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Tricky. Alot of what I would say has been posted on here already.
Of course Benitez has had good money compared to lesser clubs. But thats irrelevant. He is only being compared to Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal. Take them individually. Wenger is one of the greatest Managers of all time and has done a great job. I dont mind if rafa falls short of his standard. That said, he has beaten him 4 out of 5 seasons and Wenger needs to win a trophy to cap the recent job he has done. The current blip and injury problems are making people over react. Rafa did a great job last year and will get us back on track. I think the cost of the squad says alot tbh. |
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1 Edwin Van der Sar (G) £2m
2 Gary Neville (D) Youth 3 Patrice Evra (D) £5.5m 4 Owen Hargreaves (M) £17m 5 Rio Ferdinand (D) £30m 6 Wes Brown (D) Youth 7 Michael Owen (F) Free 8 Anderson (M) £14m 9 Dimitar Berbatov (F) £31m 10 Wayne Rooney (F) £20m initial widely reported to rise to £27m 11 Ryan Giggs (M) Youth 12 Ben Foster (G) £1m 13 Ji-Sung Park (M) £4m 14 Zoran Tosic (M) £bought with another player for a combined fee which could rise to 16.3m, for arguments sake £8m 15 Nemanja Vidic (D) £7m 16 Michael Carrick (M) £16 (some say 14m/some18m) 17 Nani (M) £17m 18 Paul Scholes (M) Youth 19 Danny Welbeck (F) " 20 Fabio Da Silva (D) 21 Rafael Da Silva (D) 22 John O'Shea (D) 23 Jonny Evans (D) 24 Darren Fletcher (M) 25 Luis Antonio Valencia (M) £16m 26 Gabriel Obertan (M) £3m 27 Federico Macheda (F) 28 Darron Gibson (M) 29 Tomasz Kuszczak (G) £3m 31 Corry Evans (M) 33 Sam Hewson (M) 38 Ron-Robert Zieler (G) 41 Joshua King 42 Magnus Eikrem 44 Ritchie de Laet (D) £1m 47 Matthew James (M) What does that come to? |
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Just over £200m I reckon?
I would love to have the time and knowledge to do these exercises myself. But Paul Tomkins (very, very biased Liverpool journo) reckons he spent a significant amount of time on it and came to the figures I posted. As Sugarfoot suggests,no-one knows the real anwers. |
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To be fair, alot of the names you have no fees against will have cost money too.
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lets not forget man utd have similar owners what has happened to the 80 mill from the ronaldo sale?
as i'm sure what they spend in the jan/summer windows will have come from the tv rights or profits from gates. will fergie get to see that money? |
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sir digby - totting that lot up I make it 3rd at best :)
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I've tried to be as comprehensive as possible, I can't find any evidence for fees being paid for any of the players which i've indicated cost nothing, they either came through the academy or were signed as youngsters from other academies for no reported fees.
Of course they need wages and family jobs on the groundstaff ;), much like any other club I expect. |
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Anyway. None of us know for sure and we've done this to death.
My sumary is that as you rightly say... we came within 2 wins against sides we should be beating of winning the league last season. That should be the most important issue when looking at what Rafa has done overall. Yes he's made alot of mistakes, but considering where we were when he arrived, and the quality of sides in the Prem around us, that, and that alone for me, proves he has been and is doing a good job. |
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also the 2 serbs signed reports say 17m (that includes add ons) i.e if utd win league, CL surely no more that 4 million add ons?
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agree with CCM
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The 2 serbs signed for combined fees THAT COULD EVENTUALLY RISE to 16.3 million for BOTH.
The fact that i've put the fee for Tosic at 8mill when he's extremely unlikely to have earned Partizan belgrade any of those add ons is more than fair imo. |
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agree with TCG
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If LFC are on a shoestring budget will they be bringing Trevor Eve in during the January window!!
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What I find odd though... is that if you ask most people, Fergie and Wenger are both fantastic Manager's doing terrific jobs and very rarely receive criticsim (rightly so).
In recent times, Rafa has been competing with them and questionable figures of spending aside, he gets very little other than stick. Add to that the fact we had the best European record of any team in the Prem until last season since he has been here, and its even more surprising. I know he's not the most likeable character, but very few people have a good perspective on things. Everyone thinks he has been there forever. 5 years isnt that long. He has assembled a very good first team and with a couple more years and extra strengthening, we're not that far away from a good squad. I think it all hinges on our history and people expecting more of us because of our past. I'm not saying I would ever have admitted this when rafa rrived, but we were a genuine 4th place team who could have slipped further back then. The other 3 havent exactly sat back in the last 5 years and have had great Managers taking them forward too. |
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To be honest, I think the fact he constantly uses money, or the lack of it, as an excuse is one of the main reasons he gets criticised.
My other point about this would be that by using it as an excuse he is also providing a ready made excuse for his players who may subconciously believe it's OK to fail. Is constantly referring to the inability to compete just tantamount to saying 'this lot i've got aren't good enough'? |
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Yep fair point.
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SDCC see what your saying, but it is true what he says.ppl read too many headlines then use them, themselves as fact. he stated in feb 09 that he never had the money to compete with utd and chelsea( which is correct). then in august he was asked about buying new players after alsonso went he said this
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