Liverpool

[The_Milkman]

Benitezova kolumna za EMD se nadaljuje

Let’s save the offside ruling

The Euro Cup has begun and a lone goal by Czech player Václav Sverkoš was enough to sink the Swiss hosts in the inaugural match. It had been many years since the opening game of this competition was decided by a single goal. I seem to remember the last time, when France beat Denmark with a solitary goal by, the now UEFA president, Michel Platini.

Long gone are the days when the first matches were played very openly and many goals were scored, like that France-Yugoslavia in 1960’s Euro Cup, where the visitors won 4-5. The reason seems evident. In a tournament of this nature, the first match is so important that nobody wants to lose. If you lose, you are forced to win the remaining two games and do so under great pressure. Perhaps, for this very same reason, the first match tends to be a ‘testing of the waters’, to get to know and measure up the opponents and not risk too much to avoid any surprises. The negative thing is, that if both teams do the same, we won’t see many chances.

This is what happened during Switzerland-Czech Republic; the team that took advantage of the opponent’s mistake won the match. Incidentally, regarding that lone goal, it must be said that it came to be in an interesting situation, to be analyzed from the regulation’s point of view. We all know that there should be more than two players between the opposing team’s player and the byline in order to eliminate the possibility of offside, if the attacking player is in a forward position ahead of the ball. However, with all changes regarding this rule, the most passionate and complex in my opinion, I believe that an enormous amount of confusion is created for the fans and, more importantly and determining, the referees and assistants.

Now they talk about “position plus influence” and, after an innumerable number of mistakes and varying interpretations, I believe that it is time to go back and simplify the ruling so that a player in an offside position, whether or not he participates initially, should be ruled offsides since his ‘illegal’ position could benefit him later in the chance of a clearance. And his positioning on the pitch will always command a defenders and /or keeper’s attention if he is located near the box. Thus, in order to help the refs, who end up getting all the blame, and to avoid further scandals, I believe that, any time an attacking player is ahead of the ball and there are no defenders between said player and the byline, he should be ruled offsides.

At least, in the vicinities of the penalty box. A different story would be if he was standing near a sideline where he’s clearly not involved in the play. In that case, the play should continue. But in the centre, the striker is always a threat and a cause of distraction. Don’t tell me that it wasn’t great to watch that unforgettable Milan team, of the never highly-enough praised Arrigo Sacchi, working on the offside trap…I assure you that for managers and players it would be a relief also, because we would know what to expect and wouldn’t depend on every referee’s interpretation of the rule, whom in the end, are human beings, and thus not infallible.

In other respects, Portugal showed their credentials in a duel that opened up as the game went on and, when the score-line forced the Turks to leave spaces behind, the likes of Pepe and individual details from players like Cristiano Ronaldo or Nuno Gomes were seen. At the end, Meireles secured a win that, like we mentioned on Friday, puts Portugal in good position to continue as one of the favourites.

Meanwhile, Spain’s debut is fast approaching, where they must count on everyone’s support, maintain the good atmosphere and the team unity and avoid as much as possible, the debates over one type of style of play or another or a specific player or another. If we don’t do these things, the smallest of adversity will create division and we will lose energy and cohesion. This would, in prompt, create problems that don’t even exist at present time. Calm and support will the key for Spain.

[The_Milkman]

LIVERPOOL posted a £33m loss in the year ending July 31, 2007 - according to accounts submitted to Companies House.

And the outlook for the financial future at Anfield is not likely to improve, piling even more pressure on the Reds’ co-owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett.

The first accounts submitted by Kop Football Holdings Ltd, one of Liverpool’s parent companies, revealed the loss.

The club’s £350 million loans will also have to be refinanced as early as January and the club must pay interest on a £64 million loan from Kop Football Ltd, its immediate parent company.

The accounts also reveal that the owners wrote off £10.3 million when they scrapped the club’s design for a new stadium after their takeover in February 2007 – and that the co-owners claimed more than £1.4 million in personal expenses in the seven months after their takeover.

While the figures make bleak reading, it is understood the loss will not affect Rafa Benitez’s spending power this summer.

A significant transfer fund for the manager was included in the club’s overall level of debt, allowing Benitez to still chase his major targets.

YANKS OUT

[DV_tifo]

Mhm torej se nikakor ne bo tako dobro izšlo kot na gledališču tišine in rakcov z jenkiji.
Škoda da so take kanalje dobile u roke Liverpool.

[The_Milkman]

Anfield je naš!!! Naši včeraj zaklenili Anfield in "deložirali" lastnike

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Viis8OKrRNY
http://youtube.com/watch?v=C49cbMe7PAk

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/ ... 092788.ece

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a307/ ... G_0718.jpg
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a307/ ... G_0717.jpg
http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn17 ... to0002.jpg
http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn17 ... to0003.jpg
http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn17 ... to0004.jpg
http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn17 ... to0005.jpg
http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn17 ... to0006.jpg
http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn17 ... to0007.jpg
http://shrani.si/f/2g/tS/4YYXKIq6/notice1.jpg

[tench]

Fantje se trudijo, a se bojim, da je to bolj kot ne sizifovo delo....Učinki so bolj kot ne nični...


Mimogrede:

http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liv ... -21047925/

[The_Milkman]

Ti bi hotu bit častni občan a?

heee


No kakorkol

San José, a step closer to heaven

J . ORTIZ DE LAZCANO

VILLABA

Mikel San José’s journey to Liverpool began in his birth city, Villaba(Navarra), on a March afternoon in 2007. The central defender, who at the time was playing for Athletic’s Youth A team, managed by Julen Guerrero, observed amusingly as his team-mates were taking part on a match. All of a sudden, his mobile phone rang. “It was a gentleman, who didn’t reveal his identity but asked me a few questions, one of those being whether I was willing to go play football abroad”. Although his initial instinct was to be cautious and wary, the youngster agreed to a meeting at a Pamplona hotel, where he arrived accompanied by his parents. The same person that was afraid of being identified on the phone showed his face. It was Paco de Gracia, scout for the ‘reds’ in Spain. Beside him was Eduardo Macia, former technical secretary at Valencia and current chief scout at Liverpool, where he manages over seventy scouts spread all over the globe.

Macia’s computer hard disk contains the names of over 10,000 players. San José couldn’t believe it. “They were very clear since the first moment. They put a very good offer on the table for me to go play with the reserve team”. Curiously, the five-time European Champions offered San José more than what Athletic were proposing to him. “I told them(Athletic) that I had an offer from Liverpool and all they offered me was to go play at Basconia (Third Division). I analyzed the situation and concluded that if I wanted to make it to the first division, it was best for me to leave. At the end, when they realized that my departure was imminent, Txema Noriega (Then director of Lezama(Athletic’s academy) offered me to go play for Bilbao Athletic (Athletic’s B team) but he was still incredulous. It was sort of like saying ‘I’m proposing this to you just so you won’t leave, not because I think you can play at that level”.
This is how a player that seemed destined to mark an era playing for the rojiblanca defense fled to Liverpool, where he landed for the first time last August 6th, after winning the U-19 European Championship with Spain. “I was afraid. I was going to be all alone and I didn’t speak the language…”

Fast forward ten months and he is closer than he anticipated to making the big leap. In between driving lessons, San José dissects in Villaba his English adventure. It has gone better than expected. Here’s a summary of this past season: he has played every match as a starter, except for the times he’s been claimed to play for Spain, was crowned champion in the Reserves League, has been a part of over twenty training sessions with the first team and he was even part of the team, although he didn’t get to debut, when Chelsea played Liverpool in the Premier.

San José has been living with an older couple with two children who are already married and living on their own. “They are people of trust of the club and they’ve had other footballers living with them before but now that I can speak English better I’m going to be living on my own”.

From what he says, the principal value of the Liverpool culture is based on effort and an iron-willed character. This was explained to him before his first training session by Antonio Gomez, the physio. “He approached me and told me ‘be ready since the first day because if you fall asleep here you’re going to get kicked from every angle”.

Carragher’s screaming and shouting

Here he mentions one of the biggest differences. In England, nobody saves their energy. “A little training session match is like a Liverpool-Everton at Anfield. In Spain, for fear of injury, people avoid contact. Here if you kick someone, nobody complains. That is why players like Gerrard and Carragher, who come from the academy , are playing in the first team. They always go all out. The mentality at the club is that even if you are very good technically, you still to fight for every ball as if it was the Champions League final”.

Benitez never rests. Every time they cross paths, he has some words for SJ. He insists that Mikel has a weakness that, if corrected, will help unleash all his potential. “He tells me that I need to be more aggressive, that if I am to play with the first team I can’t be defending like a little girl”.

The ‘cracks’ still intimidate him a bit and he keeps his distance, despite the fact that he eats breakfast and lunch with them on a daily basis. And he tells of what seems like a feat for Carragher, the ‘capo’ of the defence. “Even when Anfield is packed and everyone is singing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, when he screams and shouts instructions to the other defenders, you can hear him from anywhere on the pitch”. Of Gerrard he speaks nothing but good things. “He says hi to me, although because of my trouble with the language we haven’t practically spoken to each other. One thing is true, he speaks to the English lads on my team on a daily basis”.

With the Spaniards the contact is more frequent. They are not vain or have any illusions of grandeur. “Torres is shy and quite but a good person”. Arbeloa spends all day telling jokes and Reina having a laugh with him. Xabi Alonso has been very important for me. He approached me since the very first day and he’s always giving me good advice”.

Things are going so great that he’s not even thinking about coming back, “despite that I’ve been an Athletic since ‘txiki’(little)”. “ I didn’t expect to be playing as much or adapting so well. Now it’s not the time to talk about coming back. My goal next season is to debut with the first team and have success there”. If he does, the pain for the rojiblanco supporters will be accentuated because Athletic were not able to value, who some say, could have been the best defender of his generation

[tench]

An ordinary man in an ordinary world....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.j ... imw111.xml

http://youtube.com/watch?v=YaTL6VAr2RY

[The_Milkman]

vredno branja...

Jun 11 2008 by Andy Proudfoot, Liverpool Daily Post

I REMEMBER the days when following a football team was so simple. Before the days of wall-to-wall television coverage; before that interweb thingy was invented; before Radio 5 Live interrupted Sports Report to broadcast live commentary on Portsmouth versus Wigan.

All you had to do was pick up your morning paper, turn to the back page and devour the latest news and reports, reading the paper from back to front (if you got that far).

Nowadays I have to order the Financial Times and the Economist to keep abreast of takeovers, accounts, ownership structures, credit crunches and leveraged buy-outs.

The lunatic world of football finance grows ever more complicated, and the ordinary fan becomes more remote from the behemoths that used to be our local football clubs.

No wonder our grounds lack atmosphere; those in attendance are probably busy checking the stock prices and interest rate movements to see if their club is about to go into administration.

The last fortnight has been instructive: when we should have been speculating on the relative merits of Spain, France and Italy in breathless anticipation of a European festival of football, the headlines have been dominated by the ludicrous amounts of money offered for, and to, Cristiano Ronaldo; the £200,000 per week allegedly tempting Ronaldinho to join the Eastlands gulag; and of course Abramovich’s quest to hand another £100m to next door’s cat, or whoever else passes his front door when he takes another astute decision over his club’s managerial arrangements. Bizarrely, Michel Platini, the UEFA supremo, also chose the eve of the tournament to launch a tirade against the likes of Manchester United and Chelsea carrying huge debt to provide them with an unfair advantage over other clubs, going so far as to say this was ‘cheating.’

Now there’s probably a serious point in there somewhere, but shouting ‘big boys did it’ or pulling tongues is not the best way to get it across.

Sadly, our own club has now become embroiled in the financial quagmire, good and proper.

The publication of the accounts of Kop Football (Holdings) Ltd, the ultimate holding company in the structure which owns Liverpool FC, gave rise to a batch of headlines which were bound to reignite the smouldering resentment burning in the hearts of even the most moderate fan, patiently waiting to see if another Torres is due to arrive, or whether a spade will enter the ground in Stanley Park. Talk of losses, levels of debt, write-offs and travel expenses which would make an MEP blush are bound to be seized on by those who seek to discredit the American owners as evidence they are only seeking to line their own pockets.

The ownership structure is now so complicated that it is hard for seasoned financial commentators to disentangle, let alone your average football fan; Kop Holdings is apparently ‘two levels above Liverpool FC’ in the structure, and inter-company loans complicate the picture further.

This level of complexity breeds mistrust, and generates suspicion that its purpose is not just to keep our money out of the grubby hands of the taxman, but to prevent us all from forming a clear view of the owners’ intentions.

If the Gruesome Twosome are to have any hope of turning round fans’ opinions, they need to invest some time and energy into explaining exactly how their financial plans stack up, how the cost of the stadium is to be funded, and how the revenue will be generated to pay for it.

We might not all understand it, but we’d appreciate the effort. And perhaps then, we could go back to worrying about the footie, not the FTSE.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/ ... -20603015/

[tench]

Dober članek ja, čeravno rahlo fatalističen in slightly izven konteksta. Nihče te ne sili, da se poglabljaš v finančne detajle, ali pač?

And Reds chief executive Rick Parry is now poised to fax through a fresh offer of £15m, plus another £3m in add-ons, for Villa's captain.

Jao bože, še vedno bereš ta rubbish. "Rick Parry is poised to fax a new offer..." Dramski trikotnik. Sedaj smo pri zapletu. Čudno, da ne omenjajo znamke faksa in impregniranega papirja zavoljo krokodiljih solz, ki jih točijo v Birminghamu....Kriza...

[The_Milkman]

Prvi članek je tako..za prebrat...ni glih neko težko poglabljanje da klikaš na mirror te pa nihče ne sili

[The_Milkman]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio2_a ... rwalkalone

[tench]

Letošnje okrepitve imajo res hud pedigre. Eden ne zmore priti dlje od klopi v mizerni repki, drugi niti v repko ne more...Jao!

Edit; ta "mizerija" z Barryem se mora takoj končati. Tip ni niti v sanjah vreden toliko denarja. O'Neill je nor - 20 mio??? Lepo se obdrži Alonsa in bo mir. Če se bodo pustili tako izsiljevati, bodo izpadli samo še večji papki...

To je blaznost. Cel transfer budget bo šel za igralca, ki se ga sploh ne potrebuje, medtem ko bodo "kritične" pozicije še naprej ostale deficitarne...


P.S. Ged strikes again!

"Villa and Torres were both outstanding," said Gérard Houllier, the France technical director and former Liverpool manager, who was also in the crowd. "Their partnership is very interesting, the diagonal runs they make are very clever, very exciting. Torres is a wonderful player and he has had an excellent first season at Liverpool. I only wish I'd had the money to buy someone like him there."

Aaaarrrghh....you brought in Djibril, Ged! Remember?

[The_Milkman]

Kje si to pobral o Gedu?

Za tisti denar bi takrat lahko izbiral skoraj bilokaterega napadalca.

O'neill igra go with the flow.... lahko naredi popolnoma nič in 1. septembra obtiči z najboljšim igralcem in kapetanom ekipe...ali pa nasprotniku prepusti pirovo zmago in pobaše ohohoho denarja. Jah background je taprav... Carrick 16, Hargrevs čez 20, Masch 17.....


Če pogledaš s te strani, United je pripeljal Carricka (ki je mlajši ampak slabši od Barrya in je padla liga) Če gre Alonso in pride Barry (pustmo zdej ceno limito ziher mamo) je to pomoje kul zamenjava...Barry zna zabit (še kakega več kot Xabi) in pa odlično asistirat, hudo izvajat kote in proste kar nam fali....
Je pa tko A.Villa ima doooolgo zgodovino kupovanja naših opuškov...enkrat se nam je moralo vrnit...


Spet po drugi strani noče noben videt Xabija it...pa čeprav je mel kurc sezono....

Glede repk, Glede Degena to je sramota...glede Dossene...poglej kako so lahi tam pokriti...Chiellini, Zambrotta, Grosso....

Jaz bi vseeno poskusil z neko simbolično ponudbo za Quaresmo...čeprav je model 100% važič in 0% finalnega produkta rabimo neki za bok... in je pomojem vseeno cenejši od Betlya (za katerega Barrett skoz govori da nismo zainteresirani) Downing ni slab, ni pa top4 material.

Seveda ne moremo mimo dejstve da je treba v napad pripeljat Villo, pa kolikor to podrlo dosedanji sistem igre....



edit:

http://www.dagbladet.no/sport/2008/06/11/537911.html

Carra odpira novo kafano, tokrat v Oslu...

[The_Milkman]

Evo ode še ena ponudba

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/footbal ... 450271.stm

Tole je že smešno....

[tench]

Ja in kaj ti govorim...Barry ni niti približno vreden teh par. In potem sta ceni za Carsona pri 10 in Croucha pri 15 mio prenapihnjeni?

Zaradi mene, tudi če ne pride. Alonsov odhod je izključno povezan z njegovim prihodom in ne obratno. Alonso nima nikakršne želje po selitvi in bo prodan "na silo" zaradi Barrya.

Quaresma, Villa? Si nor? Saj vidiš, da ne spravimo niti za enega bogega veznjaka od Aston Ville skupaj, kaj šele za take "proven CL players"....Znanstvena fantastika. Pozabi. Transfer budget je še nižji kot je bil prvo sezono. Prvi nakupi (Degen) pa imajo že čisto vse obrise famoznih Hofer nakupov iz sezone 2004/2005 - beri: Josemi, Nunez, ipd.