WITH the football world having been fixated on the excitement of Euro 2012 there is an air of inevitability with the somewhat laboring pace of this summer’s transfer window activity. The comings and goings in the Premier League have been kept to a minimum as the cream of European talent embark on a period of re charging following this summer’s European Championships.
Champions League winners Chelsea and fellow Londoners Arsenal have already spent big since the opening of the window with Marin, Hazard, Podolski and Giroud arriving in the Barclays Premier League for a modest sum of £75 million. Arch enemies Manchester United have spent a reported £20 million on Japan superstar Shiniji Kagawa and young Crewe hotshot Nick Powell and are reported to be close to acquiring services of England left-back Leighton Baines from our fierce rivals Everton.
With Premier League Champions Manchester City certain to strengthen with yet more world class talent, the need for new boss Brendan Rodgers to strengthen last season’s hugely underachieving squad is as big as it’s ever been.
The coming weeks will serve up the answer to an extremely pivotal question for Liverpool Football Club: is Anfield still an attractive destination for the cream of world footballing talent, or will Brendan Rodgers have to settle for the so called “second tier“ footballer if he is to add quality to his playing staff in preparation for his first season at Anfield. The silly season of transfer rumours is well under way and it is no great surprise to see Liverpool linked with a multitude of players since the start of the summer including just about every winger and striker on the planet.
There seems to be a notable difference over the last few months in the caliber of player that the club is being linked with. With the greatest respect to the likes of Davies, Sigurdsson, Moses, Allen and Sinclair, is this really the caliber of player that a club of Liverpool’s size and stature in world football should be looking at.
Whilst there is no denying or hiding away from last season’s disappointing campaign we still have some fantastic footballers at the football club and should be targeting players at the same level as the likes of Gerrard, Suarez, Reina, Skrtel, Agger and Johnson. The likes of Spearing, Shelvey, Adam, and Henderson are better options than the players we are being linked with currently and these players also have the added advantage of already knowing and understanding the expectation at Anfield.
Let’s not forget of course that despite our return to European football next season our absence from the UEFA Champions League is a huge stumbling block in our quest to add the quality of players required to challenge for a place in the top 4 of the Barclays Premier League. Despite the huge variation of views on both the amount of players and positions that Brendan Rodgers needs to strengthen this summer, one view that Reds fans will almost certainly agree on is the caliber of players that must be brought into the football club if we are to mount a serious challenge for Champions League football this season.
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What we need is for our first signing this summer to send a message out to the likes of Suarez, Reina, Gerrard and Skrtel, but also to the rest of the footballing world that we have the ambition needed to restore the club to the top of English Football.
If this message is indeed a positive one and we manage to capture a Gaston Ramirez, Joao Moutinho or Ibrahim Affelay then this will encourage yet more top quality players to head for Anfield, in the same way that Torres, Johnson and Suarez followed players like Alonso, Reina and Mascherano to Merseyside.
The flip side could be equally as telling for Liverpool fans though. If the first signing under Brendan Rodgers is a Mark Davies or a Scott Sinclair, with the greatest respect to those players then rightly or wrongly then it will seem that the required standard needed to wear the famous red shirt is much lower than our football club and its legendary supporters are prepared to accept.
With August approaching fast, the ambition and attraction of Liverpool Football Club will be severely tested over the remaining days of the transfer window. We will of course be watching this particular space with the keenest interest possible.
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No, we cannot. Might have been different if the owners had chosen Rafa as our manager, but with no proven manager, no CL, and ownership that can’t come close to the spending of City or Chelsea, “second tier” or worse is what we’re looking at over this summer.
Do we need to be a destination for Europe’s top drawer? I don’t think so.
Did we win the European Cup in Istanbul with Europe’s top drawer? No
Did we attract the top Spanish players before Rafa arrived? No.
Do we need players that fit BR’s system? Yes.
There’s every chance BR can squeeze far more out of what we already have. Dump Joe Cole and Charlie Adam and work with the rest. Bring Sterling, Suso, Morgan, Coady etc through and spend the money saved on developing Anfield and the Academy.
The only message our current players require is there on their payslip every week, not the amount but who the employer is.
Spot on Callaghan, totaly agree with that.
We dont no whats next but the like of davies is adding crap to our team we need creativity we can play tiki taka without wining we need wingers and strikers who no to kill the ball in the box and someone to fit suarez type of play not carrol who always wait for soft balls
Simple answer: No!
We are no longer the club that we were 4 years ago.
With the current ownership we will always linger below 5th.
Take those depression tabs quickly!
Only money attracts top players, not the club. Lets face it what players would have gone to chelski or city before the cash? They’re average clubs, just toys for the super rich. Liverpool, Manure and Arsenal, they’re THE big clubs in England. players tried to aspire to play for these clubs, but not anymore. Having said that, i’m sure we’ll do much better next season, a few quality players will change our luck around. YNWA.
LD, Who do you want the owners to be? The pile of cash FSG put out last year not good enough. The HUGE decision to replace a team legend with a new Coach because the team was sliding backward not enough? Is it because they are not running out and buying every player a reporter or agent decides to post a link to LFC?
I think it’s hiliarious how the same manager that couldn’t hack it at Watford and Reading and was fired by both is now some managerial savant that will lead us to the promised land.. fans become delusional morons and throw reality out the window bcuz they are so desperate to believe. We are a mid table team and may go lower unless a real manager and real players are brought in.. right now we are mid table table team loaded down with overpriced average brit crap…its reality.. deal with it..
Can’t seems to agree enough that the failure to bring back Rafa would come back to bite us.
No disrespect to BR but even some mediocre Icelandic who had just one good season at PL prefers a managerless Spurs over reuniting with his old boss
We have more than enough quality in that team & i think dats y rodger is reluctant to bring in players,he’ll maximise d squad’s effort & dat’ll b enough…adding more is jst problem