Samuel Eto'o, Daniel Alves and Rafa's re-building list for Liverpool

I agree that it's good to have a manager who doesn't moan after a deserved loss but I don't think anyone would say that Milan were the better team on Wednesday. Even Arsene Wenger is quoted as saying Liverpool were unlucky and deserved to win. Not sure on what area of the pitch Milan outdid us. Would you like to tell us? Yes, we weren't great up front but they only created one chance all game. I can only take it that you are not a Liverpool fan at all but just decided to write a talksport-esque piece with no fact but plenty of 'outspoken' shit to draw attantion to yourself? As a separate point to be saying Kuyt is world-class defies belief. I can only assume you either don't get to many games or have no idea that to be world-class involves more than running around a lot, while posing no attacking threat whatsoever. We had Erik Meijer for that. But then as you're clearly not a Liverpool fan you've probably got no idea who I'm talking about have you?

the blame has to squarely laid at the door of the previous owners and their managers... how much did houllier and benitez spend? it has to be couple of hundred million and at no stage has lfc threatened the top of the prem ship as far as i remember... a few cups over the years , yes inc the european cup, but if i was a liverpool supporter that would not be enough..the premship is the true measure and the point i am trying make is that its not cash which was missing but bottle on the buying front ( look at man u and cfc who bot drogba,ronaldo,essien,rooney, ) or the ability to spot talent (look at arsenal..fabergas and the rest) all liverpool have done is buying players who just are not quite good enough or not good enough at all. rafa mite come across as a nicer person than fergie and jose, but they are winners... u need a new manager, or from where i am...keep rafa

Great a chelsea fan talking about money!! were really gna listen to that. Our record siging is cisse for £14mill - then heskey for 11mill. Chelsea are havin a laugh paying 21mil for SWP - 24Mil for drogba - 20mill for carvaliho - 25Mill for Essien. If Rafa had that money we would top, not struggling to keep up with united, lets not 4get 15mill for robben, 30mill for shevchenko, 14mill for ferreara. U shoud seriously have a look at urselves before u judge liverpool!!!!!

i am not saying that we havent spent more, we have and we got ripped off here and there.., but u are making my point precisely cisse at 14 and heskey at 11 were a total waste of money where are they now? drogba,ronaldo,essien,rooney would have been better value..i am not comparing just saying u could have done much better with cash..surely u must agree...

There is no doubt benitez has spent a lot of money. And there is no doubt some of the players bought is not good enough for liverpool. But when you have a budget (after playersales) of maybe 30 mill, and you need 5 new players to go straight into the starting 11, you are destined to fail with some of them. Both heskey and cissé were houllier's men, and rafa has never been able to pay more than 10,5 mill for a player. So he bought alonso. For less than these sums, he has brought in sissoko, garcia, reina and agger. All of these for less than what was paid for essien. Not the worst of signings. If he'd had the money available, we would have alves, villa and milito two seasons ago. By now, they have trippled their value. So to say that benitez doesn't use his money right is some way out of line. In my oppinion that is.

We were not second best in Athens. Milan were definitely not the better team. And that's not according to me but to argentinian, uruguayan, brazilian, spanish newspapers. We had more shots, more shots on goal, Dida had to make more saves. As someone was saying, our problem has been ownership with little vision who failed to grow the club's "brand" name worldwide(££) in part because our previous manager had them eating out of his hand telling them how wonderful we were and how we were sooo close to winning the league/premiership even when we were finishing 30 points behind first place! Bravo Houllier, Bravo Moores.

lets hope that rafa can go for his #1 targets instead of having to make do with 2nd/3rd/4th choice- of all his signings only reina,alonso,garcia, sissoko and kuyt have been his first choice others have slipped through his fingers (eg wanted vidic got agger(although dan the man is a quality player), simao got gonzales, alves got pennant)

Have to agree with Chris here. You do not seem to have a clue what you are writing about, but simply jump the bandwagon of some newspaper article stating we would sign Eto'o and Alves (and Milito). Eto'o at 30m? I hope we do not sign him. This guy is not rotateable, in other words, he won't fit into our (Rafa's) system. Three years at our club and still he only signs players he knows from his time in Spain? I really would like to know who has discovered Dagger, but surely not Rafa himself.

I think Liverpool were the better team actually - Milan were making awful mistakes between defence and midfield. Zenden should not have played - he was not match fit - Gerrard shold not have played advanced as he did - he should have had the freedom of the pitch to dominate - Crouch or bellamy shuld have replaced Zenden and joined Kuyt from the start. Kewell - it is a joke for a player toa represent Liverpool even for a minute at that level afer not playing even a small part in the season. Wrong Choices Rafa - you could have won it - these are the dedcisions that make a manager great or ordinary - Hope you learn to appreciate Gerrard more and actually play him where he is te best in the world - otherwise you will just get more of the same - whoever you get.

Its truly disapppointing that we lost, on the other hand, to think positively, it will give Rafa and the board to think more deeply what they want for the nexy season. A win at Athen may result complaceny for the next season In my opinion, in total, we are among top spenders after Chelsea and we can't - thus, we just put the blame solely on lack of signing. -though the quality of signing is another question To challenge for the EPL title, I think we need more cultivation among the players besides recruiting few more world class players. Any world players will flop if the culture is not right for them and within the club- its always a gamble. Andrei is a classic example- just to name a few- but on the other hand, Ronaldo for a 12mil is worth every cent to Man U I am a diehard Reds fan but I admit I envy the way Man U fights and plays in the EPL. Come the Reds, you have one of the best and unique fan base ( never say die) in the Globe- use to the cultivate this passion into every single player.

So what if we lost ? We played gallantly in the finals! What we need is a good STRIKER. Tevez fits the bill. He will have Mascherano & Gerrard to feet him and he already knew the pace of the Premiership. So what if we have to pay him more ? Quality strikers don't come cheap .... look at Berbatov ! Why ManUre is willing to pay big money for him ? Bcos, he can score plenty of goals ! We don't need Eto'o bcos' he doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut !

point taken, u have to have a different attitude if u are working more to a budget..., be interestingng to see whats going to happen this summer, when every body will have more and we seem to have less relatively speaking

I dont

Thank God Rafa has finally broken ranks on the awful previous regime at LFC. David Moores - the 'fan' chairman who never ran a business in his life, presided over 17 years without a league win, ran up £80m of debts and then made off with £80m of profit from the club he 'loves'. Rick Parry - his 'no hurry' bungling nearly led to Stevie G leaving after the euro cup win and has consistently failed to get a good price for transfers in or out of the club. He failed to wrap up the deal for Simao allowing Benfica to get cold feet. Then last year was told to get Alves but dithered until the price went over £10m - then was supposed to get Pennant and Neill on the cheap as cover and failed miserably again. No wonder Rafa doesn't want this clown in charge of negotiations. Both West Ham and Barca are reported to want one or more of our players. A good negotiator could see Tevez AND Eto'o at LFC next year in cash plus player deals...

Peter you have hit the nail on the head, Rafa has nearly always had to settle on his number 2 choices making us a second tier team, and dief your post shows that Rafa has had enough of this settling for second best, Rafa is sending out a clear warning to the new owners that second best is not good enough and now we will see how serious the comitment of these new owners is to Liverpool, Rafa has put them in a corner and if they really are to back him expect our major tranfers to arrive at Anfield in the next 2 or 3 weeks. And finally to Chris comment no 1, Saying that AC Milan deserved to win which i have not done make me not a Liverpool supporter, so using the same logic when Carragher stated that Ac Milan desreved to win he is abviously not a Liverpool supporter either. And the Wenger comment did you bother to read the whole statement, he said Liverpool deserved to win as his Arsenal did last year, he was not complimemeting Liverpool he was using us to say that his team was the better of Barca last year, an

I would have to agree. Finally now we have got the money to go and buy a world-class striker. Spend 20mill or over. United can spend 20mil on midfielders, i.e carrick, hargrives, 30mill for rooney, veron and ferdinand. Thats what has kept them at the top for so long. We have spent money but not been able to go out and buy the top top player, always second or third choice. The board never backed Rafa with simao or alves when they were cheaper and when the priority was a right winger Now ther value has trebled and we got our 3rd choice winger in pennant who to give credit to has improved a lot. We need to move now, go in for the big players before they move elsewhere. Mascherano has to sign for us cuz hez class. This should automatically mean we should go straight in for tevez before real snap him up cuz he is proven class striker in the prem and is mascherano's best mate. I hope theyre tryin already becuz he'z a star and would be a massive hit at anfield. also we have strong spanish and south american connect

and when have we ever listened to what opposing managers have to say about Liverpool Fc,or should we only listen to the good things they have to say or should we believe Maureen when he says we are a small club, Chris when someone states the problems with a club it does not mean they are not a fan, or should we all curl up stay quiet and settle for second best, the fact is we may have played better than AC but we did not win. If we were a better team we could have cancelled out the chance of them beating us, and they were there for the beating if we just had a bit more quality in key positions

Alright Tom maybe you are a Liverpool fan but you've just got a bit of a different take on things, either way though I think you're missing my point. Firstly, maybe Wenger was making a backhand compliment but it seems a bit of an unecessary one if he didn't actually mean it. Besides that though I was just using him as a single example, I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone else in the game who'd disagree. Also I don't really see your logic in saying that if Mourinho tells lies then all managers must do? Was every other neutral in the game agreeing with him when he made that comment? I'm well aware of our deficiencies and know we're far from being the best team in Europe but at the same time it was clear that in that one-off game we were the better team. I've heard Rafa and Carra say that Milan are a great team but not necessarily that they were the best team on the night, but I'll take your word for it. If so it can only boil down to boardroom politics. Secondly, there's a big difference between a w

Between a world-class player and one who is hard-working and popular. If you've been to any amount of Liverpool games it's obvious that Dirk Kuyt is EXACTLY the type of 2nd rate player your article refers to. Are you saying he's up there with the likes of Eto'o, Kaka, Gerrard, Ronaldo (the shithead one (or the fat one as well i suppose)), Ronaldinho, Messi etc...? Or even as much as the likes of Drogba and Berbatov? Yes I know all players have different qualities and that he can 'defend from the front' a la Rushie, but in every other aspect of his game he falls short. If that's what you want from a forward we literally may as well be playing Momo up there (an exaggeration but you get the gist). It just goes totally against your main point that we've got too many players that we just accept as being up to Liverpool standard.

I agree that Bolo needs to be replaced but Harry Kewell is not the answer. Too injury prone and too predictable. Answer - Get a world class left back and make the winger spot Riise's. I also agree that Kuyt is world class, but what Peter Crouch has to do to impress is beyond me. Liverpool looked way-more dangerous when he came on. He is an excellent player, & people should start to be more appreciative. Some of those crosses that Pennant managed in the first half would have been far more potent if Crouchey had been in then. Isn't that what Pennant was purhased for? The number of times I've watch Rafa play two wingers & not Crouch is beyond me! The only reason he is getting a Super Sub tag is because Rafa keeps listening to people who think he looks awkward. Stevie Highway looked awkward, but in his day was the best left winger on the planet. John Toshack is another that was not particularly graceful, but ask he kop what they think about him.

I have to agree with you chris, that Kuyt is not the definition of a world-class striker. And in fact, why not play sissoko in front, if the main assignment of the striker is to close people down? I have nothing against a striker who works hard for the team of course, but in my opinion, kuyt has a lack of some basic attributes. His fist touch is not a striker worthy, his pace isn't scary to any defender, and he is not even close to be as clinical as henry, villa, trezeguet or raúl. He is a good player, but no world-class striker.

Come on then, to David Smith, Tom Helland and anyone else. Tell me what makes Kuyt a world-class player. Has he got the vision of a Litmanen? No. The touch of a bergkamp? No. The pace of an Henry? No. The natural ball skills of a Zola? No. The aerial presence of a Drogba? No. The strength of a Shearer? No. The instinct of a Van Nistlerooy? No. The ability to link play like a Sheringham? Possibly but at nowhere near the same standard. The hardwork you'd find in around 80% of League 1 players? Yes. We should not be seeing a player whose main attribute is that they try hard. That should be the absolute minimum requirement for a Liverpool player, not a basis for hero worship.