unit and utilised Owen's pace on the counter.

We had Gerrard, Murphy, Owen who could decide this type of game.

In recent years we have had purely Gerrard... and now we have Gerrard and Torres.

You have Ronaldo, Rooney, Tevez, Nani, Saha, Scholes all capable of deciding a tight game.
 
dobbsy said:
I think back then we were a tight defensive unit, who utilised Owen's pace on the counter.

We had Gerrard, Murphy, Owen who could decide this type of game.

In recent years we have had purely Gerrard... and now we have Gerrard and Torres.

You have Ronaldo, Rooney, Tevez, Nani, Saha, Scholes all capable of deciding a tight game.
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Don't forget Super John O'Shea ;)
 
Loki said:
As I said before it's my observations as an outsider looking into Liverpool. Only you guys can say if the squad is better under Benitez rather than Houllier. My point was that four or five years ago you could never predict the outcome of the a United Liverpool game home or away as there was very rarely much in it. Nowadays I don't think Liverpool offer the same threat to us in a game. They get easily found out and their tactics are very sterile.

The other thing lost on Liverpool fans where finances are concerned is that for the most part of Fergies tenure we had responsibilities to the stock exchange. So as much as Benitez's hands have supposedly been tied then so has Fergies to some extent
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We had a spell where we done well against you lot during the middle of Houllier's time (iirc you won the last few home and away) but that was when we had a very strong back 4 with Hamann sitting in front of them and we soaked up loads of pressure and pinched the odd goal. With the exception to the 2-0 and 3-1 at Anfield we never controlled the game against you where as under Rafa we have (last season at Anfield and both matches the year before) but just didn't get the break in front of goal. Our record against the rest of the big 4 under Rafa is poor and the lack of a top striker since Owen left was a huge part of that; the games are often tight and we were reliant on Cisse, Baros or Crouch to take those 1/2 chances. Hopefully with Torres and possible new attacking additions we can turn that record around.

As for the finances, i know Fergie wasn't working with no budget but he still had a large enough budget to sign the genuine top players when they became available and wouldn't miss out on a signing for the sake of £1m which in the case of Alves and Simao we have.

edit\ dobbsy wrote the same thing :)
 
BaZ87 said:
We had a spell where we done well against you lot during the middle of Houllier's time (iirc you won the last few home and away) but that was when we had a very strong back 4 with Hamann sitting in front of them and we soaked up loads of pressure and pinched the odd goal. With the exception to the 2-0 and 3-1 at Anfield we never controlled the game against you where as under Rafa we have (last season at Anfield and both matches the year before) but just didn't get the break in front of goal. Our record against the rest of the big 4 under Rafa is poor and the lack of a top striker since Owen left was a huge part of that; the games are often tight and we were reliant on Cisse, Baros or Crouch to take those 1/2 chances. Hopefully with Torres and possible new attacking additions we can turn that record around.

As for the finances, i know Fergie wasn't working with no budget but he still had a large enough budget to sign the genuine top players when they became available and wouldn't miss out on a signing for the sake of £1m which in the case of Alves and Simao we have.

edit\ dobbsy wrote the same thing :)
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Think Coco the clown was as much to blame for us missing out on Simao and Alves as the financial side of things, both of them could have been wrapped up well before the start of the season, not trying to do business as a last ditch attempt in January and Parry trying to squeeze every single pound off he could.
 
BaZ87 said:
True but we'd have still been able to sign both had we had the extra £1m odd available, Alves especially.
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This disheartening thing is the players we have missed out on due to both indecision and finance.

We wouldn't pay the 6 million to secure Cristiano Ronaldo under Houllier + Thommo, missing out on Thuram at one stage.

Vidic we missed out on.
 
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