Are We About To Make More Mistakes in the Summer Sale?
IN the very few weeks that have passed since the arrival of Rodgers as the new Liverpool manager we’ve been linked with multiple players and a number of names have come up that will be familiar to all of us.
There have been a handful of players though, that have had their names crop up more often than others: Zaha, Kalou, Garcia, Krasic, Sigurdsson, Tello and Caulker – one or two of these names ring true with Liverpool’s fans and bring some optimism for the new season.
However, names such as Kalou, Garcia, Krasic are hardly players that will have us all sitting at home salivating in waiting for the new season to begin. Given that Kalou has never been anything more than a bench-warmer at Chelsea and has just been released for free and that both Garcia and Krasic have barely played for their first-teams all season (Garcia was actually on-loan at Osasuna) makes me wonder whether we’re simply shopping in the ‘cast-offs’ market this summer, and that concerns me a great deal, if I’m honest with you.
Don’t get me wrong, I know that there are bargains to be had. You need only take a look at Bellamy last season for a superb example. But spending upwards of £7 million for a player such as Krasic that could barely get near Juventus’ team or pretty much the same for a player that is no longer in his clubs’ plans in Garcia seems to be a little worrying.
Over at Old Trafford and United have just snapped up probably one of the most exciting midfield prospects in Europe, Shinji Kagawa, for around £12 million. The guy has won back-to-back league titles with Borussia Dortmund and yet that lot have managed to negotiate a bargain, whilst given reports on Saturday morning, it looks likely that we’re going to now sign Sigurdsson from under Swansea’s noses, only the price has now gone above £8 million. Whilst Barcelona are supposedly holding out for somewhere around that same amount for Cristian Tello – a talented young man, to be sure, but he’s hardly been a mainstay in even their ‘B’ team, never mind the first and while I’d be more excited to see his name than many of the others, I’d still begrudge forking out almost £10 million for a ‘prospect’. We were burned too badly last season in that way to take the same risk again.
Similarly, we’ve found ourselves heavily linked with Spurs’ Steven Caulker. A very talented and promising young English centre-back, who spent the season on-loan with Rodgers himself at Swansea but, again, the fee would be around £8 million. As I mentioned recently in an article about where I feel we need to strengthen in the summer, I really see no point in spending what would be a large chunk of our limited transfer funds on a player that would probably only be our 4th or 5th choice centre-back, and more likely 6th if you include Martin Kelly.
But while many of the supposed targets have got me a bit concerned, another worrying aspect about this all is how long the rumours have been dragging on. Without wanting to hark on too much about United, I would again cite how they named their main target, negotiated quickly and got a total bargain before anybody else even knew the player was available. All we’ve done so far is allow ourselves to be linked with all and sundry and, in procrastinating so long, let the prices of these targets rocket simply by being linked with us which is exactly what has just happened in the case of Sigurdsson – a player that I’m very interested in seeing at Liverpool but not if his price is going to go any further above his original price.
I should point out that I’m not trying to be utterly negative and I’m aware that our new man in charge has not been at the club very long and is still getting to grips with things. Sadly though, it seems as if the old transfer market procrastinating is still very much in evidence from Rafa Benitez’s time at the club. My main concern is that we’re going to end up making a late charge and just go out and panic-buy average players and allow ourselves to be totally ripped off in the process. I can only hope that I’ll be wrong and that many of the rumours are only that, rumours and that Brendan Rodgers is as shrewd and forward a man as we’ve been led to believe and goes out and works some magic in the market this summer.
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Newcastle News 24/7
June 18th, 2012
That was aimed at chunky
June 18th, 2012
First point: these are all rumors, second point: Surely BR needs to get his feet under the desk before making any signings, jumping straight in before properly assessing what he needs would surely be an even bigger mistake than the ones you have identified in your pointless rant. END
June 19th, 2012
Paper talk fella… Calm down! I’m pleased that Rogers is keeping calm and taking his time to assess the situation at LFC. I’m confident that he’ll be an astute business man, and he’ll bring players to the club that warrant their price tag.
June 19th, 2012
man utd, chelsea, newcastle, arsenal all had their coaches wit them last season, so they know their squad well and they know where to improve. BR needs to asses d squad, identify d weakness and buy players to strengten d squad not just buy square pegs to fit into round holes.