Here are some questions I asked to some of the moderators of RAWK about the current situation, and their replies.

They say a week is a long time in politics, at Liverpool it’s an era, these were asked two days ago and already things have moved on; all the same its interesting to see how we feel.

The answers were given by MichaelA (MA), Armin(A), AlanF(AF), SteveM(SM) and myself, Hinesy(H).

1. Do you think if the Yanks sell to DIC, that would be a good thing, or a case of out of the frying pan…
SM: Who knows?  I said at the start that once Moores let go, then we are in the realms of money men, not football men and are open to the elements.  They could be great for us - they could be a disaster. MU fans may hate the Glazers, but (although prices have sharply increased and they have introduced a few other shitty measures), they have backed their manager 100% and provided the funds when required.

MA:DIC have much more money. The cowboys are making good money from their sport franchises, and we’re another revenue stream in their business model. I got the sense that DIC were always more about kudos and success, and building a global sports brand that just happens to make a mint for them, even though they’re already minted. So in that sense, I’d rather be the plaything of a rich man than the toothpaste tube that was being squeezed dry by a less rich man. I think the club would be better off in those circumstances too..

A:Yes on both counts. They were always a better choice than the Americans who barely had enough liquidity even after Hicks came on board considering the financial input required. Dubai has access to monies unaffected by the credit crunch, they need to invest now and the fundamental business model is excellent. Potential earnings once new distribution is fully achieved are stratospheric.

DIC also have a desire to project a global, prestige interest and there’s the possibility that they would’ve seen LFC as a way to augment this. So although ran as a business they may have splashed out every so often as a way of promoting the brand of Dubai.

They’re still businesspeople and not fans, we’ll never have a benefactor in the Moores style again but if we had to sell out then Parry and Moores should never have reneged on their deal, it was bad faith and I don’t believe DIC will come riding to the rescue but if they did it would be better than the current mob.

AF:I don’t think things will ever be the same again. I had reservations about DIC at the time -  Al-Ansari would not be spending his own money but investing Dubai’s money. If he could juggle the needs of DIC as an investment fund with his own personal ambitions we could sail along happily for a while. There would be no stability though. A change at the top of DIC (not unlikely in the near future and highly probable in the mid-term) would leave us in the hands of an investment company who have no interest in the footballing side of things. The Sheikh himself has no interest in football as far as I am aware.

H:yes we are heading in to the fire but I’d rather the heat of the desert than being a Texan BBQ plaything. I’m even more wary of any new investor and for all the slings and arrows aimed at him, Abramovich seems to be a unique force these days…

2. Hicks’ points are basically good sense.. if Rafa was talking about leaving surely they should’ve looked for a replacement in case… yes or no?

SM: Technically yes.  I don’t doubt all clubs line up their next manager in advance.  We were speaking to Mourinho and Rafa before Houllier got the bullet.  However Rafa has not mentioned leaving and there is no indication since Schuster went to Madrid that they want to change again. However it shows their lack of PR awareness in the UK football market when they openly admit they have been looking for a replacement. No-one in their right mind does this - this says to Rafa and all the players that Rafa’s days are numbered. How much damage does that do to morale in the team? Even Klinsmann himself knew not to mention any approaches from other clubs when doing his press conferences at Bayern. Their dealings with the media are poor.

MA:Yes, and yes. But if he wanted to share it with the world he should do it via an anonymous username on an internet forum, not by briefing the international press; that’s just dumb. 

A:They took over a club that was at a certain stage with a manager, 2 years in and a very promising 2 years at that. The cycle needed to be respected, they weren’t buying a club in crisis but a 2 in 3 years CL finalist. They began the process of undermining him. Looking for contingency is one thing, using it as a blunderbuss battering ram mid season another.

AF:I don’t believe he was talking about leaving. Maybe those in the know can enlighten me but in all the rumour and inuendo the one constant is that Rafa loves it here and sees it (or saw it) as a long term thing. The choice of Klinsmann as their potential replacement is damning. They should have sacked Rafa at the start of the season or waited to the end. If we were in the relegation zone then maybe panic but at the time we were well in the hunt for the league and in the middle of our best form of the season.

H: As I said in some thread I think what Hicks did wasn’t a bad idea, but to announce it when previously he had been so conspicuously silent on support for the incumbent manager smacks of foolish pr at best and vindictive snidy undermining otherwise.

3. How do you feel they are damaging the club?

SM:To put it bluntly, they are making us a laughing stock and looking like a bunch of amateurs.  Rafa is beginning to look like Ranieri inhis last year.

MA:They seem to me to be out of their depth, and rather than trying to tread water and come to terms with their predicament they’re just yelling ‘help’ like a pair of pussies. They’re making themselves look naive and small time, and after years of quiet circumspection from David Moores, the club is tarnished by the association with the hick Hicks. They’ve built a house of cards on Merseyside, and they’re in danger of doing irrepairable damage to the club. I’d always naively assumed that LFC would always be above the petty board room spats and the idiotic chairmen who can’t help but open their mouths to fit in their feet. To see these two idiots bring down the curtain on that is despairing; it’s clearly affecting everyone at the club from the manager downward, it’s affecting the people in the stand and it’s affecting the players on the pitch - it’s unforgivably amateurish.

A:Where to start? They’ve mistaken rhetoric and PR for effective corporate governance. Latterly they’ve even lost their grip on that. The 50/50 split between owners is the Evans Houllier nonsense revisited, except a thousand times worse. Now every disagreement between them is conducted on the other side of the Atlantic whilst the club drifts in limbo. They speak when they shouldn’t and remain silent when they need to speak. Hicks has been to the G W Bush school of diplomacy and his casual laughing dismissal of supporter concerns is a slap in the face to people who have spent their lifetimes following a club with a history, heritage and immersion in its community that few sporting clubs in the world can match.

I could go on for ever on this one so I’ll leave it at that

AF:How long do you want it to be. In addition to everything else I have a huge problem with Hicks and the stadium. Some put it forward as the one thing they got right. For me it’s the perfect example of what is wrong. We had a stadium that had planning approval and was due to start on site. There were probably some modifiications that could be made but it was a 60,000 stadium that would put us on a par with the other top clubs. What was proposed by HKS was not what the club needed. My greatest hope is that they leave before they can start work on it.

H:For me the main thing is that they have pissed away years of reputation and sense of the Liverpool way. Even if we’re kidding ourselves that any ‘Way’ may have gone with the Boot Room, Liverpool were percieved as a club who knew how to do things. I had a lot of time for Parry until the ticket debacle, and over the last year or so, we’ve looked like a comedy act. Apart from the that, I do think the club’s progress has been put on ice, which these days is the same as backwards movement. By some time too.

4. We all got pissed off with Rafa recently, but I think he still has our support, or does anyone here think the Yanks should get someone else in?

SM:My philosophy is that I will always support whoever is out there on that pitch and whoever is in charge at the time. In saying that, players and  managers come and go and Rafa will go not doubt.  Whether he is pushed or quits is another matter. My priority has always been the League title and that has never changed. With the way Rafa sets out his team and uses the whole squad, I honestly don’t think he will have a chance of winning the title, this season or any other unless he is allowed to buy another 3-4 top players and therefore can minimise screw ups like at Reading, etc. Part of the reason that I’m not losing sleep over this is that we are behind the other 3 sides in more ways than one and therefore until that is sorted, I’m not convinced much will change on the title front, no matter who is manager.

MA:They haven’t got a fucking clue who to bring in. And neither have any of us. I want to win number nineteen. Can Rafa do that? I’m not convinced, to be honest, but he’s being hindered by outside forces, so I think he deserves full backing to achieve our ambitions.

A:He has my support, whilst I understand those who have doubts I don’t honestly look round at the league and think, I wish we had x. Only Wenger could perhaps have done more with the same resources and even he has had a long time to embed his style of play and is trophyless for a couple of seasons as well.

AF:The yanks shouldn’t be allowed to select the tea lady let alone a new manager. Yes I still support Rafa till the end of the season at least. It’s impossible to judge Rafa now. I have no doubt that the triple substitution at Reading was a result of the pressure Rafa is under. I no longer have any expectation for this year but changing now would also be pointless. For me it’s moved beyond Rafa now. He has gone and the fight moves on to the owners.

Jesus, a manager that can take a club that in previous seasons was described as an “underacheiver” and outside the “big three” European Cup success and then prove it wasn’t a fluke by getting to another final two years later… who has re-established the club in the “big four…” yes he deserves my support. If the takeover was meant to take us to another level, to provide that investment that would allow us to compete with Chelsea and United - then 2007/8 should have been “season zero” a new start and a new hope.

H:The short term frustration with the seeming lack of effort, the odd selections and lack of progress is nothing compared to the fucking up of our club by two idiots. On the pitch Rafa may continue to delight and frustrate in equal measures but would get my support. Off it, he has been treated very very badly indeed and by any rights, I wouldn’t blame him if you told them to stick it.

5. Should they sell up?

SM:If they can’t provide the funds they claim they had, then get the hell out.  So far they are been a waste of space. Stadium plans no further on and I don’t see any money being given to Rafa than wouldn’t have been provided by Moores.

MA:Unequivocally yes.

A:Yes, I believe they should. If there truly is a quick cash in available we should encourage them to take it. They’ve clearly bitten off more than they can chew. From a busines point of view, given sufficient real investment now there’s no doubt that LFC can stake a place at the forefront of a new explosion in UK football as income from overseas sales skyrockets. If we’re cash poor and hamstrung by debt then we’ll lose ground at a critical time.

From my perspective as a supporter I don’t trust them, hate the thought of them in control of my club and want them gone yesterday.

AF:Yes. I’m sick that I gave them the benefit of the doubt at the time they bade a bid. maybe naively, I still think Gillett understood what was required but if he can’t rein Hicks in then they should both go.

H:.I would’ve said no, not til the end of the season but I get a feeling something has to go, and it should be them.

That Liverpool fans were passionate about the club and didn’t want to lie down and accept the contempt being shown for the club by the owners then let me show you a few posts and thoughts from some members of RAWK:

Garstonite:

“I’m talking about full stop. The option to fuck football - the sport that has taken up so much of my time and money that I often don’t even have - to fuck it off completely. It would be easy to quote the famous of all the Shankly quotes at a time like this. So easy, it’s not worth me typing it out. But these American owners have come here pretending to know the values of this club. But it’s not something you can see from abroad. It’s not something you can get into. It’s a way of life. You earn a living, you eat food, you drink drink and you support Liverpool Football Club.

We knew we had to move on amd the irony is we knew we had to move on to something that is so anti-everything most of us grew to love about the sport. Artsy-fartsy and prancy bullshit or not, it was the working-classes haven from reality. A glimmer of hope, a bit of joy. A fucking great way to end a shit week, to spend a couple of hours with the lads and support players that represented your area. You had a loyalty to your city. To your area. When Liverpool beat Manchester United or City, Newcastle or Birmingham, we were getting one over on that city. Now what have we become? Billionaires playthings, following overpaid primadonnas who show no loyalty so why the fuck should you?

Gillett and Hicks appear to be the extreme of what is wrong with modern-day footballing owners. Clearly only in it for the money, looking at every avenue in order to bleed everybody in sight dry. All week, the argument against putting our foot down and making a stand is “you don’t want to piss them off”. Fuck it. Are we gonna let these cunts ruin the finest fucking football club in the land while we sit on our hands?

The shit has hit the fan. Time to show these Yank twats that they’ve picked the wrong fight.”

or Terry De Niro:

“Every year of my Life of supporting my beloved Liverpool FC, I’ve been excited from the first kick of the season to the last, and from the time I was a kid in the 60’s growing into a man in the 70’s and 80’s, I had every right to. Watching my team steam roll their way to trophy after trophy. Further more, trophies that really mattered. The League championship being showed to us most seasons with various heroes from over the years walking up to the Kop and waving said trophy in front of us. European cups soon found their way to us and I’m lucky enough to have been to 3 finals when we were victorious. I’m not knocking the League Cup, FA Cup, UEFA Cup, and I loved it when we won them, but nothing compares with the League, and I really feel for our younger supporters who have never seen us lift it.

So back to the reason for this thread. I’m constantly looking at various threads on here involving the Mancs, Arse and Chelsea, where they are constantly clawing points and breaking away from us, and seeing comments like “Lucky Mancs, Arse, Chelsea. Dubious decisions going their way, diving cheats etc etc…”

The simple fact is…Liverpool at the moment are not as good as the other three, and that is a FACT! and haven’t been in the league consistently for a while now.

2005 was magic and nobody can ever take that roller coaster final ride away from us, but we can’t keep looking back to that. We need to sort our domestic position out ASAP or we will fall further behind than we already are.

As it stands now if somebody offered me a 4th finish now for this season, I’d snap their hands off and that’s coming from one the Shank’s old school of “first is first and second is nothing.” As we’ve got a fight to achieve that when you look at the teams and their points tally that are breathing down our necks.

I’d be delighted if we won either the FA Cup or Champions league again, but almost 18 years without the League title is really starting to get to me now.

I thought about posting this in the LFC forum, but it would only get the “knee-jerk” treatment, and after all my years of supporting this great club, I think I know what I’m on about…”

or -HH-’s poem:

“The way our club was run was always unique,
We knew when to be silent and when’s right to speak.
And while I’m sure that such an approach had its flaws,
I wish we’d never let these two cunts through our doors.

They promised us money, and a flashy new ground,
But that turned to shit when no loans could be found.
And speaking of loans, they said ‘none’ when they came,
But like so many promises it turned out to be lame.

‘We’ll sign Snoogy Doogy, if one can be found’,
But then you’ll um over a defender for 4 million pounds?
Tell Rafa he can’t sign who he wants on a free,
And can’t even decide who stays and who leaves?

They told Rafa to focus on coaching his team,
Took the control away from him cause they had the means.
Stories of them selling were quickly denied,
But the silence was deafening on the Rafa divide.

Whenever the stories began to die down,
The flames were fanned by these PR loving clowns.
Smiling thinking back to the way Rafa ‘pouted’,
We’ll wipe away your smiles now your agenda’s been outed.

Approaching a man not fit to wipe Rafa’s arse,
That you’d mention it in public shows a complete lack of class.
Consulting him on football also has me intrigued,
Where’s his La Liga’s? His Champions League’s?

I long for the days when the money didn’t matter,
Money men behind the scenes so we can listen to the Rafas.
When knowledge of football was required to comment,
Not PR games from the cunts with big wallets.

But they’ve picked the wrong battle with the wrong folk this time,
We won’t just lie down when our club’s on the line.
Shanks understood the people were the heart of this club,
As did Rafa when he came for a drink down the pub.

It’s not just for our manager now that we’re fighting,
But for the wrongs of these two fools that we just want righting.
We know now we should have never sold out to these Yanks,
And we’ll fight till it’s them who are walking the plank.

We are the supporters, we’ve seen the joy and the pain,
We’ve followed our team through the wind and the rain.
Without us there’s nothing, these clowns soon will see,
We are the club. We are Liverpool FC.

 and finally a classic from Garstonite again:

“I just think that there are times when, as football fans, we have to realise when to give up our unconditional support to a cause. There’s a long process towards that decision, of course. But who wants to talk about that? The ’cause’ can be an entire team, an individual player or the leader of the gang, the manager.

It’s safe to say, football has made a fool out of even the most erudite and level-headed… And me. I thought Souness would be able to turn it around. I had a belief Roy Evans would guide a new-age Liverpool side to success. I was convinced Houllier was the best thing to happen to this club since Kenny Dalglish and I had unreserved faith he would land us major honours.

So why should I now – older, fatter and probably just a little bit wiser – continue my loyalty towards the next man on the conveyor belt? Well, I shall tell you. And if you don’t wish to here my ramblings, the exits are here, here, here and here. Thank-you.

OK, I take a distinct disliking to the Championship Manager culture. We should sign so-and-so and all our problems will dissolve like a teardrop in the rising sun. It’s stupid, idiotic, foolish and if I had a thesaurus I’m sure I could find a thousand more words to describe how illogical and overly-simplistic it is. But am I a wannabe-manager? Of course. When I realised I wasn’t good enough to make it as a player, it was the obvious path to pursue. I blame my Mum for not getting me the appropriate footwear, just for the record. But, anyway, on the fear of digressing, I’ll get back to the point.

With Souness, with Evans, with Houllier - as pretentious as it may sound - I always felt I had ideas they should have used; that I knew the problems that they weren’t addressing. But then Rafael Benitez arrived. Yeah yeah, he spends days thinking about tactics, formations and his general footballing philosophy. Yeah yeah, he kicks his wife out of bed dreaming about football. Yeah yeah, he thinks about football so much he forgets his kids’ names (source citation required). And yes, he did also come with an impressive track record. But for the first time in a long while, my optimism had been compressed and I needed something to reignite that pride and that confidence I always possessed, even in face of a crisis. It is certainly true that I felt a large degree of frustration like many at that time, that we had become as further away as ever at being crowned Champions. But maybe the fact I was becoming a cantankerous old prick had something to do with it. I always there’s something about a man entering his thirties that makes the sun no longer brighten up his day, but merely get in his eyes. Ah well.

But then something remarkable happened. Something got hold of my hyper-inflated ego, dragged it into an alley way and severely pummelled it. Liverpool – a team that was half-filled with players who consistently failed to reach their potential, and half-filled with players I can only imagine got a football career by entering a raffle – won the Champions League. The most prestigious prize in club football. Now, dress it up all you like – say if Rivaldo had been on the field to take that free-kick in the exact position he scored past Chris Kirkland in that crucial group match, say if Del Piero’s shot hadn’t been stopped by a miraculous save from Carson in the quarter-final, say if William Gallas did indeed prevent that ball from crossing the line or Gudjohnsen’s effort in the dying moments actually killed me rather than just threatening to – the simple fact of the matter is, all of that is irrelevant. We won it. And we wouldn’t have without Benitez’s influence.

This could have only been achieved by a man that meticulously planned every eventuality, a man that tactically drilled the side to the brink of mental-exhaustion and, maybe, a man that offered Roman Slysko a generous pay-package, who knows? Who knows?

Now, I know that a Liverpool manager should never live off his past successes. I have people remind me this continuously, after all. Usually, by the by, people who are so pent up with anger and frustration, I can only assume are impotent. But there you go, that’s just an educated guess. BUT, does a managers past successes warrant support and patience from his fans and (I’m legally obliged to add) the owners? Fucking right it does.

Does the fact that Benitez has been working under immense pressure deflect from how he has built a strong squad, with a world-class spine? No! Is Rafael Benitez a world-class manager who shouldn’t allow no-nothings opinions’ stand in his way? Yes! Would getting rid of Rafael Benitez put our progression back five years, even if it were for short-term success? Yes! Am I in danger of using up my exclamation marks quota? Unfortunately, yes.

If you use a stream as a metaphor for football, then you’re most probably mad. But I will nevertheless pursue it, having not thought this through properly, so bear with me. The stream represents the division, and on the stream are twenty ships that represent the teams. Now, at one end of the stream we have largely calm waters where either side of the stream are greenlands where rabbits burrow and butterflies frolic gaily. At the other end, we have a waterfall where the ships nearest to will eventually plummet. Naturally.

Now, there is sufficient room here to venture how the bottom of the boat is where the background scene is worked: from the Chairman to the cleaner, the mechanisms behind the team are polished and checked once an hour, every hour. I could even say Gillett and Hicks are making their way through the ship’s wood with an axe, but anyway.

I am more interested in where the fans’ role plays in this. To me, we are the crew. We are behind the captain who is intensely trying to steer the ship in the right direction. Now, on one side of the ship, are the calm members of the crew. They laugh at the ship with the barcode flag. They are careering towards the waterfall and many members of their crew have decided to jump overboard. The other side are plotting against the captain. They hear there is a better man suited for the job from a stream a long way away. They are constantly criticising the captain and they question why he persists in fuelling the ship with coal, when the ships in front have invested in nuclear power. What the captain needs is unity and full support. Have we really reached the end of our tether with a manager that has promised and already brought so much? Consider this period a storm.

Now, you can take from this half-drunken rambling what you wish. You could conclude that Rafa is a pirate. You could also conclude I’m stark raving mad. What I hope you do conclude is that even though things haven’t been going well, it must be said that this is all part of what you signed up for when you decided to become a football fan and in such an unpredictable game, one thing will always ring true: a strong ship is a far greater force than one in a state of disrepair.

At the end of the storm, is a golden lark. Or something.

Post-script:
The silent ones with flasks come to life as we fire a canon at one of the ships behind us. They mimic the otters in the water, as they chant ‘Easeh? Easeh@ Easeh/”

If anything I hope makes one realise that Hicks and Gilette cannot just expect us to be armchair fans nodding with senility as we shove a greasy paw into the popcorn like some fans of other sports may do.

Take note, we are angry, aware and sad. Not a good combination.

The blog is meant for random and occasional thoughts and my one for today is this:

Is Rafa a dead man walking?

I remember when Ferguson announced to much cheering that he was going to retire at the end of the season. Man Utd promptly played pish for that season. The motivation, the commitment, the effort wasn’t there. And this was from a team who adored, well, respected, their manager and wanted to play for him.

I wonder if Rafa’s authority has been so undermined by the deafening silence from our owners over measures of support for him that those players who don’t like being rotated have just given up trying to impress, and those that do like him, know they’re playing for the end of the season.

Gerrard himself has stated that Benitez isn’t the warmest of managers, and if he doesn’t have a really close personal relationship with many of the players then they are not going to bust a gut for him if they don’t want to.

 This is of course, conjecture and if true, a sad indictment on the mindset of our players, but recently we have look lacklustre, non-commital, and half arsed.

At Luton, we were 2nd best to most balls, yesterday ‘Boro passed the ball around us, and since the New Year we’ve looked half the team we were last year.

Well if its the case, any fondness I may have ever had for our new owners will have gone with the morning rain, never mind not investing, never mind not understanding, the cardinal sin in football is to sling enough mud so it sticks and let the press pirahnas feast on the rest.

To undermine the main voice of authority at any club is petty, misguided and pathetic, never mind bad business sense. And that 2 successful businessmen are doing this made me question whether or not they were doing that, but now it makes me question how they got to be successful.

For some reason ‘Boro away has often been a trickier match than is should. When Liverpool do well in the North-East the season goes well, when we don’t, the season isn’t such a good one.

Well we’ve beaten Newcastle and Sunderland (just) as theirs, so here’s hoping that Rafa will put out an attacking force and a good display to shake off the ridiculous winter blues.

Of course it was at ‘Boro that marked the beginning of the end of Gerard Houllier when he put one up front there all those years ago, showing a defensive intent when really we should be going to places like Smog City to steamroller them

Naturally Rafa would never just put one up front against a lower league team away from home.

He just does it at Anfield

Came into the pub and had a drink with the fans..

Took us to the final of 3 cups

Won two of them, in the finest of styles, finals that will go down in everyone’s memories, not just Liverpool fans.

Made us smile as we watched our team play again

Brought the beard into fashion

Showed dignity in defeat

but most of all

understood our team.

Rafa, thanks for some of the best memories, the days when we know why we support football and love Liverpool.

right now I couldn’t give a flying yankee doodle dandyfuck what anyone thinks about you leaving your post, til you go, you’re our manager, and that’ll do me.