Rafa Benitez has been in talks with Liverpool chairman Martin Broughton over the last few weeks. High on the agenda would have been the scale of the transfer budget afforded to the Spanish manager. Benitez has no doubt been trying to guarantee that all money from player sales is reinvested straight away into the playing staff. If he does get his way in this regard, how much money could he accumulate by selling unwanted players? I have listed a few potential sales below that could bring in a fair amount of money to build a transfer war chest for Rafa:
sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
Ryan Babel – £9millionYossi Benayoun – £8million
Albert Riera – £6million
David Ngog – £3million
Mikel San Jose – Sold for £2.6million to Athletic Bilbao
Diego Cavalieri– £2.5million
Krisztian Nemeth – £2.5million
Jay Spearing – £2million
Nabil El Zhar – £1.5million
Philipp Degen – £1million
Charles Itandje – £500,000
Stephen Darby – £500,000
Although I may have overestimated and underestimated some of the prices here, I think we could get at most £40m from the 12 players listed above. The question remains though, doesn’t it leave a big hole in our squad if we sell all of these players? In some respects it does but I have highlighted those in bold above that I believe need replacing. In regards to the others, there are many youngsters in the ranks who could very easily fill the roles vacated. In the goalkeeping positions, Cavalieri and Itandje could very easily be replaced by Gulacsi and Bouzanis, Jay Spearing has been replaced already in the reserves during his time on loan at Leicester by Steven Irwin, Stephen Darby and Philipp Degen’s right back slot can be filled by Martin Kelly, while Nabil El Zhar’s wing role could easily be filled by both David Amoo and Alex Kacaniklic. As Krisztian Nemeth has been on loan at AEK Athens this season, a striker replacement is not really required and both Dani Pacheco and Nathan Eccleston can more than make up for his sale.
The four in bold highlighted above means we would need to find 3 midfielders and a striker for that £40million. That might prove to be the difficult and the solution maybe found in Javier Mascherano. Masch has stalled on signing a new contract until after the World Cup and he has stated in recent weeks that his family is not happy on Merseyside. If we estimated his value at £30million, that would boost the transfer fund up to £70m. Whether this is an option for the manager is another question. Would he want to sell all of these players and would he actually get all of the money back from the board?
In any case, the list above is what I believe could be the solution to Liverpool’s lack of spending power to rebuild the team in the summer. Would you sell these players and who would you spend the money on?
Follow us on twitter @live4Liverpool
Live4Liverpool is recruiting columnists. For further info contact the site editor at editor@live4liverpool.com
wel you may hate me i would sell torres for 50+ to 80 mil and also sell mascherano a would sell some of the dead wood like kuyt 10m riera 10m ngog 3m lucas 5m.
bring in some key players for example craig bellamy for 12mil and scotty parker say 10m. bring in a james milner for 25mil wich takes it up to 47. also i would sign a decent lb like filipe whos at brazil lb. we also need a couple more players so heres my view
In:
milner 25mil next steven gerrard
bellamy 12mil work rate phenomenal and has had a great season with man city
scot parker 10mil hard worker gd replacement for mascherano
filipe ? 10 strong lb good attacking
joe cole free quality player for backup
thiery henry free hes done it once n shd be able to do it again in prem
darren bent 16m gets 18+ goals a season
simao 8 mil offers another option down left
wich cms to about 70mil.i would spend another ten mil to spend on covers . thn with the remaining money i would build the academy up. because if you think we have had the like of gerrard owen heskey murphy daglish barnes etc. but if u thnk last 8 years everton picked up all the kids the likes of rodwell and mr wayne rooney and in my eyes him and torres upfront we wdnt be in this situation now.
sign anew manager we have give benitez 5 years hes wun us champions league and league cup or fa i forgot. someone who knows how to win a league. best bets are scolari or mark hughes.
sell: cavalieri(3m)itandje(1m),riera(9m),aurelio(free),spearing(2.5m),degen(2m),el zhar(2.5m),san jose(2.6m) = 22.6m.
sign:antolovic,gk(2m),torosidis,rb/rm(4m),wilson(4m),filipe luis(11m),banega(8.5m),simao(6m),rossi(12m),jovanovic(free).=47.5m loss=14.9m. we are reportedly getting 15m to spend in the summer aswell so this is perfect.
reina
carragher agger
johnson filipe luis
mascherano
maxi aquilani/banega gerrard simao
rossi/torres
subs:antolovic,torosidis,skrtel,benayoun,lucas,kuyt,jovanovic,
send ngog,nemeth,pacheco,darby out on loan.
What kind of matter really, thank you for sharing, we have a common interest.