The OFFICIAL Liverpool FC thread - #DankeJürgen

[TacadoirArdMhacha]

Rafa - did you used to post as Corn? Your style is very familiar.

Interesting observation lecale - let's test it out.

Rafa - Philip McEvoy is an average goalkeeper, not up to the standard required for intercounty football and is quite a way behind Paul Hearty and Ciaran McKinney. Martin O'Rourke does not contribute enough to justify being in an Armagh side. In particular his passing is poor and his ability to winning breaking ball is grossly exagerated. Please discuss.

And Dirk Kuyt is shite.

[Rafa]

Rafa - did you used to post as Corn? Your style is very familiar.

Interesting observation lecale - let's test it out.

Rafa - Philip McEvoy is an average goalkeeper, not up to the standard required for intercounty football and is quite a way behind Paul Hearty and Ciaran McKinney. Martin O'Rourke does not contribute enough to justify being in an Armagh side. In particular his passing is poor and his ability to winning breaking ball is grossly exagerated. Please discuss.

And Dirk Kuyt is shite.

Ok, I don't know who Philip McEvoy is nor Ciaran McKinney for that matter.

I see a lot of people making reference to me being corn as well as sending me PMs! Since one PMer kindly explained to me what exactly everyone was talking about I think I should now take the opportunity to clarify that I am categorically not the poster formally known as Corn02!

Sorry to disappoint.

[EC Unique]

''Brown or Skrtel? Skrtel.''

Are you serious?

Fair enough Brown is a bit short on match fittness but he is an excellent player and I expect him to be first 11 before long.

[bingobus]

''Brown or Skrtel? Skrtel.''

Are you serious?

Fair enough Brown is a bit short on match fittness but he is an excellent player and I expect him to be first 11 before long.

But would he be a CH or a Right back. I doubt he'll be a CB in front of Vidic or Rio barring injuries. Always seen him as a RB. Had potential to be a CB but think at this stage he'll not make it there.

[brokencrossbar1]

Can you make it clear I am not  Rafa over there!!!!! Getting ridiculous, although I do agree with plenty of his points.  Wink Despite the fact that he is far too pro rafa

Rafa is not corn, from the horses mouth!!!

As for Brown instead of Skittles, don't even go there!

[supersarsfields]

''Brown or Skrtel? Skrtel.''

Are you serious?

Fair enough Brown is a bit short on match fittness but he is an excellent player and I expect him to be first 11 before long.

Brown wouldn't get near Skrtel for a CB role. Infact when fully fit I'd expect skrtel to be in the first 11 at the expence of Agger.

[Lecale2]

Rafa - did you used to post as Corn? Your style is very familiar.

Interesting observation lecale - let's test it out.

Rafa - Philip McEvoy is an average goalkeeper, not up to the standard required for intercounty football and is quite a way behind Paul Hearty and Ciaran McKinney. Martin O'Rourke does not contribute enough to justify being in an Armagh side. In particular his passing is poor and his ability to winning breaking ball is grossly exagerated. Please discuss.

And Dirk Kuyt is shite.

Ok, I don't know who Philip McEvoy is nor Ciaran McKinney for that matter.

I see a lot of people making reference to me being corn as well as sending me PMs! Since one PMer kindly explained to me what exactly everyone was talking about I think I should now take the opportunity to clarify that I am categorically not the poster formally known as Corn02!

Sorry to disappoint.

Thank God for that. I sort of knew thon c**t Corn wouldn't have the balls to come on here again after the way he left.

[oakleafgael]

Lads I honestly think you are fooling yourselves if you think Liverpools strongest 13/14 is comparable with either of Chelsea's or United's. Kuyt for all his endeavor isnt up to the standard of the player who should be playing for Liverpool. The way I see it is that there are three top class players who would get into any team in the world. Another 4/5 who are good enough for the team and after that its mostly fillers. Both the owners and the management have to take the blame for that, the owners for the lack of support for the manager in the transfer market and the manager for his poor decisions.

[Cúig huaire]

3 top class players? Torres, Gerrard and ?

[oakleafgael]

3 top class players? Torres, Gerrard and ?

Reina is as good a goalie as whats around imo.

[Cúig huaire]

Reina is a great shot stopper, but he is terrible at crosses. He flapped at a couple on Wednesday night. I will admit that he hasnt had the best defence in the world playing in front of him this season, but he is prone to the odd error.

[supersarsfields]

And for the job he does Masch is one of the best around.

[oakleafgael]

Reina is a great shot stopper, but he is terrible at crosses. He flapped at a couple on Wednesday night. I will admit that he hasnt had the best defence in the world playing in front of him this season, but he is prone to the odd error.

Very few goalkeepers nowadays are the complete package. Put any keeper behind a defence as poor as the current Liverpool one and the confidence will soon go and errors will creep in. He isnt that bad under crosses for a continental keeper, his temperament would be his biggest weakness imo. There arent many better than him.

[oakleafgael]

And for the job he does Masch is one of the best around.

He would be in the group of 4/5 who should be kept and are worth a place in the team. To compete for the title I think they are short of a central midfielder, two wide men, a top class forward and a centre half. Thats just what is needed for the first eleven.

[EC Unique]

RAFA BENITEZ has made a career of hauling himself - and Liverpool - back from the brink.
There have been epic moments in his Anfield reign when he pulled off masterstrokes that had the Kop believing they were in the presence of greatness.

They stood in awe of Rafa the Legend.

That faith and trust looked mis-placed in Lyon on Wednesday when Liverpool failed to clinch the win they so badly needed in the Champions League.

But it is not all about that single failure.

A closer glance at the facts exposes a few home truths which are painful to contemplate.

The harsh reality suggests the Kop may have been idolising someone who does not quite merit legendary status. Someone more like Rafa the Myth, than Rafa the Legend.

All his touches of genius have to be tempered by 13 BAFFLING DECISIONS which led to more head-scratching than a visit from the nit-nurse.

We all know Spaniard Benitez has a notoriously stubborn streak.

A single-minded approach from which there is rarely any swaying.

But there are times when anyone has to listen to a voice of reason - and that brings us to one of Rafa's most calamitous blunders.

When Paco Ayesteran was working alongside Benitez, he had someone whose opinion was not simply down to blind faith, but what he himself believed in.

Ayesteran - a man who helped establish them as the Spanish Brian Clough and Peter Taylor - left Anfield a little over two years ago.

The reason: A petty disagreement which could so easily have been rectified rather than be an irreparable rift.

Many Reds believe the day Paco headed back to his homeland was the day the cracks began to appear.

A lack of trophies since does little to shatter the suggestion.

Then comes Rafa's bewildering treatment of key players.

Like, for example, the handling of Peter Crouch and Robbie Keane.

And Xabi Alonso, possibly more than anyone else.

Crouch, should anyone forget, hit 22 Premier League goals in his time at Liverpool. In the Euro campaign of three years ago his seven goals did as much as anyone to book another Champions League final.

His reward? A place on the bench for all but the final 12 minutes of a game when Liverpool desperately needed another outlet, a man to unsettle a Milan backline lapping up all thrown at them.

Alongside Crouch on the bench was Craig Bellamy, a man terrorising defences again, now at Manchester City. Both have now gone but Crouch's sale must go down as a monumental error.

Yet if Crouch felt hard done-by, that is nothing compared to the treatment fellow striker Keane received.

A man who would have crawled over broken glass to play for his boyhood heroes, yet would have only used it to slash his wrists by the time he left.

One glaring example of that came at Wigan, at the end of last January, when he sat on the bench as Liverpool toiled. Keane was thrown on only for the last six minutes after the Latics equalised.

Too little, too late.

And talking of hitmen left kicking their heels, even superstar Fernando Torres has not escaped.

Like at Stoke, two weeks earlier, when he was thrown on only for 30 minutes of a deadlocked game.

By then, Stoke's belief grew in equal measure to Liverpool's panic and two more points were eventually dropped.

A game which, incidentally, came 24 hours after the memorable 'Raf rant' - another of his blunders.

Even if you accept Rafa was right to question Manchester United boss Alex Ferguson's influence on the game, the timing could not have been worse - heaping immediate pressure on his men to get a win at Stoke.

Had the Wigan and Stoke games ended in victories, the four extra points would have brought an end to a two-decade title drought.

Then there's the second striker issue. Ryan Babel, David Ngog, Andriy Voronin. Men capable in flashes, yet nowhere near consistent enough.

We saw all that is frustrating about Voronin in Wednesday night's draw in Lyon. OK, Babel scored a cracker that night, but how often have we been able to say that?

Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard both went public in their desire to see Michael Owen brought back - for nothing - in the summer.

Yet Benitez, 49, still harbours simmering anger at the way he believes Owen left Liverpool in the lurch when he joined Real Madrid.

End of interest. Even though he is not the player he once was, does anyone genuinely believe he would not have given the Liverpool side a more potent alternative to those now available? And what of Rafa's suffocatingly cautious approach to the game?




So many defensive line-ups, substitutions, one-player-up-front moments make Rafa's mantra crystal clear: It's far more important not to lose a game, than it is to win it.

Bringing Yossi Benayoun off when his team were level with Lyon only to lose the Champions League home tie, was met by boos from the fans.

Yes, there have been plenty of success stories.

Martin Skrtel, for one, was a man largely unknown on these shores, but a tough, rugged centre-back entirely at home in the Premier League.

So why, at Middlesbrough last term, was he used as a right-back, spending the afternoon being run ragged as Liverpool crashed.

Beyond all of these aberrations, there is one dark shadow that looms larger than any other at Anfield right now.

Xabi Alonso.

Selling Alonso, following his most impressive season at the club, was not in itself the crime, however.

That came the minute the midfielder found himself as a pawn to try and tempt Gareth Barry to Merseyside.

From then on, no counsellor could repair the relationship between the two Spaniards. That was not down to ill fortune, but pure and simple rank bad man-management by Benitez.

Only this week Gerrard admitted he remains "devastated" by the loss of Alonso. And when your best player is saying that, then things really are bad, Rafa.

Thirteen is unlucky for most. For Benitez, it may be the number that exposes the myth behind the legend.