forgoing another shot at top four again??

Ooops, sorry for my typo. hahaha. Anyway, I was trying to say we should have utilized the 80 million pounds better because if we really just wanted to strengthen our squad, it shouldn't be the backups or quantity because we already have some good ones. What we needed is quality and international top-class players. Anyway, what's done is done and we can't change the fact that we actually spent 40 million on Hendo and Downing. Hope the next manager will actually use the money for some better players.

Speaking of manager, apparently some bookies have suspended betting on AVB to Liverpool and R. Martinez and AVB on the top of the list on sky bet with 11/4. If I'm not wrong AVB's odds wasn't as high few hours ago. And this might have told us something too: Independent's back page tomorrow:



Anyway, speculations are still speculations. Hopefully we will find out as soon as possible.

They didn't move him into the board room?

i think KD was offered but he felt it wasnt required. (for him either the manager or nothing)

if i'm in KD shoes, as in any job prospects, i too would decline.


anyway

this is what i picked up from rafa benitez website/forum
(question was posted on 6th May 2012)

reply not written by the man himself but his admin of the website; though he (rafa) does reply on other occasions, though when matters pertaining to liverpoolfc, he usually reserves himself our of respect on any part on tactics/team selection of KD. (its in his forums@rafabenitez.com).

You can dissect if it's really rafa on the other end when you know his response seems a little lack of english emotions (usually written in bold and but seemingly short/aburt & short much like the fin' Kimi raikonen how he responses )



btw senoir benitez himself is in Cardiff (15-16th May), speaker at the UEFA Pro Licence Course on ‘Modern Times, Modern Managers’.

This post has been edited by koolspyda: May 17 2012, 08:02 AM

Dunno if Rafa is the right person or not but for sure many of his tactics work in the Championship campaign.
Are we in the UEFA Champions next seasons?

Sad day indeed. Sad time ahead,
But then whatdayou expect from YANKees?

They are FSG Incorporated.
They arent Liverpool FC and they will NEVER be.

Sad day not because Kenny has been sacked,
But rather Liverpool will never be the same again.
The soul of Shanks has been ripped out.
The foundations of the legend of Liverpool FC has been dismantled.

Rose tinted we maybe, but we are Liverpool FC, not FSG FC.

YNWA Kenny...................

we fans too need to embrace the true colors of the modern business football. it's business, business, business nowadays.

Not that we need to sell our soul but realise the fact certain things cannot be left just on pure sentiments. hate it or feel ambivalent about it, FSG is as what ian ayre did mentioned, about ROI.

The devils, ManU realised this aeons ago & capitalised it quickly. much has been said of their fans, though there is a certain enviousness on how they managed to build itself into the the biggest football business. Sure, some of them may remind of the debt glazers has put in. Turning it around, their accounting figures will show how much the football club rakes, even Real Madrid is only second to them. <comments above are only in regard to their ka-chingness, please some lfc fans don't read this & turn it into, "u might as well go support ManU"

This post has been edited by koolspyda: May 17 2012, 07:44 AM

I guess many still are unable to realized the difference between KD & Club.

Thats the point...its buisness unless you are owned by the russian mafia or an oil sheik.
Thats why the soul is gone.

Its easy to support success.
Its not so to walk through storms........

---

Added on May 17, 2012, 7:32 amGuess many are still unable and probably never be able to realise the Liverpool way..

This post has been edited by prophetjul: May 17 2012, 07:33 AM

One does NOT just go walking into storms without an able & competent captain, or else one will end up in holland!

Yup but I guess at every time before money is spent, there will always be that risk of transfers, won't it?

Some people argue that buying Premiership proven players would be better instead of paying over the odds for foreigners. Who would have thought the Premiership proven players we bought would be disappointing and those that came from other leagues, take the league by storm.

I guess maybe Kenny got it unlucky there.

Anyways,



And for those who don't know Txiki Begiristain is the current Director of Football (DOF) at Barcelona.

It all makes sense now!!! Pep Guardiola steps down as manager of Barca, comes to Liverpool to take over and is reunited with Rodolfo Borrell and Txiki Begiristain.


One can only dream

So begs the queations:

i) Who comes in?
ii) Which reputed manager will wanna come into a scking club?
iii) How much money will said person BE GIVEN to build a squad?
iv) How many triumphs will he need in his first season to be allowed/good enough for a second?
iv) If the next manager fails in the next season to win anything and fails to qualify for the CL, will FSG sack again?

---

Added on May 17, 2012, 7:51 am

This post has been edited by prophetjul: May 17 2012, 07:51 AM

hmm, buying spain success? or buying into the hard work that made barcelona for what they are today?
barcelona isn't from pep guardiola.

the current barcelona blueprint began from johan cruff/frank rijkaard onwards. The question will then be to FSG are we prepared for a long term decade of long haul, hence next season won't guarantee a CL spot.

Where did you go
when things went wrong for you,
when the knives came out for you?
Where did you go?
All you needed was a friend
You just have to ask and then.......

you don't have to have the solution,
you've got to invest in the problem,
and don't go hoping for a miracle.
All this will fade away
so i'm coming home
i'm coming home.

What did you learn,
locked away all on your own,
chance and your head all blown
What did you learn,
It was unfortunate,
you missed you chance to find out that

i'm coming home
but just for a short while.

Cheers Kenny. YNWA

---

Added on May 17, 2012, 8:01 amFollowing todays news, Spirit Of Shankly have released the following statement:


FSG: We need direction


We find ourselves once again experiencing another summer where talk centres around off the pitch decisions instead of footballing matters. The position of manager at Liverpool Football Club is one that deserves huge respect. It deserves all the resources of Liverpool Football Club to be put at the manager's disposal to make the Club as successful as possible. Today, we are once again in a position where this is not happening. At this moment in time, we have no Manager, no Director of Communications, no Director of Football, no Commercial Director and no ownership presence this side of the Atlantic, a situation compounded by the continued failure to appoint a Chief Executive.


There are also ongoing questions around the lack of a stadium solution. Recent decisions at Liverpool Football Club have led to more questions than they have answered. Today's decision does exactly the same. Many supporters will be asking just what exactly is LFC's strategy for the future. We would expect those in charge at LFC to address this situation urgently in a manner befitting of the Club's history and tradition to allow Liverpool Football Club to move forward. We would also expect those charged with moving the Club forward to engage in meaningful dialogue with supporters, something promised to us in those early meetings with Mr Henry and Mr Werner, but which is yet to materialise.

http://www.spiritofshankly.com/news/fsg-we-need-direction

Think FSG cares? Think again...i think FSG think we fans are mupppets.....

---

Added on May 17, 2012, 8:12 am

Kenny Dalglish farewell: no more excuses for John W Henry at Liverpool

One wonders what will happen to Kenny Dalglish's successor should Liverpool endure another tough season outside the top four of the Premier League

Andy Hunter



The wheel has turned full circle for John W Henry at Liverpool. His game-plan to gain control of the club was formulated at the London offices of the law firm Slaughter and May and, 19 months on, slaughter in May has cleared the way for Fenway Sports Group to implement its Anfield vision. Having added Kenny Dalglish to its cull, the demand will be intense upon Liverpool's owners to finally demonstrate they possess one.

Dalglish has gone, prematurely in these eyes, following a season that encapsulated the complexities facing FSG in its decision over the manager's position. The return on its £120m investment in new players in the Premier League was clearly unacceptable and Liverpool are at a tipping point as Financial Fair Play draws near while their rivals head into the distance.

Liverpool's former manager was often justified in lamenting misfortune in front of goal and lauding a performance level that was infrequently reflected in results, but an eighth-place finish – an 18-year low – reflected a campaign lacking in consistency and cohesion from players and manager alike. The club's first piece of silverware for six years, with the Carling Cup followed by an FA Cup final appearance, delivered the counter-argument for Dalglish's first full season back in charge and Liverpool's most celebrated moments since 2008-09.

"We are here to win," said Henry on the day his company, then New England Sports Ventures, wrestled the club from the destructive grip of Tom Hicks and George Gillett. It would have been more accurate to add the caveat "but challenging for fourth place is more important". One wonders what will happen to Dalglish's successor should Liverpool finish next season closer to the top four but trophyless.

Liverpool's league campaign disintegrated when Robin van Persie's stoppage-time winner for Arsenal at Anfield on 3 March – the week after the Carling Cup had been claimed on penalties against Cardiff City – effectively put Champions League qualification out of reach.

Subsequent defeats by Queens Park Rangers, Wigan Athletic, Roy Hodgson's West Bromwich Albion, Fulham and finally Swansea City were no way to convince FSG that recovery was inevitable next season.

It was in the transfer market where the owner's faith in Dalglish first wavered. Liverpool's style improved markedly under the 61-year-old and the fractured mess he inherited not only from Hodgson, with the club four points above the relegation zone when he accepted Henry's SOS while in Bahrain on a cruise, but from a previous ownership that had fundamentally weakened the squad, places this season into perspective. It should also have afforded Dalglish an extra year to demonstrate that Andy Carroll, Stewart Downing, Jordan Henderson, José Enrique and Charlie Adam – failures to a man during their debut seasons on Merseyside, despite Carroll's late flourish – have the mentality and quality required.

An outlay of almost £90m on that quintet is impossible to justify. Damien Comolli paid with his job as director of football having negotiated the transfer fees. As Dalglish admitted on the day Comolli was sacked, he was the one who identified the targets. The manager was now vulnerable. His replacement will not have the same funds available to construct a Champions League challenge and, Luis Suárez aside, there are few profits to be made with the current squad. If there was risk in retaining Dalglish for the task of rejoining the European elite it is outweighed by the necessity to start all over again with lesser funds and a fourth manager in four seasons.

Dalglish restored stability and dispelled the theory he had been out of the game too long before signing a three-year deal as Hodgson's replacement last May. His handling of Suárez's eight-match ban for racially abusing Patrice Evra in October, however, was archaic and inflamed the controversy. It is sad that a generation who never witnessed Dalglish become Liverpool's greatest player and one of their finest managers have, among their own first-hand memories, the sight of the Scot wearing a Suárez T-shirt at Wigan and rounding on the interviewer who asked about the striker's refusal to shake Evra's hand at Old Trafford. None of this was a factor in his departure.

Ian Cotton, Liverpool's long-serving head of communications, lost his job last week but the truth is there was no one at Anfield in a position to take the lead from Dalglish. The vacuum at the head of Liverpool's operations on Merseyside is reflected in the contrast between Dalglish's two departures as manager. In 1991, it was of his own accord amid the trauma of Hillsborough and at a hastily convened press conference where he was flanked by the chairman Noel White and peerless chief executive Peter Robinson. Today it is against his wishes, with Liverpool's chairman, Tom Werner, resident in the United States and with no chief executive employed by the club.

FSG was welcomed upon arrival at Liverpool not simply on the basis it had ousted Hicks and Gillett and removed the imminent threat of administration. Henry's considered nature and steely ambition, Werner's dynamism and the obvious enthusiasm at FSG for restoring Liverpool's fortunes as it had the Boston Red Sox fuelled the sense of a fresh start.

They spoke of acquiring the best young talent and wanted a young, hungry coach to lead the long-term project of leading Liverpool back into the Champions League and into title contention. The decision to dispense with Hodgson had to be taken and, in fairness to FSG, its plans were then complicated by Dalglish's immediate impact and the unifying effect the Anfield legend had on a club at war with itself. Nineteen months on, however, and just under two weeks before the transfer window reopens, Liverpool have no manager, no director of football, no chief executive, no head of communications and still no decision on a new stadium.

The boldest judgment of recent times on Liverpool's future has come from Lord Justice Floyd at the high court in October 2010, and not from the men he sold the club to. That changed today. Having sacked a club icon, a man who recently claimed he would be for ever in Liverpool's debt, FSG is now free to implement the plans it always envisaged for Anfield. It has no more excuses. Liverpool's support, meanwhile, awaits evidence the owners' decisiveness is not merely restricted to firing employees.


This post has been edited by prophetjul: May 17 2012, 08:12 AM

Rafa in!!

True but the thing is, it shows that it pays off to have people who understand the club, culture, tradition or whatever. Their whole club is run by people who understands the Barcelona philosophy from top to bottom, from manager, coach to players.

Majority of the Barcelona squad consists of players who came from La Masia. Pep Guardiola graduated from La Masia. His backroom staff? - Tito Vilanova, Juan Carlos Unzué, Andoni Zubizarreta, Guillermo Amor and Eusebio Sacristán all at one point, played for Barcelona. And now, Vilanova is set to take over and will no doubt continue the system.

No surprise that our successful years were from Paisley, Fagan and Dalglish (and Rafa if you'd like) - people who knew what it meant to be part of Liverpool.

I think Barca's "mes que un club" fits well. That's where we are similar

Kenny Dalglish is gone but has Fenway taken on too much at Liverpool?

A lack of footballing knowhow has worsened the difficulties of long-distance ownership for the Americans
Share10


David Conn



The Liverpool icon Kenny Dalglish's second stint as manager is summarily over and, with his departure, so too is the honeymoon period for the club's American owners, John W Henry's Fenway Sports Group. Liverpool seemed to promise such fun for them, and riches, when they were back-slapped in 19 months ago, paying off, as the price of buying the club, the £200m debt that the previous pair, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, borrowed to buy the club in the first place.

Yet now, and after a disappointing season in which expensively bought players failed to justify their outlandish fees, Liverpool supporters will demand a coherent plan from FSG, for a new manager, coaching structure, and some action on the stadium.

When they arrived, Roy Hodgson was struggling painfully, but it was FSG's decision to hire Dalglish on a permanent contract, and now they have sacked him. They appointed Damien Comolli as director of football on the recommendation of a baseball general manager, Billy Beane. Then they sacked Comolli too.

Liverpool overspent on players under FSG, the £35m for Andy Carroll the most staggering example, but Henry publicly endorsed that. The owners also supported Dalglish's protest at the FA's ruling that Luis Suárez had racially abused Patrice Evra, and Liverpool put out two dreadful, complaining official statements, so Dalglish's sacking has little to do with that. Last week the head of communications, Ian Cotton, who worked for 16 years at a club previously known for a dignified Liverpool way and then had to wrestle with the Suárez stance, departed too.

FSG have not only a manager's job to fill, but to design a whole structure, if they are to persist with a director of football, an appointment that is key, too. When they took over, the reports of their Boston Red Sox baseball team stewardship were glowing and had seductive parallels – there they restored a grand, fallen club to championship triumphs and its old ground, Fenway Park, sumptuously. But the discomforting truth, only dimly recognised here, is that Henry, Tom Werner and their fellow FSG investors bought Liverpool just as they were running into serious problems at the Red Sox for the first time. Last season the team failed to make the play-offs, a failure considered more catastrophic there than Liverpool fans feel about missing Champions League qualification. The Red Sox general manager, Theo Epstein, left and the coach, Terry Francona, was sacked.

Yet the replacement Red Sox coach, Bobby Valentine, is not faring any better; the Red Sox are bottom of their division, the fans unhappy, the press critical, which is all uncomfortable for the owners.

At Liverpool, you can overlay on FSG's Boston headaches four additional major difficulties. First, while they are lifelong baseball aficionados, they knew almost nothing about football before they bought one of its greatest institutions. Second, a much underrated difficulty in this Premier League experiment, the first ever in world football, is overseas ownership of clubs: FSG are busy people, a long way away, inconvenienced in daily business by time differences.

Third, Liverpool also have a stadium to sort out. The stated need that rich men must stand behind the cost of building a new stadium on Stanley Park was the sole reason Liverpool were sold in the first place, the former chairman David Moores making £90m for his shares. Yet FSG, having done a gorgeous job with Fenway Park, arrived saying they would look at redeveloping Anfield. So far they have spent 19 months scratching their heads over the same planning problems Moores's former chief executive, Rick Parry, found insurmountable.

Fourth is money. FSG were attracted by Premier League football's lucrative worldwide following, basing their calculations on Champions League qualification. The fans retain patience for FSG because they paid off the Hicks and Gillett debt and above that have lent Liverpool £30m interest free, freeing up money they then overspent. It appears, though, they do not intend to put more in, because Liverpool's accounts state they organised a £120m facility to borrow money from banks.

With expensive signings of historic proportions, Dalglish now fired, much blood spilt on the carpets and no news yet on the stadium, the American owners' next moves have to be very much more sure-footed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/20...pool?intcmp=239

Thanks Dalglish, for everything. You tried. The footballing world is different to what it was 20 years ago. Results matters, money rules. Owners made the decision.

It was a bad season, but we know that you took the job to try and restore Liverpool's pride and reputation. Others became a manager for the money, for a project, to build their career, to stamp their place in the game. But yo u already had it all, and could have watched from the sidelines as our club went through a downward spiral. You could have folded your arms and said `Yeah, its bad now. Tough luck. It was glorious during my days...Lets remember it that way'.
You could have just retained your worth cult status and forever remain a King to the eyes of every Liverpool supporter, young and old.

But you chosed to step in, roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. You tried and in the process, returned our pride and brought the players together. You stood firm till the end.

Andre Farkin Boas?!!..I hope the anti Dalglish brigade will be happy

I raised this weeks ago. Remove KD if
-you already got a proper manager lined up.
-and if you're ready to back the manager if he wants the $$ to revamp the squad and bring in his own brigade..

other than that, it will be joke to expect someone to come in and tell him to work with AC, Downing, Adams...