AFTER GUARDS OF HONOUR, rounds of applause and general fume Neil Atkinson is joined by Gareth Roberts, Simon Hughes and Marie Lunde to discuss the football. The actual football and that.
They also look at where the club goes next. Full and frank as ever.
The Anfield Wrap.
On the point of Gerrard putting pressure on the owners to spend, the counter argument would be the owners throwing it back at the ones involved with transfers and say what have you done with the money I’ve given ya
I’d say our transfers hit rate for the past 3 years have been at best 30%, which is pretty woeful. I’m sure if we are better in the market and not as incompetent as we are, FSG would be more willing to shell out cash
I don’t particularly agree that Can should now be seen as a RB/DC rather than the position, I can only assume, he was bought to fill, Centre Mid. Neil’s argument that he doesnt want to see Can in the mid next year, well if he doesnt play in that position how can we say whether he’ll do well or not?
Yeah, players improve, he’s still young. I still expect him to be a midfielder, unfortunately the bloke he could be learning from is leaving for the US soon
I don’t think he can play as the deepest mid though, he is better box to box like Yaya Toure, has the ability to pass and also that surge to break the lines.
I’m basically sick of seeing him at full back, it’s not helping the lad
Elephant in the room – every time you all talk about the need to sign two £50m proven belters this summer you never mention any names. Who are these 20 goal a season strikers just waiting to join us? Look through any list of the Top 100 players in the world and I reckon you’ll get to the 50s and 60s before there are any players you can imagine signing for a non-CL club. I’m all for being ambitious but we also need to be realistic – the players we sign this summer will either have to have failed at a big club (like sturridge or coutinho) or be a risky signing other bigger clubs aren’t willing to take (like suarez). Slamming our recruitment is all well and good but you don’t seem to be acknowledging the market we’re in
By all accounts Rodgers wanted Bony and Bony was prepared to come but we would pay the £19mil and wages. I’m convinced if we’d had Bony we’d be sitting at least 4th right now. So by scrimping a few mil we’ve missed out on the CL and 10s of millions.
None of us on here employ a scouting network, a transfer committee or specialised analysists to find and convince players to join. That’s their job day in day out and we ended up with Balotelli.
Really?? That’s what they came up with!!!
In fact, why not try this next time you’re going to criticise our recruitment – imagine yourself as a spurs fans saying the same thing (with less recent success but being based in London I’d say spurs are the club at a most similar level to us in terms of appeal to players particularly when you take ffp into account)
“I’m sick of £20m signings. We could have signed Alexis Sanchez if Daniel Levy cared as much as I do”
“Why isn’t Darren Anderton involved in recruitment? Imagine if he’d turned up at that meeting with Memphis Depay, how could he have said no?”
“We are Spurs. We’re a big club. I don’t know why we don’t just sign goals this summer and focus on winning the league. After all, beating the bottom 13 sides home and away is easy”
“Pochetinno’s won nothing. If only Levy would pull his finger out we could box off Klopp easily – I’ve found an interview where he once said that White Hart Lane was a nice stadium”
The only equivalency between us and Spurs is recent similar league finishes.
In the last 10 yrs we’ve won the CL, got to another final, several quarter/semi final finishes, challenged for the title twice, won the FA Cup, won the Carling Cup, few other cup finals/semis. What’s Spurs done?!
We’re a big club having a lean spell.
Spurs are just a mediocre club!