Roy Hodgson’s interview following Saturday’s defeat to Kaiserslautern wasn’t exactly the best way to cap off what was initially a good week for the reds. Our transfer dealings under Roy kicked off with a bang with the signings of Joe Cole and the young scot Danny Wilson. In between those acquisitions came the highlight of the week when Steven Gerrard committed his future to us, which in turn had us supporters (and Arjen Robben strangely) licking our lips at the thought of a front three of Cole, Gerrard and Torres tearing into opposition defences.
That anticipation and excitement soon veered a bit downhill on Saturday though, when Roy Hodgson worryingly told reporters that Torres had a ‘beef’ with the club and that he could do no more to convince him to stay. This is by no means confirmation that Torres is leaving but it did highlight a problem we have which could get a lot worse with the league season kicking off in just over 3 weeks time. By the time Torres gets back from his holiday, we’ll have a week and a half until our tough start to the season against Arsenal. If he were to then decide he wants to leave, it would put us in the crippling position of trying to find a £20m+ striker to replace him in the space of a few days.
The scenario of not having Torres or even his replacement available for the opener against a dangerous Gunners side would be disastrous, and after last season especially it’s vital that this time we get off to a positive start. We all know Fernando Torres is one of the very best strikers in the world, and any team would miss him if were to leave them, but we are now getting to the stage where time is rapidly running out for our pre-season preparations and we need to have a settled first team squad ready for an assault on the rest of the Premier League.
Because of this, it may be time to consider life after Torres because going into next season unprepared for his departure and then being left with a couple of weeks of the transfer window to buy a world class replacement would leave us in a real mess. I understand completely that he is on holiday but as a reds fan I’m becoming tired of biting my nails waiting for Fernando to either commit or demand a transfer. What we now need is a resolution for this situation. He’ll either ask for a move to a club competing for the highest honours or he’ll follow Steven Gerrard’s lead in giving us another season to fulfil his hunger for success (which will hopefully prove to be the case), and the sooner we discover the outcome, the more time we have to focus on preparing for the upcoming season.
The same goes for Javier Mascherano but his case is a little clearer to us. He’s made no secret of the fact that he’s unhappy in Liverpool and to be honest I was disappointed to hear that he wasn’t courteous enough to at least get back to Roy Hodgson when he attempted to contact him. It would have been better for us if he had already asked for a transfer because we would have either signed his replacement by now or we would have been close to finalising it. Now, our preparation for the new season has been held back and with time running low it’s a bit of a concern being at the end of July and not knowing if two of our key first team players want to stay on or not.
As I mentioned before, Fernando Torres is a great player, so too is Javier Mascherano, and we would all love to see them in our red shirt next year. But if that’s not what they want then I just hope they make it clear as soon as possible so that we can get on with the rebuilding job swiftly enough to not be in a severely weakened position by the time we have to face the major threats of Arsenal and Manchester City in mid August.
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I would not love to see Mascherano in a Liverpool shirt this season, despite you claiming that all of us would. He came out making all the wrong noises way too often for my liking. I actually would be gutted to see him play for us again. Hope we get 30+m for him from any club stupid enough to pay that for a traitor.
totally 100% agree we need an answer now not 2 or 3 weeks down the line but i think fernando will stay but masc will probably go just let the fans who help pay your wages what is going on ware is purslow when u want him
My thoughts exactly. I love Torres and want him to stay but no 1 player is bigger than the club and if hes going to go speak up!. We need a replacement to work well with Gerrard and Cole. Mascherano has made it clear he wants to go so lett him go …at least hes been honest.
with regards to nando, i hope roy takes the same stance as wenger with a simple-NO, he’s under contract, we want him so, end of discussion!
as for JM, good riddance! as i have stated before, benitez valued him at OVER £50m, so SURELY he would view £30m as an absolute steal? alternatively, i would take balotelli + cambiasso in a straight swap for the ungrateful little prick!
100% agree. If the prices quoted are to be believed the £100m for 2 players means they would be easily replaced.
personally i think if they offer £70m for torres we should sell whether he wants to stay or not.
What riles me about Mascherano was that it was his wife’s unahappy we want to go to a Spanish speaking country. Now he seems happy enough to go to Inter. Who’is his wife going to have there to talk to, Mrs Rafa
So poor fernando has a beef with the club..poor extremely well paid, regularly injured, established as world class only after coming to the club fernando. Scored 15 at best prior to coming to the club, whose fans worship him and sing his name and has played 60% of games only. stay,,,go whatever you are NOT bigger than lfc, good player now prove your a great player and worthy lfc legend..or dont. lfc walks on. and NOT alone
Torres isn’t going anywhere this season – he has three years left on his contract so is in a weak position to force a transfer through and we can still pick up a massive fee next year if worst comes to worst
Masch on the other hand has to be forced out of the door this transfer window. His transfer value will begin dwindling as soon as the season starts (just two years left on his contract) and he really is not worthy of his massive transfer value (I would be pissed to see us buy an exact replica of him right now for anything over £15m). I don’t care about any speeches he may come out with in he coming days – it’s in everybody’s best interest if he moves on asap
Are we taking our eye off the ball here? We are talking and writing about the unknown,but we have yet to purchase any player with cold hard cash. While we blabb they do nothing upstairs. Hicks said it would be a big tranfer window, and i’m still waiting.
Things will start rolling into place once Masch moves on, Torres commits to us and Man City complete their transfer spending, thereby allowing everybody else to start buying without fear of being gazumped by them
Loans will begin to happen as the window comes towards an end and everybody knows exactly where their squads stand for the new season
i dont like fernado torres and would be glad if he goes
We still need torres in liverpool