Dave, we all have our teams respective spectacles on most of the time. I know Fergie made mistakes (many of them) but to some of you lot Rafa was a tactical God and could do no wrong (even his poor tranfers were someone elses fault). I feel sometimes it does no harm to point out trhe odd shortcomings in managers/players etc
Arbeloa and Alonso were hardly top players. None of us had heard of them and Mascherano had good reputation but was a bench player for West Ham when we signed him. Not sure that's really attracting top talent?
If theres one thing you can't say about Rafa it's that he's not brilliant tactical manager. Guy is brilliant in setting up s team for a one off match. I don't think any other manager would have won the CL with the team we had in 2005.
The team needed improving, who else do you think he was going to sell to raise enough funds? The reserves were **** You opposition fans are amusing when discussing this too, you always seem to miss the part where Alonso was poor bar his first and last season with us! We had one striker in the squad that was proving to be injury prone yet we had no money to recruit. Rafa decided to sacrifice Alonso, buy a cheaper alternative which would have given us the cash to buy another player. My guess would have been a striker. Who knows if it would have worked. Can't say I agreed with selling Alonso either but unlike the opposition fans, I can understand why
Arbeloa I'll give you but Alonso was a wanted man. He may not have been the world star when we got him but there were plenty of clubs after him. Not having the Mascherano comment at all. Never have and never will. He was on the bench at West Ham because Pardew was the manager and he was being thick as ****. Javier was already part of the first team for Argentina, Pardew should have put both Mascherano and Tevez straight into the West Ham team and built the side around them. People seem to forget that Tevez was on their bench a lot too, only playing him in the last few games.
True but thats easy to understand when you look at Rafa's comments and dealing that summer. He was attempting to change things round. The powers that be weren't giving him the money to sign the winger he wanted (Simoa, JoaquÃn, etc) so he decided to use the FBs instead. Getting Barry alongside Mascherano would have made us more defensive in the middle and allowed Johnson and Aurelio to attack and provide the width we lacked due to not having wingers.
Do you not realise every game is a one off match, different team, players, tactics? if he was that good tactically he would have won the league.
I'm not saying Mascherano wasn't a top player, don't get me wrong. But I could have attracted him to liverpool if I was manager. Would any player turn down the liverpool first team to stay on the bench at West Ham?
TBF, he should have won the league in 2009. Its just bad luck on his part (and pretty typical for us) that Man Utd managed to string seven hundred 1-0 wins together
What I mean was, he knew how to set up a team to go away to the best teams in the world and get a result (a draw at times) and then do enough to just win it at home. Works perfect in Europe but was his downfall in the league as proven by the 11 draws in 09
Probably. All in saying is, how many established stars did he actually buy from top clubs? Not that many.
The 'perfect' manager has not yet been born and certainly hasn't appeared at any EPL club. Just as with Ferguson, the myths far outstrip the reality. Rafa did take a tactical approach to his team development and to each game his sides played. Sometimes those plans went awry (as do all the best plans) but he proved his worth by making tactical changes during a game (eg Istanbul). We all knew that his transfer decisions were compromised but it was only after he left and H & G had been ousted that we began to learn just how hamstrung his position had become. One of the great debates in the near future will be did Rafa lose touch with the team to become more embroiled in his fight with H &G? (not all of that story has yet been revealed). Sure some of his transfers now look very strange - but then so do some of Ferguson's so let's not try to make him appear an idiot when it comes to transfers. We know he's not perfect but he's a far far better manager than most mancs will ever give him credit for being.
I don't disagree with you. In an ideal world, we'd have kept him AND improved other areas but that wasn't an option. So, as I said above, how does he raise money without selling Alonso baring in mind he'd been poor for a while prior to that sale attempt? We weren't going to sell Gerrard or Torres. Mascherano? Well he hadn't been at the club very long (once you take the loan part away) and didn't fetch when he eventually moved either so I'd say not him either. Not sure we had anyone else worth big money.
Maybe you should spread your football watching beyond the Premier League. Mascherano was a world star, he was the best midfielder at the previous world cup and the fact that West Ham wasted him is irrelevant.
Depends what you mean by established stars. We've not signed top top players for a long long time. But we have signed world known players such as Torres and Suarez.
Naughty naughty - your last 2 titles were won by using the same tactics against every side and hoping for the best so your argument does not stack up.
Of course Rafa could do wrong, and he did. The reason you'll find Liverpool fans defending him so much is not only whilst he was here but after he'd gone too, he received way too much criticism. In European football, you won't convince me any manager is better. In the league, he was somewhat questionable with 2009 being the odd one out.
