xavier

English football in particular. With the coming of the 'Premier League' and marketing of the same, the "audience" will always expect to be entertained and teams need better players to do so. Its the system that is wrong. A way to recover the situation would be to allow reserve teams to play in the football league till the championship. Spain does it and even the likes of Madrid, Barca and Valencia consistently produce top youth players because of it. The young 'uns need competitive football and the 16-20 games a season that the reserve league provides is nowhere enough for future aspirants. Yes, you can send players out on loan but once on loan, you lose control of what you want to do with them. Playing in the Championship and League One will give you the control that these teenagers need to improve their game with a view of playing for your first team. The F.A. will never have the balls to accept its major flaws and improve the game.

Thanks Bill, appreciate it.

As a long time regular, maybe not. Stevie Warnock played a fair bit (got his break under Houllier though). Under Rafa, Insua joined as a 17 year old, played a lot of games, and went on to win an Argentina cap. Mikel San Jose did well for the reserves, played a full season on loan at Bilbao but decided that he didnt want to come back. Danny Ayala got his break and took his chance and is first choice in the championship on loan at Hull. Martin Kelly is a huge prospect, possible first choice in the next few years if he sorts out his back and knee problems and has got his break, Spearing has played a bit, Eccelston who has done well in the U-18's and reserve has had a couple of substitute appearances, Shelvey and Wilson are proper good buys and will get their chance. Lucas was brought when he was 19 as well and is part of a first choice pairing there. Pacheco's a fantastic talent and has come on to change a couple of game but we need to find a position for him. He was the top scorer in the U-19 Euro's. Suso is only 16 but already pushing on from the reserves. Michael Ngoo and Toni Silva are regulars in their U-19 international squads. David Ngog has a decent scoring rate for the first team. Chris Mavinga won the Euro U-19's with France and played all their games. So yeah, our reserve and youth system is as good as it ever was after Rafa arrived. He brought in Barca's youth coach to manage our U-18's and John McMahon is clearly doing a good job with the reserves. A lot of these players will not be good enough for Liverpool and might not be the next be the next Gerrard. But for a supposedly top team like us who will probably fill in first team places by buying internationals, the youth system is a way to bring in money. It should pay for itself. Even if all these kids are sold in the future, they'd bring in money to buy new youths and will be backup to the first team at worst. Manchester United has a brilliant youth system, they may not be playing kids in the first team all that often but usually manage to sell players at 22-23 years of age for 5-6 million pounds regularly. Rafa knew the advantage of a good feeding system (insert fat joke here) and we're already seeing the benefits of that. Hopefully Roy or whoever who replaces him continues the progress made. Liverpool cannot expect to have a Steven Gerrard come through every 3 years, but what it can expect is a Darron Gibson or Johnny Evans or Phil Bardsley and Frazier Campbell, who can be sold on to make a profit.

His transfer net spend was about 9 million pounds a year over 6 years. Rafa didnt 'waste' millions, every manager has flops, Rafa had his share as well. Difference being, that for an apparently top side, we didnt have the cushion of extra money like Chelsea, or Manchester United (even Spurs and Villa on occasions outspent us). His record with us in Europe in outstanding. We used to go into the knockouts as underdogs but have beat Barca and Real and Inter and Chelsea and Juve (in 05). We scored 82 and 86 points in the league under Rafa, which gets written off by the media time and time again. We never had the squad to win the league but usually had a strong first team. It was never only about Torres and Gerrard under Rafa. Add Pepe Reina, Alonso, Mascherano to the list and we had 5 genuinely world class performers in the team. Along with good players like Agger and Carra and Aurelio and Arbeloa with ten goals a season regularly coming from Kuyt, Luis Garcia and Yossi.. Benitez assembled a good team. Always unnoticed by the media, our youth system improved ever since Rafa joined us and is very strong now. Even forgetting all the memorable results, it was Rafa who first brought to attention the problem with our owners. For him the city and the club was always number one and was fighting a one man battle in the management side of things and we appreciate that. Even when he left, he donated a big chunk of money to the Hillsborough victims and spoke of how the Wirral was his only home now. It was a nice touch of the LFC fans today to have thanked him with that banner and the Inter Ultras to have allowed them to display it during Inter's CL game against Spurs. To win the league now, you need to constantly get good players and need about 15-18 top players in the squad. We never had that because the managers hands were always tied behind his back when it came to funds. We lost out on Vidic, Alves, Barry and Malouda and god knows how many others. Its rubbish this Rafa wasted millions on the squad argument. The players definitely need to take responsibility. They should been shouldered some blame when Rafa was under the cosh as well, but that never happened. But we were rarely genuinely outfought under Rafa. We've been held to a draw by worse teams and beaten by better ones but it was rarely this bad. The game against City this season exemplified that. Roy plays a good old 442 and we were massacred in midfield and it was worse than when Everton dominated us in the first half. We've never looked like scoring, many times during the season. Roy hasnt won an away game in 23 tries, he's tactically inept. Fuck me what a record. 23 games. Blackpool had about 80% possession since the 80th minute when we were trying to get a goal and draw the game! But most of all, its his comments in the media that have turned the fans against him. He was supposed to follow the 'Liverpool way' that Rafa apparently didnt. But in order to blame everyone else (which Rafa did a lot apparently, hah!) he's blamed Torres, Agger, the kids who he put out and has given a Rafa-esque guarantee taht we wont get relegated this season. The funny thing is, with him in charge, i think we might. I dread every press conference of his, he thinks that we did well against Everton and United ffs! We had a 15 minute spell in both games! After we were 2 nil down and the opposition had obviously stepped off the gas. Both sides could have beat us 4 or 5 nil easy if they'd gone on. I dont even want to start going on about how he sold two young players and paid cash to replace them with Konchesky, paid 5 million for Poulsen who Juve were willing to let go on a free in Jan and paid 7 figure amounts to sign Brad fucking Jones as backup. We have Meireles but he thinks that it would be a good idea to play him in right midfield. Wow. Its not funny, its sad. Thanks to Moores, Parry and G&H, we have become a laughing stock. Hodgson isny helping things but he is not half as big a villain than those guys. Atleast United are on the next train behind us to be massacred by the debt on the club. Thats a plus. The LFC forums arent too bad at this point actually. Things are looking up with the sale of the club, Purslow leaving today and confirmations from solid sources that Hodgson has been asked to resign after the Napoli tie. Pellegrini would be a good man to get in the club, i reckon. His agent has said about us having made contact with him but the ones in the know still say that the Rijkaard deal is done.

Hodgson is probably off after the Napoli game. Since he's so fantastic and all, maybe Reg would like him to replace Moyes later? Rijkaard is being linked as a replacement although this one isnt confirmed as opposed to the first one.

Pot, kettle, black and all that.

Told you it'll be easy. Even Hibbert and Beckford got kick outs. Atleast Hodgson's closer to the sack.

No chance. 2-0 Everton, at least. Meireles will probably play out of position on the right and the totally awful Poulsen will be a non body in the middle. At least Neville works hard.

Relegation 6 pointer this. We're gonna get hammered.

Dont care about the 9 point deduction

We're lucky we have a manager whose experienced fighting relegation battles.

Tariq Panja on twitter is an excellent person to follow if anyone's interested in whats happening, even for the wrong reasons like reg. Dont fault him too much on his last post, actually. I'm sure there are many people who'd agree with him. Its natural. Nothings done as of yet. G&H will try every trick in their book to keep hold of us (tried to put up Melwood, Anfield, guaranteed tv money and the players as collateral to get in investment which was blocked by RBS' men on the board and then they even tried to sack Ayre and Purslow yesterday night). Its not over till its over. Many Liverpool fans are talking about getting back to the top and winning trophies under new ownership but for me its about getting the pride back. Banter and cat calls from opposition fans doesnt affect as much as seeing the club dying from the inside. Dont think its possible to win the league without having anything like the money Abramovich or the Al Nahyan family has. The mancs are on the next train to trouble, behind us though and will need to sort it out.

Aww, I love you too. You and your self appointed 'People's Club' Club.

Hello. Was the forum down for a good while, tried to get one a few weeks back but couldnt? Aye fair enough.

Are you sure if these three would get into your squad even? Beckford over Torres surely.

Crouchie and Poulsen to Liverpool. Done deals.

You might not have a choie but to

So are we Maxi, Jovanovic and Cole though.

We'd be lucky if we can break into the top 4 again.

fo' shizzle my nizzle

You can get a straight red even if you're on a yellow, you know. With the suspension being 2 games + the possibility of one.

It depends where the injuries are happening doesnt it. If its during training, then it means different from an in game injury. Newcastle's training ground is infamous for getting players injured. Could well be the exercise regimen as well, some players are not suited to a particular one. Torres remains fit for us most of the time but the chances of him getting crocked increase the moment he goes away on international duty with Spain. God knows what they do to him. On the other hand, some players are just injury prone... like Van Der Meyde. He could be chopping parsley and he'd still do his knee somehow.

Haha red card? Red card's are given for denying an 'obvious' goal scoring opportunity. Thats why Vidic got a 2nd yellow and not a straight red himself, Evra would have maybe caught Kuyt by the time he reached Van Der Sar's box. The through ball to Owen was CLEARLY taking him away from goal and not towards it, i think a yellow card was deserved and probably fair.