No, hence the comment: See, that would indicate that I haven't "rated" the player at all and was simply commentating that the journalist in question, who's sole job is to watch and assess football in South America, finds Liverpools acquisition of the said player somewhat bizarre given that there are arguably better keepers in the market. I cannot see what your over-all issue with this topic is. Rafa's record in the market is, at best ok, at worst abysmal. The money spent on players who were quite frankly sh!t is there for all to see. Of all of his signings I'd say about 6 or 7 are actually worth considering. Torres, obviously, Mascherano, Kuyt, Skirtl. All good players. But after years of trying he still hasn't found a decent wide player, he has only got one forward who knows where the net is every week and at fullback he has, up until recently, been rlying on John Arne Risse and Steve Finnan who's provides as bigger a goal threat as Carl Leaburn on a bad day. It doesn't matter of they were sold on for profit. The aim of football is not to buy and sell players for profit, unless you're like Arsene Wenger an d startlingly good at finding bargain basement world class players. Rafa is not. I do wish people would ot justify average players because they were sold on at a profit. Over £100m worth of progress over 4 years? As I said, if they are not contributing to the first team squad then they cannot be classed as successes in any way because there presence at the club has no effect on first team success. While I would hesitate to write them off, I certainly wouldn't be hedging my bets on them either.
Frankly transfermarkt.de is notorious for having false figures for transfer fees. It says Anderson was purchased for £25 million, Hargreaves for £20 million, Carrick for £21 million and Pique sold for £4 million. it says Torres was bought for £30 million! So basically it has incorrect figures for all the transfers. I suggest if you wish to cite figures for transfers in order to support a point, that you use ones which are at least slightly accurate rather than complete garbage. You might as well say according to your fortune-teller.
This is merely your opinion and one that I do not share. If you wish to cite 18 year olds or free transfers as evidence of poor transfer dealings then that seems a little desperate. I am not claiming Rafa is a transfer genius but he hardly a chump either. If you do not rate Liverpool players then fair enough. That's your opinion and you are entitled to share it here. I merely think it is somewhat strange to criticise youth players who have achieved great things already but are too young or raw to have made the breakthrough at first team level. It is clear that Liverpool have some of the most impressive young players in the country. They may or may not fulfill their potential but until they have had a chance it seems premature to judge them. Your comments on Cavalieri were an attempt to portray his signing at Liverpool to be a bad signing. Any judgement on this issue is obviously premature.
My comments surrounding Cavelieri were based on the topic - that 6 out of every 10 signings Rafa makes are gash. And the said player is barely rated at all back home in Brazil....
Yeah but you have included youth players in that assessment and used the reasoning that these players have had no positive impact in the first team. If you applied that logic to Fergie, then 90% of his signings of youth team players are gash because they also fail to impact in the first team. Anyway, I've stated my position on this issue and would prefer to leave it now. Let's just accept we have different opinions on this and move on.
What I did with the list I submitted was highlight the players which have been unquestionable successes. There were 8. Out of 40+ players. Maybe 10 of them were youth players which means a staggering 22 players either disappointed or were average at best. That's more than half. That's about 6 out of every 10, like I said. Either way you look at it, Rafa has been very much hit'n'miss in the market. Players such as Veronin, Gonzalez, Pennant and Josemi all cost money yet have been average. Pennant has shown glimpses of potential, which is no more than he showed for Arsenal and they saw fit to move him on. Quite why Liverpool have persisted is anyones guess - the lad just doesn't seem destined to fullfill his potential.
Equally they can't be classed as failures either then! Is there some information stream you are party to then that Benitez doesn't know about? All managers make dud signings, even O great prophet Wenger has made some absolute howlers. You're diminishing your valid point by going on about players who have been at the club for two miinutes (and bought for the future) as being an indication of a managers failure in the transfer market. Whichever way you dress it up , that message is totally unreasonable.
I never classed them as failures. I never even suggested it. I simply made the point that very few of Benitez's signings actually turn out to be any good. As it rurns out, more than half turn out to be below the required standard to mount a serious title challenge, not including the young players he's signed, of which I clearly stated that I remain open minded about. It is not unreasonable to question the transfer market record of a manager who has signed over 40 players for more than £100m, 23 of which have been unquestionable failures. That isn't including young players. That is including players who signed for money, who had crack at the whip and have since been moved on because they were not good enough. Faced with those kind of figures I fail to see how my point has been diminished or jeapardised in any way.
Can you please list these 23 'unquestionable failures'? We can talk about their costs. Every manager makes a lot of signings that turn out to be underwhelming. It seems Rafa gets more flak on this regard than is fair. Did not Fergie sign Veron, Kleberson, Forlan, Djemba-Djemba, Taibi, Ricardo, Howard, Carroll, Bosnich, Rachubka, Culkin, Van Der Gouw? Some of his earlier signings included Frazer Digby, Terry Gibson, Peter Davenport, Simon Andrews, Wayne Haseltine, Shaun Goater, Andy Rammel and Wayne Bullimore. I don't hold that against Fergie because he has made other signings that have proved very successful.
No, you can go back and look at the list that was posted, it took me long enough to find them all. The highlighted players are the ones who are without doubt players who have made the required impact. The youth players you'll know yourself. I'm talking along the lines of Morientes, Veronin, Pennant, Carson, Josemi, Gonzalez, Zenden, Kromkamp, Fowler, Bellamy, Aurelio, Arbeloa, Pellegrino, Garcia, Sissoko and Bellamy. That's 16 for a start and many of them cost a pretty penny. Sissko was average at best, despite early promise, Pennant is your bog-standard English youngster oozing potential but ultimately failing to deliver, Carson was bought and sold without so much as a murmur, Josemi needs no explaining, neither does Zenden, Kromkamp, Fowler, Aurelio and Pellegrino. Antonio Nunez came as part of the Owen deal but no one knows why. He was aweful and if anything he simply resulted in Liverpool getting less for Owen. Arbeloa is at best and average player and certainly no patch on the first choice fullbacks currently playing for either of the other top 4, Bellamy was sold after one season, Fowler turned out to be a fat, unfit, injury prone waste of space, and Garcia, despite his "heroics" against Chelsea was never a top draw player. Veronin may have been free, but is he a good player? No. Has he contributed anything remotely positive? No. I believe that Paletta has now left too? Off the top of my head the ONLY players Rafa has signed that have genuinely made an impact are Alonso, Torres, Mascherano, Kuyt, Reina, Agger, Skirtl and possibly Lucas. Peter Crouch deserves an honourable mention, although even he has been moved on to pastures new.
revX : Is it true that Benitez has made 40 first-team signings(say, you define them as bought at age 18 or higher) so far?
You listed 15 players not 16 as you mentioned Bellamy twice! Firstly Garcia was not a failure. He played 3 seasons in which he was injured for half a season. In that time he scored 30 goals, all from open play. Not bad for a little attacking midfielder. Carson was bought for £750,000 and made several appearances for us such as in the CL against Juventus at the age of 18. He was unable to dislodge Reina who has broken records for clean sheets at Liverpool. He was unwilling to be a reserve keeper and wanted to move on to further his claim to an England place. Rafa allowed him to get first team football elsewhere and made £5 million after loaning him to Villa and then selling him to WBA. Hardly a damning transfer! In fact making £5 million profit on a player in just over 3 seasons shows astuteness in the transfer market to any normal observer. Of the players you've mentioned Voronin, Fowler, Zenden and Pelegrino were all free transfers so hardly costing Liverpool much cash. Pelegrino, Zenden and Fowler were signed at the end of their careers for their experience as much as anything and to flesh out the squad in numbers. This was similar to the signings of Blanc and Larrson. Again all free so hardly evidence of this waste you allude to. Voronin was also signed for free. In his first injury plagued season he scored 6 goals and made 7 assists. So he made some positive contributions despite your assertion. Many foreigners take a period to adjust to English football. My expectations on Voronin are not great but again he was a free transfer so hardly an expensive mistake. Sissoko was not a flop. He was merely replaced with a better player in Mascherano. Sissoko had a serious eye injury during his Liverpool tenure which cast doubt on his continuing as a footballer. Eventually he recovered but he still suffered problems in his vision. After JM's acquisition Sissoko was sold for a profit of £5 million. Again not an example of expensive waste. He is now at Juventus. Josemi had problems with learning English. He was signed for £2 million and was swiftly swapped for Kromkamp. Kromkamp was unable to displace Finnan and was sold to PSV for £1.75 million. So a giant loss of a quarter million. Nunez was a flop and Liverpool made a loss of about half a million quid. Morientes was a flop. He was good at Real Madrid, Valencia and Monaco but failed to adjust to English football. He cost £6.3 million and was sold on for £3 million. He is Rafa's most expensive mistake and Liverpool made a £3 million loss on him. Gonzalez was a flop. He cost Rafa £1.5 million and was sold after a year in England for £3.5 million. So at least he made the club £2 million. Again not an example of an expensive mistake. Bellamy played for one season. He scored 9 goals including scoring at the Camp Nou and assisting for the decisive 2nd goal. He played a crucial part in an English team beating Barca in their home patch for only the second time ever. Bellamy obviously is a bit of an arse and he was sold on due to his discipline issues. He had an OK season but not brilliant. He was sold on for a small profit of £1.5 million after one season. So hardly an expensive mistake. Fabio Aurelio was a free transfer and is a second choice LB. He has had 2 serious injuries so far at Anfield. To claim he has failed at Liverpool is premature imo. Again hardly evidence of an expensive mistake. Pennant has underwhelmed overall. He has had very good games but other games when he has not done much. He cost £6.7 million and missed a lot of last season with injury. Pennant still has to deliver consistently. At this point the jury is still out but Pennant is not yet at his peak and has time to improve. Arbeloa was signed for £2.5 million. He has actually performed well at LB last season and also plays right back and sometimes CB. He is a versatile defender whose performances for the Reds have been good enough for him to make the Spanish Euro2008 squad. He is hardly a flop. Palletta was a 20 year CB from Argentina. He was too raw for the Prem and was sent back to Argentina. He is now at Boca Juniors and Liverpool have a buy-back option if he develops. Liverpool have lost £800,000 on him. So your list of expensive flops only really breaks down into Morientes, Gonzalez, Nunez, Josemi, Kromkamp, Palleta and arguably Bellamy (on disciplinary issues). These were purchased for a total of £17.3 million (including Bellamy) and released for a combined loss of ~ £1 million. So the players you higlighted as being expensive flops cost less than a Forlan and a Kleberson. It is fair enough that rival fans do not rate Liverpool players but their attempts to portray Rafa as having a transfer record that is worse than normal does not withstand scrutiny imo.
He has made a lot of signings, more than 50, but many of these are youth players and still in youth teams or are in the reserves. However including 17 yr olds signings in a list of flops seems hardly reasonable. Man U have a batch of youth players at varying stages of development. Including these signings in a list of Fergie's signings and then implying these are example of signings who have failed to make an impact would seem unfair. The realities of football are that the majority of youth prospects fail to make the first team grade. This situation happens at every club and is even more extreme at the bigger clubs that have more youngsters on their books and a greater standard of player in the First Team. Liverpool have invested a lot of effort into their youth teams under Rafa and while the benefits have not yet been reaped the signs are promising. Liverpool have a great many prospects and they have won the FA Youth Cup twice, the Dallas Cup and the Reserves League under Rafa's tenure. At this point though it is premature to hail promising youngsters as a success. Only by breaking into the First-Team for a significant period will a youth player be deemed truly successful.
We've covered this already. Selling a player for a profit does not constitute a success. He made a negligable impact on your side and from a footballing perspective was a failure. But a mistake none the less. He was expected to make an impact and didn't. Equally, players bought on free transfers are not exempt from being rubbish. Their contributions towards the side, fomr a footblling, not a financial perspective, were poor. Failures, all of them. More squad places and wages wasted on players who acheived **** all. Did I say expensive? I'm not sure I did. I said a list of flops. And there are many. So we had 2 poor players. You have had loads. I'm not an accountant and I don't care for accountancy. Neither do many other football fans. What counts is what happens out on the pitch, not how much money Liverpool do and don't spend. The vast majority of player Benitez has signed, approximately half actually, have not turned out to be positive signings. Do not even try and suggest that a manager who's record of dud signings is one every two has not got a quaestionable record.
Well, I wasn't talking about youth team players. And I know how good your youth team players are; I am always talking them up in our forum and about how you guys have suddenly become as active as Arsenal in poaching players from the continent. Apparently, and I haven't verified this, Benitez has made 41 signings for the first team so far. Ferguson, for comparison, has made 77 signings for the first team in 22 years. And, signing bonuses(x2 - buying the player and then selling him) and the wages paid are pretty significant too; otherwise you could say that Chelsea made a profit on Sidwell. I thought Benitez was improving on this regard though, with Torres, Babel and Skrtel last season and Dossena, Keane and Barry this season; but with you guys signing Ngog, I am not so sure.
Well Chelsea did make a profit on Sidwell. (I also read football365). Chelsea have also made a large number of expensive signings who have underwhelmed. The fact that Boularhouz, Mutu, Crespo, Sheva, Malouda etc also underwhelmed is of more significance than Sidwell not displacing Lamps, Ballack, Essien, Makelele, Mikel, Cole. As for Ngog, I only heard of him last week, so have no idea about this particular player. We have also signed Saric, Weijl, Poloskei and some other youngsters in the last month. No doubt Harry Boulton is already tutting at this crazy investment in youth!
Did you see the list of United flops I posted earlier? A lot more than 2 and it only covers Fergie's early years. Face it every manager has players who do not make it. You are trying to argue that signing 2 players who flop and (for an example let's use Veron and Forlan) cost more than £35 million combined is the exactly the same as having 2 free signings who flop! This is plainly nonsense. Any reasonable observer would see that the ramifications of one is larger than the other. You cannot simply ignore the financial aspect of transfers. Your attempt to portray the signing of an 18yrs old Carson for £750,000 and then selling him a few years later for £5 million profit (because he needs first team football in order to play for England) as an example of bad business by Rafa is simpy ludicrous. If you continue to maintain such an unreal assertion then I see no point in continuing discussing issues with you.
I do believe Rafa is a good manager, he has brought Liverpool on leaps and bounds but there is just something missing that is failing them...I think money spent on the wings and another top class striker and we will be set. I am a bit annoyed with the Barry saga. He is a great player, would be a great asset but they have stalled talks. I think Rafa should have tried harder for Bentley, who looks on the verge of signing for Tottenham. Miss out on a gem!
OMg i have to agree with you here, why the frig has he bough Keane, not that he isnt a good player, but for christ sake where will he put him, we have Kuyt an Torres. And what the hell is Veronin all about he is such a tosser.
Money is not the important point here. Yes it matters, but performace comes before money IMO. By your philosophy, a team could make endless cheap signings, have them do reasonably well in the PL and sell them off for profits and be considered a success. And they would be a success, if their expectations were to simply do "reasonably well" in the PL. But, if you are a team with title ambitions, this financially profitable strategy that only does OK in the PL would be classed a failure. By contrast, a strategy that signs more expensive, and typically more proven quality players may end up with some very expensive mistakes instead of cheap mistakes. But, a more expensive/better quality player that does only OK (by his relative standards) will still contribue to a title winning team, and if said player exceeds his standards, then he becomes a PL star. This brings success which brings more money that can offset the more expensive mistakes that such a policy will typically endure. Rafa's strategy needs his signings to progress greatly to have a title-winning team, because their initial quality isn't there. And the fact is, so far, few of his signings have done so. As a last note, I have no idea why he continues with this policy (as evidenced by his signings this summer, bar perhaps Dossena) when his one departure from his typical policy, Torres, was an outstanding success.
Rafa must deliver this season and win the Premier League for a few big reasons. Liverpool rightly take pride in having won the most league titles in England. Their enemies could equal the record next season, and which Liverpool fan would stand for that? Also, Rafa has been in charge since 2004 and (Champions League aside) has only won Cups in his time there. He also has only scraped in 3rd and 4th which for a club of Liverpool's tradition is not good enough. It's a bit like under Houllier and this is the reason Houllier got the sack. If Liverpool don't put in a serious Premier League challenge this season, then I reckon Rafa's job is under threat. He has had four seasons to get it right, so he has no excuse if he doesn't this time.
He has had four seasons to get it right, so he has no excuse if he doesn't this time. You can't make that statement with all things considered. 1) The team he inherited was poor. He had to rebuild it completely (4 remaining players, notice the progress of style and ability in just 4 seasons) 2) Four seasons really isn't that long for a team in Liverpool's situation. How long has Wenger had? How long did Fergie have before he won anything? 3) Rafa hasn't had the same budget to work with as chelsea and manyoo, so consider how much Rafa has closed the gap with his budget in comparison to theirs. 4) Rafa's youth development hasn't even had time to come through the ranks. We are starting to see a glimpse of what hes been doing with the youth and reserve teams over the past 4 season's. In two more seasons, we will start making serious cash on those players or fit them into the starting eleven. Rafa has been trying to build and create the right squad to play the style he wants since hes been here and I really think he is getting close. That takes a considerable amount of time with a somewhat limited budget. I think that we are going to see a totally different style and formation of attacking football from Liverpool this season. The addition of Keane, Dossena, and Agger on top of the changes Rafa has made in the squad over the last 3 seasons will be the difference in 4th place and 1st place.
(1) Team wasn't as poor, They won the CL all with GH's players. Rafa has not done noticeable better in his four years compare to 4 years before him, In fact point wise and standing Rafa's last 4 years are very much like the production of Liverpool in 4 years before he took over. (2): Wenger didn't take long but more to the point Wenger and Fergie have won titles. So they have proved that they can. I don't know how long it took Fergie to win his first title, but I also don't know what were conditions like (How was Man U) in OT when he took over. If Liverpool considers themselves a big club than yes for any new manager 4 year is a LONG time. Its one thing to rebuild say midtable team like Boro or even Newcastle, but big teams generally won't tolerate a new manager for at least not challenging in 4 years. (3) Rafa had plenty of Money! And he has spent plenty. Liverpool fan tend to argue that RAfa's spending cannot be compared to Fergies, cause Fergie had the team for longer and thus he was building to improve on what he had. But once again Liverpool was not a midtable mediocrity when Rafa took over. They were a constant top 4 for most part. How has he closed the gap considerably? They have not come close to challenging for the title. It doesn't matter if they were 11 points instead of 21 points behind. It only shows while two years ago when they were out of th race they didn't pick up many point towards the end cause they relaxed as CL place was garaunteed, this year they had take later games seriously as they were pushed a little for 4th place. (4) Youth Development? Really? Okay then.
Wenger inherited a poor team at Arsenal but managed to finish 3rd in his first season. But Liverpool are desperate to win the league again. I'd say for that reason alone there is pressure on Rafa to deliver quickly. Wenger won the Premier League and FA Cup in his first full season. Yet in this close season, Liverpool have outspent United. To say then that he's never had money is false. What youth development did Chelsea have under Mourinho? Yet they still won back to back Premier Leagues. A limited budget didn't hinder Wenger from making Arsenal challenge for the league last season. Buying big is no guarantee of success anyhow. A big money player can flop, like Shevchenko at Chelsea.
Rafa has won the CL in his tenure. Arsenal fans should not sneer at such an achievement considering the lack of such a trophy at Ashburton Grove. It is Arsenal who have actually regressed in the time since Rafa arrived in England. Arsenal have gone from a team who were undefeated and League Champions to a team that has not won anything in 3 years. They have also shown a trend of unrest amongst their first team players with many displaying disatisfaction at Arsenal and wanting to move elsewhere.A Cole, Hleb, Flamini and Henry all left despite being first-team regulars. Adebayor looks like he would jump at the chance to play at Milan or Barca. Fabregas also looks likely to leave within the next 4 years imo. Arsenal have not addressed their squad failings of last season yet (although the window is still open) which were a lack of depth, short CBs, untried fringe players (due to a lack of rotation) and a team bereft of leaders (bar Cesc and Toure). Arsenal have improved financially but on the pitch they have much to prove.