MOST conversations between footie fans end up boiling down to the same thing: the aspiration, the reality and the unexplained gap that lies in between.
What fills that gap — the knowledge of what really happens behind walls, in boardrooms, on training pitches, in conversation, on email, over phones — is influenced by all kinds: conjecture, rumour, analysis, stats, history, expectation, one-eyed football fandom, agent talk, click bait, football club politics….take your pick.
It’s a maelstrom that is intriguing and frustrating in equal measure. Ultimately, it’s always there, never sated, always yearning: the unknown — what could have been and what might be. How it can change. How it can get better. It’s worse than ever when there is no actual football to get stuck into; the limbo of the close season.
Take Liverpool’s search for a ‘top’ striker for example; a certain starter — the 30-goal a season man.
Danny Ings, at 22 and with only one Premier League campaign to his name, is unlikely to be starting week in week out for Liverpool on a regular basis anytime soon.
He is, you would guess (hope, pray…), more likely to be rotated in and out of the side, used as a substitute, eased into his career as a Liverpool player.
So that leaves Liverpool still looking for a star: a reliable goal-getter. As close to guaranteed as money can buy.
And so we have the names. Endless names. New ones every day. Christian Benteke, Stevan Jovetic, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Carlos Tevez, Alexandre Lacazette, Jackson Martinez, Luciano Vietto…
What striker would you ideally like to see wearing the red? What striker do you think Liverpool could realistically lure (and afford)?
Aspiration. Gap. Reality.
The answers to these questions — however you choose to reach them — will inform how you react to the club being linked to Benteke. Or signing Ings.
Some will say that is where we are now: resigned to plundering squads of clubs lower down the food chain; bullying only those deemed to be bulliable. Others will say we should aim higher; swing more punches, get cheekier, cleverer, more left-field. You want Raheem Sterling, Manchester United? Give us strikers then. All the strikers.
Yet more will point to the adherence to the Financial Fair Play rules or Liverpool’s rankings in the money stakes. Some will have watched the FA Cup final, read about £32.5million price tags and gone for a long walk.
Whichever applies, everyone knows Liverpool need goals. Swapping 82 of them for £75million didn’t work in the case of Luis Suarez while Daniel Sturridge’s combination of groin strains, ankle trouble, hip problems and a hamstring injury means he has now missed 54 games for the Reds since signing from Chelsea in January 2013.
Meanwhile, Mario Balotelli is for sale with the calculated gamble deemed to have failed, Fabio Borini has been frozen out and Rickie Lambert is unlikely to be running out on a sunny day in August wearing the Liverpool red.
Sterling could be another to leave if he gets his way.
The lads going the opposite way in the revolving door – the aforementioned Ings and fellow rookie goal-getter Divock Origi – don’t look ready to shoulder the burden of being a leading striker at Liverpool. A No.3, a No.4, Ok. A starter in the biggest games of the season? Very worrying if that turns out to be the case.
Ings finished the season with 11 goals for relegated Burnley — more than a third of their 28-goal haul for a campaign that yielded just seven league wins (and more than Lambert, Borini and Balotelli managed between them for Liverpool). So better team, better players, more chances, more goals? Ings hit the net 26 times in all competitions the season before, albeit that The Clarets were competing in the Championship then. But question marks over his ruthlessness in front of goal remain. We’ll see.
Origi, 20, managed 10 goals for club and country in 2014-15. Now his loan spell at Lille is over he doesn’t exactly feel like the answer to Liverpool’s woes either. The consensus is the chequebook needs to be brandished and soon.
So who do we get in? Benteke talk has cooled with Liverpool seemingly unprepared to pay his reported release clause. Instead it would be lovely to go and cherry pick from the very best in Europe and plenty of fans advocate we should do just that.
But if we go off goals records alone the continent’s very best is made up of some very familiar names — many that Liverpool simply wouldn’t — or couldn’t — sign: Ronaldo (48 goals), Messi (43), Lacazette (27), Aguero (26), Neymar (22), Griezmann (22), Toni (22), Kane (21), Costa (20).
Huge fees, long contracts, big release clauses or clubs that simply won’t play ball (as we should never do with Manchester United when it comes to transfers) — all stand in the way of a move to Liverpool.
Left-field? Luca Toni’s 22 goals in Serie A say he’s well worth a look. But at 38 years old he’s unlikely to fancy the pressing.
Proven potential? Lacazette, 24, says he wants to play in the Champions League. The Lyon president even threw in the line: “Remind me what European Cup Liverpool are playing next season?” (Remind us how many you’ve won, dickhead).
The aspiration. The reality.
The demand for the ‘marquee’, in-demand, big signing; gazumping big rivals to a signature — how realistic is that right now under this manager with these owners? Liverpool won’t be competing in the Champions League, have just finished sixth in the Premier League and uncertainty surrounds the club following the departure of Brendan Rodgers’ nearest and dearest on the coaching staff.
It can’t help the sell. And who is making the sell?
Then there is the issue of the wages on offer. Could Liverpool blow the current wage structure for a belter or two? Forget the rigid financial definition of ‘value’ and think of the other one — value on the pitch? Could they afford the ‘statement of intent’ a big signing would bring with him given that two of the biggest earners on the books — Steven Gerrard and Glen Johnson — have now departed and Liverpool look shorn of a superstar?
Maybe. But three years ago John Henry penned an open letter to fans that set out a transfer strategy that is “about getting maximum value for what is spent so that we can build quality and depth”. The former should be the aim now but the latter still seems to rule.
The same letter told how FSG are “avowed proponents of Uefa’s Financial Fair Play agenda” — something now likely to be “eased” according to Michel Platini.
Henry added back then: “Spending is not merely about buying talent. Our ambitions do not lie in cementing a mid-table place with expensive, short-term quick fixes that will only contribute for a couple of years.
“Our emphasis will be on developing our own players using the skills of an increasingly impressive coaching team. Much thought and investment already have gone into developing a self-sustaining pool of youngsters imbued in the club’s traditions.”
Spending big on a nailed on belter and bollocks to the resale value? All evidence suggests it’s unlikely.
Throw in too, Liverpool’s questionable negotiation nous that has seen top target after top target head elsewhere, and the club’s move towards performance-related contracts.
Discussing the contracts, Ian Ayre said: “In any business you can make lots of money but if you let it go out of the door in other ways, then you are in trouble.
“The obvious biggest outgoing is players’ wages and transfer fees. That’s taken a pretty dramatic change in terms of how we look at it, analyse it and pay for it — and how we structure contracts.
“We pay good pay for our players; we pay fair pay. But we also like to give them the appetite to earn more which we know footballers like to do. As we all do.
“That’s a far cry from deals where it is sort of nailed on and then it doesn’t matter whether they perform or do not perform. So we are just trying to find a balance. I think other teams are doing that as well — or at least trying to do that.”
What of the teams that aren’t doing that? If it’s a performance-related contract v a ‘nailed on’ payment, what do you, the player, go for? If it comes to a demand for a ‘nailed on’ deal in negotiations, what do Liverpool do?
Too often it feels like Liverpool make a hard job even harder when it comes to competing at the top, whether it’s age profiles, resale values, wage structures or types of contract. No one is saying ‘do a Leeds’ but the odd exception to the rule can’t hurt, can it?
Since FSG acquired the keys to Anfield in 2010 around £323million has been spent on players under the reigns of Brendan Rodgers and Kenny Dalglish (£212m and £111m) with circa £209m recouped. The 10 most expensive deals, according to our mates at LFC History, are below.
BIG BUYS UNDER FSG
- Andy Carroll £35m – January 2011
- Adam Lallana £25m – July 2014
- Luis Suarez £22.8m – January 2011
- Dejan Lovren £20m – July 2014
- Lazar Markovic £19.8m – July 2014
- Stewart Downing £18.5m – July 2011
- Jordan Henderson £16m – June 2011
- Mario Balotelli £16m – August 2014
- Joe Allen £15m – August 2012
- Mamadou Sakho £15m – August 2012
Henry again in 2012: “We will build and grow from within, buy prudently and cleverly and never again waste resources on inflated transfer fees and unrealistic wages. We have no fear of spending and competing with the very best but we will not overpay for players.”
So the strikers we all want to see? The big names, the tricky foreigners, the lads ripping it up in La Liga and Serie A?
Unless they’re damaged goods, free, ready to take a pay cut or within the acceptable age range and deemed ‘value’ it’s unlikely we’ll see them at Anfield anytime soon.
But then again, when did Liverpool *ever* buy the true superstars up front? Not as often as you might think, although we’ve been fortunate enough to bring a couple of decent lads through the ranks, Robbie Fowler and that lad who ended up at Manchester United for starters.
That said, the list below shows that of the strikers brought to the club in the last 15 years, the two most successful — Fernando Torres and Luis Suarez — were two of the most exciting, most expensive and were widely known to have pedigree. Is the club spending too much time looking for secrets that don’t exist?
When Liverpool played a then club record £20m to Atletico Madrid in 2007 to sign the Spanish side’s skipper Torres on a six-year deal, the then 23-year-old had been Atletico’s leading scorer in each of the previous five campaigns. Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal had also shown an interest, among others.
The Reds were recent beaten finalists in the Champions League and had finished third in the league. The manager had won the European Cup, the UEFA Cup and La Liga twice. A decent sell.
The Liverpool led by club legend Kenny Dalglish in his second spell was less of a sell. But Suarez joined anyway.
Then 24, he joined Liverpool on a five-and-a-half year deal after a season scoring 49 goals in 48 games for Ajax in the Eredivisie. His overall record there was 111 goals in 159 appearances.
He had just finished serving a seven-match ban for biting PSV Eindhoven’s Otman Bakkal on the shoulder but Rory Smith wrote in the Telegraph at the time that “Beating De Boer’s deadline to sign one of the most sought after players in Europe represents a considerable coup for Comolli and FSG.”
Suarez had joined a club that had finished seventh the previous season was competing ‘only’ in the Europa League and went on to finish sixth four months after he pulled on the number seven shirt at Anfield.
It is possible for Liverpool to uncover a star then. A coup can happen. Even when the sell is difficult. Even under these owners. With this wage structure. With these contracts.
But how hard are Liverpool looking? How determined are they to not repeat the mistakes of last summer? Shouldn’t they want to win? Be desperate to get better? Can’t they see the value of sometimes straying from their own rigidly enforced boundaries?
Reality. Gap. Aspiration.
What’s in that gap at Liverpool? The next two months will tell us more.
Until then, keep on filling the gap. It’s half the fun.
Strikers
| Player | Bought from | Fee | Signed | Games/Goals |
| Mario Balotelli | AC Milan | £16,000,000 | August 2014 | 28/4 |
| Divick Origi | Lille | £9,800,000 | July 2014 | 0/0 |
| Rickie Lambert | Southampton | £4,500,000 | June 2014 | 33/3 |
| Iago Aspas | Celta Vigo | £7,000,000 | June 2013 | 15/1 |
| Daniel Sturridge | Chelsea | £12,000,000 | January 2013 | 67/40 |
| Samed Yesil | Leverkusen | £1,000,000 | August 2012 | 2/0 |
| Fabio Borini | Roma | £10,400,000 | July 2012 | 38/3 |
| Craig Bellamy | Manchester City | Free | August 2011 | 37/9 |
| Luis Suarez | Ajax | £22,800,000 | January 2011 | 133/82 |
| Andy Carroll | Newcastle United | £35,000,000 | January 2011 | 58/11 |
| David N’Gog | Paris St Germain | £1,500,000 | July 2008 | 94/19 |
| Robbie Keane | Tottenham | £19,000,000 | July 2008 | 28/7 |
| Lauri Dalla Valle | JIPPO | £600,000 | November 2007 | 1/0 |
| Fernando Torres | Atletico Madrid | £20,200,000 | July 2007 | 142/81 |
| Andriy Voronin | Free Transfer | Free | July 2007 | 40/6 |
| Krisztián Németh | MTK Hungaria | Undisclosed | May 2007 | 0/0 |
| Dirk Kuyt | Feyenoord | £9,000,000 | August 2006 | 285/71 |
| Craig Bellamy | Blackburn Rovers | £6,000,000 | July 2006 | 42/9 |
| Robbie Fowler | Manchester City | Free | January 2006 | 39/12 |
| Peter Crouch | Southampton | £7,000,000 | July 2005 | 134/42 |
| Fernando Morientes | Real Madrid | £6,300,000 | January 2005 | 61/12 |
| Djibril Cissé | Auxerre | £14,500,000 | July 2004 | 79/24 |
| Florent Sinama-Pongolle | Le Havre | £1,500,000 | July 2003 | 66/9 |
| El Hadji Diouf | Lens | £10,000,000 | June 2002 | 80/6 |
| Nicolas Anelka | Paris St Germain | On Loan | December 2001 | 22/5 |
| Milan Baros | Banik Ostrava | £3,200,000 | July 2001 | 108/27 |
| Emile Heskey | Leicester City | £11,000,000 | March 2000 | 223/60 |
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If FSG look at that list of top 10 buys that they’ve made since they’ve came, they’ll walk away with their head in their hands.
How many can be said are successes??
Suarez & Henderson. With the jury out on Lallana and Sakho and even less so on Allen and Markovic.
There’s a reason strikers cost so much…they do the vital thing to win games….score goals! Or that’s the theory.
They’ve spent over £20mil twice on strikers with one being a fantastic success and the other a fantastic failure although everyone knew he was vastly overpriced. How do we expect to guarantee goals if we’re not willing to pay for the talent?! Of all the strikers brought in under FSG only 2 are successes, no other even comes close. There’s something massively wrong with that!
What is the infamous transfer/scouting committee doing?? If anyone deserved to go this summer it was them. How can they buy players the manager clearly doesn’t want and they clearly don’t fit the system??
If FSG are so worried about getting value and not wasting money then how about buying players that the manager wants that suits the style he wants to play!
Jury out on Sakho? He’s the best centre back in England. A natural born leader. If he was with us a year or two longer and/or had a manager who wasn’t afraid of strong personalities he’d be our captain.
And to think Lovren was bought for £20m to replace him.
I love Sakho and when fit he’s one of the first names on the team sheet for me but he’s rarely fit. Since he’s arrived he’s yet to be fit for a few months in a row therefore he can’t be relied on. Sturridge is starting to slip into the category too.
Lovren wasn’t bought to replace Sakho. A certain Daniel Agger left before Lovren was brought in.
Pencil in Sakho and Lucas and you’ve solved much if our defensive weakness. That pairing coincided with the revival of Mignolet. Unfortunately our ‘manager’ didn’t notice until almost too late.
You are right. He should have played both of them injured or not.
Correct.
100% agree on Sakho, he’s a proven leader and he was 1 of a rare few that got in the trenches when we were getting well beaten in Stoke, that’s when you find out your real captains your real leaders. We had 2 that day and 1 has left which was our former captain.
On the striker front, you get what you pay for, look at City and Chelsea they bought goals plus there is no shame in that. I worry until the manager issue is solved we can’t sell the club to a bug money signing for goals.
“On the striker front you get what you pay for…”
Chelsea paid big for Torres, Shevchenko, Mutu, Crespo, Khezman (sp?), Lukaku, Wright-Phillips, & probably more. Money isn’t always the answer. (Sturridge was only £3m, he flopped there too.)
City have one great striker, who they paid the release clause on (we could have got him). But the rest would be getting pelters if we had signed them. (Injury prone, not doing it in big games, not linking with Aguero effectively, not living up to the fee, etc…)!
It’s all very random & unpredictable. See Tomkins for details…
so £15m is considered “big buys” for us? What era are we living in???
If FSG are as smart as they seem to think they are, they’d be signing Ron Vlaar and Abou Diaby up sharpish. The latter on a pay as you play basis, the former as a replacement for Skrtl should he choose to leave the club.
Vlaar would get eaten alive in this team – no defensive midfielder/holder, fullbacks bombing on. Just another decent “system” defender that looks good in “batten down the hatches” sides. Swap him for Lovren and I might bite, though.
Diaby can’t put himself on the pitch so that’d be mad.
I could see the Club doing a ‘pay-as-you-play’ deal with Micah Richards (just released by City). haha.
Christ, the Club reminds me of Bandcamp with all this ‘pay-as-you-pay’ shite.
I’m not joking when I say I feel thoroughly depressed after reading that.
I’m not sure of anything anymore. If someone knows something I don’t then please let me know but it seems to me last season was a disaster but a disaster with some fairly obvious factors as to why. Yet, it appears we’re repeating exactly the same mistakes. Benteke was / is clearly a target for us. Ings for Borini, Benteke for Balotelli and Origi for Lambert. Ok, the optimists amongst us will say that is a clear upgrade. I don’t really know much about any of them. I watch games of other teams now and again but I don’t watch their players. I’ve no idea what they’re like but I’m failing to see the upgrade. I can see this season going down exactly the same route as the last. I can’t see where we’ve learned our lessons.
On the one hand I think it’s clear to anyone looking in that Liverpool are in a tough battle for 5th next season. We’re nowhere near Chelsea, City and now Arsenal. If true that Utd have £200m to spend then we’re not getting close to them either. Most good players will be able to see this too. Take our Liverpool caps off and ask why would any good striker join us? What can we offer them? Nothing that Spurs and Southampton can’t and they’re not gonna attract top strikers. Maybe, we could buy a mercenary but that goes against the club’s policy.
If next season goes how I expect it to then everyone’s in trouble. The transfer committee can’t justify their roles any longer. Rodgers will have to take the brunt of it because he’s the manager and clearly can’t offer anything to transfers either. Ayre will get it too. I know nothing about Clyne either but he’s going nowhere for £10m. Utd will come in and get the deal done in a matter of days if that’s what they want to do. It’s obvious to anyone. Offer a piss take fee and it doesn’t happen. Obviously, the owners will come under fire, irreversibly, for allowing all this. There’s just no skill / expertise or strategy being applied to these transfer targets. I could do better and I know nothing about players. I do, however, know what we don’t need so that’s an upgrade on our current set up.
So, can anyone tell me what lessons we’ve learned. How are our targets gonna improve us. Benteke is injury prone. A quick Google search reveals that. If we end up with him and he doesn’t score and gets injured then heads have to roll. If Ings turns out to be like Borini then heads should roll. I’m one of those idiots who bets on LFC every new season. This year I’m considering backing us to miss out on the top 8. I’ve no faith in what we’re doing as a club. I think we have 2 issues. We’re incompetent and we’re slipping further away from the elite but the solution is out of our reach.
Mate we are 10 days into the window, not 10 days left.
I can see how this is going. Prem proven makes sense on the surface but there’s a little bit more to it than that and I’m questioning if we’re looking further than a few stats. We’ve already got 3 of our strikers and we clearly attempted to make benteke another. We normally have 4 strikers. That could have been the full set. Maybe we’ll have 5 this year. Either way we wanted goals as a priority. If we’re having 4 strikers then the recruitment / targets has either been brilliant and shows we all know nothing or they’ll be the utter shit they look. As it stands I’m disappointed. I’m normally optimistic about signings then lose faith when I see them. I think this will have to be the other way round. Window is irrelevant. We’ve showed our intentions and maybe that’s as good as we can expect to get now. I don’t know anymore.
It’s an issue of money, mate.
Pay the money and they’ll come. Serie A circus-show Milan are now in the process of a proposed rebuild and are about to buy Jackson Martínez & are talking figures with PSG over Ibra.
As long as FSG are at the helm and their scouts are targeting “value” before “fit,” we’ll be going nowhere fast. Ings was only targeted because he’s “undervalued” – same reason our striker options last summer we 1) Remy (undervalued at £8m); 2) Eto’o (free transfer coming off a decent if unspectacular season at his age); and 3) Balotelli (widely considered a steal at £16m last summer, though Milan couldn’t wait to see the back of him).
Hate to say it, but I actually turned off TAW’s ‘Gutmann in the Gutter’ last night. I like all the contributors and value their opinions highly, but I actually couldn’t listen to their case for signing Ings – like, when someone is praised for their “energy,” that’s when I’m done. Yup, we have lots of “energy” in Milner, Henderson, & Ings. Where’s the quality, though? Fabio Borini gives you “energy.” Like, I never rated the guy when he was at Burnley, and I’m not going to start rating him because we signed him. He’s just a very average player, both statistically and when you actually watch him play.
Anyway, there’ll be plenty of time to whinge when the window closes, I’m sure.
I feel the same mate but he may prove us all wrong. If we had another striker of Sturridges quality then he wouldn’t be a bad number 3 /4. It’s crucial our new number 1 / 2 striker is brilliant but it doesn’t look like he’s going to be based on the transfer speculation.
Regarding just pay the money, I’m not convinced mate.
If you’ve got new owners who are pledging to buy all the best players as part of a project then it’s possible. We’d be offering one individual a large wage, only.
For example, who do we think we can realistically attract who is better than Benteke e.g. Higuain won’t come to us whatever we pay him (within reason) as Arsenal, Utd and Chelsea can offer just as much. He’ll then choose 1 of those 3. Lacazette doesn’t look like he’s willing to join a team that’s not in the CL. I think we’re fucked and will move down before up. It’s unfortunate there’s 4 better teams in our league than us. Catching up will be tough. I’m worried.
Jesus Robin were you having a bad day. That’s very unlike you. Chin up it’s still June & the window hasn’t even opened yet.
Ha, probably some truth in the ‘bad day’ quote. Not a bad day as such. I’ve been battling with the idea that we can’t attract good players for nearly a year. I don’t want to believe it but deep down I’ve felt it. Seeing our targets has made think someone at the club has said ‘we have to be sensible and go after the ones we can get’. I think I wanted the club to shock me with a big name and make me feel stupid for being so negative but more so I’m having a realisation that the club are thinking along the same lines as me. Which if true would perpetuate it. I’ll have changed my mind by next week.
I’d be happy with Falcao. I watched him in a few Utd games to see what all the fuss was about. Movements brilliant. Mourinho’s been saying all the right things in the press today about him though. Doubt he’d come to us anyway, haha.
This is close to something I had started to write (but couldn’t be arsed finishing ). I couldn’t agree more and share your concern, coupled with a general lowering of expectations (par?) I fear for the direction the club is headed.
It’s all about the scouting for me.
We should know what type of player we need….. We should then scout those players and bring one in.
Price only matters to fans…
I could not care less if the player costs 10p or 50 million.
“Can he play”….. That’s all that matters to Liverpool fans….
I stole the last bit from the official history of Liverpool video I had as a kid.
Boss that video.
I also think that Origi will surprise a few people.
He is a younger better version of Benteke in my opinion.
If we blow 30 million on someone who was keeping Benteke and Lukaku out of the Belgian world cup team a little over a year ago then what little faith I have in our scouts will evaporate like a wet fart.
If we blow 30 million on Benteke is what I meant….
My bad.
It think Liverpool should look at a Brazillian striker named Jonathas that plays for Elche in Spain, he looks faster, more mobile and a better dribbler that Benteke, but with similar strength and aerial ability…they call him the new Diego Costa. He is 26 and scored about 11 goals last year for them, check him out…at the link below and would be available for Less than Benteke…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbl6Bokp7Rw
Jesus he could be our new God
Posted about him on RAWK a week or so back. Would be a nice value signing – much more suited to the rigours of the PL than Aspas, and would be considerably less than Benteke if we’re going the “mobile target man” route (for whatever reason). Elche also have been relegated due to a debt issue, so we could probably nab him cheap.
Our scouts get their passports stamped in Burnley, Southampton, & Greater Manchester, though. NEXT.
From the FSG statements you would expect our big signings to be dominated by 22-24 year olds just entering their prime, that could deliver ~5 good years to LFC and be sold for even bigger money to the likes of Madrid and Barcelona.
Instead it’s largely a list of players largely recognised as overvalued and just ‘decent’ players, or players 2-3 years prior to entering their peak years.
How we ended up in this position with all of the statistical analysis that is supposed to be going on at the club, I just can’t understand at all.
Fingers, Toes, eyes everything crossed.
Players we already have, need to be played in the correct position.
Brendan has to learn plan b, c, & d.
FSG need a plan b, c, & d.
It is terrifying being a red now.
Lets all hope an pray for the best club on the planet
YnWa
Er this is really shite on android. Seriously. It’s got worse.
And I’ve got latest samsung! !
Oh. And you’re wrong again Roberts.
It’s easy. Money talks. Always has. Always will.
You think those players signed for Man City because they ACTUALLY wanted to play there? Or do you think the £200 a week persuaded the ‘lad’ from South America?
They copied LFC. We always used to pay big money.
You pay peanuts you get monkeys.
And Mr Gordon if you want my advice on a professional basis I’m very cheap. Ooh you’re cheap!
The article provoked an eloquent lament from Robin of Chester, who seems now to have joined the fraternity of which I am an unenthusiastic member. I have gone, under BR, from thinking we could beat anybody to being shit-scared of ANY team, even at Anfield.
Haha, I think the manager is the least of our worries. I’ll certainly be behind him 100% next season. It’s almost become a cliche thanks to Neil but I wanted us to buy goals and I don’t think we will / have. I’m more worried about the direction of the club and the transfer committee. The more we fail the harder it becomes to compete both on the pitch and in the transfer market.
hahaha, the manager least of our worries?? you have got to be the most deluded person ever, what a BR asstickler lad, and the nr.1 super fan prize goes to yous!!! BR is our only problem, he is the root of all problems, and FSG are the biggest problem..Capitalist vultures…You are living in kokkooo land if you think BR is the least of our problems! HE AND FSG ARE THE ONLY PROBLEM TOOL!
What’s a “problem tool”??
I think the market for strikers is going to be a very difficult one this summer, regardless of the transfer policy applied by Liverpool.
The good thing is that as it stands at the moment we have more strikers than we need, so there is no need to panic (yet). I think it was a smart move to get Ings in and hopefully between him and Origi, we will have some extra goals in the team.
We are going to face a lot of competition for real talent. ManU could be shipping out two strikers and will need to recruit. City will likely be in the market for a striker and Chelsea are certain to be in the market. This all creates churn and an opportunity to pick up the cast offs, but I don’t think we will be in the market for any of the players coming out of those clubs.
The future of some of the favourite names bandied about by fans is already clear. Icardi will be remaining at Inter, Vietto will be going to Atletico and Lacazette will not be looking at us. For anyone else who you might name, you need to think about who else is going to be looking at them.
If we don’t land Benteke, I would not be surprised to see us coming to the end of the window empty handed, and looking for another stop gap solution. Anyway, hopefully Sturridge is back fit in September banging the goals in and this all becomes an irrelevance.
It it vital though that they are both able to & willing to run & move about.
Rather than buying a quite unsuitable centre forward for about £30 million why not think outside the box (literally) and look at players like Son and Aubameyang? Both are gettable for sensible money, both are perfect for the kind of pressing attack that saw Liverpool at its best in recent years and neither is Benteke!
If Rodgers really wants a target man who can pull balls out of the air and play in others that feels like fundamental step backwards.
I’m all over Aubameyang!!!
Extremely fast and mobile. Very good free kick and peno taker. Can play anywhere across the front 3 so when Sturridge is fit he can still fit in the team without unsettling it. He’s no midget either at 6’1.5 and has a great leap. Shouldn’t cost a fortune and at 25 we could see his best years.
Make it so!!
My son would approve – our scouts ought to play more FIFA, where it’s all about pace & mobility. (Origi is boss on there, though, so perhaps they are…)
Since the season 10/11 the LFC spent over 440.13 M € and was not capable of mounting the base of a good team. Why?
What do you think best:
1. Pay 50.00 M € on Lacazette or 45.00 M € in Markovic and Balotelli?
2. Pay 33.00 M € in Cesc Fabregas or 31.00 M € in Adam Lallana?
3. Pay 35.50 M € in William or 36.00 M € in Iago Aspas, L. Albert and Joe Allen?
4. Pay 60.00 M € in Edinson Cavani or 62.30 M € in Borini, Lambert, Balotelli and Markovic?
5. Pay 50.00 M € in Diego Costa or 63.00 M € in Andy Carroll and S Downing?
The LFC’s problem is not just money. It’s much bigger than that!
And I do not see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Might Pedro be gettable? considering his ltd game time due to the 3 amigos. Still linked with Montoya, sign one could help get the other, need to be cute with signings like did with Couthino, look at Stoke they got Bojan, Stoke!
Lavezzi ? Di Natale leftfield hipster choice?
What happened to Luis Muriel? he looked good, wheres Deulofeu? I want South Americans, on the whole havent let us down, Letto didnt get much chance, Palletta ‘The drill’ now ITA international, oh Gonzalez of course.
Rafa’s at Real, should make the most of his love for Liverpool and build strong connection, be first in line for there surplus players.