LB, I certainly never intend to diss you or anything.

LB’s posts and viewpoints has never been anti-Rafa as far as I’m concerned. Perhaps my definition of “ARCs” was a bit unspecific, it was only directed at those who have a irrational hatred of anything and everything Rafa does, which LB is NOT.

As FS has noted, when the criticism blew out of proportion, LB was one of the first to figure out that Liverpool stand to lose more by removing Rafa than to have him stay and ride out the storm. And if you noticed, I have never once countered LB even when he is critical of some of Rafa’s methods, because he speaks sense.

Anyway, I think I’m done winding up BM enough for now, so I’ll take you guys’ advice and ignore him from now on, lest I unintentionally include even FS in my trollings.

Since then our performances have improved dramatically at least in terms of commitment and any doubts I had about Rafa and the dressing room seem to have been dispelled, Derby game or not, a team that has lost faith in its manager does not perform with that level of determination when they no longer believe in the man in charge.

Have you noticed that we seem to go through the same things every season, we start slowly,(even last year when we fought wonderfully and won a lot of early games our play was disjointed)hit a bad spot about dec/jan and then finish the last part of the season well.

Last year the game against middlesborough was the low spot, no commitment, no quality quite awful and then we preceded to go on a marvellous run.
This year the real low spot was the Portsmouth game not only was the performance diabolical but we didn’t seem to care and although it has taken us longer to pick ourself up we seem to have decided to roll our socks up and at least try to fight for the results, belief has been slower in coming and we are not out of the woods yet, but the optimist in me hopes we have turned the corner.

You may not have meant it that way, but you’ve just lumped LB and BM in the same boat.
That’s just not on!

I think you are letting your personal fued with BM get in the way of reasoned thinking… and frankly some of your posts are showing it… best you started ignoring him and move on.

I may not always agree with LB, but he generally makes good arguments for his point of view… not that he needs me fighting his battles.

I happen to think he talks sense specifically because I’ve played in teams that were good, but whose weekly performances were as lost as LFC have been this season.

Maybe that experience allows me to be a little less critical of such performances… even though I’m firmly in the “die for the red cause” and “leave it all on the field” camps.

And we won’t have to play well.
That would certainly be nice.

…But I’ll settle for us playing scrappy, holding defensively solid, while getting dominated for 89 minutes, but with the exception of 60 seconds during which…

…A wayward backpass fall to Dirk Kuyt, who then slices his shot, horribly off-target, until it hits Gallas in the knee-caps, changing direction, until it whacks Sagna in the face, rebounding and wrong footing Almunia, then deflecting in over the line off Vermaelin’s left testicle… for a 1-0 win… and if that happens… I’ll take it.

Though unlike Bascombe, who was seen as being too close to Houllier and has now sold out to the Sunday Rag, Tomkins has always based his arguments on pure, solid facts.

Facts which the ARCs refuse to even read, because they know they’ll look like idiots if they do as they are absolutely correct, and so they resort to personal insults and BM-style goal post moving whenever the “argument” suits them.

As seen in the last few paragraphs of that latest Tomkins’ article, these ARCs simply refuse to believe the fact that the Chavs have now conceded more in set pieces (via man marking) than us (via zonal marking).

Once all the dust is settled, these ARCs will be revealed to be the illogical pricks that they are, talking out of their arses, and we should spare them no mercy in rubbing them in everytime they dare come back with these untruths.

The moment they run out of sticks to bash Rafa with and resort to personal insults on the people who list facts to refute and ridicule them, then they have lost. Just look at my new admirer BM as a perfect example of what I mean. :p

The quality of football has not really improved in the last few weeks but the defending has. The character looks more like what we have come to expect. We haven’t gone a goal down in recent weeks. It will be interesting to see how we handle that next time it happens.

We will have to show character on Wednesday night because Arsenal will play us off the park at times during the match. They always do to sides at the Emirates. We haven’t won away to Arsenal in 10 years! February 2000. Titi Camara 1-0.

We’ll have to play very well to get a result.

Wounded animal or not i think we are well up for this.I agree Aitch there`s no need for champagne footy just results we need now from here on in.By any means nessesary i`d say.
We are gaining some much needed confidence though and the players belief in themselves and each other is growing with every game.Lets hope we can continue this good run and expose their own nervousness.I think the players wil sense any doubt Arsenal will have and hoprfully capitalise on it.After all they`ll know that feeling only to well.