http://www.football365.com/story/0,17033,8...3092025,00.html

:lol: is all I have to say. Specially after last night.

He does have a point though.

How many times have Liverpool, United, Arsenal and Chelsea won the league?

18 for us, 16 for United, about 10 or 11 for Arsenal I think, Chelsea 3 times? Now how many times has each won the European Cup?

5 times, twice, never and never.

Surely the facts speak for themselves?

United, Arsenal and Chelsea have been trying for years to win the European Cup and fail time after time. It's the one Ferguson wants more than anything, yet only managed it once in his 20 odd years in charge. Yet has won the league over 10 times I think.

Says it all.

I think it is harder, of course some have easier routes through than others.

Whilst it may be true that winning the Champions League is harder, Rafa's claim that Arsenal and Chelsea are jealous does make me laugh. From what I can see, it is definitely Liverpool who are more jealous because they have failed to win 'the easier trophy'.

I think its true to say that any team is keen to win a trophy they have never won or not won for a long time.

So, are Chelsea and Arsenal jealous of Liverpool for winning the CL? Yes

Are Liverpool jealous of Mancs, Arse & Chelsea for winning the league in recent years? Yes





Nothing else to see here, jog on

I refuse to believe that winning the Champions League is harder than winning the league. It's simply delusional to think otherwise, regardless of whether clubs are 'jealous' or not.

You can win the Euro Cup without winning a game (away goals and pens in the final).
The schedule for the euro cup sees games every 2 weeks, contrast that with games over Christmas in the league.
You can win a cup on luck, you cant win the league on luck.
A Euro cup run can see you avoid the so-called better teams. In the league you have to play everyone.

The hardest part is maintaining a challenge on both fronts.
Last year Liverpool and AC Milan had nothing to compete for in the league come the latter stages. Yet, United and Chelsea were still going for the league and the FA Cup.

Rafas comments are a blanket for covering up his league form, which has been shocking since his arrival. He has the luxury of hiding behind a euro cup win.
Liverpool fans allow him this luxury, any other club, especially those on the continent, would not allow that luxury.

Benitez covering himself because he's won the European cup and not the league, kinda contradicts himself then...?

See the stats in my post above.

If it was easier, why have Chelsea never won it?

when we won it we didn't have an easy route at all

levekrusen
juventus
chelsea
milan

Agree. His league form is terrible. Liverpool are in a league of 4 teams, and to potentially finish 5th twice out of his 4 seasons is awful. The CL is just a small number of games, its a cup competition, thats why Liverpool have done well recently.

We all know Liverpool are the most successful team in English history, and well done, but talking about the past all the time is irrelivant, and gets boring after a while.

Fact - at the moment Liverpool aren't up to it, and after 4 years in charge it is down to one man, the clown. I just don't see why Liverpool fans stick by him, they will not win the league under him.

I would like to see him leave and Liverpool win the league, but he seems to have a good relationship with our manager (both being Spanish), and has loaned us a quality winger this season, so he can continue being a bafoon if he choses to.

yep, and this quality winger is out for a month! :angry:

We know we're not up to it.

But with the mess the club is in at the minute, we can't replace him even if we wanted to. We can't afford to.

Who do you get to replace him? And who would actually take the job? This isn't Championship Manager.

Look at the state of the club.

£350m loan recently taken out, with ALL club profits going towards servicing the interest payments alone on that loan. Therefore little, if any money at all for transfers.

We then require a further loan of around £300m over the next year or so to complete work on the stadium, resulting in a further £30m per year of interest payments that results in the club making a hefty loss until the new ground is up and running and bringing in the money to service those payments.

There will be little, if any money to spend. And that's with regular Champions League Football. We've won it and been to a final in the past 3 years, yet still don't have any money. Imagine what the situation will be like if we don't finish 4th?

Any new manager coming in would want his own players. He'd want funds to buy the players he felt we needed. Where would them funds come from? No top manager is going to come into a club in turmoil and financial meltdown.

So - what are the options?

No matter what anyone's views on Benitez are, we just can't afford to replace him. The only option the club have got is to stick with him and hope he and the players can turn it around.

The club is trouted. And we're in this position due to 10-15 years of poor management catching up with us

United v Milan 2007 semi

United are going for 3 trophies

Milan are going for one

Milan can rest all key players United can't

Milan win


Simply really

So that demolition job in the San Siro was all down to them being able to rest players :lol: :lol: :lol:

How come Liverpool have spent so much in recent years then? Last summer I think they were the biggest spenders - Torres £23M, Babel £11M, Benayoun £5M. Every summer they spend a lot, and it hasn't worked, so I think it is his fault.

But do you mean that Liverpool will not have money to spend in the summer because of the owners, and all the fuss at the moment? Is that why the fans are so against them at the moment?

Your saying that squad rotations when your only after one pot doesn't help?

Strange seeing how you have been doing so well at this in recent years, and will be doing it again for the back end of this season.

Yes we'd like win the champions league

Yes you'd like win the league

Simple

Weren't United fielding a crocked defence that game or something?

if winning the champs league is easier than winning the prem league how come you aint done it neither arsenal and the mancs only once and yet youv'e all been very succesful in the league <_<

Yep. A fully fit defence and it's a different game, however good they were. Vida was half fit and woeful...

In 2004 it was due to horrendous tactical errors on Ranieri's part, if it wasn't for him we would have cruised through that tie against Monaco.

In 2005, no need to remind you, was due to the goal that never was and pure unluckiness on our part.

2006 we were knocked out by unquestionably the finest team in the world at that stage.

2007 we lost out on penalties.

My point is that you can get through cups on one offs, on luck, on decisions made in your favour. Obviously it's not all luck but fortune does play a large part when compared to a league, which shows how good you really are. Leagues measure your performance over the course of 10 months, if your good enough you'll be succesful. Luck doesn't come into it. Thats why we ran away with the league in 04/05 and left Liverpool trailing 37 points behind despite them knocking us out of the EC.

And if winning the EC is harder than winning the league how come you lot have never come close to winning it in 4 years under Rafa? Surely with all the experience from a knock out competition you should be cruising for the league title. And by the way Utd have won it twice ;)

Torres was £20m by the way. We also got £7m for Bellamy, £7m for Cisse.....etc

Net spend of around £24m in the summer.

United go out and spend that on one player. The average cost of the players bought in the United first team is £14m. Ours is £4.1m. That's the difference.

All this "he's spent massively so has to deliever" is a load of rubbish. Sunderland spent more than us this summer!!!!

We're against the owners as they've gone against everything they promised when taking over. They lied. The whole club is in a mess, the fans all arguing with each other over it. The players in a mess. Manager had them going behind his back. It stinks.

Put it this way:

United have a debt of around £600m due to the Glazier takeover, but they have a ground of 76,000 sold out every week and a merchandising department far superior to ours and sponsorship deals that dwarf what we bring in. Their interest payments are around £50m per year. They made an operating profit of £60m. Nearly all of it gone on interest of that loan.

We now have a debt of around £350m, with interest payments of £30m per year to make. Our operating profit last year was £30m, a lot of which was generated with the CL run to the final etc. Our whole profit will now be wiped out to pay interest on these loans.

In the next 6 months or so, we're going to need a further loan of £300m to fund the new stadium. Further interest payments of around £25m a year, taking the total up to around £45m a year, well above our operating profits.

No new ground yet, therefore no new income to cover that.

Where is the money going to come from for transfers? What happens if we finish outside of the top 4 and miss out on the CL money?

We're in the sh1t in a big way.

Get rid of Benitez - what manager in his right mind is going to come into all that and have no money to spend, and possiblities of his best players being sold to fund the repayments on loans? Tom Hicks is famous for it over there, asset stripping.

That should cover the main jist of our worries :angry:

of course winning the league is harder for christ's sake! you have to perform consistently over the course of 38 games whereas in a cup competition there are far less games and you can sometimes blag your way through ( i refer you back to the honourable chelski fan's excellent reminder of a certain euro "goal" scored by the mickeys). You might blag the odd game during a league season but that won't win you the title - in a cup competition (especially later into it) that blag could make a massive difference to you winning the cup.

I heard somewhere the other day that United have made a Net Profit in transfer dealings since the Glazers took over. Haven't had the time to research it further so i'm not sure if it's true or not.

I remember reading in the red news fanzine from early this season, the following about transfer spending since the glazers:

(i cant actually find the fanzine atm so im just going off the top of my head)

Before this summer we had made a net profit. I can't remember the figures for the summer of 2005 but I know we bought park, dong? and van de sar in the summer and sold kleberson, djemba-djemba and phil neville. January 06 the money for vidic and evra was the money that we would have spent on the quadrants but they were mortgaged or something or other.

summer of 2006 we sold ruud for 10m/11m and got the 12m for mikel and bought carrick for an initial 14m with a bit of add on money that could rise to about 18 in the future. So thats a profit of about 8m.

Last summer despite headlines of 'glazers back ferguson in the transfer market' we had a net transfer spending of 25m. (which is what they originally said would be our transfer budget EVERY summer)

I actually think fergie has been excellent in the transfer market since the glazers, he's had to really.

^^^ Those posts above summarise exactly what's going on at our club as well. Media and PR spin on things, to make it look like the owners are backing the manager in the transfer market. They're not.

It's crazy. People within the club at United keep saying the Glazers have given money to Ferguson to spend on players whenever he's needed to buy. It's made to look like the Glazers forked the money out of their own pockets when in reality they haven't. Sold players in order to buy.

We've sold a fair few players from the youth teams also. Fair enough they may not have ever made it at United but we still sold them and made money from them.

Exactly!

But to be honest the amount that ticket prices have gone up in the last few years we should be spending about 50m every summer.

But we cant do that because any profit we make goes towards interest repayments, before the debt is even touched, which I think is exactly what BHB is saying is happening at liverpool or is going to happen.

This window Liverpool spent £18M on Masceranho and £6.5 on Skrtel, and recouped £8 on Sissoko. Thats a spend of £16.5M, is much as anyone, unless I've missed something. The other stuff fair enough, the owners are messing about, but their backing Rafa, and where they are is not good enough, and the stat above that Rafa's average player only cost £4M is because he loves buying rubbish players who turn out to be rubbish, but he still has the money for the top players.

That £18.6m figure quoted for Mascherano is apparently the fee for him and his wages for 5 years, so the £8.2m received for Sissoko will more than pay for his transfer fee.

Plus he hasn't actually signed yet, but lets not let the truth come into this :lol:

Take your point - offal says it's only verbal so Parry could still trout it up. ;)