I was pleasantly surprised to see the rumours doing the rounds on Friday night across the web that Liverpool had completed a deal to bring Uruguayan international Gaston Ramirez to the club. I know little about him, to be completely honest, other than he plays for Bologna in Italy and is a highly thought of young attacking player, even referred to as the ‘Uruguayan Kaka’. Regardless of any of this, he is a member of one of the best international sides in the world and that can only be a good thing, especially as he has two of his compatriots already at the club. If he signs, he will certainly present the fans with a very exciting prospect.
However, this rumour aside some of the others have me slightly concerned.
Admittedly, they are only rumours but with names such as Mark Davies, Victor Moses and Steven Caulker popping up regularly this week, it really is starting to get slightly worrying. I’m beginning to think that we’re setting our sights far too low.
As always, you can’t bank on gossip in the press until a move is announced or admitted to by the clubs involved but the very fact that we’re having our name associated with players such as these makes me concerned that we either a) don’t have very much money to spend or b) we’re simply targeting average squad players.
We made a similar mistake last summer and brought in a group of players for extortionate fees. Regardless of how much a player like Davies would cost, he is not what Liverpool needs or wants. Sure, he may have had a decent season at a relegated side and he may well be a decent player but we’ve let a more than decent squad player (Dirk Kuyt) move on for next to nothing already this summer and it look increasingly likely that another, Craig Bellamy, will be on his way too. So are these really the sorts of players we want to be replacing them with? I would much rather see a couple of the youngsters step in to fill the squad voids left by these two players.
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But despite comparisons with our activities last summer, the more appropriate comparison would be with Roy Hodgson transfers in the summer of 2010, when he brought in a number of players he was familiar with/had worked with before, including Brad Jones, Paul Konchesky and Christian Poulsen – all solid players at the level they are suited for, but they are not the sort you bring in to a club the size of Liverpool. Hodgson brought these men in because he’d worked with them before and they’d done a job but the signings were well out of sync with the task he faced at Liverpool.
The concern for me is that Brendan Rodgers might be about to make similar mistakes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking the man before he’s even signed a player but a quick look at some of the primary targets we’ve had linked to the club in the past few weeks show a who’s who of players that have either played for, been loaned to or been targeted by, his former club Swansea while he was manager there: Gylfi Sigurdsson, Steven Caulker, Fabio Borini, Mark Davies. Sigurdsson aside, these are all players that would be acceptable for a club of Swansea’s stature and could do a decent job for them, but they are not Liverpool players; they are not the kind of quality we need to pepper our squad with during this very crucial summer window. As I’ve found myself saying all too often in the past few weeks, let’s just hope they are only that: transfer rumours, and when the ball starts rolling after the Euros have ended, we’ll start to see some genuine quality arriving at the club.
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as i have just eluded to on another blog….had you been around, would you have written this article when shanks brought in the little-known Ron Yeats & Ian St. John or when Lfc brought in the likes of Souness, Keegan, Nicol, Lawrenson and many many more?
The players you mentioned played in an era pre internet and before football was the multi bilion pound industry it now is. There are plenty of gems around unfortunatly not many of them are British if we do have restrictions on transfer budget’s we need to look abroad for future stars not mediocre players from the premiership.
there are players in this era too! look at some of the gems that moyes & pardew have unearthed! big money doesn’t gaurantee success as we found to our cost last seasopn.
Understand what you are saying but, the era you are referencing the difference in the english top two divisions was not huge, it was a time when a team promoted could if they do well challenge for and win the top division. I am not advocating we spend huge money, but M.Davies has not shown that he has what it takes to improve our first XI, he is 24 years old and would be good squad player should we first be able to get rid of likes of Adam, if Aqua’ wants to go, but for now we are heavily loaded in M.Davies preferred position. I wouldn’t mind us going in for Zaha.
We can blame RH for starting the trend of bringing in below par players who does not do the job.
However the ultimate blame of bringing in below par players AND at hefty prices lay should be pointed out at KD’s direction. This single act alone broughyt us behind at least 4 to 5 years.
We do not have to look far for teams for bringing in unheard players who does the job well at low investment, just look at the 2 teams above us.
Shanks? Well look no further than Everton and Newcastle. Lets hpe BR is not another KD in disguise, we can ill afford one.
These rumours are uninspiring to say the least – apart from gaston Ramirez,…. Hope we do raise the bar. We got average. We need some quality in the squad now.
They are only rumours and we shall have to wait for a few weeks before we are told anything.
Ahh stop with the gossip!!
Our club needs world class players simple!
At this rate we we are going to be the best league one side in the premiership! These rumours are not helping Rogers, 30mill can still grab you some class. Sort it out.
This is not the past we need world class players even new castle and spurs are able to attract big names i feel so sad to the names we have in our squad
I just want to say that we should wait and see before talking because nothin’s done yet.
So its talking on the wind.
Even we don’t buy top class player, wait to see what the team does.
One year ago everyone were happy with those signings but adam and downing showed us a poor disply, the opposite could happened.
Rdogers have to work and to prove his work worth something which match liverpool ambitions
Sorry, beg to differ, not many LFC fans were happy with the signings, and what’s more, they were right. Mediocre overpriced players. I suspect FSG are loathe to spend big money this close season after last season’s disasters. It also strikes me that if we don’t up our quality of signings we will lose people like Suarez and Skirtel.
we may lose more than suarez and skirtel.
As far as i am concerned KD messed up th club and set us back atleast £75mil no other decent club would have spent more than £5mil on any of those players including the record signing andy carroll.
alan pardew and new castle owners must have laughed everytime they look at the money they got for a player who can’t even lace rooney’s shoe.
Rooney’s sh*** he proved that at the euros
World class players?
You have to be joking. We won’t attract anyone of any merit at all. Mark Davies is about par for the course as he is incredibly average. Sigurdson is a bit better but won’t come and we even got turned down by Markus Rosenberg as he preferred WBA.
andy, don’t believe everything you read, that story about Rosenberg is absolute bollocks!
Absolutely agree. Very worrying indeed if that is the way that BR is going. Nothing confirmed yet so just pray that the rumours are wrong. We need a couple of class additions who would go straight into our first 11 – not a bunch of mediocre crap. And by all accounts there are some good players out there who would be interested in a Liverpool move for a relatively moderate fee. If we’re going to get anywhere near top four next season we’ve got to match the sort of players that Arsenal, Chelsea and Spurs bring in.
I prayed they were just rumours when Carrol was spoken about and downing.
If Sinclair , Davies, Solomon kalou are BR buy. Heaven help us.
Let’s hope
whoever we bring in will be an improvement on dalglishes rubbish,apart from suarez.when people say,is he good enough for lfc,it makes me sick.mark davies is better than any midfielder we have got,including gerrard at the moment.the likes of davies,are lfc good enough for him!!!
in Uruguay we went for about 20 years of having mediocre players and it showed as an international team went but as you all know we had the world by the scruff of the neck from the 20s to the late 60s now or in the past 10 years or so we are a force to recon with thank God, my point is British football is changing for the good and its a mater of time before it blossoms…Gaston is a winner and a wee bit of a diver but at 21 he will change.
This is time to buy players to be in the 1st 11…the reason y we r going 4 average players is because we also have average playrs in our squad the likes of v.mosses can look decent due to squad players like adam and henderson who only play ball on the mouth but fail to do action on the grounds,God b with rodgers in his decisions
A world cless stricker that is what we need I just hope (is listing so of the boys we brough last season are below liverpool standard and that is why we are strogleing we created a lot of chances last season that to say we have good midfielder all we need is goal scoreing stricker that is all
FOOLGLISH DESTROYED ARE ONCE GREAT CLUB :{ BUYING CRAP TRIPLE OVERPRICED IDIOTS IN ADAM HENDERSON DOWNING CARROLL :{ AND DONT TELL ME COMOLI BOUGHT THEM,COZ FOOLGLISH SAID IT WAS HIM ? HOW ON THIS EARTH DOES AN IDIOT MANAGER IN FOOLGLISH GIVE JAY SPEARING A NEW CONTRACT…PLEASE DONT TELL ME THESE IDIOT PLAYERS FOOLGLISH BOUGHT ARE GONNA BE GREAT NEXT YEAR ? COZ ITS JUST NOT GONNA HAPPEN,THEY ARE CRAP FULLSTOP !!! WE ARE AND WILL BE A BOTTOM 10 TEAM FROM NOW ON,DUE TOO THE IDIOT MANAGER WHO IS FOOLGLISH :{ WALK ALONE TW*T I HATE YOUR GUTS :{
Have some respect please. You can have an opinion about someone, but there is no need for disrespecting one of the greatest servants this club has ever had…
ive zero respect for an IDIOT who spends say £80 million pounds on ADAM HENDERSON DOWNING CARROLL ? NEVER :{ AND THEN HE GOES AND TOPS IT BY GIVING JAY SPEARING A NEW CONTRACT… HE WAS AN IDIOT AND IS FOOLGLISH ? THESE PATHETIC SIGNINGS WONT BE BETTER NEXT YEAR,THERE JUST SHOCKING SIGNINGS FULLSTOP !!! IM FROM LIVERPOOL,KNOTTY ASH ? ARE CLUB IS IN BIG TROUBLE DUE TOO THIS IDIOT FOOLGLISH :{
True daglish signed those players but lets be straight Liverpool hit the post 1000 times last season, suarz got 8 match ban threw the team off, Carroll was unfit which made downing look bad and henderson is just crap lol don’t blame daglish
Come on Deano show just little bit respect for the greatest ever Lfc player. I was for him to go as well but the man doesn’t deserve to b insulted like this. He wasn’t the problem. Purslow boy and M Broughton a Chelsea fan were for getting rid of Benitez after one bad season and replacing him with LMA mngr R Hodgson. We can all have opinions but insulting the man is not good.
FOOLGLISH DOESNT GET RESPECT,BECAUSE YOU EARN RESPECT !!! AND THAT IDIOT HAS F***** ARE FOOTBALL CLUB UP BIGTIME ? AND YOU KNOW IT ? HE HATED THE FOREIGNER,S ONLY WANTED TO PLAY HIS CRAP SIGNINGS,TO JUSTIFY THE PATHETIC SHAMBOLIC PRICE TAGS !!! ADAM CARROLL HENDERSON DOWNING NEED EITHER STEP UP OR SHIP OUT ? DO YOU KNOW WHAT P*SSED ME OFF MORE ABOUT FOOLGLISH,HE GAVE JAY SPEARING A NEW CONTRACT :{DISGRACEFUL ? IN THE WILDERNESS FOR ANOTHER 20 YEARS DUE TO FOOLGLISH…RESPECT IS EARNED,AND IVE LOST ALL RESPECT FOR THIS IDIOT FOOLGLISH…AND IM ANGRY HE WAS EVEN GIVEN THE JOB IN THE FIRST PLACE :{
I do understand that u were and still r pissed off. I was as well. I hope we don’t buy any more British players. The only one I would like us to sign is A Johnson of MC and that’s it. I just think that the language u r using is a bit strong. That’s all.
Show some respect you ***** King Kenny is Liverpool football club
Whats is wrong with you Deano? Respect breeds respect, you are not about to get any if you keep on disrespecting a legend.
I wonder ? …If those who are complaining before ..before we have signed any player and a ball has been kicked …will be as quick to apologise for there rants ..this I doubt very much..I have no doubt that should we sign second rate players and have a bad season I too will complain ..but only then…as it will then be a fact …so can we not wait and see ..you never know we just may be pleasantly surprised.
i jus want to ask u if u were pleasantly surprised by the display of the players that KD signed last season??????How much longer are we lfc fans going to hav to suffer…we hav not won the league in yrs, our best yr in recent memory is 2005 when we won champions league under rafa benitez if we do not sign players of that calibre we r going no where……we are becoming a feeder club for the likes of madrid and barcelona and the only reason we r not a feeder club for man united is bcuz of the bitter rivalry between both clubs but who knows maybe we’ll be pleasantly surprised there as well……continue to support mediocre signing and look at our club join the ranks of nottingham forrest somewhere in the lower leagues hoping to one day restore past glory
All i can say is may God help us (lfc). Honestly, i agree with David Tyrer on this article. Pls keep it up
Either we buy the players with quality to add to our team or don’t bother buying any. As proven last year, buying average players just adds to the wage bill and adds 0 value. Downing, your ears should be burning.
That simple. Id be happy with one or two quality players and nothing more. If there arnt any, save the cash for next year!
YNWA
A new name is rumoured every day. If anyone is worried about what rumours are doing the rounds, should see a doctor
Rodgers’ will sign players who are fast, accurate passers of the ball who fit the system. It’s unlikely any (apart from strikers) will ever cost more than £10m. If Ramirez is £16m, as recently quoted, it’s not likely he’ll be a Liverpool player.
I expect an inspiring system of football delivered by individually uninspiring, interchangeable players. All the signs, this will be the case, are there.
i hope u are correct in ur assessment or God help us
BR as the manager won’t never attract anyone big name player to liverpool he just not good enough to
manage a big team .