Originally posted by sally cinnamon
Look on the brightside, you're missing f*** all.

I suspect he is missing the champions this year.

TBF. Fergie was so close to losing his job before he got the formula right.

Unfortunately, my team Palace allowed them the springboard to success by losing the Cup Final replay to them in 1990. That season Man Utd finished around 16th. Earlier that season I was at Old Trafford when Palce beat them. Imagine that. Much of Old Trafford was standing and in the second half huge numbers of supporters were sitting on the terraces in protest chanting Fergie out.

If we had held on for the last 8 minutes in the Cup Final, he would have gone and they would have had to get a new manager in. Thus no magic formula.

That FA Cup win led to the Cup Winners Cup the following season and I think the League title the next season.

So blame Palace for Man Utd's elevation.

By the same token we had a hand in collapse of the Liverpool dynasty.
TBF it probably started with Arsenal's Title win in the last minutes at Anfield in 1988/89. However, come 1989/90 and Liverpool famously defeat Palace 9-0. Little did they expect us to beat them 4-3 in the FA Semi (the same year of the competition as above). Dalglish didn't last much longer than that and the rest is history.

Originally posted by Hopster
I suspect he is missing the champions this year.

TBF. Fergie was so close to losing his job before he got the formula right.

Unfortunately, my team Palace allowed them the springboard to success by losing the Cup Final replay to them in 1990. That season Man Utd finished around 16th. Earlier that season I was at Old Trafford when Palce beat them. Imagi ...[text shortened]... he competition as above). Dalglish didn't last much longer than that and the rest is history.

He can watch them win the league on his tv, sat with a pack of cold beers, a couple of giant hot dogs and his sister on his knee. Their would be considerably more passion then old trafford.

Originally posted by Hopster
Completely apart from this - I remember a time when Liverpool were famous for winning trophies using only the same 14 players in a season. Probably Forest too when they were at the top.

Now teams spend 5 or 6 million on players to keep in a rotation system.

I am not sure that is progress.

How many games did they play per year?

Originally posted by Palynka
How many games did they play per year?

Intresting point, not sure but definatley less than now.....surley?

Originally posted by Hells Caretaker
Intresting point, not sure but definatley less than now.....surley?

didn't the prem used to have 22 teams?

the top players now do to much traveling with awards ceremonies and advertisement deals.

if you say you can't physically play 90 mins of football twice a week at a high standard for 9 months of the year then you're either really unfit or you're lying.

look at other sports, the tour de france, over 3 weeks on a bike 4-6 hours a day with only 2 rest days, in which they still do about 50km to stop getting tight. mens tennis, to win a slam they have to play 7 best of 5 set matches in 2 weeks, with 1 match lasting between 1.5 hours to over 4.

and that's without taking a break half way through, ok i used to cycle quite a bit and it is a lot easier to tuck into a pack of riders and coast along at their pace than it is going solo but hour after hour is a lot harder than playing a football match.

Originally posted by Palynka
How many games did they play per year?

Less certainly, but that's the fault of having a Champions League, there was nothing wrong with the European Cup.

To compensate; there aren't as many FA Cup replays, there are two teams less in the top division and bigger clubs enter the League Cup later. If they wanted to reduce it by a further game they could remove the two leg semi of the League Cup.

I think Liverpool won a treble with just 14 players, that's impressive however you look at it.

Originally posted by Hopster
I think Liverpool won a treble with just 14 players, that's impressive however you look at it.

It's also obviously untrue.

D

Originally posted by trev33
didn't the prem used to have 22 teams?

the top players now do to much traveling with awards ceremonies and advertisement deals.

if you say you can't physically play 90 mins of football twice a week at a high standard for 9 months of the year then you're either really unfit or you're lying.

look at other sports, the tour de france, over 3 weeks on a ...[text shortened]... ce than it is going solo but hour after hour is a lot harder than playing a football match.

Bring on the winter break and the 39th prem game!!😵

Originally posted by Ragnorak


I'll let you do the maths. BTW, do you have any links to Liverpoo's spending at the time? It'd be interesting to compare.

D

I know this argument's over and Rag's skulked off but I thought this article would sum it all up nicely.

http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/news/drilldown/NG163249090213-1041.htm

"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?

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.

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.

Even so, Ferguson spent big to lift the burden on United's shoulders. Rafa's average spend on all players is 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 has 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.)"


Paul Tomkins

Originally posted by Angry Boy
I know this argument's over and Rag's skulked off but I thought this article would sum it all up nicely.

http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/news/drilldown/NG163249090213-1041.htm

"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 lo ...[text shortened]... ally, Ferguson did not overtake Liverpool with thriftiness.)"


Paul Tomkins

What an absolutely arbitrary statistic your completely unbiased LiverpoolFC.tv "reporter" uses. The convolutedness of his chosen stat reminds me of the way travellers speak in pikey to keep you on the point of confusion. And also like a pikey trying to negotiate with you, most of what your unbiased "reporter" refers to are patently false.

Not at all like a scouser to be a lying bakstrad, is it?

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.

This is absolutely unfathomable give he doesn't state which transfer record he is referring to. But assuming he's actually doing something honest (big leap, I know), and referring to the British Football transfer record, then he obviously can't do maths (another typical scouse trait, it seems). The 1990 FA Cup team had an average cost of 34% of the transfer record at time of purchase. That works out at about £10m in today's market, which isn't bad considering A) United's lack of quality youth set-up (which Ferguson made a priority to fix) and B) This team formed the basis of the team which went on to win at least 1 trophy nearly every year for the next 19 years. Not bad going for a team assembled for only £110 million at today's rates.

If I were to cherry pick a fixture like your quoted source did, to show how Ferguson built a superb youth academy in parrallel with investing in the present, I could pick the 96 FA Cup Final where the United squad was filled with the products of Ferguson's youth system, and accompanied by astute signings like Cantona (21😵 and Schmeichel (10% of transfer record at time of purchase)

Again, I'm astounded by the randomness of the metric. Although, given you're trying to make Rafa look good, discussing metrics which only deal with 11 players is a good tactic, considering the countless millions Rafa wastes on players who never ever get near the first 11. Nice work there in dressing mutton up as lamb. A much more meaningful metric would be salary expressed as a percentage of turnover. More on that later.

some of the expensive 'flops' he bought at the same time, like Danny Wallace and Neil Webb) were big-money deals.
Danny Wallace: FA Cup, League Cup, Cup Winners Cup (he played in the final), Super Cup in a 4 year stint, which was adversely affected by the fact he had MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS!

Neil Webb: "During his time on Trentside he won the League Cup in 1989 and became a regular member of the England national team.

In the summer of 1989 he joined Manchester United for a £1.5m transfer fee, scoring on his league debut against Arsenal.[1] [b][/i]Unfortunately, after just a few games at United, Webb snapped his achilles tendon while playing a match for England against Sweden. He never returned to his previous form[/i][b], suffering from weight problems and other injuries.[2] Webb was still a precise passer of the ball and was included in the England 1990 World Cup squad. He also helped Manchester United win the FA Cup in 1990, UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1991, and Football League Cup in 1992.

So your source quotes a guy with a degenerative disease and a guy who suffers a career threatening injury early in his United career, as examples of Ferguson's expensive flops, yet both still won at least 3 trophies in 3 years. Given this, I'm guessing that some scum reporter will try to twist the players who died in Munich into some kind of "United players who never achieved their promise" "report".

I don't expect to be able to convince you of anything considering your response to my facts are lame, totally biased "reports", (blog would probably be more appropriate given the absolute lack of professional integrity in your quoted "report"😉. At least everybody else reading the thread will see the depths you'll stoop too to try to defend Rafa's rather unambitious Liverpool tenure.

And now lets look at something meaningful and unambiguous: salarys expressed as a percentage of a club's turnover (figures taken from the most recent released: 2006).
Chelsea 71%
Liverpool 57%
Arsenal 49%
Manchester United 43.6%

So, despite Rafa spending countless millions on squad players and huge amounts on wages for players he doesn't even rate himself, his team is still a bunch of also rans, with a couple of top players, and tens of average players.

Please don't come back with some half baked, totally biased piece of "journalism" full of lies and inaccuracies as your rebuttal. To be honest, this tactic of yours is becoming tiresome.

D