As we approach the third week of the latest January transfer window, there has been very little activity from any Premier League clubs, with only Liverpool’s city rivals Everton showing any serious signs of adding to (and also selling) squad numbers.
The likes of Arsenal, Chelsea, City and Tottenham are unlikely to add to their squads significantly in this window, with all of these clubs having fairly impressive sized first-team squads with strength and quality in depth.
On the other hand, fellow challengers, Liverpool, Everton and United all require further strengthening – for various reasons – and in Liverpool’s case, the sooner the better.
This season the return of one Liverpool player has heralded the long term injury of another, and for every Allen or Gerrard we see returning to full fitness after a lengthy injury, we see Agger or Sakho succumb to a almost season-ending injuries.
Prior to the window opening, and after two hard-fought defeats over the Christmas and New Year period, Rodgers spoke of the need to quickly bring in quality to add to the squad. Players that would mean absentees wouldn’t be missed so much and that players wouldn’t be forced to play such a high intensity game so many times in a short space of time.
But over 2 weeks into the January window and we’ve seen rumours come and go, with the disappointment of players we were linked to leading up to the window opening being dashed and subsequently grounded.
We’ve also heard little from the owners, FSG, since the 1st of the month and Brendan Rodgers has now started to state that we won’t just buy for buying’s sake. If there aren’t any top players available that fit into what he wants for the club, he will just wait for the summer.
While this is an admirable admission, I’m afraid our current predicament means that we have no option but to strengthen while we can! All Liverpool need at the moment is for one of the clubs’ top players to sustain another big injury and all of a sudden our top 4 hopes could die.
I’m not trying to scare-monger, but can you imagine if we suffered an injury in a key area again, during a crucial run of games?
Just imagine having to come up against City, Chelsea or Arsenal at home later in the year. With a fully fit first-team we’d fancy our chances against any of them. In fact, it is the fact that we have so many of the other top 7 to come at home that we feel this could really be our season, but if we had to face them without Lucas, Suarez, Sturridge or Gerrard all of our hard-work and effort could become undone.
I’d always prefer to avoid sprees in January, unless we can guarantee some top-quality, high-value signings like we did last January when we signed Coutinho and Sturridge, but this year we’re desperate to add some more quality and numbers, given the much stronger standing in the league.
Liverpool can strengthen significantly in the Summer and once we know what our final league position is, the club and manager can get together and thrash out a proper budget and plan for moving forward during the World Cup but this window, we need to move fast as the squad is thin and the opportunity to finish as high as 2nd or 1st is one which hasn’t presented itself so closely for over 5 years.
After a victory at Stoke, which propelled the Reds back into the top 4, this is an opportunity that the club – and, more importantly, it’s owners – really can’t afford to let slip through their fingers.
In previous seasons Liverpool would’ve collapsed after losing a two goal lead so close to half-time but the second half comeback is something new, something that we’ve only started seeing this season and much of it rests on the quality of our front-3, at least one of whom we could lose in the summer should we not at least qualify for the Champions League and the addition of even one extra player, with real quality could make the biggest of differences to Liverpool’s season.
There is a split on the FSG board. Two key members want JWH to sell up & focus on the Red Sox. JWH response? The asset hasn’t matured yet. JWH’s plan is to get the stadium redevelopment to a point where it increases the value of the asset before cashing in for his own and FSG’s profit (meaning he and Werner and Ayre lied about re-investing all monies raised by LFC back into the club and not being in it for personal profit). This may take 2 plus years.
Talks with Liverpool City Council and LFC regarding redevelopment have been ongoing for some time. The outcome is key to the valuation.
It’s the ones in the background making the noise about selling. Major FSG background investorJeff Vinik resigned from the LFC board few months back. Not widely reported…
Vinik along with Michael Gordon believe LFC takes too much focus away from their US sporting interests. Henry, Werner & Ginsburg disagree.
JWH believes that the way things are progressing with BT & Google, added to a better stadium, he could double HIS money in 2-3 years.
BT & Google. Lots asking. BT want to blow apart Sky’s domestic stranglehold on the Premier League. They are on their way..
Google will be the game changer. If you haven’t heard about Google TV yet you soon will. JWH certainly has. Google it!
JWH is looking into the future. Global Internet streaming rights. Revenues will explode. He knows his LFC asset has not fully matured yet. He and FSG are in it for their own profit. Nothing else.
No, it won’t help LFC much on the pitch. With global revenues split evenly across the 20 clubs, every club’s revenue will increase.
The more successful we are the higher the value, but they won’t risk of chasing success by over investing. Vicious circle.
The future JWH sees has the likes of BT, Google & Apple with TV+Internet solutions going into battle for football rights. He smells dollars.
Closure of the popular old LFC.com Kop blog site replacing it with a plastic, sterile, propaganda-approved social media connected site is the reason for our social media strategy. Can deliver pay per view to LFC millions of fans globally (albeit fly by night fans).
Unilateral live TV rights are unlikely but there are lots of revenue streams they can leverage.
FSG have overestimated importance of FFP, which is likely to be declared unlawful by EU courts. FSG use FFP as a smokescreen to run a globally massively lucrative football club on as modest a budget as possible, not to run the club prudently, but to maximise FSG profits on exit.
FSG are shadowbankers – shadowbanking involves derivatives that caused a multi-quadrillion toxic derivatives bubble and financial crash that continues to adversely impact billions of people globally. Shadowbanking enriches a tiny elite of finance oligarchs, while causing suffering and death through spikes in global fuel, food and energy prices, exploiting famine, war and instability. FSG and their criminal fraudulent and money laundering Bank of America/MBNA and Standards Corrupted cronies OUT, fan ownership IN!
Whereas I certainly dont know the ins and outs like Bradbury pound….I do agree with his sentiments . Surely everyone can see that FSG are here to make money from our club ?
Yes , they will try to bring success on the pitch , as a means to increasing their profit…but this can’t be what we want for our football club ?
Some fans have a very shortsighted ignorant view that if results are going well…everything else doesn’t matter. FSG have reinvested very little NET and have done little except spread more propaganda concerning the stadium issue.
I see NO difference between FSG and the Glaziers at man ure. the manure fans know what the Glaziers are …yet there are still a lot of deluded Liverpool fans that think FSG are white knights iin shining armour…strange !!!
Fsg =blood sucking greedy yank bstrds
Yeah @The Saint blood sucking greedy bstrds, save our club from annihilation only to destroy us again. I wonder how the blood tastes in Boston where they were instrumental in making a sh it team into winners, tasting success for the first time in almost forever? Vampire Leeches can go to hell.. Although ‘if’ we qualify for champions league or win the PL they can happily stay, sucking blood or Mancunions.
Yawn . What a boring fool trolling everyones comments.
Nobody cares what you say . Your just a idiotic troll
Mr henry + co are a shower of wa nkers. only here for the dollars , this season was a chance to push on , but they as usual are not going to get us top players. Hicks and gillet mark 2 is all they are
Fsg are the most deluded and money sucking owners I have ever seen.Just bcos Brendan is playing attacking football doesn’t mean we are good.And iam happy we are challenging but I don’t blieve we will make top 4 with this squad talkmore of title.I can’t blieve we still haven’t bought anyone.SHAME TO FSG.
The headline is close but not quite right . Yes FSG should F off , but it should be something other than fork out
FSG OUT . and the sooner the better.
I agree that January is not the most ideal time to sign players but I can assure you that if we had spent wisely in the Summer we may have got at least 2 points against both City and Chelsea but no we had 14 year old kids to turn to in B Smith and J Rossiter against Chelsea while they had superstars to bring on , SIMPLY PUT SKINT AND VERY POOR those two matches have seen us go from Top to potentially 6th by the end of the month.
Whilst you dont need to do a Tottenham and sign too many players in one go u want to have the minimal cover of 2 players per position to avoid square peg round hole syndrome.
We need defensive cover just sign MVila and another LB or RB and then a Central Attacking Midfielder and bring back Reina and loan out Mignolet as he is well below Liverpool quality of late
Fork OFF Mr Henry you greedy scum sucking greedy yank b***ard
thank fook, thought i was the only twart who hated the yank fookers! ya baseball team is she ite an ya love them. so we got no fruckin chance of cash splash til the summer draft. would like to know who has the say so over signings cos rogers have been pi ss poor. cissoko,allen sahko,ilori (who the fook is he ) aspas, mignolet, borini,fookin moses,alberto , toure (no wonder citeh gave him away)! all been sheet. sturridge been the part and coutinho is one for the future. disgraceful our transfer dealings heard we offered 4 bob for mata cos he was over 18……. fookin c-unts