This is what they call the Muppet Show

I just despair at some of the negativity surrounding our club at the moment. Below are real posts from supposed Liverpool fans than were posted onto the Echo’s website in response to an article about the need for Rafa to ease Torres back to first team action after his recurring injury problems:

PeteJ wrote:
Here we go again...!! Protecting a one goal advantage.. Not looking to increase our advantage early as possible..
Negative before a ball is even kicked.

I can't be doing with this warming the bench for Torres , He's either fit to play or NOT fit.

Should we go 2 goals down early on Benitez will have him stripped off.. Too little too late..

For the first time in a long time I am not wasting my money flying out to Romainia for this one..

In the past I would be taking two days of work..

Not this time...
23/2/2010 1:00 PM GMT on liverpoolecho.co.uk

steviebabe wrote:
protect protect and more protect, that is the only system Benitez employs, when he won the title with Valencia he did it with a team that conceded least goals ever and scored the least goals ever, it says it all about a negative, arrogant manager who is not fit to lace Shankly's boots and has brought this club to mocking status. 4th place? Don't make me laugh........
23/2/2010 3:02 PM GMT on liverpoolecho.co.uk

TerryYNWAMercer1 wrote:
This man is so stupid, how many times does he allow players back to early and thenthey are out injured again, he should not be played for another couple of weeks, i agree about him being an arrogant manager, i as PeteJ will not be going to this one as i have had enough of Rafa and his boring football... Sorry shanks
23/2/2010 3:17 PM GMT on liverpoolecho.co.uk

Scouser_Ex_Pat wrote:
Take solace lads. Don't give up hope that Juve will come in and swoop this idiot off to Italy. Only then will this nightmare end.
23/2/2010 6:13 PM GMT on liverpoolecho.co.uk

MallyMcNulty wrote:
I dont like the man, but I was jealous when Alex Ferguson was interviewed at half time in the San Siro last week.... when asked if he was going to hold for the Draw (after being very lucky to still be in the game!) He laughed the remark off and replied "No, No - we'll go for the win...."

Fast forward 2 days - Anfield, and the Reds are struggling to make a decent breakthrough Romanian "Part - Timers." Its enough to make you scream with frustration, especially when you consider the position we were in this time last year and how good the team showed they could be against Man United, Real Madrid, Chelsea etc.

Why does the manager persist with the cautious approach that is not winning us enough points to consolidate an early Champions League spot? How many times do we need to needlessly drop points before he realises he needs to try something else?

Does he not believe the players he has signed and the team he has built is good enough to actually play football to win the game?
23/2/2010 9:40 PM GMT on liverpoolecho.co.uk

I don’t get it. I think we’re on a decent League run at the moment with far more consistent form than our rivals for fourth place. We undeservedly lost at the Emirates but that was our only defeat in our last 9 League games and in those games we have only conceded twice and have taken 10 points from a potential 12 off our supposed rivals for fourth spot (if you include Everton alongside Aston Villa, Tottenham and Man City).

When all is said and done, losing away at Arsenal is no disgrace, unlike losing to Hull as City did recently or Wolves at Spurs did.

People went so over the top about our performance in the City game. The media called it a “dour draw” and even the Echo slated it under the headline “TV lucky to miss out on Eastlands shocker”. I watched the game live and, while I admit to being frustrated at the lack of goal-scoring chances we created, on the whole I was not unhappy with our performance and I certainly wasn’t bored. Apparently the majority of people think the only thing watchable in football is goals. Last season, Liverpool were the League’s top scorers with 77 goals. Ignoring added time, Liverpool played 57 hours of Premiership football. If we generously assume it takes a minute for each goal scored, that means for about 55 and a half hours Liverpool were not scoring and were therefore totally unwatchable by that logic. And they were the most prolific team! Why then would anyone watch football at all?

Contrary to the idiots' view, football is not just about goals. It is about winning. In League football, the objective is to win points. Scoring goals helps to achieve that objective but equally so does not conceding.

What I saw at City was a Liverpool team following a game plan, working hard, defending extremely well and trying its best to play some attacking football but severely lacking confidence, form and its best attacking players in the final third of the pitch.

Far from thinking City were there for the taking, I thought our work rate and defensive resilience made them look extremely ordinary. Unfortunately, as has been the case for some time, we lacked sufficient quality in the final third to turn some potentially promising possession into meaningful attacks. If a team’s final ball is poor, they can be called wasteful but what I see from this Liverpool team at present is that often the final ball before the final ball is poor. That doesn’t make the team or the manager negative; it simply proves the lack of quality of the players entrusted to attack. Why is there a lack of quality? To me, the fact that our most potent goal threat and most individually creative player were only fit for a return to the bench after being injured for over six weeks is a major factor. Put a fully fit Fernando Torres and Yossi Benayoun into that team and immediately its chances of creating and taking goal scoring chances increases. Add a fully fit Glen Johnson at right-back to provide some width to the attack and those chances increase even more. Why don't we have more strength in depth? You'd have to ask the owners about that one as it is they, not Rafa, who refuse to invest in the squad.

In the absence of those key attacking players, to me, the most important objective is to avoid being beaten and to continue to pick up points; not to try to play entertaining attacking football using players who do not naturally play that sort of game. Would you expect Carra to perform as well as Reina if Rafa was forced to put him in goal?

Tommy Smith wrote in his Echo column: “You’ve got to score goals to win games. I’d rather see us win 4-3 than draw nil-nil.” Who wouldn’t? We would all rather win by any score than draw but it’s not as though Rafa was given the choice between a 4-3 win and a 0-0 and chose the 0-0. Had we gone gung-ho and tried to attack at all costs, we would have been far more likely to concede 4 than score 4.

Personally, I applaud the manager for the resilience he has restored to the team in the absence of the best attackers. I felt in pre-Christmas games such as Fulham away and Portsmouth away that we were still trying to play the same way as we would if our strongest XI was playing but with vastly inferior understudies such as Degen in the team. The result was that we were dominating possession and creating a few chances that we weren’t able to take but on the whole we struggled creatively and crucially we lost those games.

Compare the results at Stoke and Wolves by contrast to those games. Without our better attacking options, we were strong at the back and came away from potentially tricky away games unbeaten. To respond to Tommy Smith, I would rather draw 0-0 than lose 1-3.

Saying “I’d rather see us win 4-3 than draw nil-nil” is like saying “I’d rather see Ronnie Corbett KO Mike Tyson in a boxing match than see both fighters still standing at the end of the round”. If Ronnie went at Tyson with fists flying from the first bell he would find himself flat on his back in seconds. Just as you can’t expect a midget to out-box a former heavy-weight champion, you can’t expect a side missing its best attackers to annihilate a back four and goalkeeper that cost a combined £53.5m when our entire first XI cost just £63.7m.

Why can’t those who claim to be supporters see the bigger picture? The answer is probably obvious from their posts – they are fucking idiots.

Take PeteJ for example who “can't be doing with this warming the bench for Torres , He's either fit to play or NOT fit.” Let me help, PeteJ. Torres is back in the squad ahead of schedule, is not fit enough to play 90 minutes and using him in any way other than sparingly puts him at significant risk of picking up further injuries. I am curious about PeteJ's comment “For the first time in a long time I am not wasting my money flying out to Romainia for this one..” Flying to Romania to watch Liverpool games is a waste of money considering we haven’t played there since the year 2003.

Then there is steviebabe who calls Rafa arrogant and says he is “not fit to lace Shankly’s boots”. As I stated in a recent post, under Shankly we went six seasons without winning the title finishing 5th three times and finishing as high as second just once so Rafa’s record compares pretty well with that of the great man. If 5th was apparently good enough for Shankly, why does 4th place equal “mocking status” under Rafa? Rafa has also won more European Cups than Shanks too. On what basis does steviebabe call Rafa arrogant? Does he know him personally? And even if Rafa was arrogant, does it matter? Is Alex Ferguson not arrogant? Was Jose Mourinho? Has Arsene Wenger never come across as arrogant? Rafa could drive round shooting puppies for all I care as long as he is helping us towards success.

TerryYNWAMercer1 calls Rafa stupid yet he can’t even use punctuation correctly. Then there is MallyMcNulty who thinks Unirea are “Part-Timers”. Clearly he is unaware that Romania has its own professional League and that Unirea, like Liverpool, dropped into the Europa League from the Champions League where they hammered Rangers 4-1 at Ibrox. Now if we were playing Rangers, would anyone expect us to hammer them? Unirea also drew with Stuttgart and beat Sevilla so they are no mugs. But because MallyMcNulty has never heard of them, he thinks it’s OK to label them part-timers and expect us to effortlessly wipe the floor with them.

Of course, without a hint of irony, MallyMcNulty mentions “how good the [Liverpool] team showed they could be against Man United, Real Madrid, Chelsea etc” last season. Notice, in his mind, it was the team that showed how good they could be and not the manager, as though Rafa deserves no credit for last season despite taking all the blame for this. MallyMcNulty also erroneously claims those results came “this time last year” but actually this time last year the team was struggling. When we drew with City on Sunday, exactly one year before to the day we drew with City before going on to lose 2-0 at the Riverside to soon-to-be-relegated Middlesbrough. We weren’t playing well at that time but despite that, we had an upsurge in form and finished the season strongly as we are capable of doing again.

Liverpool fans were once famed for their knowledge of the game. Sadly, in the modern game any moran can attach himself or herself to our great club and start spouting crap. It's such a shame the club can't disown supporters. I do despair!