Should Liverpool continue to loan ‘in’ players?

WHETHER Liverpool should be engaged actively in loaning in players is a question that many fans are somewhat divided upon.

To be clear, I am debating whether we should be bringing ‘in’ players on short term loan deals, not whether we should be loaning players out.

The latter for me is a very good idea when executed well. It enables us to give young players the chance to play more regularly, gain valuable experience, learn new skills, but also for the manager to assess at what level the player is capable of performing. If a player is already capable of helping the team consistently well, such as Sterling, there is no need to consider loan offers.

Few young players coming through the academy though will have the stellar quality that a Gerrard or Fowler showed, and hence were able to hold their own in the first team from a very young age. Even if they are able to contribute, like so many did last year, they would clearly benefit from more regular game time at a different club.

For the likes of Suso and Andre Wisdom, who are both doing very well at Almeria and Derby respectively, they will no doubt return to Liverpool next season as much improved players.

For others like Adam Morgan, who had good technique and natural finishing ability as a youth player in our ranks, few teams were interested in loaning him. He had an unsuccessful spell at Rotherham, and despite further opportunities in the reserves wasn’t able to develop sufficiently in other aspects of forward play (e.g. holding up the ball, bringing others into play, playing from out wide) and has now, following a loan spell, joined Yeovil fighting relegation from the Championship.

Loaning out also helps when trying to get players off the wage bill who aren’t likely to play much, or who aren’t in the manager’s future plans. Sending Andy Carroll to West Ham for a season for a reported £2m loan fee with West Ham paying all his wages, followed by a a permanent £15m sale was an excellent deal for Liverpool, following his much publicised failure to perform at the top level.

However Brendan Rodgers is perhaps the first Liverpool manager of recent times who also likes to bring loan players in to fulfill a need. In the past bringing players in on loan has always been the realm of smaller teams, who borrow good players from bigger teams who don’t have space for them. Chelsea are perhaps the most active team in the Premier League at signing players and sending them on loan, at times even for players who are better than the ones in their first team (e.g. Thibaut Courtois or Romelu Lukaku).

I had mixed feelings when Liverpool started doing this. My first thought was that it sounded like a small club mentality, but when I thought it through the two loan signings we made were pragmatic decisions based on failures to get the players we really wanted, or could afford.

Liverpool failed with bids for Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Diego Costa and with the deadline looming Rodgers managed to get Victor Moses in. Similarly with Jose Enrique’s knee injury playing up further early in the season and pre-season, Rodgers managed to get Aly Cissokho, an experienced Champions League defender, to help bolster the ranks.

These two signings have not been successes, and I’m fairly sure, and indeed hoping, neither are offered full term contracts at the end of the season. Despite scoring on his debut Moses has looked out of sync with the clever footballing brains and technical abilities of the likes of Suarez, Sturridge and Coutinho.

The Nigerian seems to lack tactical understanding, struggling to perform in a position behind the strikers when Liverpool were playing 3-5-2, and being inconsistent and individualistic when playing as a winger. It almost seemed that he thought he would be guaranteed a starting spot at Liverpool, rather than having to earn it. In contrast young Sterling has been impressive over the last couple of months since breaking back into the team and keeping Moses out.

Aly Cissokho has equally struggled. He undoubtedly has excellent physical attributes – pace, athleticism and strength. However, he is quite poor technically, his first touch letting him down at times and doesn’t have the subtlety to his passing game that would allow him to dovetail effectively with others, particularly Coutinho, on the left hand side. Surprisingly he has also been caught out defensively, losing his man during crosses, and diving in too often. Even with Jose Enrique’s injury, Cissokho was still overlooked initially for Johnson (with Henderson and even Sterling playing right wing-back), then later for Flanagan. With Flanagan injured Cissokho is again in the side, but he is still a weak link.

I’m hopeful that the prime focus of our January transfer dealings will be for permanent solutions to the left back problem and attacking midfield problem. But the issue here is not that the principle of getting a player on loan is a bad one. It is that the two players we brought in were not the right ones.

As a club I do not want us to make a habit of bringing in players on loan, but if the availability of the market dictates that that is what we need to do to bring in some quality that we’re lacking, then I’m not against it. I’d be very happy, for example, if we brought in Fabio Coentrao on a loan deal with an option to a permanent transfer – although he unfortunately has plenty of other suitors.

Our Summer transfer dealings have been disappointing, not just the loan players. I would rather have a quality loan signing arrive rather than another overpriced mediocre player on a permanent deal. However, we all hope we can replicate the success of last January.

You can catch more from me on my own blog: http://taintlessred.blogspot.co.uk/