It’s Snow Joke
It is a day after Christmas, we are halfway through the season, and Liverpool Football Club are sitting seventh in the Premier League after 19 games.
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With pre-season hopes of a first title win since 1990 on the back of last seasons refreshing title challenge now in tatters, as well as a premature exit from the European Cup, many fans are calling for Rafa Benitez to be given the boot from Liverpool.
The way I see it, there are three options open to us at the moment. The first option would be to give Rafa time with the current playing squad in order to hopefully propel us up the league and into a European Cup place.
The second, the much preferred and sadly most unlikely option, would be for the Yank twats to realise that the squad needs investment and back Rafa in the transfer market come January.
The final option would be to relieve Rafa of his position. Many modern Liverpool fans are impatient, uneducated beings from Southern England who have never been to Anfield and simply sit in their comfy armchairs watching Liverpool on the tele. Sacking Rafa is their preferred option. However, I ask those people, if Benitez were to be sacked, whom would you replace him with?
Jose Mourinho is one name put forward as a potential new manager of Liverpool. However, how could we attract Mourinho to Anfield? Imagine the following: ‘Hey Jose, do you fancy leaving Inter Milan to manage Liverpool. We can offer you 50p a season for a transfer budget, as well as many broken promises. Oh, and you have to service our £30 million a year interest by selling your best players. Up for it?’
Rafa is, in my opinion, our modern day Bill Shankly. In the five years he has been at the club he has turned us from a club on the decline, battling for 4th place, into one of the best teams in the world.
This season may not have been very successful so far, and I realise at the moment we are actually battling for 4th place, but Rafa has revolutionised almost every aspect of our club, and in a way he has been a victim of his own success at Liverpool. By winning the European Cup in his first season at Anfield, many fans expected a similar instant success in the league.
To win the league, you need a quality squad and not just quality players. Rafa has slowly been building up a quality squad over the last five years, and it is working. Working on limited funds, Benitez has bought numerous players for comparatively small amounts. Some of these signings have worked out well, others have not, but Rafa has not been afraid to ship them on and slowly, but surely, our squad is improving.
Most people point to players like Voronin and Degen still holding a squad number and warming the bench. Do you think Benitez wants players of such quality in the squad? The sad truth is that these players were signed on free transfers in order to boost squad depth, simply because Hicks and Gillett treat Liverpool Football Club like a franchise, sucking up all it’s profits without investing in the playing squad. Instead, if Rafa wants any form of transfer budget, he has to sell players. Make no mistake; the Yanks are the cancer of Liverpool Football Club.
Our form this season has been poor. Confidence is low and the players just do not look arsed. We lost Hyypia, Alonso and Arbeloa during the summer, and even though we brought in Glen Johnson and Alberto Aquilani, our squad is not as strong as last year. Johnson is a good player, although defensively suspect at times. Aquilani is still not completely match fit, however, his time will come.
Last season, finishing 2nd in the league with a club record number of Premier League points was a massive achievement. Many people thought that we could make a step up and win the title this season.
For Liverpool to progress and win the title this season, a number of things were needed. Stability at the club would be vital, Rafa would need to be backed in the transfer market, and finally, Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres would need to remain injury free. None of which happened.
Injuries to key players have hit us hard, confidence is low, the turmoil at the club is still occurring and our dirty laundry is being aired in public. Bill Shankly must be turning in his grave, as every blade of glass he built when creating the Liverpool way is being slowly destroyed.
What now for Liverpool Football Club, Rafa Benitez and the cancer in the form of George Gillett and Tom Hicks? The story of our season is not over yet, and I’m sure there is a rocky road still to walk down… but we will never walk alone.
Merry Christmas
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Merry Christmas to all 
Bill Shankly
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December 1st 1959, the day Liverpool Football Club was changed forever as a new era began.
Future Thoughts
Among leaflets about depression, letters about fire safety and other general crappy bits of paper Lancaster University crammed into my hands during Freshers Week over two years ago, I remember receiving a giant A3 poster.
The poster outlined a three year plan, and thinking back it told me (it was a talking poster) that around about this time in our third year of Uni we should be applying for graduate jobs, so we can walk into a nice shiny career after graduation and boost the University’s all important stats.
Have I started applying for graduate jobs? No. Do I know anyone else who has started applying for graduate jobs? No. Maybe the poster deserved its place in my bin with all the other freshers spam rather than on my wall.
I am thinking about my future though. What I originally thought was a pretty straight path is now turning into a pretty wonky path with lots of different tempting avenues I could wonder down.
Before I started University, I quite fancied doing a masters degree. Then, I actually did start Uni and quickly learned that I’m a lazy git who likes to get drunk. Now however, I am feeling kind of sad that my time at University is coming to an end, and if I do well enough in my summer exams then I may just apply to study a masters. After all, there is not a massive abundance of great graduate jobs around in the current economic climate is there?
When I was younger I harboured the ambition of joining the Royal Air Force, although my Dad kind of pushed me in that direction. I joined the Air Training Corps when I was 13, which was a decent laugh with my mates, but I felt that military life was again something I could not be arsed with. Over the last few weeks though, the RAF has kind of rebooted itself inside my mind and it may very well be something I look into and consider in more detail.
Traveling is also another option. I would quite like to see a bit of the world and maybe even a bit of sun (a rare site in England) before I am an old fart. Something like Camp America might be an idea, and living in Spain for a few years during the future is something I have had on my mind for a while now… ahhh!
Knowing me though I will probably end up with a career in Lidl.
Now I suppose I should crack on with some Uni work…
Injured
The last 5 days have been pretty damn shitty for me compared to my usually perfect life and I feel like a good moan.
Last weekend I had a cracking time in Carlisle whilst staying at a friends house, a cracking time that was added to further by Liverpool’s fantastic 2-0 victory over Man Utd. I was buzzing.
University work and worrying about my future in general has contributed to my mood sliding downhill since Monday. My mind has also been fucked around by snakes with tits this week, but I guess that is an obligatory part of life.
Then yesterday, 5 miles into a 10 mile run (nothing better than a good run when you are pissed off), I fell arse over tit down the canal after my ankle buckled over a loose stone.
Cuts, bruises, a sore arse and a severely sprained ankle was the result, and I had to to limp the remaining 5 miles home.
I’m doubly pissed off with this injury because I planned to run the Lancaster Half Marathon on Sunday 8th November, and I have been making great gains in training over the last few weeks. It would have been my first half marathon, and something I would have been proud to complete. Now all my hard work has gone out the window… I can’t walk and I’m on crutches.
Whoopdy do.
Still, I am an expert on crutches having broken the same ankle a few years ago, and I am going to Alton Towers tomorrow for the Halloween celebrations on those wonderful crutches, so hopefully I have reached the bottom of the trough.
Get Out of OUR Club
Liverpool have lost four games in a row, something which has not occurred since 1987, and on the Sunday coming we face Manchester United at Anfield.
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There is a black cloud engulfing Liverpool Football Club at the moment, a black cloud created by Tom Hicks and George Gillett as they slowly rip apart our great club from its heart.
The Yanks have delivered lie after lie and broken promise after broken promise since ‘buying’ our club in 2007.
“This is not a takeover like the Glazer deal at Manchester United. There is no debt involved, and we believe that as custodians of this wonderful, storied club we have a duty of care to the tradition and legacies of Liverpool.” Tom Hicks (February 2007)
The most recent reports suggest the overall debt due from the club and its holding companies is £410 million.
“The shovel needs to be in the ground in the next 60 days or so, and we would intend to follow that. I think you’ll see the beginnings of a great big swimming pool being dug out here in Stanley Park relatively soon.” George Gillett (February 2007)
Over two and a half years later there is no swimming pool, let alone a stadium.
Liverpool regularly used to spend a steady if unspectacular amount of £20 million per season on transfers under David Moores. We are spending considerably less since the Yanks came to Anfield, and yet we are still expected to compete with teams with the financial power of Man Utd and Chelsea.
George Gillett states that we have spent a lot of money on players, but the figures simply do not add up to support his lie.
In the summer gone we signed: Glen Johnson (£17.75 million), Alberto Aquilani (£17.1 million) and Sotirios Kyrgiakos (£2 million), equating to a total spend of £36.85 million. We sold: Paul Anderson (£0.25 million), Sebastian Leto (£3 million), Álvaro Arbeloa (£3.5 million) and Xabi Alonso (£30 million), equating to £36.75 million.
A net spend of 100k is the best figure George Gillett can point to, a figure far away from the £20 million net we regularly spent each summer under David Moores. We also received £16 million for Robbie Keane in January, and we have only paid £10 million combined for Glen Johnson and Alberto Aquilani so far, meaning in reality our spending in 2009 is £12 million and our income £52.75 million.
Where has the money gone? The answer is simple, all the profits generated by Liverpool Football Club are used to pay off the interest on the loans Tom Hicks and George Gillett took out in order to purchase the club in the first place. We should be adding genuine quality to our squad in a bid to go one step further than our 2nd place position in the league last season. It is not the most ideal situation is it?
Disaster is not beyond the realms of possibility. If we fail to qualify for the Champions League for just one season, then the financial plan the club is currently based on at the moment will fall. Players will be sold in order to pay back the interest from the loans, meaning we will be waving goodbye to the likes of Torres, Mascherano and Reina. Performances on the field will consequently decline, and before you know it we will be the next Leeds United, or worse. This is what Tom Hicks and George Gillett have brought to Anfield, we need to get them out before it is too late.
Rafa Benitez will likely be coming under increasing pressure over the next few days, but losing four games in a row does not automatically make you a bad manager. Kenny Dalglish was managing Liverpool last time we lost four games in a row, was he a bad manager? Kenny is hero, our greatest player and a great man in many Kopites eyes.
I was not lucky enough to be around and remember Dalgish’s playing and managerial career at Liverpool, but when you hear people mention that Rafa has the chance to go down in history as one of the greatest influences on Liverpool Football Club next to the likes of Kenny and Bill Shankly, you have to listen. Rafa has taken us from an average UEFA Cup team to one of the best teams in Europe in 5 years, whilst being continually constrained and undermined by Tom Hicks and George Gillett.
They don’t care about Rafa, they don’t care about the fans, Liverpool Football Club is in the wrong hands. YANKS OUT!
A Tickler
I thought I would share this, it gave me a little chuckle. Credit to whoever wrote it.
Dear Technical Support,
18 months ago, I upgraded to Girlfriend 1.0 from Drinking Mates 4.2, which I had used for years without any trouble.
However, there are apparently conflicts between these two products and the only solution was to try and run Girlfriend 1.0 with the sound turned off.
To make matters worse, Girlfriend 1.0 is incompatible with several other applications, such as Lads Night Out 3.1, Football 4.5, and Playboy 6.9.
Successive versions of Girlfriend proved no better. A shareware program, Party Girl 2.1, which I tried, had many bugs and left a virus in my system, forcing me to shut down completely for several weeks.
Eventually, I tried to run Girlfriend 1.2 and Girlfriend 1.0 at the same time, only to discover that when these two systems detected each other, causing severe damage to my hardware.
I then upgraded to Fiancée 1.0, only to discover that this product soon had to be upgraded further to Wife 1.0.
While Wife 1.0 tends to use up all my available resources, it does come bundled with Free Sex Plus and Clean House 2009.
Shortly after this upgrade, however, I found that Wife 1.0 could be very unstable and costly to run. Any mistakes I made were automatically stored within Wife 1.0′s memory and could not be deleted. They then resurfaced months later when I had forgotten about them.
Wife 1.0 also has an automatic diary, explorer and email filter, and can, without warning, launch Turbo Strop and Whinge. These latter products have no Help files, and I have to try to guess what the problem is.
Additional problems are that Wife 1.0 needs updating regularly, requiring Shoe Shop Browser for new attachments and Hairstyle Express which needs to be reinstalled every other week. Wife 1.0 also spawns unwelcome child processes that drain my resources.
These unfortunately conflict with some of the new games I wanted to try out, warning me that they are an illegal operation. Also, when Wife 1.0 attaches itself to my hard drive, it often crashes.
Wife 1.0 also comes with a rather annoying pop-up called Mother-In-Law, which can’t be turned off.
Recently I’ve been tempted to install Mistress 2009, but there could be problems. A friend of mine has alerted me to the fact that if Wife 1.0 detects Mistress 2009 it tends to delete all of your Money files before uninstalling itself.
Any ideas?
Xbox 360 + Fifa 10 = FUN
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FUN