Robbie, are you comparing Liverpool to Madrid and Barça?

Ha ha ha.

It depends by what you mean with comparison. Despite our woeful form at the moment, I still believe we're one of the best sides in the world, at least our starting XI is. IMO, the top 4 from England and the top 2 from Spain are the best 6 sides in the world. Barca are better than us, but I'm still to be impressed by Madrid.

Nobody knows without insider info, United no longer have to declare any transfer fees to shareholders / the stock exchange and the like, so without seeing the books you couldn't be sure. That's what's laughable about the whole exercise.

If Chelsea win the league then good on them. They would've deserved it. I couldn't give a sh*t about net spend. Just because we got £80m or whatever it was for Ronaldo has absolutely no relation to the value for money or quality of the players brought in this year.

So your fine with Fergie not being even more money for the team from the deal and the owners pocketing the cash?

Arguing about which club has spent more?

You all sound like married couples arguing who has maxed out the joint credit card.

I would've loved to sign Villa and Silva, but we haven't. Rather than whinge about it, we have to get on with what we've got. No excuses, no moaning, we've spent enough in the past (like you) to compete for the league. That's what we need to be doing.

I'm attempting not to argue about that fact (not very well!). My point is regards to the ridculous stat of "net spend". It's a load of rubbish. United have a reported net spend of what? -£60m this season? I still expect us to compete for 4 trophies.

City would have indeed been delighted to have done what Liverpool had done but City fans and Liverpool fans have had a very different level of expectancy over the years and still do.

Remember, it's not that long ago that United had finished way off the pace, in third, behind Chelsea and Arsenal and so-called experts predicted their demise, the fans were in uproar about Glazer and the place was not a happy camp. They've won three league titles since and what has that vital "net spend" been since? You may not like the comparison but it just goes to show.

Let's face it, apart from Gerrard and Torres, how many of your players would any top club clamber to have in their side? Not only does the squad outside the 1-11 not look good enough for the top, the team is nowhere near of the standard required. Have you ever known a top side be so heavily reliant on the fitness of just two players? There's only one bloke who's fault that is.

Yeah, because Gerrard & Torres save goals, control games and do everything.

They're our best players, they're arguably the two best in the league, we're obviously going to be reliant upon them more than any of our other players; however, I do believe some of our other players get little credit for what they do. Benayoun is class, he's always creating stuff yet he's barely spoken of; why? Mascherano is one of the finest players around at doing what he does, the amount of games he keeps us in with his work rate and tenacity really does pass most people by.

IMO, Reina, Agger, Skrtel, Aurelio, Johnson, Mascherano, Benayoun, Gerrard and Torres are all easily good enough for the top sides. It's the rest of the squad we fall short on. We have some players who are boarderline top quality, like Kuyt, Carragher (now he's starting to get on) and Insua's still very raw.

I still believe we'll finish top 4, quite comfortably actually, but we're just gonna have to ride out this next month or so.