Liverpool FC

[The Baron]

If it's not a witch hunt I dont know what is!

Every year the tabloids pick on a manager of a big team. First they loved Mourinho and then they hated him. It was Wenger for a while as well.

Why would you be soo upset about it being Benitez for a while? Liverpool aren't performing well at the moment, Benitez hasn't always had a great relationship with the media and the tabloids love nothing more than stirring up trouble.
It'll die down soon enough....it's your owners you have to worry about..not the witchhunt against Benitez.

True and again, this season it's mostly deserved admittedly. He's made some odd choices.

Agree about G&T - they must go. Although they seem to be cottoning on in more recent times.

I hope so mate..they scare the living shit out of me. I hope someone like Abramovich steps in but there's noone that can afford to buy a club like Liverpool at the moment. I'm guessing that works in your favour with those two though..if they felt they could get a half decent amount from someone for the club they would probably be pulling some weird shit trying to flog it. (Like sacking Rafa and bringing in some new hot shot unproven coach who will look better on the PR leaflet)

Lol proberly.

Don't get me started on those two jokers! I could write for days on them without pausing for breath.

[Josedinho]

Cheers for the replies Baron. I think the point you made is right. Tomkins thinks his team are getting a hard time so is defending them. I don't think they're getting a hard time so it seems like Tomkins is covering any mistakes and needlessly defending Rafa to me.
I still like to check the thread, i like Liverpool and my housemate supports them and Tomkins seems to have good knowledge of what is going on within the club it's just some of his arguements i find a little whiney.
One of the points i think he made well was about Aquilani. He seems to be under pressure from the media to play him but the time is not right yet. I think that's just frustration from the media and the average sky sports fan (i include myself in that). It's a £20million midfielder that is new to the premiership, we all want to see him play and see how good he is and how he adapts. Obviously Rafa is doing what he thinks is best for LFC and rightly the rest of the country don't come into it.

[The Baron]

Cheers for the replies Baron. I think the point you made is right. Tomkins thinks his team are getting a hard time so is defending them. I don't think they're getting a hard time so it seems like Tomkins is covering any mistakes and needlessly defending Rafa to me.
I still like to check the thread, i like Liverpool and my housemate supports them and Tomkins seems to have good knowledge of what is going on within the club it's just some of his arguements i find a little whiney.
One of the points i think he made well was about Aquilani. He seems to be under pressure from the media to play him but the time is not right yet. I think that's just frustration from the media and the average sky sports fan (i include myself in that). It's a £20million midfielder that is new to the premiership, we all want to see him play and see how good he is and how he adapts. Obviously Rafa is doing what he thinks is best for LFC and rightly the rest of the country don't come into it.

Agree with all of that.

I would say Tomkins was better on his own blog (which I posted a lot of on here last season) but he's stopped doing it as he doesn't get paid well enough from it and he's fighting a long term illness which I am not too clued up on. The stuff on the main website which I rip now is paid, but muted and to an extent censored.

I am from the south and have always lived here so when I was younger I was unaware of Liverpool's hatred of the Sun and basically read whatever paper my parents got which varied. As I got older, and more to the point, as I now have a lot of friends in the London rag employment cirlce and a one who works for Sky Sports News I am aware that almost every writer and pundit have strong biases towards certain clubs, many dislike Liverpool quite openly (watch Sunday Supplement for the most blatant cases in point) and now that I know, I see through it daily/weekly/whatever - imo of course. EDIT: It's also very well known that some managers have a lot of friends at fleet street - Benitez is not one of them.

Us reds did have the monopoly on Shitanta (oh dear Steve McManamananmananmanaman) or the joys of Mark fucking Lawrenson on MOTD. I can just about handle Hansen's bias towards us as he at least knows what he's talking about a fair portion of the time. Phil Thompson isn't great and is probably too red but he's been a half decent assistant manager and temporary manager when Houllier was very ill so ott he may be but again he has a clue. I have no clue what the likes of Merson, McLintock & some others are talking about - the game they played is long past. I mean Collymore and Cascarino on talk sport - I ask you! People who at least turned up for games they were picked for please! And these guys are hammering the likes of Gerrard, Benitez, Wenger, Bendtner, Alex, Song, Scholes. I mean seriously.

I think there is hope for the media yet though. There are some excellent young writers out there if you can be bothered to look (my favourite is a Chelsea fan - shoot me) and the younger TV pundits who came from a game of rotation and foreign managers as the norm have a lot more to offer imo.

[The Baron]

Terry Venables = mad skillz. Pretty funny...

Ex-England boss slams Liverpool over Benitez contract


Former England and Tottenham Hotspurs manager Terry Venables has described Liverpool’s decision to offer Rafael Benitez a five-year contract last season as “madness”.

In what is surely one of his biggest opinions to date, Venables wrote in his column for “Even though the beleaguered Spaniard may not have had the rub of the green on occasions, he still enjoyed one of the biggest slices of footballing good fortune this year.

“When Rafa signed a new five-year contract in March, he not only won the Lottery, he won the Boat Race and Grand National as well.


“We have a situation now where the club probably cannot get rid of their manager even if they want to. Liverpool are in a straitjacket - and they cannot get out.”


Sport.co.uk would like to commend Venables for quite clearly swatting up on his English lit. His recent columns – which contain opinions so large that they have to be kept in a hermetic tank next to Kelvin MacKenzie’s ego – have displayed a mastery of the written word which flies in the face of previous utterances such as: "If you can't stand the heat in the dressing-room, get out of the kitchen".


However, we would also like to take issue with the following assertion, also lifted from Venables’ latest tome: “You have to question the Liverpool board's decision to give a five-year contract to a manager who has failed to deliver a league title and, arguably, blew his club's chances of landing that elusive crown last season with his infamous 'That's a fact' rant.”

Liverpool’s league record post-rant:

Played: 18
Won: 12
Drew: 5
Lost: 1

Really blew it there, didn’t he?

[boldie]

lol @ El Tel Never has a manager been more over rated than he was.

[The Baron]

lol @ El Tel Never has a manager been more over rated than he was.

Anyone who sells Diego Maradona to fund a move for Lineker....

[Longy]

lol @ El Tel Never has a manager been more over rated than he was.

Anyone who sells Diego Maradona to fund a move for Lineker....

Times must have been tough for barca back then when they spent 2 years, trying to spin up the money to buy Lineker. Let Lineker go to Everton as well in the interim.

[The Baron]

lol @ El Tel Never has a manager been more over rated than he was.

Anyone who sells Diego Maradona to fund a move for Lineker....

Times must have been tough for barca back then when they spent 2 years, trying to spin up the money to buy Lineker. Let Lineker go to Everton as well in the interim.

I dont know the timescales in all seriousness but I heard Maradona pushed through the move anyway.

El Tel is still the shits.

[Murph1984]

Venables has come a lot closer than any other England manager to winning something since 1966 so he deserves some credit.

He was pretty much undefeated with England throughout his reign as well iirc

[77dave]

hicks with more problems

http://sports.espn.go.com/dallas/mlb/news/story?id=4709073

[Longy]

Venables has come a lot closer than any other England manager to winning something since 1966 so he deserves some credit.

He was pretty much undefeated with England throughout his reign as well iirc

He had 5 competitive games in charge and we played well in 2.5 of them, hardly something to get over excited about imo.

[gatso]

Venables has come a lot closer than any other England manager to winning something since 1966 so he deserves some credit.

He was pretty much undefeated with England throughout his reign as well iirc

He had 5 competitive games in charge and we played well in 2.5 of them, hardly something to get over excited about imo.

not his fault that he was in charge at the only time since wc1970 qualifying that the team didn't have to play competitive matches. he took us to a major semi which we only lost on pens and only lost 1 game in 2 years, he couldn't have a much better record

[Longy]

Venables has come a lot closer than any other England manager to winning something since 1966 so he deserves some credit.

He was pretty much undefeated with England throughout his reign as well iirc

He had 5 competitive games in charge and we played well in 2.5 of them, hardly something to get over excited about imo.

not his fault that he was in charge at the only time since wc1970 qualifying that the team didn't have to play competitive matches. he took us to a major semi which we only lost on pens and only lost 1 game in 2 years, he couldn't have a much better record

Yawn, my point is that people going over the top about him being a good England manager, have massive sample size problems and virtually every game was at home. How many home games did Sven lose in charge and he made 3 straight qf away from home. Yet everyone seems to think he was awful.

I don't think he was bad but his record is clouded by the fact the media never got on his back.

[gatso]

Venables has come a lot closer than any other England manager to winning something since 1966 so he deserves some credit.

He was pretty much undefeated with England throughout his reign as well iirc

He had 5 competitive games in charge and we played well in 2.5 of them, hardly something to get over excited about imo.

not his fault that he was in charge at the only time since wc1970 qualifying that the team didn't have to play competitive matches. he took us to a major semi which we only lost on pens and only lost 1 game in 2 years, he couldn't have a much better record

Yawn, my point is that people going over the top about him being a good England manager, have massive sample size problems and virtually every game was at home. How many home games did Sven lose in charge and he made 3 straight qf away from home. Yet everyone seems to think he was awful.

I don't think he was bad but his record is clouded by the fact the media never got on his back.

yawn, you make a point about sample size problems by using a sample size of 5

I mostly liked sven as england manager fwiw. I still have my sven goran erikSUN tshirt given to my by the sexy sun girls before england argentina

[Murph1984]

*Gerrard in diving shocker*

And they said the English lads should have pulled Ngog aside after the Birmingham game a few weeks back