For a player who cost near enough to our transfer record back then, that is simply abysmal. It would be the modern equivalent of buying an Irish Divock Origi. Except Divock has actually shown elite numbers in at least one season (0.9 goals+assists per 90 in 2019-20, numbers here: https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/divock-origi/leistungsdaten/spieler/148368/plus/0?saison=2019). This, by the way, mostly off the bench and still better than Keane’s all-time best season.
I don’t think he has. He’s done good work under systems like that, but it’s frequently ended in tears.
Let’s face it, love the guy to bits, but he’s fucking crackers. Could start a fight in an empty room
Incidentally my all time favourite Rafa story is the punditry one. In one of his spells out of work Rafa was contacted by a TV company (can’t remember which one) to ask if he’d be interested in doing some punditry. Rafa replied positively, and contracts are arranged. Rafa then contacts the TV station saying there are just a couple of things he wants to make sure are in place. OK, say the TV people, thinking it’s some financial thing or a rider or something. what do you need? Rafa says I need to interview the players and managers of each team prior to the game so I have an in-depth understanding of the tactical instructions for each player.
Er…what, Rafa?
Rafa explains again, and the TV company say that they can’t get Rafa access to all the players beforehand. It’s just a matter of watching the game and pointing out a few things the viewers might have missed.
How am I supposed to comment on the game if I don’t know what the players have been asked to do, Rafa says. He tells the TV company any analysis he can offer is meaningless, as unless he knows what a players instruction is, he could be telling audience a player is doing something wrong, when they are actually doing something right.
Right. Say the TV people. We don’t think is going to work out…
Rafa wasn’t perfect, but I just want to comment on the quantity of players he went through. Yes, it was quite a lot. However, if you are shopping at the lower end there are more duds.
It’s fine if your status is a mid ranking Prem team. But if you are aspiring to crack it at the top, and you don’t have the budget, you have to roll the dice more in the hope that you will find one or two to bridge the gap.
I am confident that under FSG Rafa would have won the Prem, and the slight question marks over him, that most informed reds have, would be largely assuaged.
I defy anyone to look good after tangling with Hicks and Gillett.
This bit: Deliberately muddying the waters. You said Klopp wouldn’t speak out publicly. When it was shown he did, you then shift the goalpost to use it about VVD.
It wasn’t literally the reason. He had worked under the system. He got annoyed he wasn’t consulted, given a player he didn’t need. You are twisting, reaching here.
Wrong again. Made up. We failed to land loads of players Rafa wanted, he never made a peep.
I could go on but what’s the point each time you shift the goalposts or write a half truth.
Rafa is stubborn, his time to manage LFC has past. I hope he fails at Everton, well I hope Everton fail him. But he was a fantastic manager for LFC.
You’re moving the goal posts. Apart from a wonder strike against Arsenal and some scratching here and there, Keane was shit. Anyone stating we lost the league that year because of Rafa’s stances, Torres running on fumes etc needs to give their head a wobble and look back at the actual season. Torres, and the team, was firing on all cylinders in that back half and the games played, won, drawn, lost stats bear that out. We had a phenomenal end to the season, United just had a slightly better one with Macheda popping up in two games never to be seen since. It happens.
The reason it still hurts is because it was our first realistic challenge for almost two decades and we really needed it more than United did. Ask most United fans and it’s a good bet they don’t even remember being pipped to the title in 2009/10 but ask most of us and 2008/09 invokes a sense of what might have been, as does 2013/14, simply because for us it was rare events up until then just like Newcastle fans keenly feel losing out to United all those years ago.
Leave Rafa be. Bringing up Keane and Barry and whoever the fuck else in an attempt to revise history is poor.
This is becoming ridiculous. Managers far and wide incl Guardiola, Pochettino, Mourinho, Solksjaer have in some way, shape or form, either in pre or post match interviews, bleated about their club’s activity in the market and not being able to compete etc (even though it is bullshit). Why only Rafa gets beaten with this stick is beyond me.
Okay, let’s look at this for a second. Taking away penalties, he scored 12 goals in 2727 minutes for Spurs in that season, for a 227.25 minutes per goal, compared to 5 goals in 1259 for us, for 251.8 minutes per goal. Factoring in assists, it’s 9 goal contributions for us vs 22 goal contributions for Spurs. This results in 139.9 minutes per goal contribution for us against 143.5 for Spurs.
That said, this is in a team with Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres, aiming for the league title, and not just trying (and failing) to get into the Champions League. Whether or not that brings up the assist figures is up to interpretation.
Now for a bit of fun stats. Divock Origi’s equivalent minutes per goal contribution in all the seasons he’s been with us: 110.5 (2015/16, 5 goals 1 assist in 663 minutes), 132.5 (2016/17, 7 goals 4 assists in 1457 minutes), N/A (2017/18, out on loan to Wolfsburg), 91.5 (2018/19, 3 goals 1 assist in 366 minutes), 100.4 (2019/20, 4 goals 3 assists in 703 minutes), N/A (2020/21, 0 goals, 0 assists in 181 minutes).
Now, you were saying one isn’t good enough for us and should be thrown out of the club ASAP, whereas the other was a valuable jewel we got rid of too soon? Some people just can’t seem to acknowledge that Keane was a shite player who simply wasn’t good enough for us.
That was the first time he publicly spoke out against g+h. Because he was realising by the time that their game was fake. Imo, nothing of what Rafa said against those chancers should be hold against him. He was 100% right to speak out, and everything which followed afterwards blatantly confirmed the need to call them out for what they were.
His complaint after the final wasn’t so much about the owners. It was ‘there are two £15m players I can get right now and the club won’t get them for me’
But I think we can agree, surely, regardless of what other managers have done, and in response to @1972 ‘s assertion that Rafa never made a peep (that my comment was in reply to), that using the post match presser for the champions league final to complain that you have players lined up that the club won’t get for you does in fact constitute ‘a peep’?
Aye we can, but using it as s stick to beat him with whereas no other manager has a thing said against them for the same thing is a little disingenuous.