Мамка му. Liverpool за пореден път се прецакаха и шансовете за титла станаха доста силно малковероятни. И други години сме нямали шансове за титла ама не ми пукаше кой знае колко, ама сега колко ми е тъпо 🙁 Щото имахме шансове… А като гледам как вървят нещата, скоро няма пак да имаме шансове. Собствениците скарани, а Бенитес не ще да подпише нов договор… А ако не станало ясно, аз съм му фен и мисля, че той е правилния човек…. Абе боза.
Та това – надеждата е кофти нещо понякога. А за всеки футболен фен, надеждата се казва “Следващият сезон” 🙂

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TOMKINS: LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD
Paul Tomkins 13 February 2009
Taken from: http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/news/drilldown/NG163249090213-1041.htm

Following my piece earlier in the week, I want to expand on a couple of the themes and clarify one small mistake on my part.

I was accused by one Liverpool fan of being obsessed with Manchester United. In truth, I was just responding to people in the media saying that Liverpool can’t cope without key players when, quite clearly, they can, and that United can cope wonderfully without key players when, quite clearly, that’s not totally true.

Manchester United are the current barometer. Their success dictates comparison. They are where we want to be. In the bigger picture, the Reds are catching them up, and at a far greater rate than Ferguson originally caught Liverpool. But it’s still not enough to spare Benítez some appallingly wayward criticism, much of it relating to his rival down the East Lancs Road.

Even as Liverpool fans, we cannot argue with Alex Ferguson’s record or his status as a legend of the game. However, at times he will do something that Rafa also does and be labeled a genius for getting the result, whereas the Liverpool manager will be castigated even after a win. Stuff like that needs redressing.

With the purchase of Berbatov, United now have three £30m(ish) strikers. This season they’ve coped much better without one of those: Wayne Rooney. You can’t argue with their depth up front, which is better than last year, when Rooney’s absence left them light.

But in the four league games Ronaldo has so far failed to start this season, United won just one, drew two and lost one. Two were tough games, but then so too were two of the four Gerrard has missed, and Liverpool’s results were better.

I made one error in my piece discussing United without Rooney and Ronaldo last season: they also won at Fulham. It doesn’t greatly alter the overall picture: that they were much diminished without these two key men.

For me, this is perfectly natural anyway. Any team would miss a pair of the quality of Ronaldo and Rooney. But it’s glossed over with United that, actually, they did really rely on them, and that this season they still look iffy without Ronaldo.

The fact that this season Liverpool have coped exceptionally well without Gerrard and/or Torres is my main point.

And I must emphasise greatly –– I wouldn’t draw the United comparison if it wasn’t for the media ramming that myth down our throats to start with. At the weekend I lost count of how many times different pundits said United can make do without players like Ronaldo. The evidence is suggestive of the contrary.

What’s interesting is that Ferguson, with a Champions League game looming after the Fulham fixture last season, did exactly what Benítez did at the weekend, and left out his star names. At the time, United were trailing Arsenal at the top of the table. Was it a crazy gamble? Was he cracking up?

United won 3-0. Again, this might suggest that his squad was far stronger than Liverpool’s now, but I’ve already shown that United were far inferior without Rooney in 2007/08 to their overall form, and almost impotent without Ronaldo. Also, United hadn’t just had a 120-minute midweek derby and lost players to injury.

Liverpool’s win against Portsmouth may have been less convincing than United’s at Fulham last year, but it was a win all the same; just as United, with a full-strength team, needed a Stoke player sent off late-on to eventually aid a breakthrough. That’s football. Good teams wear down less-good teams. Whatever side you select, you cannot always win the game in the first 80 minutes.

And it can’t be ‘luck’ that Liverpool have won so many games late on under Benítez, including coming back from what appeared impossible situations.

Dirk Kuyt has scored and set-up a lot of last-gasp goals this season, and part of that is down to the manager finding such characters, who will never give up. Similarly, look at the determination of Javier Mascherano, a defensive midfielder, in the dying seconds, to try and win the game. Look at his joy at Torres’ goal. This is no accident, no fluke.

Ferguson deserves great credit for buying Ronaldo amongst others, but then so too does Benítez for purchasing Torres and turning Gerrard from a six-goals-a-season midfielder into a twenty-goals-a-season midfielder-cum-striker. Prior to Torres arriving, Liverpool were accused of lacking a world-class striker; now he’s here, the manager is wrongly accused of an over-reliance on him.

With all this, I’m not trying to belittle Manchester United or Ferguson. What he has done has worked. Some years he may have had luck at vital times, but their enduring success speaks of doing things right time and time again.

But by having a massive head-start on Benítez, he has had the kind of advantage that he himself could not overcome when Kenny Dalglish was Liverpool manager over a similar time span.

Neutrals may now say Ferguson is a better manager than was Dalglish; and yet Ferguson was miles adrift of Dalglish season after season before King Kenny resigned in 1991. And Ferguson had arrived from the similar Scottish football, not a different culture like Spain.

People say that the seven years it took Ferguson to win the title cannot be compared with now; football has changed too much.

But if anything, it’s now harder to come from lower in the league (indeed, below 2nd-place) to win the title. Gone are the days when people like Brian Clough could take a promoted side to the league title; imagine West Brom or Stoke doing that now! And in 1992, Leeds won the title in their second season back in the top flight; I don’t see Sunderland doing that in 2009, do you?

Casting the net further afield, Arsene Wenger is used as an example of how it’s possible for someone to win the league very quickly. But he was a pioneer as the English game changed to a more continental style; his timing was perfect in order to offer new enlightenment. By the time Benítez arrived, you could not get such an advantage. Everyone was enlightened. Even Bolton used sports scientists, dieticians and psychologists.

And if you look at Wenger’s record since Rafa arrived, you can say that the great Frenchman has been decidedly second-best to the Spaniard on the whole. More experienced than in 1998, Wenger, already an expert in English football, has found it tougher because the top end of the table now has a number of great sides to compete with.

Of course, there was Jose Mourinho’s impact at Chelsea. But he had exceptional resources, to add to a team that were already a 2nd-placed 80-point Premiership outfit and Champions League semi-finalists. But even then, what he built appears to have been a little short-term in its vision, given the ageing side and subsequent strife at Stamford Bridge.

Going back to United, Alex Ferguson made a series of astute signings in 1988 and 1989. But it took 4/5 years for Bruce, Irwin, Pallister, Ince, Hughes and co. to win the title. The fees for these players may seem cheap to us now, but in relation to the transfer record of the day, these (and some of the expensive ‘flops’ he bought at the same time, like Danny Wallace and Neil Webb) were big-money deals.

One of the main points of writing Dynasty was to make comparisons across the eras on as even a playing field as possible. The United team that won the 1990 FA Cup had an average cost (at time of purchase) of half of the transfer record; or the equivalent of an average of £16m per player in today’s market.

By contrast, Kenny Dalglish had a far cheaper team at the time. Part of that was the decreased need to spend big, as over the years Liverpool, similar to United now, had become a well-oiled machine that needed tweaks rather than overhauls.

However, to show that it’s not just about money, and also that Liverpool can’t claim to have been paupers when Ferguson finally ended United’s 26-year wait, Graeme Souness, in rebuilding the ageing side he inherited, formed a team that also cost on average close to 50 per cent of the transfer record. His own purchases, which did include some cheap players like Rob and Lee Jones, worked out at 45 per cent of the record: an average of £13m per player in today’s market.

Had a world-class manager spent that money at Liverpool, Manchester United ‘might not’ have made that vital title breakthrough. But they did, just as Liverpool won against Portsmouth at the weekend, despite all the ‘if Liverpool hadn’t won’ speculations.

Even so, Ferguson spent big to lift the burden on United’s shoulders. At the time Dynasty went to print, Rafa’s average spend on all players was just 16 per cent of the English transfer record. (This figure does not include the many youngsters and reserves yet to play a part in the first team, so it’s not skewed by such cheap investments.)

United’s strongest XI based on last season is listed in Dynasty as having an average cost of 43.5 per cent of the record, compared with the 18 per cent of Liverpool’s.

That 43.5 per cent was based on United making the Tevez deal permanent at £32m; so it still stands because Berbatov cost precisely that, and Tevez, rather than a regular pick, is now a rather luxurious reserve (to add to expensive signings like Anderson, Nani and Hargreaves. The first two have just nine league starts between them this time, despite their cost.)

Liverpool’s (perceived) strongest XI did become a little more expensive with the signing of Robbie Keane, but he’s no longer part of the equation, while a signing like Riera, who has replaced Babel as first choice on the left, was actually £3m cheaper.

So for Benítez to have the financial advantage that Ferguson could call upon between 1986 and 1993 – i.e. the ability to outspend a great rival in order to overtake them – he would need a team stuffed full of £15-30m players, as opposed to just a couple. (Again, I’m not saying that if you spend the money you’ll definitely have success, but equally, Ferguson did not overtake Liverpool with thriftiness.)

But there’s an even more crucial point. Not only did Ferguson have a financial advantage that Benítez now doesn’t, he also had disruption at Liverpool from 1989 onwards, when Hillsborough derailed the Reds and left Dalglish suffering from understandable stress. The worst imaginable luck in all senses for Liverpool was, in sporting terms, good luck for United.

It’s also important to note, by way of balance, that United were similarly damaged by Munich in 1958, without which Bill Shankly might have found Matt Busby’s men impossible to overhaul six years later.

No matter how good Shankly was, and how great the team he assembled, if United had not been rebuilding when he arrived 50 years ago, but instead going from strength to strength with a great young side, it might have been too great a gap to bridge. At the very least, it may have taken Shankly beyond 1964 to win the championship if Duncan Edwards and co. were still alive.

You almost always need some disruption with preeminent rivals to sneak a march on them. Because whatever you do, they already have momentum.

Since his arrival, Benítez has elevated the Reds above Arsenal, although it could be argued that they are in transition. This season he has got the Reds above Chelsea, but their constant changing of managers in search of ‘sexy’ football appears to be part of their undoing. All the same, you have to be in a position to take advantage, and so far Liverpool have with their own improvement.

In other years, this might be enough: two strong rivals (and recent European Cup finalists) overtaken. But the one constant remains United, who were miles ahead of Liverpool in 2004, and who, even though the gap has been closed dramatically, still have undeniable advantages that stretch back well into the 1990s in terms of personnel, finances and one manager’s vision.

So I repeat, the point of this is not to demean Ferguson’s achievements. They are set in stone. But what irritates me is how he is seen as almost able to do no wrong, and Benítez no right.

I reiterate: in the last two seasons, United’s results without Ronaldo have been the equivalent to mid-table form. Liverpool’s results this season without either Torres or Gerrard have been far, far better. And yet Liverpool are portrayed as the one- or two-man team, and Benítez the clueless, lucky manager with a weak squad.

And how utterly wrong that is.

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Taken from http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/news/drilldown/NG163223090210-1353.htm

TOMKINS: END THIS TORRES/GERRARD MYTH
Paul Tomkins 10 February 2009

There are lies, damned lies and statistics. And there is the absolute guff spouted by pundits who wouldn’t know a fact if it bit them in the part of their body they speak out of.

Of late, I’ve been wondering if Rafa Benítez is damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t. Now I’m just starting to believe that’s too mild a way to put it. I have never known a manager so unable to win even when he wins. One defeat in 33 ‘main competition’ games, and still the flak flies.

And as I will prove, some of the criticism could not be more wayward.

If ever there was an almost perfect example of how he can’t win, it came at Portsmouth, following the midweek Mersey marathon.

To put it in perspective, if Rafa had played a weakened team at Everton in the FA Cup, he’d have been lambasted for not taking the competition seriously (yawn), and for not understanding the local derby.

He went with a strong team, to try and win the game and keep the momentum going, not least because Mersey derbies have a habit of being blown out of proportion: lose, and it feels like the end of the world; win, and you can get a massive fillip.

But Lucas was sent off for two yellows, when only one was a foul. Steven Gerrard had already limped off injured at the start, and Liverpool were left to play extra-time with ten men and a clearly leggy Fernando Torres. So much then for fielding your best players to win the game early and then be able to rest them: the advice every man and his dog was giving Benítez in the past.

Already physically shattered, a deflected goal in the 119th minute was similarly tough on the psyche. It was a body blow to the, er, mind. So the received wisdom was no use whatsoever on Wednesday.

What it did do was leave a tired, dejected team shorn of its captain and with its best striker seeing the recent run of games take its toll, having returned from a long injury problem to be thrown into a busy schedule.

So what does a manager do in this situation? Play his best players, who were clearly tired (and two of whom – Torres and Alonso – weren’t 100% fit), or use the squad and hope that a little less quality and/or experience is compensated for by far greater freshness, plus the hunger to impress?

After all, Gerrard had just succumbed to an injury from playing too much football; what if Torres followed suit?

With Spain unlikely to rest him on Wednesday, there was a chance that the Reds wouldn’t even get to the upcoming vital weekend break (the one big bonus of going out of the FA Cup) with the striker’s hamstrings intact. So Rafa wasn’t resting him to keep him fresh for Spain; he was trying to avoid another lay-off.

Ultimately, extreme situations demand extreme measures.

I don’t think the result made Rafa a genius, just as having drawn or lost would not have made him a chump. Had everyone been 100% fit and sharp, then it’s a risky judgement call you can perhaps question. But they weren’t. Clearly.

However, there was one very logical reason why, in the circumstances, it was a gamble worth taking. The Liverpool subs looked so sharp precisely because they were entering into a game with the opposition starting to tire, and in which those three Reds wouldn’t need to rely on stamina – just a short burst of effort that didn’t need to be sustained.

What Rafa did in the face of fatigue was pair Torres, Kuyt and Alonso up against an equally tired second-half Portsmouth side, when their quality could tell. Ideally the game would have been won by then, but if it wasn’t, they were there to win it late on. After all, Alex Ferguson has done that countless times in the past, keeping his stars in reserve in case he needed them to come on and win the game.

Had that trio started the game, it could quite easily have been a case of them tiring before the south coast side. Who knows? It’s certainly not unlikely after the midweek exertions, and a whopping 210 minutes of football since Pompey played last Saturday. Either way, it’s an almost impossible situation for the team to play to the best of its ability.

Mixing metaphors somewhat, I just wish the baying hounds would cut Benítez at least a little slack. I honestly can’t recall a top manager being criticised even half as much as the Spaniard – and this with trophies, constant Champions League qualification (and annual progress to at least the semi-finals, bar 2006), along with radical improvements in the league.

After Torres scored the winner on Saturday, one commentator said that Liverpool need to keep him fit and ‘nurse him’; yet there was widespread condemnation before the game for not starting him. So you need to nurse players like Torres and Gerrard, just never rest (i.e. ‘nurse’) them. Oh, okay.

Then later that evening, it was said Liverpool would not have won fielding that side against better opposition.

Which was ludicrously bereft of logic because Liverpool were playing Portsmouth, and that’s the only team the manager could pick a side to beat. Did Rafa select that same XI against Chelsea last week? No. Did Rafa have to pick a side on Saturday to beat Manchester United or Arsenal? Of course not. It was Portsmouth.

In the post-match TV analysis it was all about how Liverpool will get ‘nowhere near’ the title with this squad; having just gone top of the table with 13 games remaining (even if United were still favourites with two games in hand).

And there’s me thinking the Reds had been challenging all season long, sometimes without Gerrard, often without Torres.

The same was said on TV on Sunday morning: journalists declaring Liverpool’s squad as too weak to mount a title challenge –– whilst that very squad is clearly making a challenge. It’s like three blind mice leading equally vision-impaired followers.

(Please, fellas, if you’re reading, stick with it, but I’ve a lot to vent. The facts are on their way. Read them, and consider their implications.)

The result is the only justification of team selection, whether you get the winner in the first minute or the last.

I said last week, when Man United score late, it’s the sign of a great side; when Liverpool do, it’s luck. And yet even before Torres came on, Kuyt had put the Reds 2-1 up with a goal that was wrongly chalked off for offside, while Pompey’s opener looked offside. And Liverpool are ‘lucky’?!

Had that Kuyt goal stood, there’s a fairly good chance Liverpool would have won without their two stellar names even featuring, and yet the Setanta pundits and Sky journos were adamant about how Liverpool are too reliant on Gerrard and Torres.

Again, I ask people to go check Manchester United’s results without Ronaldo and Rooney. And again, I ask people to see how many games Liverpool have won without Torres and Gerrard this season.

If you can’t check, let me do it for you: United lost five league games last season. Rooney missed four of them, Ronaldo missed three, and they did not play together in any of those defeats. Of these opponents, only Chelsea were a team in the top eight, so it’s not skewed by difficult games.

In the 12 league matches Rooney did not start, United’s accrued a 69-point average when extrapolated over 38 games, as opposed to the 87 they actually racked up. In the seven games Ronaldo did not start, the average would have made an even worse total: 65 points. Or the tally that saw Everton finish 5th.

Shockingly, in the four games in which neither started –– against Manchester City, Bolton, Sunderland and Spurs (again, no giants, but admittedly one derby) –– they dropped half of the available points: meaning an average of 57 if extrapolated over 38 games. Or equivalent to finishing 8th, like Portsmouth.

(Also, of the three league games Ronaldo missed at the start of this season, United dropped five points, which is the form of a mid-table side.)

Yes, United have other good players all over the pitch, but do these facts not suggest that they are overly reliant on their best two attacking players?

While United have coped well in the last few games without Rooney, without either him and/or Ronaldo on a regular basis, the form book suggests that they are not a title-winning side. Indeed, far from it.

(Of course, if United did not have these players on a very regular basis, or indeed at all, they’d try to buy similar replacements; just as Liverpool obviously would in the case of Torres and Gerrard.)

Now look at Liverpool without Torres and Gerrard this season.

Gerrard has failed to start four league games –– Villa, United, Fulham and Portsmouth. Two of those are clearly very tough fixtures, against top-three sides. Two were at home, two away. And yet Liverpool’s record is won two, drawn two. Over 38 league games, that is worth an impressive 76 points.

Due to injury, Torres has failed to start no fewer than 15 league games. These resulted in ten wins, four draws and just one defeat. Over a 38 game season, that ratio would earn an incredible 86 points. That is a title-winning tally; last year United got 87, but needed only 86.

Perhaps due to Torres playing at least half a dozen games when lacking sharpness, Liverpool have actually fared better without him; with him starting, the Reds have won five and drawn five, which is 76 points in terms of form over 38 games. (Though he did win the weekend’s game from the bench.)

It gets even more amazing. In each of the two league games Liverpool started without both Torres and Gerrard, the Reds won: against United and Pompey. It’s only two games, of course, but it’s a 100% record. Or 114 points over the course of a season! (Silly, I know, when based on such a small sample, but a 100% record is a 100% record.)

Yes, these are statistics – but then league tables are formed from similar statistics relating to win, lose or draw, which are the most important kind. And yes, United’s figures are based on last season (when they won the title) and Liverpool’s this season (as they challenge for it). Even so, it’s valid.

But even I was shocked at how remarkably disparate the win/lose/draw statistics were. I’m no genius; I just sat down and bothered to check some team sheets and calculate some figures, rather than just make ignorant assumptions like the McPundits.

So why are Liverpool the team perceived to rely on just two players? Why does someone like Tim Sherwood say that United don’t rely on their key men and Liverpool do?

Why isn’t the truth –– that United cannot seem to cope very well without Ronaldo, and certainly not well at all without both him and Rooney –– more well known?

Why isn’t Rafa praised for getting so many great results without his key men this season, rather than just constantly criticised?

Why isn’t Ferguson accused of being lucky or relying on Rooney and Ronaldo to get him out of trouble?

I’ll leave you (and anyone in the media who reads this) to draw your own conclusions. But based on these figures, if I were Alex Ferguson and United lost Rooney and Ronaldo to serious injury, I’d be very worried.

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Интересно – Рафа Бенитез е критикуван като треньор, които мисли само за защитата. Ливърпул играели много защитно при него. А реалноста е, че с тази защитна игра Ливърпул са вкарали 42 в момента. Само Челси от 20 други отбора във Висшата Лига са вкарали повече – 44.
Направо не си го и представям какво ще стане ако Ливърпул почнат да играят атакуващо 🙂

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