I am on the Arsenal ,Man City and Chel$ki bandwagon

[Sir X]

Fi win di Prem and the liverpool bandwagon to recall Rafa! If pool is going to go english then Martin Oneil is the only option , if its continental its deschammps or hiddink.Rikjarrad needs a mourinho budget to win titles.

Liverpool have two youth coaches left over from the Rafa years who have intimate knowledge of developing the Barca/Real madrid youth system, anyone that comes in has to know how to embrace it and run it thus all english managers are excluded except Oniel, im might ave some sense.

Right sass ?

[Assasin]

ah well look where Villa is with the Former Liverpool manager.
Liverpool will not go anywhere fast anytime soon. You need a manager to stop the bleeding and then build on it. You have too many players who need to go to restart putting the team together. Liverpool would be crazy to take back Rafa, they need a coach fi work with the owner, not to start placing demand on them unless they have Chelsea or Man City type money. Real and Barca can afford it as they are partly funded by government and still running at a huge loss.

[Sir X]

yes sass , where do we start torres, gerrard to man city , kuyt to inter milan ,glen jonhson and aqualliani to juventus , maschi to barca ,maxi and babel to birmingham , lucas to inter pepe to man u , agger to juventus .

ship the rucks dem out to champions league teams and get some good championship ballas or fulham ,bolton , newcastle english man dem.and build a airball team, midtable is the ambition

gwaan chat faart

[Sir X]

Another masterpiece ....juss try understand ..i dont expect you to but try
The Media Narrative In Full Swing
Good luck to Roy Hodgson. On many levels he’ll need it.
Then again, maybe he won’t. The press seem to love him, so that’s one fewer battle he’ll face than Benítez.

Having said that, I fear that some of the press, in taking one last chance to swipe at the Spaniard, are doing Hodgson no favours; in a quite comical piece, Paul Hayward of the Guardian seems to not actually understand what the former Fulham manager is all about.
By building him up into something he’s not, he’s providing false hopes. He’s putting unfair pressure on the new Liverpool boss.
First, the Guardian man’s digs about the old one.
“By the end of the Rafael Benítez reign one of the game’s great clubs had adopted a kind of mechanical pragmatism designed to destroy the opposition’s plans rather than impose their own.”
“Anfield’s regulars were suffering but were too loyal to complain. They filed out through the Shankly Gates bored. It was inimical to Liverpool’s followers to see their heroes win games by calculation alone. They revered Benítez for the 2005 Champions League win in Istanbul but could recognise the creeping joylessness of his football and his apparent inability to derive any pleasure from a goal.”
Yes, we must have managers who dance and sing after scoring. This is what the fans want. (Of course, no fuss was made when Rafa gestured and looked happy after a goal against Blackburn. Many top managers know that if you smile one minute, someone will try and wipe it off your face a minute later. Or say that you’re a disrespectful so-and-so, as they cry foul to the press five days later.)
As for the joylessness of the football, that was certainly true to some degree last season. But it was mostly away from Anfield where the lack of goals was indeed a problem; by contrast, only three teams scored more goals at home than Liverpool managed at Anfield. There were dull games there too, but people seem to think all 19 home games are always a breeze.
And while 2005 is mentioned as if it’s the only thing Benítez did right, it’s worth remembering that just over a year ago Liverpool fans had been given their closest run at a league title in 18 years, and were the Premier League’s top scorers.
I don’t think 86 points were racked up by “calculation alone”, and it’s ludicrous to suggest that was the case. Benítez’s team, shorn of Torres for large chunks, outscored a United side containing Ronaldo, Tevez and Rooney.
“Hodgson’s Liverpool will get back on the front foot. They will assert their pedigree. Nullifying the opposition will not be their religion. This is the first step out of the darkness for a side who finished seventh in the Premier League and now face a second Europa League campaign.”
This is perhaps my main problem with the piece.
Because if there’s one thing Hodgson is not it’s an ‘attacking’ coach. His Fulham side have done brilliantly these past two seasons. However, both times they scored just 39 goals.
Now, you cannot expect a side like that to be scoring hundreds of goals. But given that Fulham’s average league position over those two seasons is 9.5 (7th and then 12th), you’d expect them to rank at a similar level if they were a perfectly balanced side, or higher if they were an attacking side.
Instead, both times they ranked as the 13th-top scorers. Making for an average of … 13. In both seasons, relegated sides actually scored more goals than Fulham, including Burnley.
Now, that’s not Hodgson’s problem; he did his job well. But the love of God, let’s not make out that his success there was achieved by brushing all-comers aside, at home and in Europe, and that, by contrast, Benítez only specialised in dour football. To me, it’s a bit like praising the raisin for being a dried fruit, while at the same time criticising the currant.
At Inter Milan it was slightly better, but they were the 4th-top scorers when finishing 3rd, and joint-6th top-scorers when finishing 7th. This was no team on the front foot; not least given the number of games they drew. Again, Roy did pretty well there. He did not, however, employ ‘total football’.
At Blackburn, with an expensive squad, the goalscoring stats were unremarkable. Again, I’m not saying that in itself is failure; just that I can see precious little to back up Hawyard’s confidence of front-foot football.
There have been high-scoring games for Hodgson, but then again, Liverpool share the record for the most Champions League goals in a single game (8); put four past Madrid, Chelsea, Arsenal and Man United; and as previously mentioned, were the Premier League’s top scorers the season before last … and still the Haywards of the world paint Benítez as ultra-negative.
“High on Hodgson’s to-do list will be a purge of all the obscure shadow men brought in by Benítez during a carnival of talent speculation. Clearing out the no-names and nearly men is a vital task which Hodgson has performed already at Fulham.” [Edit: Hodgson left a team whose average age was 30. Not exactly overhauling a squad, is it?]

There is some deadwood at Anfield, although Benítez himself had already begun shipping some of it out. There are plenty of cheap players on cheap wages who will be surplus to requirements, and one or two well-paid and costly ones.
Presumably though, there is some left at Craven Cottage too: £10m on Andrew Johnson anyone? I don’t know enough about them to comment, but there are plenty of unfamiliar names in their squad, outside of the core of Fulham’s impressive side.
Worryingly, in his 1.3 seasons at Blackburn, Hodgson spent £75m (today’s money, TPI) on pretty much nothing but deadwood. And his Fulham signings have been far from perfect, too: some gems, some dross.
But as I always argued in Benítez’s defence, all managers sign loads of players who end up on the periphery, and their fare share of expensive flops; it just depends if you want to highlight them.

“This will lighten the wage bill, provide money for acquisitions and offer chinks of light to a marginalised academy, the finishing school for Michael Owen, Robbie Fowler, Steve McManaman, Jamie Carragher and Gerrard.”
Marginalised academy? Really? Or one in the middle of being overhauled to finally produce a player worthy of a regular spot? Have Liverpool let a load of top-class locals go in the past six years? (Ten years, even.) Who attracted the two famed Barcelona youth experts to Anfield last season?
In 2009-10 only 9 appearances (all by Smalling) were made by a Fulham player brought through their youth system (Liverpool had 72 by comparison, although that of course includes Carragher and Gerrard). In 2008-09, not a single appearance was made at Fulham by a trainee (Liverpool had 69). Every single appearance was by a player who had been brought in from outside.
Again, if Roy thought that was for the best, then that was for the best. But he hardly has any kind of record in giving youth a chance.
Indeed, out of the 49 managers to have at least two full Premier League seasons under their belt, the average age of Hodgson’s teams – 27.65 – is the 5th highest. By contrast, Rafa Benítez ranks 30th – at 26.22, a full year-and-a-half younger – and this is below the averages of both Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger.
“Hangeland’s arrival from Norway displayed Hodgson’s eye for an undiscovered talent: a virtue to be appreciated at a club £350m in debt.”
A great bit of business. Top work.
But only one example. Will a club £350m in debt appreciate a manager who’s most expensive signing at Blackburn was £7.5m Kevin Davies (£17m in 2010 money, TPI) – a horrible flop – and whose most expensive signing at Fulham was £10m Andrew Johnson?
I don’t mean to look like I’m attacking Hodgson; I’m not. I’m just doing something really crazy, called research.
And hell, trying to set the record straight at the start, so Liverpool fans don’t turn around a few months later and say “I thought this guy was supposed to be a youth-chance-giving-up-and-at-’em-attacking-general?”
Hodgson has a lot of strengths – he spoke with great authority at his unveiling today – and hopefully we will see them all come to the fore. And he may change some of his approach, and surprise us in certain areas. For him this is a new team, a new club, and he has the chance to shape it.
But to date, he is not known for attacking football; his record in the transfer market is not special; and he has no track record in blooding young players. Anyone thinking differently, based on his record to date, is most likely setting themselves up for a fall.

[Sir X]

Roy Hodgson is an intelligent man. He went to grammar school, speaks several languages, has a rich vocabulary and commanding turn of phrase and – as he often reminds us – 35 years of experience in football management.
So why is this intelligent man behaving the way he is, and has been throughout his tormented reign as Liverpool manager – failing to acknowledge his deficiencies, blaming the club’s problems on anyone he can find, stubbornly insisting that he’s doing his best and acting with incredulity when others suggest it’s not good enough?
The answer is entitlement. He thinks he’s owed it. He believes that the Liverpool job is the crowning glory of a storied career and that not only can his fabled methods not be questioned, but they should be allowed limitless time to flourish.
And the problem – of course – is that the fabled career he’s thinking of is one that’s been faithfully and fancifully reported by his friends in the press, fuelled by his own imagination and hubris, and yet not borne out by his actual record and certainly not by his time at Anfield.
We’ve already heard him retell his palm-fronded arrival at the club last summer:
“someone who had been brought in with the pomp and circumstance, and the money it took them to release me from my previous contract, and being feted as one of England’s best managers”
Except of course he was grudgingly welcomed at best, by a group of supporters willing to give him a chance but knowing he was no Benitez, Mourinho or Wenger.
And since then he’s upgraded himself from Emperor to Deity:
“having defied people they have started to crucify me”
Perhaps most famously, he took great umbrage at his management style being questioned, betraying both his ego and the journeyman nature of his career in his response:
“What do you mean do my methods translate? They have translated from Halmstad to Malmo to Orebo to Neuchatel Xamax to the Swiss national team. So I find the question insulting. To suggest that, because I have moved from one club to another, that the methods which have stood me in good stead for 35 years and made me one of the most respected coaches in Europe don’t suddenly work, is very hard to believe.”
Little wonder, then, that while he still maintains that he will not change the methods that worked so “well” at Fulham and that he “can’t work better” than he is, he still quite regally brushes off the complaints of people who think that 12th place, Route One football and a team and support close to revolt is unacceptable. This despite taking charge of a squad that got his predecessor sacked for coming seventh and spending half the money he was given to improve it on Paul Konchesky and Christian Poulsen. People without those 35 years experience just don’t understand:
“Fans are waiting for a man with a magic wand that can turn all of the ills that everyone has seen into something different. Those of us who work in the game and have been working in the game a long time know that magic wand doesn’t exist.”
But this isn’t new in Hodgson. This isn’t just the Liverpool job swelling his head and clouding his thinking. Here he is, interviewed by the Independent back in 2002:
“Of course, my track record, if people bothered to study it, would put me in the same category as [Sir Alex] Ferguson enjoys today, but people don’t talk about what I’ve done outside England. Here, they just talk about Blackburn Rovers, but that’s just a very small part of a 26-year career. To most English journalists it’s the only part. I’ve got an excellent track record in Sweden, Switzerland, Italy and in Denmark, where FC Copenhagen was my last job before I went to Udinese. We won the league there by seven points.”
Sound familiar? There’s more that he’s recycled since:
“You can be touted for future glories, then maybe a manager’s fortunes change and the whole attitude towards him changes. Of course, it’s wrong. If you’ve got the ability to be a good manager one minute, then unless people’s judgements are totally wrong, that ability doesn’t just disappear a few months later.”
But here’s the killer – the real clue to the entitlement that festered and festered, that was brought to the peak by a Manager of the Year award that to the rest of us was clearly an Underdog award or for Lifetime Achievement, but for Hodgson was pomp, circumstance and deification. Here he is discussing the England job, given to Sven-Goran Eriksson:
“I was sure he’d do a good job, as has been proven the case. But if you’ve been a candidate for the job, and you’d be happy to take it and somebody else gets it, then obviously any feelings you have for them are going to be mitigated by the fact that you wish it had been you. It [not being selected] didn’t bother me. I didn’t put myself up as a candidate. I was just pleased to hear that I was being considered. That was an honour in itself. It would have been an even greater honour if they’d said, ‘You’re the man’. But I understood that I was in competition with some other very strong candidates, names like Sven, [Terry] Venables, [Arsène] Wenger, all the top people in the game and you can’t always expect to come out on top. I’m pleased they went for a good man and that it’s working out because I would have been disappointed if they’d passed me over and given it to someone who wasn’t very good and the team had done badly.”
Manager of Liverpool is a late substitute for the career-capping job so far cruelly denied him. He should have had it then, and before, and since.
For it was always predicted that he would. Back in the pre-Sky era, when “continental football” got little press coverage, no TV coverage and YouTube was unimagined, Hodgson was always portrayed by his journalist friends as the dark horse for the England job. The well-kept secret of a brilliant English manager succeeding overseas.
No matter that his success was with small nations and small clubs in poor leagues, and that his one attempt at a big job (with Internazionale) was short-lived and ignominious – it was a great story, and one that fed on itself. He was brilliant – grammar school, five languages, league titles in Sweden – and he would one day land the biggest job of all for an English manager.
So when he lucked into one of the biggest jobs in club football – hired by men who don’t understand the game, just looking for someone who wouldn’t agitate and generate bad press like the last one – he took his house-of-cards history and bulletproof ego with him.
He can’t be wrong. It’s the players’ fault, Benitez’s fault, the owners’ fault, the fans’ fault.
The hoof-ball style of play, lack of width, unwillingness to press, disenchanted team, disenfranchised fans, woeful league position, future deteriorating every day he stays in the job – no one should mind him disclaiming responsibility and demanding patience.
He’s entitled.

[HL]

X...They should give Sammy Lee a bly...
Sammy Lee

[Sir X]

Big sam yuh mean,nuh im did a look the england job, sass would love it , pure route one ball and english balla.

[Paul Marin]

X...They should give Sammy Lee a bly...
Sammy Lee

Absolutely NOT!!! Sammy is part of the problem. He too has to go. Nice enough guy and a Liverpool man at heart, but not the right man for the job.

[Assasin]

Him shoulda gone long time. He screwed up Bolton and Liverpool going down since he came.

[Sir X]

he screwed up bolton ....dis bredda serious ...nuh im big sam a bring as im prentice , 2nd in command ....sasss yuh ead right

[Paul Marin]

he screwed up bolton ....dis bredda serious ...nuh im big sam a bring as im prentice , 2nd in command ....sasss yuh ead right

X, who you think was a better #1 for Rafa - Paco or Sammy?

[Sir X]

Nuh must Paco ! let me guess Rafa had no tact (people skills) and Paco left , is that the point ?

Doesnt not negate the fact he is the best we ever had.Its Rafas pool , not pacos.

Sammy was meant to appease the xenophobic media.

[Assasin]

check Sammy record as head coach of Bolton. You see how quick them sack him?

[Paul Marin]

Nuh must Paco ! let me guess Rafa had no tact (people skills) and Paco left , is that the point ?

Doesnt not negate the fact he is the best we ever had.Its Rafas pool , not pacos.

Sammy was meant to appease the xenophobic media.

My point is that Rafa lost a very good #1 and swapped him for a "not very good" replacement. Just like he did with Xabi and Aquilani (although that wasn't Aquilani's fault). So yes, it was Rafa's 'pool, but he did not do us a service in going with Sammy.

[Westman]

You are outdoing yourself this new year. I see that instead of picking one loser, you are picking three. I tell you what. There are 20 teams in the Prem. Why dont you just go ahead and pick all 19 losers?