What's going to happen if we don't get fourth place?

For every high there’s a low and for every disappointment, there’s a moment of sheer joy. We've been thru much worse periods than the current one and what didn't kill us only made us stronger. It’s easy to stand strong when the champagne is flowing, but the real measure of the man is to be found in times of adversity. Feel good factors, success, results, players, managers, custodians and every other facet of the club come and go. Being a Liverpool fan is for life. We're the one constant in the club's existence. Its very lifeblood and its living breathing heartbeat from the cradle to the grave win lose or draw. I’m a Liverpool fan. I was born one, live as one and fully intend to die as one. I was a red yesterday and I’ll be a red tomorrow. In between it’s an honour and a privilege to be part of the greatest and most unique footballing institution on god’s green earth. YNWA.

We are Liverpool

Give me a break how is the best defensive midfielder on the planet a luxury player, a luxury player is a lazy winger who creates chances but wont run 2 yards to make a tackle.

Don't know how a lad that covers every blade of grass and gives his all when he plays for us is a luxury player. If he left he went he would be every bit as big a loss of Xabi.

Why would we sell one of our world class players. Amazing post to be honest Masch a luxury player gave me a good laugh though.

Just my opinion...but keeping a player that offers us very little going forward and who has a believed value of £30,000,000 doesn't really make much sense if we are looking to progress as a club.

With 10 defeats already in the bag this season.....it is quite clear that having the best defensive midfielder on the planet (open for debate) hasn't really been particularly beneficial.

We need someone that is good both offensively and defensively in similar measures and can influence the game in both halves of the pitch.

Once Mascherano goes past the halfway line he is pretty much useless.

Your idea of a luxury player pretty much sums up Ryan Babel to me Corballyred and if he is a luxury in your eyes......well....maybe you are easily pleased!

Agree with your views on Johnson but :
 
I actually like Lucas and feel that he is a disciplined player who is excellent on the ball and can tackle and pass with a high success rate.

The sign of a good footballer is how much time you create yourself on the ball and he does this extremely well. One of our most comfortable players in possession and rarely gets robbed contrary to popular belief.  He keeps the ball moving with simple and effective passing and would show us a lot more if given a little bit more freedom to get involved more when we go forward.


Passing sideways because you do not know what to do with the ball is not an attacking skill and as for tackling, when he stops giving away silly and dangerous free kicks just outside the area you may have a point.

Agree with your views on Johnson but :
 
I actually like Lucas and feel that he is a disciplined player who is excellent on the ball and can tackle and pass with a high success rate.

The sign of a good footballer is how much time you create yourself on the ball and he does this extremely well. One of our most comfortable players in possession and rarely gets robbed contrary to popular belief.  He keeps the ball moving with simple and effective passing and would show us a lot more if given a little bit more freedom to get involved more when we go forward.


Passing sideways because you do not know what to do with the ball is not an attacking skill and as for tackling, when he stops giving away silly and dangerous free kicks just outside the area you may have a point.

Passing sideways to a team mate is far more effective than passing forward to someone that hasn't made themselves available to receive the ball.

Beating a player with a stick for retaining possession is ludicrous. Ever heard of pass and move?.....Lucas actually does this extremely well but requires the participation of 9 other outfield players to make it effective.

Giving away silly and dangerous free-kicks was something that was levelled at him LAST SEASON and rightly so.

He has done well to eradicate this from his game this season and probably concedes less free-kicks in dangerous areas than Mascherano now who some are touting as the greatest defensive midfielder on the planet.

His pass completion and tacking ratios are amongst the best in the Premiership this season.

If we don't get 4th this season, then we will win the league next season.
Surely with no Champions League distraction Rafa can put his strongest team to play every week, no?

If we don't get 4th this season, then we will win the league next season.
Surely with no Champions League distraction Rafa can put his strongest team to play every week, no?

I admire your optimism!

Making the jump from at best 5th to 1st in the space of a season with less investment than about 6 other teams is about as achievable as Portsmouth avoiding relegation.

I said a lad that creates chances, Babel doesn't do much of that. In fairness though I would like to see more of him.

 This debate has been on here quite a few times to be honest. Your obviously a lad that doesn't see the importance of a defensive midfielders. I could go back into the debate and say what a great player Makele, Dunga and Roy Keane were but this is the wrong thread.

 I'll just say this Masch is as good as anyone currently in the world at that position, you obviously weren't a big fan of Makele, if you want to be successful you need a top quality defensive midfielder.

 I actually think it would be an insane move to sell and it looks like Rafa is with me on this one.

On defo with hscred being excellant on a ball is'nt just about passing it sideways and backwards.

Unfortunately thats exactly the reason why we are in the situation we are in with Rafa's obsession with rigid playing roles which fits exactly into looking into player stats, I bet Lucas and Kuyt are always at the top of that list.
But they actually offer very little in terms of making the right pass, bursting past players, getting into the box etc etc. Which in fact was one of your accusations of Masch.

I have already gone on record to say that if Kuyt isn't utilized as a striker he should be sold.

Dirks pass completion ratio wouldn't be particularly high either as his first touch usually ends up with an opposition player.

Lucas does what Rafa tells him to....no more and no less. He keeps play flowing and doesn't lose the ball. As for making the right pass...he completes his passes and if nobody is making themselves available for him to give the ball to further up the pitch then sideways is the right pass.

Surely you don't honestly think Rafa tells Lucas to do anything other than break up play and make sure we keep possession do you?? If that was the case Lucas wouldn't get in the team for being unable to follow instructions.

Why do you think Cisse got the boot and Babel is heading the same way?....they are not capable of understanding what is being asked of them.

Mascherano doesn't have the technical ability to go past players and the same applies to Dirk....notice a pattern forming here?

Lucas showed that he can make things happen as was evident against Lille last week when he burst into the box and won us a penalty. He can only show this when given licence to do so.

Although Mascherano breaks up play very well and closes down the opposition extremely well...Lucas also does this but has better positional awareness and therefore isn't charging all over the pitch to make up ground on people.

Rafa has had great success with a tried and tested football philosophy that saw him topple Real Madrid and Barcelona twice in three seasons......nobody will convince him to change what he believes in and rightly so.

Once a manager goes against what he believes in...his time as a football manager is up.

I said a lad that creates chances, Babel doesn't do much of that. In fairness though I would like to see more of him.

 This debate has been on here quite a few times to be honest. Your obviously a lad that doesn't see the importance of a defensive midfielders. I could go back into the debate and say what a great player Makele, Dunga and Roy Keane were but this is the wrong thread.

 I'll just say this Masch is as good as anyone currently in the world at that position, you obviously weren't a big fan of Makele, if you want to be successful you need a top quality defensive midfielder.

 I actually think it would be an insane move to sell and it looks like Rafa is with me on this one.

On defo with hscred being excellant on a ball is'nt just about passing it sideways and backwards.

I see the benefit of a great defensive midfielder if there is an end product to having one.

If we were top of the league or at least challenging there would be every reason to retain the services of a player that has no doubt had an impact on us being there.

Based on the current situation we are in we have a player worth £30,000,000 that has not been able to help prevent us sliding to 10 Premier League Defeats and bail out of the FA Cup and Champions League in the early stages.

We need a change of shape next season if we are unable to invest heavily in the squad and need to become a bit more attacking and adventurous and by doing that we need to seriously think about whether we can afford a 'water carrier' instead of introducing more of a box to box midfielder to play alongside Aquilani if he is going to feature more.

As an after thought....... You said you would like to see more of Babel......I can only think you mean you would like to see more from him.  I don't for one minute believe that you want to see more of him in the team as that wouldn't make any sense.

Give me a break are you trying to tell me Lucas is better than Masch.

Suprisingly for a man with no attacking intent and a luxury player he has 2 goals this season Lucas has none. Has 3 goals in his Liverpool career the same as Lucas.

I wonder if you sold Lucas do you think you'd get £30 million for him Ngog, surely you would as according to you he is better.

Look if you want to win a league you need one no matter what changes you make you still need one, Chelsea have one, Utd have one, Barc have one, Real have one, Arsenal have one, City have one. We have the best one so what we do then is sell him Ngog and do what because we need one. Why don't we sell Torres as well sure we will get £70 million for him.

Just my opinion...but keeping a player that offers us very little going forward and who has a believed value of £30,000,000 doesn't really make much sense if we are looking to progress as a club.

With 10 defeats already in the bag this season.....it is quite clear that having the best defensive midfielder on the planet (open for debate) hasn't really been particularly beneficial.

We need someone that is good both offensively and defensively in similar measures and can influence the game in both halves of the pitch.

Once Mascherano goes past the halfway line he is pretty much useless.

Your idea of a luxury player pretty much sums up Ryan Babel to me Corballyred and if he is a luxury in your eyes......well....maybe you are easily pleased!

sometimes the best players are the ones quietly putting a shift in.

I'd hate to see our position in the league without Mash present in the side

just think there would be a volcano effect rafa would be sacked or leave. then torres would probably jump ship. plus masch . financially the only relief will be our value would drop. the rhone group might be our saviour. then we might be able to get that new staduium built. have to rebuild our team again. not a bad idea after our results this year. bring in new blood some ressies look promising

If we don't finish 4th the world will stop spinning, some 'fans' will drown in a huge explosion of their  own semen, all the players will leave, we will have to play in blue kits and suicide rates will shoot up.

Or we could all get a grip and remember that Liverpool FC existed before 2004/05.

If we dont get 4th, I can continue to bounce around the Kop every single home game and the occasional away game. And thats fine by me.

Football aint all about winning trophies.

I'll still LOVE LFC no matter what , just like the others have been saying it's only one season and I'm pretty sure next season if all goes well in the summer we'll come back all guns blazing ! It's only for talks sake the big four is there ....ok so maybe we'll get some sick for the first few weeks of summer by our co-workers , fellow students , friends ect . but in the summer  it will die down and we'll go back to playing good football I'm sure Rafa will have a good idea about what he needs to do in the summer .

just think there would be a volcano effect rafa would be sacked or leave. then torres would probably jump ship. plus masch . financially the only relief will be our value would drop. the rhone group might be our saviour then we might be able to get that new stadium built. have to rebuild our team again. not a bad idea after our results this year. bring in new blood some ressies look promising

Not a F***ing chance, leverage buy-out merchants just like their mate Tom.

They won't be investing any of their own money, in fact if they do make that offer of £100 million it could work out worse for the club, we'd still be in the same sh*t, but at least Tom and George can get RBS off their backs.

The fans would undoubtedly continue to support this great club because we are much bigger than one bad season.The only thing good I can see coming out of this the owners might be forced to lower their valuation of the club to realistic levels and we will get new and hopefully better owners.Rafa,if he is still there and I believe he would be,should realize that the only thing separating us from the top 3 is our defensive approach towards the game and we would hopefully go all guns blazing.
One last thing I don't want to see any moaners in the team and if that lot includes our captain fantastic we should part ways before the virus catches on.

If we don't get 4th.... the world will continue spinning as normal and we will move on and recover from this nightmare of a season.
Simples

Why have I opened a thread about what will happen if we dont get 4th but yet read mostly about Lucas?

Anyway we dont get 4th what happens is we get less cash and we dont play in the champions league next year which also means less cash which means less ability to buy players or pay the wages of the ones we have which might mean having to sell them which means the team gets weaker which means we will struggle to break top 6 never mind top 4

(The above is the opinion of Brian78 not general opinion and is worst case scenario)

People who go on about Rafa being ousted by them lying b*****d yanks should remember that since he has been in charge and despite the restrictions he has been under financially he has raised approx 125m in money from champs league so as thick as these muppets are they know a good thing when they see it .

A big reason why were in this mess is due to non-investment into the side. We lost two very good players in alonso and arbeloa. Both performed consistently well for Liverpool and therefore were a major loss.

We replaced them with a lad who has been out injured for most the season, who we signed for 20m. Despite his recent performance against pompy, he is still un proven, far from it. His stats throughout his career aren't good reading either - how many appearences hes made etc.

We signed a full back for 17m. I think glen is an improvement on Arbeloa because he has everything to be a fantastic full back, but 17m for a defender is a lot of money no matter how you look at it, for a club in our situation that is.

The owners haven't backed Rafa in the market and its backfired on them. Instead of challenging for honours both domestically and in europe, we may now finish outside the top 6, something that would never have been imagined at the start of the season. We all lose out now, the players do, Rafa does, the fans do and the owners themselves do, the club will not make half as much money as it could have done and should have done.

Rafa should take responsibility for the signings hes made though. Who knows, next season it may be totally different and aquilani may start every single game and just show exactly what he can do, johnson might win player of the season, we just don't know, but i think it has to be said that this season neither player has really worked out.  Johnson has performed pretty well but 17m is alot of money like i've already stated, it could have possibly been used better (dont respond with the whole pompy owed us money malarky, he still cost 17m, end of). And aquilani hasn't looked anything like a replacement for Alonso yet.

If lessons are to be learnt, then i think we have no option but to put Gerrard, Torres, Masc, Reina, Agger, Skrtel, Carra on big contracts. They are the backbone to this team.

We then have to make three or four major signings if we want to compete in this league. I think we have to blow around 100m in the summer. Are our owners prepared to do this, prepared to gamble? Probably not. Infact, we no there not.

Therefore, i kinda expect torres and gerrard to be sold, replaced by no marks, and liverpool finish mid table next season.

if we don't get 4th i guess we'll get 5th

And btw, Ngog, what you are saying is just unbelievable. Masch a luxury? hah