Liverpool
Premiership: Runners up. Otherwise always in CL places/qualified as winners
CL: Generally QF or better. Runner up once. Winner once.
Carling Cup, Final
FA cup, winner, semifinalist.

Arsenal:
Premiership: Winner once, Runner up once. Otherwise always in CL places
CL Generally QF or better, Runner up once.
Carling cup: Final
FA cup, Winner, semifinalist.

On paper, there really isnt much difference. Liverpool better in Europe and we've been better in the league Sure they looked good this season, just like we did last season. Big deal.

Now add in the fact that Arsenal hae also sorted out their new stadium, while Liverpool are struggling to get going. Also Arsenal hae done all this spending less money than the scousers.

I know the trophies havent been there, but there really isnt much differnece. If anything, we have achieved much much more in terms of taking the business forward, despite having a smaller franchise.

We shouldnt underestimate the imporance of this. I do think the punters are now right to be demanding somethijng by way of silverware, and Arsene's goodwill with the support has been stretched as far as it can. Still, peopple could do with retaining some persepctive before going too crazy and calling for anyones head.

I do it since Rafa has taken over.

Arsenal have won nothing and finished above Liverpool twice (once on the back end of your good times). Liverpool have won the European cup, reached another final and are the top rated side in Europe.

Since 2004 you've gone from being probably the best side in Europe to being fairly average. Liverpool have gone from being very average to being one of the best sides in Europe.

Arsenal have spent far less. That's a good thing. I guess.

you can certainly do that, but i'm biased ;)
The pointi'm trying to make is that anyone claiming that arsenal are way way off the pace is seling us a bit short

I'm not sure it is. English football is so strong in comparison to other leagues you have to be unlucky in the draw not to get a fair way into the competition. Unless you mean Barca, Madrid, one or two of the Italian teams and the English teams then you're almost dead cert for the next round.

For me, it is the slide from a great side to a side that has dropped to fourth and has lost, without any suitable replacements, some of the greatest players to play in this league.

Depends on momentum vs figures, I reckon.

Liverpool look to be in the ascendency ATM. You can say that they were way off the pace last season when we were almost there Premiership-wise, but while he has Benitez has kept his key players and they have kept their form, we have lost ours, lost form.

Still EPL wise, not winning is not winning, and bottom line Benitez hasn't won it.

Funny but CL wise - I don't see such a huge difference when you consider that they won it on penalties, and we lost in the last 10 minutes of our final. I'd say that even with our inexperienced players, there's pretty much parity there.

And I have always said that getting the stadium built rightly should be considered in the level of the club's achievement!

I think that is an unbelievable skewed view, mate.

I think you can only judge it on the here and now and where both teams are.

Liverpool have more balance right now, and a better winning mentality.

However, I also happen to think we can change all that fairly quickly with a couple of signings and a change in attitude.

I think that's a very good point.

I think Liverpool and United are head and shoulders above everyone else because we will both die to get the job done. I honestly think that's an awesome difference to have.

Yep. Look how Hiddink and the return of Essien helped Chelsea out too. Fair enough, they lost it at the end of the Barca game, but only 'cos they felt wronged and had worked their arses off in the away leg.

The Scousers will go bust under Benitez or the Board will have to sack him. He is the absolute diametric opposite of Arsene. Listen to his rant about Man U buying the title. He thinks he should be allowed to buy it. Just watch all the toys come out of the pram in the next year.

well let me paint a picture for you. And I'm not having a pop.

Torres, after a very good season, gets courted by a few big continental clubs and next season has a stinker since he is mentally elsewhere.
Gerrard gets injured. Alonso goes to Juve and you dont get barry since the yanks in charge bugger up the numbers. Again
You have a crap start and are out of the title race bar three miracles by january (and I'm being generous there).
By the end of the season you are grappling with everton/villa for fourth.

It could easilly happen, and this season will ahve been a false dawn just like last season turned out to be for us.

The reality is that aresenal and liverpol are at their natural level in 3rd/4th for the forseeable. The margins between 1st and 3rd were tiny last season, so id call your second place now more or less the same thing. Otherwise, youre maybe slightly ahead of us, at a time when we've diverted resources towards a new stadium.

As soon as you have to start paying a mortgage for the new carlsberg-anfieldbowl ™ that balance will swing back the other way, and we will also then be making kmore inroads restructuring our board and posssibly tapping kronke for a transfer kitty.

Even then neither club will be able to take manyoo or chelsea* on directly.

*I'm assuming he will still be there for a couple of years before he blows up

I would say united would die to get the job done in any competition. For the scousers only the CL. All you have to do is look at the number of games they drew in the PL when they should have won this year.

And the games we came back after it looked like we would draw or even lose?

Why?

well were (over) analysisng two matches here while the thread is about 5 years on and off the field.

But if were going there - liverpool clawed back three goals in open play when they were down and out, and also defended agasint a strong attack towards the end.

Arsenal failed to hold a 1-0 and bottled chances to kill the game, albeit with 10 men for most of the match.

Youd have to hand it to the scousers on that one and thats without looking at the results. but like I said, those are two isolated incidents

I see. kind of.

Well the truth is that I was not simply comparing manners of victory/defeat, or achievement in doing so. What I was trying to say is that while I accept that Liverpool have a CL trophy under Benitez, its hardly fair to say that there is that much difference between the sides in terms of how they have performed in the competition since Benitez started.

Liverpool are ahead in terms of the past 4 years' results. But not by that much.

I agree with BiB here.

I think North Bank has a point, but i think those games they drew in the league came from a lack of creativity, or something different, rather than not willing to run the extra mile.

Liverpool and United work harder than everyone else, and that's worth ten points a season from where im sittin.

:good:

The games where have drawn are generally down to being a bad day or the other team parking the bus; Hull and Stoke would be an example for both of these.

There really is. That is why UEFA rate us as the top team. I think you're very, very unfair to say that we've been all that close in the European cup.

League is a different matter. I accept and add to the criticism aimed at Rafa for not doing better in the league. The European Cup is a whole different kettle of fish, though.

If you look at it VERY simply (and probably wrongly) and without even considering the quality of opposition faced:

2004/5
Liverpool: Winners 5
Arsenal: First KO round 1

2005/6
Liverpool: First KO round 1
Arsenal: Final 4

2006/7
Liverpool: Final 4
Arsenal: First KO round 1

2007/8
Liverpool: Semi-Finals 3
Arsenal: Quarter-Finals 2

2008/9
Liverpool: Quarter-Finals 2
Arsenal: Semi-Finals 3


Total
Liverpool: 15
Arsenal: 11

1 First KO
2 QF
3 SF
4 Final
5 Winner

Liverpool have won no silverware for three years, chelsea potentially for two years (unless they win the FA cup).
As some (like me) have posted all year long winning silverware is really hard and the game in england is at a much higher level than it was three or four years ago.
Rafa has momentum as he has invested massive amounts of cash in his first team to match united and chelsea's first teams but crucially neither liverpool or chelsea have anywhere near the depth of united (yes even chelsea struggle in some areas in this respect).
Arsenal's first team however got beaten to varying degrees in six games in the past month against the top three (save potentially the curious game last saturday when united were edgy). I missed a lot of the debate on here the past week or so but i've personally not got my head round quite why we were so wretched in at least five of those six games. I think it was because with the exception of arshavin at 'pool our strikers and goal scorers were in wretched form, our midfield wasn't protecting the back four and our back four was weak/uncommanding to say the least but something went horribly wrong again with the balance of the team and we became the arsenal of circa October/November vintage against Hull, Villa and Citeh and hence we looked leaderless, lacklustre and low on confidence.
We've been up and down all season in all honesty and really missed Gallas' prescence in the key games, to me it just highlights too much fragility in the first team squad but I honestly don't see liverpool or chelsea as being that far ahead of us and certainly think a couple of similar injuries to their cores would hurt them just as much.
If arsene clears house (ie ade goes), buys well in defence, settles on a formation and gets his key player's (fabregas') mojo working again we could easily swap roles with them next season but United's squad remains too strong for us or anyone else to win the league next season IMO.

2 out of 5 finals. 3 out of 5 semis and 4 out of 5 quarters.

Then you look at the clubs we faced and beat. Sheesh.

Maybe like Torres and Gerrard you mean?

maybe if you also added in carragher at the same time to cover losing gallas for those six key games but there's a world of difference to missing a game here or there which those two did and losing four months solid with a medial like cesc and a year with a broken leg (eduardo) and please remember how you got tonked at home by Chelsea 3-1 when they were both wobbly fitnesswise otherwise you've had few big injuries to your core.

I'd like to weigh in on a few things here

first, it's unfair not to give Pool credit for persevering through injuries
Bibbles, you told me this before -- how many games have Gerrard and Torres played together this season? And how many of the wins over mancs and chavs came without one or both of them?

second, following up on that, I think it's foolish to think that Liverpool hasn't been the much better team this year. Is anybody seriously arguing against that claim?

third, this debate risks losing sight of reality and getting sucked into the statty ranking fallacy. What's the question? Something like -- retrospectively -- who has been the better team over the last five years? Or -- predictively -- which team (based on the last five years) will be better in coming season or two?

If we're trying to answer either of those questions, all the numbers folks are throwing around (uefa ranking, league position, etc.) don't mean nearly as much as y'all seem to think they do. A wise man, who called himself Syn, once told me that football is a game of fine margins.™ The end result -- of a game, a season, a series of seasons -- creates this false impression of essential quality; when the reality is, it could have played out totally differently. That's even more the case when trying to predict the future.

But if you want numbers, these are the ones that seem to me to matter most:

• 2009 finishes: Pool 14 pts ahead of Arsenal
• 2008: Arsenal 7 pts ahead of Pool
• 2007: tied on pts
• 2006: Pool 15 pts ahead
• 2005: Arsenal 22 pts ahead

Both teams have their excuses for why they haven't done as well as they'd like. That period's been dominated, for Pool, by Rafa's need to build the team he wants; for Arsenal, by the limitations created by the construction of the new stadium. But it seems to me that anybody, who looks at that recent history and concludes that either Arsenal or Liverpool has a meaningful advantage over the other, is probably biased.

I agree. But they dont have a new stadium and their board is in worse shape than ours.
Swings and roundabouts but from 10,00 feet its not clear to me theres much between the two institutions.

Wenger said he would want to leave arsenal in better shape than when he came in. If he left formadrid now, I honestly think he could pat himselff on the back and say mission accomplished, in that sense. Of course I think he wants to do more here but theres no denying he has turned a mid table club into something much bigger. A few barren seasons shouldnt detract from that.

exactly jens. That was the point behind nayan's thread. They are hardly miles ahead yet have no stadium and a shed load of debt from rafa's spending, in effect, they are like a mini chelsea.
They are nowhere near united in terms of squad depth but are potless and have won no gold for three years. How selling babel, lucas and losing hypia so you can buy tevez resolves that is beyond me. Rafa is becoming obsessed by his pursuit of united and the league IMHO.

Beyond ridiculous. We are 105m in debt and have a 45k seater stadium.

He hasn't said he's going to sell Lucas, and Babel to buy Tevez though. He hasn't even said he wants Tevez. Hyypia wanted to leave to get first team football for the last few years of his career.


Jens, they've played about a dozen league games together. They've both started against the other big 4 twice (Chelsea 2-0 and United 4-1).

Gerrard has played 30 league games this season, Torres 23. That will probably include sub appearances too - of which Torres has made about 3 or 4.

Fabregas has made 21 league games, whilst I won't even include Eduardo.

apart from liverpool's 'special nights in europe' and our unbeten season there isnt much between them apart from a shiny new stadium.

So I think of those who curse the stadium and wish we'd stayed at highbury. Sure we might have been able to spend a little more on players, but we'd not be making succh a big gate either. Liverpool hae stayed in their old stadium way longer than they shouldve and they have spent a lot more.

What has it got them? Sure they won the CL and credit tothem for that, but they still ahvent won the league. Otherwise its all much of a muchness.

Wenger has helped get us into a new stadium and, even if they arent ready to win the legue, he does have an army of talent pushing through. For me he has kept pace witth liverpol for the most part too.

Sure it would be nice to hae picked up more silverware along the way but He has still done remarkably well over those five years.

There have been few mistakes. One I think is not keeping last yers squad together. Another is giving us the message that there is money to spend, yet never spending anything and still claiming the team is ready to dominate. Very bad PR that.

Still I think theres a lot more thats right than not. Its just time to pay the fans back for their patience now.

I concur.

Bottom line is that the Scousers are all mouth over a CL title and an improved season this year.

This year it is quite likely that Liverpool will be 4 points off Manure at the top on 87 and 91 points respectively. We reached the CL semis, Liverpool went out in the quarters.

Last year we were 4 points off Manure at the top with 83 and 87 points respectively. Liverpool reached the CL semis, we went out in the quarters.

Liverpool reached the CL final and won it in 2005, we reached the CL final and lost in 2006.

Can someone please tell me how there is the massive difference between our teams that TIB is indicating exists, because an impartial observer would surely beg to differ.

Bothj clubs have brand new shiny ovaloid things which, every match generates more revenue from the posh seats than the whole of highbury used to...

However our's is in 3-D and liverpool's is in still 2-D...

and they got to the semis by cheating!

:haha:

The 'quality' of football debate on this forum is rock fuckin' bottom.

No one's making you stay :tiphat:

How many times do I have to say this?

We did not cheat you!

....we got the ref to do it for us.

Tounge in cheek comment by Jens that was i believe

True though

You didn't, no.

The ref denied us a fair crack, though.

edit: Damn. <_<