How good a manager is Benitez really ?

Obispo wrote:

kas wrote:I think he means Benitez isn't as aggressive as some other managers. On the surface he appears quite docile.

Anyway, 8/10 from me.

Aye, that's what I thougth he meant aswell. I still don't think he could be described as "too nice" though. Maybe neutrals would like to see a bit more passion from him.

That's a very English footballing term, usually meaning the manager jumping up and down the touchline. I always felt bad for Sven when people said he has no passion just because he sat on the touchline. But I agree, neutrals who think all managers should jump and shout and get sweat armpits are probably the ones who expect that.

S4P wrote:

Obispo wrote:Mourinho is a 2

And yet he's won more than Rafa in a similar period.

1 Champions League
1 UEFA Cup
2 Portugese titles
1 Cup of Portugal
1 SuperCup Candido de Oliveira

2 Premiership titles
1 Football League Cup
1 FA Community Shield

10 trophies inside 3.5 years

Chequebook manager.

O'Leary with a tan.

Porto??.

Obispo wrote:

Cesc wrote:
His only downfall seems to be the transfer market.

Hate this arguement and I know you're not the only one to make it.

In 3 summers he's brought in Momo, Agger, Reina, Alonso, Kuyt and Garcia. People always look at the fact that he's had a similar amount of money to spend as Fergie the past few seasons but ignore the fact that he's rebuilt 80% of the squad. I honestly don't get why people think it's a problem.

Considering the stick some managers get for sticking with their bad buys I would have thought it would be refreshing to see a manager who for the most part sells them quickly and rarely loses any capital on his "duds". The sole exception being Morientes and at the time that looked like the deal of the season.

Agreed. The names mentioned have done well for Liverpool as far as I know. At least Momo, Alonso, Garcia and now Kuyt. He's beaten Mourinho more than once with a more limited squad.

The guy is pretty good at what he does. He might make some odd decisions at times, but who doesn't. "Dodgey" buys? I think not.

...anyone would've gone for Mori at the time...

Luso wrote:
...anyone would've gone for Mori at the time...

That's what alot of people skim over when they label him as a flop. He'd have been roundly criticised (and rightly so) for not taken up the chance to sign the Champions League Golden Boot winner for less than £7m in what should have been the prime of his career.

Hindsight is among the most wonderful of things.


Oh, Pierre, I should mention seen as you were on the subject of athletes - Sebastien Leto, the player we're supposed to be signing, is 188cm and 77kgs, which is pretty big I'm guessing. He's also supposedly known for his speed. So that could go some way into sorting out that problem.

Don't see how you can have Bellamy but not Gonzalez as an athlete either.

S4P wrote:I went for a 5.

Sure, he's won the CL and the FA Cup, but in doing so, he's had to come from behind in both games (with a lot of luck imo - even if it was no fluke reaching the final).

I still maintain the fact that Milan lost that final more than Liverpool won it, and as for the FA Cup final, I think Gerrard could hit 100 more like that and only find that spot once or twice.

If it wasn't for those 2 'miraculous' comebacks, they'd have won nothing under Rafa (well, OK, they'd have won the Community Shield).

As much as you can go on about Chelsea's wealth, finishing 5th and 3rd is not something I'd be proud of if I was a Liverpool supporter (especially ending the season 37 points behind the champions).

Excellent manager at Valencia, but I think his achievements at Liverpool are slightly debatable. Give him time though. After all, it took Fergie 7 years to win something.

Lucky in the FA cup?????

God this annoys me.. So we were lucky to get a perfectly good goal disallowed and that West ham scored with a freak cross from 30 yards.

dudek, shevchenko incident was lucky in the CL but if we are discounting luck then ill happily take that carling cup win off your lot and award it to benitez

5 is harsh SP4... very harsh

8 out of 10 from me.

Tactically very very good.

Not sure about his man management, e.g. treatment of cisse, favouritism of underperforming morientes etc.

@Obispo

Do you use the same argument with Veron, he was a world class player an no one knew he wouldnt adapt porperly to the prem?

I think sp4 is harsh, he is definately worth more than a 5, purely for his achievements at Valencia. Although at Liverpool both of his greatest moments were based on winning penalty shoot outs, they didnt actually win any of the finals. Thats more luck than being a good manager. But I guess getting them there was were he showed his talent taking a not paticularly talented team to the summit of Europe. So is the Greece manager (of euro 2004 fame) one of the best there is as well?

@Pierre

When Fergie took over from United, we were in a horrible situation, far worse than the team Benitez inherited so you cant use that excuse.

COTR wrote:

S4P wrote:I went for a 5.

Sure, he's won the CL and the FA Cup, but in doing so, he's had to come from behind in both games (with a lot of luck imo - even if it was no fluke reaching the final).

I still maintain the fact that Milan lost that final more than Liverpool won it, and as for the FA Cup final, I think Gerrard could hit 100 more like that and only find that spot once or twice.

If it wasn't for those 2 'miraculous' comebacks, they'd have won nothing under Rafa (well, OK, they'd have won the Community Shield).

As much as you can go on about Chelsea's wealth, finishing 5th and 3rd is not something I'd be proud of if I was a Liverpool supporter (especially ending the season 37 points behind the champions).

Excellent manager at Valencia, but I think his achievements at Liverpool are slightly debatable. Give him time though. After all, it took Fergie 7 years to win something.

Lucky in the FA cup?????

God this annoys me.. So we were lucky to get a perfectly good goal disallowed and that West ham scored with a freak cross from 30 yards.

dudek, shevchenko incident was lucky in the CL but if we are discounting luck then ill happily take that carling cup win off your lot and award it to benitez

5 is harsh SP4... very harsh

Oh sorry, I meant 5 for Liverpool. Maybe 6 at a push.

For Valencia, easily 8/9.

I'm not saying that West Ham weren't lucky either, just that if Gerrard had not scored that goal (and the odds of connecting those are incredibly high), then it would have been a disappointing season for Liverpool.

The Carling Cup was your own fault. It's not down to luck that Gerrard stuck the ball into his own net with 10 minutes to go (we then went 3-1 up).

Having finally seen the goals from the 6-3 t'other night, I can honestly say that Liverpool were a bit unlucky.

First goal - Dudek's error, should easily have had the bouncing ball.

Second goal - Dudek error again, took three steps forward off his line and then completely failed to try to stop the free kick from Baptista - terrible positioning and no attempt to save

Third goal - Song handballs it, it goes in off his upper arm and never touches his head - woeful refereeing

Fourth goal - Aliadiere is blatantly offside when the ball is played through, again terrible refereeing

Fifth goal - no problem from an Arsenal point of view, but Dudek gets beaten from 25 yards by a shot that isn't struck well, mainly due to being outside of his six yard box when it is struck, so again terrible positioning

Sixth goal - poor defending from Liverpool, but they were dead and buried by then anyway


So, two or three significant goalkeeping errors, and two goals that shouldn't have stood. Without the refereeing 'mistakes' (it was against Arsenal, and we all know that referees have a 'habit' of letting Arsenal handball, dive, cheat, be offside etc.) it would have been 4-3...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHNC8W1POX0

Now bad defending is called being unlucky? also missed a penalty, Liverpool were lucky it was not 7-3

L r d wrote:Now bad defending is called being unlucky? also missed a penalty, Liverpool were lucky it was not 7-3

We don't care about the bloody Carling cup


why does everyone else seem to so much?

Obispo wrote:

S4P wrote:

Obispo wrote:Mourinho is a 2

And yet he's won more than Rafa in a similar period.

1 Champions League
1 UEFA Cup
2 Portugese titles
1 Cup of Portugal
1 SuperCup Candido de Oliveira

2 Premiership titles
1 Football League Cup
1 FA Community Shield

10 trophies inside 3.5 years

Chequebook manager.

O'Leary with a tan.

Valencia's wealth > Porto's wealth

L r d wrote:Now bad defending is called being unlucky? also missed a penalty, Liverpool were lucky it was not 7-3

It isn't. I said 'a bit unlucky', not that every goal was unlucky.

Try this on for size, since you're obviously struggling to understand what happened in the game - if it weren't for two dreadful refereeing decisions, it would have been 2-1 at half time (i.e. an open game), as opposed to 4-1 (i.e. game more or less over).

So, Liverpool were unlucky that, due to the referee, they were out of the game after 45 minutes when they didn't deserve to be.

And the penalty was never a penalty, so...

SGM wrote: it would have been 4-3...

No it wouldn't.

We wouldn't have been so sloppy in defence for the last two goals if we weren't already six ahead.

Liverpool got beat fair and square

COTR wrote:

L r d wrote:Now bad defending is called being unlucky? also missed a penalty, Liverpool were lucky it was not 7-3

We don't care about the bloody Carling cup


why does everyone else seem to so much?

It's the combo of being beaten twice at home in 4 days by the same team, and it was a lot of there youngsters, while you had a few more senior players out. If it was 0-1 maybe not as much would of been made of it. I don't really know what this one result has to do with rating Benitez, but the excuses being made for Liverpool are embarrasing

L r d wrote:

COTR wrote:

L r d wrote:Now bad defending is called being unlucky? also missed a penalty, Liverpool were lucky it was not 7-3

We don't care about the bloody Carling cup


why does everyone else seem to so much?

It's the combo of being beaten twice at home in 4 days by the same team, and it was a lot of there youngsters, while you had a few more senior players out. If it was 0-1 maybe not as much would of been made of it. I don't really know what this one result has to do with rating Benitez, but the excuses being made for Liverpool are embarrasing

dudek, peltier, hyypia, palleta, warnock, guthrie, fowler

hyppia is the only one that will play a reasonable amount of games this season


arsenal had baptista, toure, djourou, walcott, fabregas and at a stretch hoyte.

our team was just as weakened Lrd.

@ COTR

What the fuck! You just picked out the weakest players in your team and compared them to the strongest players in our team! thats not a comparison!

And of those 'strongest' ones, you still managed to include a 17 year old, two 19 year olds and a player that struggled to get in the Sunderland squad.

Tweedle wrote:@ COTR

What the fuck! You just picked out the weakest players in your team and compared them to the strongest players in our team! thats not a comparison!

And of those 'strongest' ones, you still managed to include a 17 year old, two 19 year olds and a player that struggled to get in the Sunderland squad.

I was emphasising that ours was weaker than reported and yours was stronger than reported Tweeds.

The squads were about equal IMO, with yours possibly a bit stronger + you were at home.

No-one particularly cares about the League Cup, I agree but losing so badly and at home must be painful, I'd be pretty pissed

COTR wrote:

L r d wrote:Now bad defending is called being unlucky? also missed a penalty, Liverpool were lucky it was not 7-3

We don't care about the bloody Carling cup


why does everyone else seem to so much?

It looks like liverpool neither care about the League and the FA cup and after the Barcelona trashing you could say the same about the CL....

Ric Jol wrote:

COTR wrote:

L r d wrote:Now bad defending is called being unlucky? also missed a penalty, Liverpool were lucky it was not 7-3

We don't care about the bloody Carling cup


why does everyone else seem to so much?

It looks like liverpool neither care about the League and the FA cup and after the Barcelona trashing you could say the same about the CL....

They havent cared about the league for 20 years

Tweedle wrote:
No-one particularly cares about the League Cup, I agree but losing so badly and at home must be painful, I'd be pretty pissed

Irritating but not painful. In all honesty it was a preferable result to a draw. I'm much more pissed off about Saturday, where I think we were well in the game until two great bits of play from Rosicky.

And it's killed any sense of sympathy I might have had for Dudek's whinging about being on the bench. Thanks for the CL final Jerzy, goodbye and good luck in the summer.

Tweedle wrote:The squads were about equal IMO, with yours possibly a bit stronger + you were at home.

No-one particularly cares about the League Cup, I agree but losing so badly and at home must be painful, I'd be pretty pissed

nah I honestly didnt even feel remotely bad about it. all it means is our reserves are shit so that doesn't really bother me

if we had won it anyway we would be criticised for only winning the damn thing if that's all we won this season. better off out of the it. it's already cost us sissoko, garcia and gonzalez this season.

So a re-think on your squad depth then?

Ric Jol wrote:

COTR wrote:

L r d wrote:Now bad defending is called being unlucky? also missed a penalty, Liverpool were lucky it was not 7-3

We don't care about the bloody Carling cup


why does everyone else seem to so much?

It looks like liverpool neither care about the League and the FA cup and after the Barcelona trashing you could say the same about the CL....

of course we care about the league ricky what has prompted you to make this up

We also care about the Fa cup but losing to arsenal is no disgrace especially when it was such a strange game where they barely left their own half. winning it last year numbs the pain a bit.

no idea what you are on about ricky

COTR wrote:it means is our reserves are shit so that doesn't really bother me

But thats your future though.......

Cesc wrote:

COTR wrote:it means is our reserves are shit so that doesn't really bother me

But thats your future though.......

Exactly.

I thought Paletta, Peltier et al were supposed to be future regualrs for Liverpool.

COTR wrote:

Ric Jol wrote:

COTR wrote:

L r d wrote:Now bad defending is called being unlucky? also missed a penalty, Liverpool were lucky it was not 7-3

We don't care about the bloody Carling cup


why does everyone else seem to so much?

It looks like liverpool neither care about the League and the FA cup and after the Barcelona trashing you could say the same about the CL....

of course we care about the league ricky what has prompted you to make this up

We also care about the Fa cup but losing to arsenal is no disgrace especially when it was such a strange game where they barely left their own half. winning it last year numbs the pain a bit.

no idea what you are on about ricky

I am looking for an explanation why the HUGE favourites to win the title this year, Liverpool, are playing so much under par....

Cesc wrote:

COTR wrote:it means is our reserves are shit so that doesn't really bother me

But thats your future though.......

hardly... which of these players do you think has a future at liverpool. probably only paletta and even that is a doubt