El_Hierro

Concerning managers currently in a job, looking away from the obvious candidates such as Jol and Moyes, I think McLeish is a manager that we could easily get if we wanted to, and I think he would be a better option than Houllier, although I'm sure many won't agree with me on that. Looks increasingly certain it will be Houllier and MacDonald though and if it is, they'll certainly get my backing. Let's hope the pair of them can find us a winning formula combining Macca's attacking style with Houllier's focus on defensive stability and a balanced midfield.

According to the papers Houllier needs to 'think about it'. So instead of getting one man who wasn't too sure he wanted the job or not, it would appear we're now getting two guys who aren't that convinced.

I agree with this. It shouldn't take this long to get Houllier from his peripheral role with the French federation, so I agree we must be working on something else, or else Houllier would have been appointed by now (Thursday, yesterday or today even). Houllier is plan B imo. No idea who's plan A, although if I were to hazard a guess I'd say Moyes. Think Randy digs him :winkold:

Houllier, MacDonald and Staunton, eh. Not my idea of a dreamteam, that's for sure. However they should certainly be given time to show us what they can do together. Hopefully they've all learned something from past experiences. Houllier not to buy crap, Macca not to leave us too lightweight in the middle, and Stan, well anything really Who knows if all goes well, with this boot room philosophy and all, maybe we're looking at our future manager here....

There have been a lot of negativity towards Gerard Houllier on this site, to which I have contributed, mostly because of his appalling transfer record at Liverpool, the Baros/Carew incident and, not least, his boring style of football. However I think it's only fair to point out some of the more positive stuff about the man as well, so here goes. -he assisted France when they won the WC in 1998. -his Lyon teams in 2005/06 and 06/07 won the French league with bigger margins (15 points and 17 points) than both his predecessors Santini in 01/02 (2 points) and Paul le Guen in 02/03, 03/04, 04/05 (1, 3 and 12 points) AND his successor Alain Perrin (4 points). -looking at his time at Lyon, in contrast to his Liverpool spell, he actually made quite a number of decent signings, Carew being his first of course. Here's the players he signed for Lyon: John Carew Besiktas £ 5000000 27-06-2005 Benoit Pedretti Marseille Signed 01-07-2005 Sylvain Monsoreau Sochaux Signed 01-07-2005 Tiago Chelsea £ 6500000 23-08-2005 Frederico Chaves Guedes (Fred) Signed 01-09-2005 Kim Kallstrom Rennes Signed 01-08-2006 Jeremy Toulalan Nantes Signed 01-08-2006 Sebastien Squillaci Monaco Signed 01-08-2006 Alou Diarra Lens Signed 01-09-2006 Milan Baros Aston Villa Signed 22-01-2007 Maybe he's grown wiser with age (as most people do hopefully), eh? :winkold:

I don't think it's a straight choice between Houllier, Curbs, Sven or Mac myself. If it was that simple then one of those guys would probably have been appointed by now (by today at least) as all of those apparently were interviewed one or two (or three) days ago. Imo we're trying to sort out a compo for a manager in a job, or we're still searching as we're not totally satisfied with either of the aforementioned candidates.

Thats quite quite harsh on Houllier? > Zola & Brown? I'd have to respectfully disagree there. Nah, just don't rate Houllier much. One good season (ok, maybe two) for Liverpool at a time when competition was poor. His signings make MON look like a God in the transfer market: Vegard Heggem Rosenborg £ 3500000 21-07-1998 Jean-Michel Ferri Istanbulspor £ 1700000 06-01-1999 Frode Kippe Lillestrom £ 700000 06-01-1999 Rigobert Song Salernitana £ 2600000 22-01-1999 Djimi Traore Laval £ 550000 17-02-1999 Sami Hyypia Willem II £ 3000000 18-05-1999 Titi Camara Marseille £ 2600000 02-06-1999 Stephane Henchoz Blackburn £ 3500000 03-06-1999 Sander Westerveld Vitesse Arn. £ 4000000 15-06-1999 Vladimir Smicer Lens £ 4200000 01-07-1999 Erik Meijer B Leverkusen Free 01-07-1999 Dietmar Hamann Newcastle £ 8000000 22-07-1999 Emile Heskey Leicester £ 11000000 10-03-2000 Markus Babbel B Munich Signed 01-06-2000 Bernard Diomede Auxerre £ 3000000 08-06-2000 Pegguy Arphexad Leicester Free 01-07-2000 Gary McAllister Coventry Free 01-07-2000 Nick Barmby Everton £ 6000000 18-07-2000 Christian Ziege Middlesbro £ 5500000 25-08-2000 Gregory Vignal Montpellier £ 500000 23-09-2000 Daniel Sjolund West Ham £ 1000000 30-11-2000 Igor Biscan Dyn. Zagreb £ 5500000 07-12-2000 Jari Litmanen Barcelona Free 04-01-2001 John Arne Riise Monaco £ 4600000 21-06-2001 Jerzy Dudek Feyenoord £ 4850000 31-08-2001 Chris Kirkland Coventry £ 6000000 31-08-2001 Milan Baros Banik Ostrava £ 3600000 23-12-2001 Abel Xavier Everton £ 800000 30-01-2002 El Hadji Diouf Lens £ 10000000 25-06-2002 Bruno Cheyrou Lille £ 3700000 01-07-2002 Anthony Le Tallec Le Havre Signed 01-07-2002 Florent Sinama Pongolle Le Havre Signed 01-07-2002 Alou Diarra B Munich Free 09-07-2002 Salif Diao Sedan £ 5000000 06-08-2002 Steve Finnan Fulham £ 3500000 01-07-2003 Harry Kewell Leeds £ 5000000 09-07-2003 Patrice Luzi Bernardi Monaco Signed 01-09-2003 Djibril Cisse Auxerre £ 14000000 01-07-2004 Hyypiä, Hamann, Babbel, McAllister, Litmanen, Riise, Finnan, Kewell all good signings. The rest pretty poor, average or uninspiring, and that's quite a low percentage of successful signings imo. Wouldn't trust Houllier to sign us any gems if he comes in as manager or a DoF.

Jol>Hitzfeld>McLaren>Moyes>McLeish>Klinsmann>MacDonald>Sven> Hughes>Bilic>Curbishley>Allardyce>Lambert>Brown>Koeman>Zola>Houllier>Southgate

It's better than third rate?

I don't see Curbs as a yes man if I'm honest as he left West Ham because the owners started selling players without his approval. I can think of many worse candidates than Curbs. Not saying I want him mind you.

Don't want Houllier. Too old, heart condition, boring football, pretty crap in the transfer market, doesn't sound like the guy we should be after imo. If this is who we end up with after spending money on a top headhunting agency then Randy should get his money back imo.

I hear Moyes has a tendency of playing people out of position...

In football memory's short so I will base my answer on yesterday's game.

Love him.

I have a lot of time for Tor-Kristian Karlsen. Certainly knows his stuff when it comes to scouring the world for talented players. I read his blog and he seems extremely updated on talent around the world, follows all kinds of youth tournaments and so on. I actually asked him (mostly as a joke) on his blog once if he'd be interested to do a bit of scouting for us, his answer? "Don't think that's a possibility as Martin O'Neill likes to bring in his own players" :-) Only 35 years old, but has been Chief scout for Hannover in 2004-2006, was scout for Bayer Leverkusen in 2000-2004 (is said to be the guy responsible for bringing Berbatov, amongst others, to Leverkusen), scout for Watford in 1998-2000 and Grasshopper-Club Zurich in 96-98. Does punditry/analysis work for BBC Radio Five Live and Norwegian TV2. News writer, analyst and journalistic work for BBC Radio, FIFA Magazine, SportBild, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, The Independent, The Times and Four Four Two. I'd say he's got his sources straight all right, definitely not the guy to spout bollocks for the sake of it. I reckon either Moyes, McCleish, Hughes or Bruce, one of those is my bet, all of whom will cause a bit of a stir (for different reasons) in the British media. Whether we'll be able to get 'our guy' or not, now that's another question.

I thought he lead the line fairly well. Certainly gave Distin something to think about. Yes, I agree, just thought I'd mention it. Played better as the game went on today and had a good second half imo. Just hope he can get over these niggling injuries and go on a long spell fully fit, because then we'll see the real John Carew again.

Carew is playing with a knee injury. Just said on Norwegian telly that he's playing with 'one and a half knee at the moment'. Think it should be taken into consideration.

Well, Everton probably deserved something, but what a fantastic team win. Friedel and the defenders absolutely monumental. Friedel, too old? NEVER! Didn't put a foot wrong, two excellent match winning saves from Saha, and what about that punch almost all the way to the halfway line. Excellent stuff. My MOTM today. Collins not far behind mind. Friedel - 10 MOTM Young - 8 Dunne - 8 Collins - 9 Warnock - 8 NRC - 7 Petrov - 7 Downing - 6 Albrighton - 7 Young - 8 Carew - 7 By those ratings what I'm trying to say is that the midfielders didn't do enough for me today. Worked hard, very good defensively, but on the attacking side they couldn't keep the ball enough meaning it turned out to be a harder day's work for our defenders than it should/could have been. Should have kept the ball more when Everton turned up the pace when Saha came on, even though I appreciate our plan to catch them on the break. Luckily our defenders were all brilliant today. Carew's best period was the 20 mins before he was taken off. More of that, please.

He says the right things does Koeman, infact I really liked that interview. However he just doesn't fill me with any sort of confidence at all. Singlehandedly destroyed the atmosphere in the Valencia dressing room from what I've heard and almost took them down. The success he's had is mostly with excellent teams in poor leagues (competition wise), then again you can only beat what's put infront of you. Would definitely give him a chance if he came, but I can't say I'm very optimistic about this.

Next summer should be great though, looking forward to it already :bonk:

We need a striker and an imposing midfielder imo (urgent needs). Our centre of midfield is pretty weak atm and with Gabby and Carew's injury concerns coupled with Heskey's lack of goals those are the positions that need filling immediately. The General said if decisions have to be made concerning the ins and outs of the playing material then those decision would be made by the board and the caretaker manager. At this stage where it looks more and more likely that we won't get a manager in time to buy his own players, would people trust MacDonald (and the board) to get the 'right' players in? Or is the principle of not buying players without a manager still stronger than a pressing need of said players? (I'm taking for granted that Kev Mac doesn't get the job.)

This would be the perfect scenario for me. Depending on who the striker would be of course :winkold: P.S. An imposing midfielder in the Yaya Toure mould would be ok as well

If it's true what Kev Mac has said that they won't start interviewing other candidates until after the Everton game then we've effectively wasted the two most important weeks of the season, the last two weeks of the summer transfer window. I don't subscribe to the theory that they're stalling an appointment just to avoid spending money on transfers, and I can even see why they wanted to consider Kev Mac as manager after the West Ham game, but I can't for the life of me understand why we couldn't start interviewing people right from the off (three or four days after MON had gone when a short list would (should) have been ready). Drawing up a shortlist doesn't take three weeks. In hindsight it looks as if the West Ham game was a curse in disguise, rather than a fantastic start to the season.

What a pass by Petrov and just as good a cross from Young.

Looking forward to this I really do. The players will come out firing on all sylinders and I think we're in for another 'West Ham performance', perhaps even with a bigger scoreline. Feeling unusually optimistic about this game. -----------------Guzan------------------- Beye------Cuellar-------Dunne------Young ------------NRC--------Petrov------------ Downing---------Ireland------------Bannan -----------------Gabby------------------- 5-0. Gabby 2, Ireland 2, Downing