[quote author=Farkmaster link=topic=37249.msg991951#msg991951 date=1258590940]
Rosco, this is what I don't understand about you. You are quite right in saying you didn't expect investment to be made this summer, I remember you saying it.
I assume you had no expectation of investment being made because you knew we had posted huge losses.
You also know these losses were due to massive interest payments being made to service debt, rather than a failure of the club. In fact the club has been doing better than in the past, partially because the league and the CL have become ever more lucrative, partially because we've done better in terms of marketing, and also because of consistently better CL performances than under Houllier.
Gilette and Hicks have a couple things very well, but ultimately they have essentially failed on their gamble, and either have to dangerously eat their losses and let their gamble ride hoping they can creatively raise money for a stadium while keeping us there or thereabouts for CL broadcast money. Rafa had a disastrous transfer market in 08, that is his complete fault, and this last transfer season, with far less margin for error, he made his own gambles and lost in the short term, and an injury crisis has made his losses even greater, such that he may never get to the long term.
Why though do you simplify this whole backdrop now that things are going so badly, for a variety of reasons? Why do you only heap the criticism on Rafa while appearing to ignore all the other factors for the sake of argument? How could you possibly say Rafa got what he wanted this summer?
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Well I'm on record as saying that my preferred solution is a clear out at the club - new owners, new manager. The dynamic on the forum is that people don't like to blame Benitez because it's fucking depressing to realise that he's just not what we expected, not what we were promised. The goal after sacking Houllier according to Parry was to appoint a manager who could land us a league title.
Hicks and Gillette, while they have allowed the cash to be splashed on big money signings, have not been good for the club. You'll remember that I was against their takeover from the beginning, mainly because it was a leveraged takeover. So they do share the blame, but if I was to put my legal hat on and think about causation - had DIC taken over it would have been a leveraged takeover too , and they would have been equally vulnerable to the credit crunch as our current owners - so I don't see how it would have been much different from it is now. If Moores and Parry had stayed in charge, well I'm not sure we'd have improved as much commercially and while we wouldn't have had interest to pay had they stayed on our revenues probably wouldn't have grown the way they have under the Yanks. If Moores and Parry had been in charge I'd be surprised if we'd landed players as expensive as Torres, Keane, Mascherano etc.
So from a causation point of view it's hard to say the Yanks have been any worse for the club than DIC or the past owners would have been for us. The infighting is embarrassing, but it hasn't made any difference to the money at the club, and to be honest Rafa would be having a go at the men upstairs no matter who they were. I don't think it's the biggest problem, hence why I don't get into it too often.
But I do think a different manager would have done a lot differently. I don't think we'd have made the mistakes we made, like Keane, if someone else was in charge.
I don't think I did say Rafa got what he wanted, because he would have wanted a lot more money. Obviously. Unfortunately that wasn't possible - when people talk about money I always try to inject a little bit of perspective to it, as I did earlier in the thread with comparisons to other teams. We've spent enough in the last 5 years to be better than we are now, we've spent enough to enable us not to suffer from a situation that's a little bit too similar to the situation that Rafa took over.
Would it be easier if we had more money to spend ? Yes.
Would Rafa have been better in the transfer market with more money to spend ? Doubtful.
