new liverpool thread - everyone loves them (1 Viewer)

[coast to coast]

Someone posted this on RAWK and I had a rueful laugh:

Poulsen
Poulsen Poulsen Poulsen Poulsen
Poulsen Poulsen
Poulsen Poulsen Poulsen
Poulsen​

In other news I heard some vandals in Naples decided to dig up the Napoli pitch, presumably in order to destroy our freeflowing passing football.

 

[ratmonkey]

I was making the case for Rijkaard here back in june or july, he would suit us down to the ground I think, you'd have the think the football would improve an awful lot too.

He's just left Galatasaray by "mutual consent", so he's available anyway.

 

[Unicron]

Apparently the pilot on Pool's flight to Naples today is/was Bruce Dickonson.

 

[oh shit]

Anyone here read 'Soccernomics' by Kuper and Szymanski yet? Published last year, it's basically 'moneyball' for football. NESV are famous for applying the 'moneyball' theses to the Red Sox. They've also been reading this. I picked it up on Amazon secondhand last week and it's a great read.

Anyway, some points.

1. Hodgson won't last. I'm putting money on Rijkard. It's really not a case of 'in with the next one'. Hodgson is a shit manager because he's English. He doesn't have a clue about how the successful footballing nations of Europe have developed tactically and physically in the last 20 years. Not a clue. The only football managers winning trophies now come from Europe and that's for very good reasons. Rijkard ticks the boxes, especially with his connections to Spain as well as to Holland.

2. There'll probably be more of a crowd-sourced approach to buying players. the Lyon model works best. The coach isn't solely responsible for the team, so that every time the coach changes the team is torn up and rebuilt from scratch. That's a long term thing though. I think Rijkard or whoever comes in will have money to use at Christmas to get started.

3. Washingcattle:

Competing financially is near impossible at the moment so we'll both just have to batten down the hatches concentrate on the Europa league and wait for the banks to go bust and take Chelski, the scum and the middle-eastlands with them. Returning Spurs, ourselves, your lot and Arsenal to our rightful places atop the pile and putting an end to an era of football which will be looked back with the same ridicule as is reserved for disco and hair metal and any other flight into ridiculous excess.

This isn't really true. Also, the banks have nothing to do with Chelsea or Man City, or Spurs for that matter. It's just that their owners can afford to pump in more and more cash. United is the next team to have a 'mare over owners. The Glazers and H&G are part of a short lived crazed belief that you can turn a profit as an owner in football. That's why Hicks went mental at the end. You can't. NESV know this and are in it only for the prestige, and if there's a profit, it'll come from winning. But they've never taken a dividend out of Boston, which is a key sign that they'll be the same at Liverpool.

Without financing debts and paying out dividends to greedy owners, Liverpool are a very competitive club. Their cashflow is far higher than Everton's, for example, as they're one of the biggest teams in the world they'll always be at or near the top. Man City and Chelski are making inroads, and football fans are fickle, so we need to turn it around within the next few months to keep that advantage. But money isn't everything, it's how you use it. Statistically the best teams don't necessarily spend most on transfers - but they do usually pay the highest wages. That's a cashflow thing. We can do that. They also look after their players and new arrivals properly. They buy cheap and sell high - Rafa was actually quite good at this, which people often forget. Rafa always said he was building a long term model for the club, but few people have bothered trying to work out what it was. Too interested in the short term. Anyway the owners fucked that up, and Hodgson isn't the man to fix it. I think Rijkard, plus a new management team, will be.

 

[coast to coast]

here oh shit, that's just about enough reasoned argument for this thread. If we're looking for someone in the ilk of Rijkaard (i.e. European manager, experience in the Champions League and of winning things) with a long term vision and with arguably a less checkered history (i.e. Rijkaard's just been sacked and also got Sparta Rotterdam sacked in his first job and kinda let his great Barcelona team disintegrate quite badly) then I would think that Manuel Pellegrini would be the man for the job. He was, I believe, interviewed and said that he would like the job only that Liverpool wanted someone English for the position - which I wouldn't put beyond Purslow. He probably thought it was the right call but for all the wrong reasons, because he's no experience of running a football club.

I'm not dismissing him [Rijkaard] out of hand. Apparently Rijkaard always works best when Henk ten Cate is there to be bad cop to his good cop. But Pellegrini is very modest quiet guy who would suit the profile of the club, was very successful in South America and did excellently with not that much money to spend at Villarreal and then racked up shitloads of points but still lost in the ultimate poison chalice job at Madrid.

Like you said though, the Hodgson era is going to draw to a close before the end of the season unless something really miraculous happens - and I don't foresee it.

 

[coast to coast]

Purslow steps down as managing director, appointed "special advisor" to NESV.

 

[Unicron]

Anyone here read 'Soccernomics' by Kuper and Szymanski yet? Published last year, it's basically 'moneyball' for football. NESV are famous for applying the 'moneyball' theses to the Red Sox. They've also been reading this. I picked it up on Amazon secondhand last week and it's a great read.

I'm wary of reading anything by Simon Kuper as he routinely comes out with the most ridiculously stupid and poorly thought out shit in his columns.

Is Soccernomics (I think that's the American release, I believe it was released in Europa as "Why England Lose") the one where he says that managers aren't important and that he'd do a decent job at a club were he given enough money?

 

[Hector Grey]

He's just left Galatasaray by "mutual consent", so he's available anyway.

the rumour monkeys are all over that one. gala aren't having a much better time than liverpool at the moment. must be a kewell thing

 

[oh shit]

Is Soccernomics (I think that's the American release, I believe it was released in Europa as "Why England Lose") the one where he says that managers aren't important and that he'd do a decent job at a club were he given enough money?

Yeah that's the book, though I haven't come across that claim. Basically the tenets of the book so far seem bang on, and the heroes seem to be (predictably) Clough and Taylor, Wenger, and the Olympique Lyon management team.

Purslow gone - first of a lot of changes.

 

[ratmonkey]

Purlsow gone - get Rafa back.

 

[washingcattle]

3. Washingcattle:

This isn't really true. Also, the banks have nothing to do with Chelsea or Man City, or Spurs for that matter. It's just that their owners can afford to pump in more and more cash. United is the next team to have a 'mare over owners. The Glazers and H&G are part of a short lived crazed belief that you can turn a profit as an owner in football. That's why Hicks went mental at the end. You can't. NESV know this and are in it only for the prestige, and if there's a profit, it'll come from winning. But they've never taken a dividend out of Boston, which is a key sign that they'll be the same at Liverpool.

That was hardly my point. My point is that football has become a joke because of the excessive spending of the likes of City, Chelski and United. I'm sure Abramovic that Saudi cunt and whoever owns Spurs keep their money in a bank by the way, No ?

My point is football is supposed to be about players fans and mangers etc it's become more and more about banks, owners and excessive spending, clubs going under because they mortgage their future on the white whale of European success. It's ridiculous surely all of you have had enough of it too. Remember when Arsenal got knocked out of the FA cup in the 3rd round by Wrexham and the pitch looked like a melted chocolate desert ? That was the football I love. Having Russian pricks buy the title etc all that is pure shite. I wouldn't mind but it used to be a sideshow a back story or footnote to the game now it's the media main event.

 

[ratmonkey]

What exactly constitutes "excessive spending"? Spending money you don't have or spending more money than Everton can?

 

[washingcattle]

Spending more than you can afford (Liverpool, United, Portsmouth,) / spending way above the reasonable price of a player (Man City).

That's reasonable no ?

Chelsea Irritate me in the way they do business in general, but they had it bought a whole team (once not every fucking two years like Madrid) and have been proven right in their spending so you can't complain too much now.

 

[oh shit]

Washing cattle - The point about banks in relation to United, Liverpool, and the other clubs that have gone into administration is that they all borrowed more money than they could finance with their own revenues. But that's not the same as with rich owners, because they don't ask any interest from the money they 'lend' into the clubs. They just have their clubs as something to do with all their free time - a bit like the way proles are addicted to Championship Manager. Why buy a playstation when you can have a real life club?

But yes, I agree with Wenger's view that it's basically 'financial doping', and hopefully the fair play rules will be effective - though as with tax avoidance, rich people usually find a way around most rules.

My main point though is that there will always be clubs like Liverpool, Real, Barca, United, Arsenal etc who, by relying on their own historic status to generate revenue, will always have a financial edge over smaller clubs. The reason there's so many Liverpool fans in Ireland is pretty much down to their massive success in the 70s and 80s (more so than the Irish immigrant links) and the club still benefits from that.

You say Liverpool spend more than they can afford, but where's your evidence for that? The only reason there's been financial problems recently is the way the owners made the club responsible for their insane borrowing. They believed, like the rest of the financial world up until 15th September 2008, that the market would just keep rising forever. But in actual fact Liverpool is very much a solvent business on its own terms, and does not spend more than it can afford. NESV are basically promising to run it on those terms.

 

[ratmonkey]

I wouldn't put Liverpool and United in the Portsmouth / Leeds category of overspending, being taken over by messers who don't actually have any money is pretty different to spending money that's not there.

City and Chelsea aren't worlds apart though, I'd be suprised if City bought more than 1/2 players a year now that they've a competetive squad.

 

[washingcattle]

You say Liverpool spend more than they can afford, but where's your evidence for that? .

EH? ....WHAT?.... Really?

 

[washingcattle]

I wouldn't put Liverpool and United in the Portsmouth / Leeds category of overspending, being taken over by messers who don't actually have any money is pretty different to spending money that's not there.

City and Chelsea aren't worlds apart though, I'd be suprised if City bought more than 1/2 players a year now that they've a competetive squad.

The messers didn't have any money and yet you bought Fernando fucking Torres .

Jesus am I going insane here ?

 

[Hector Grey]

hold on, toffee boy, liverpool's main problem has been 40-odd million a year going in interest and charges, that could have gone to buy players. liverpool don't spend more than they could afford, if they did, we wouldn't be at the fucking bottom of the table with konchesky and poulsen and kyriakos in the poxing squad, would we? we'd have spent more than we could afford on some rejects from much, much better teams.

 

[ratmonkey]

Just imagine, ye could have gotten Silvestre instead of him ending up at Arsenal.

 

[washingcattle]

Hold on a second

1. Owners have no money and are in debt up to their eyeballs.

2. Club makes multi million euro signings regardless.

am I missing something ?