WELL, that wasn’t too eventful, was it? Like many a Red, I had lined up Friday night as a night of deadline day ridiculousness. I planned to sit in front of the TV, laptop at the ready, just waiting to take in all the glorious transfer goodness.
But, most importantly, I was eagerly awaiting news of either Clint Dempsey or Daniel Sturridge’s signings, and maybe even a more obscure ‘last minute’ purchase, straight out of left-field.
So when news that we’d shut up shop for the night broke, about 2 hours before the window closed, it kind of ruined my night. Sad as that may be. The failure by the club to sign Dempsey, Sturridge or any kind of recognized goal-scorer is one thing, but letting a number of strikers go already this summer, then Carroll on Thursday evening and then allowing Nathan Eccleston to go (not to mention attempting to move out Dani Pacheco too!) just strikes me as bloody ridiculous. It was as if somebody at the club really had it in for strikers.
Now, we’re effectively left with Luis Suarez and Fabio Borini. Many are already getting the knives out for Borini, simply because he hasn’t scored 15 goals yet this season. One thing the modern Liverpool fan loves to do is turn on a new signing without giving him a fair crack and it looks as if Borini might become the latest target for this pathetic ire. Let me just state for the record: he’s 21, an Italian international, and has his whole career ahead of him and needs to be allowed to develop. Getting on his back because we’ve let Andy Carroll go won’t help anybody.
But of course, the main point to take from the shenanigans is that someone, somewhere will be required to take the blame. The finger-pointing started a couple of hours before the window closed and reached intolerable levels before midnight. I’ll admit I joined in a bit myself, but having had time to just sleep on it a little has helped to put things in to perspective.
As things stand, it looks as if Ian Ayre will now be made the fall-guy. In all fairness, he doesn’t appear cut out for the job. But one thing which many fans appear reluctant to accept at the moment is that we’re basically just paying for the sins of Rodger’s and Ayre’s predecessors. You can blame FSG, Ian Ayre, or even Brendan Rodgers himself but it doesn’t take away from the fact that, via Comolli and Dalglish, the club squandered over £100 million last year and what did they get in return? Next to nothing. Can you blame them for being reluctant to go through that again?
In their eyes, Rodgers needed to sell before he could buy, with regards any further players being brought in, but let’s not forget that they already sanctioned the purchases of both Fabio Borini at £10 million and Joe Allen at £15 million. Add to that Assaidi (£3 million), Nuri Sahin (no doubt, some form of nominal loan fee) and lastly, Samed Yesil (£1 million) and you’re looking at over £30 million. So how on earth can FSG be accused of not spending money?
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Like I said, Ian Ayre will most likely lose his job for this and, whether that’s right or wrong, is irrelevant. His role dictates that he negotiates these deals; he knew how much was available and he knew that funds (not to mention wages) needed to be freed up to allow any further signings and this wasn’t done in time. Let’s not forget, the summer transfer window isn’t only 24 hours long, it’s spread over an entire summer, which makes our inability to replace the outgoing strikers even more unforgivable.
But, all we can do now is move on. Pointing fingers is just going to create another storm that we don’t need right now. The club hasn’t been this stable at any time for the past 4 years and a fan-led campaign blaming FSG or Ian Ayre or even Brendan Rodgers isn’t going to help anybody. The squad we have now is the one that we have to work with. Well, until January, at the least.
We have a strong spine of players in Reina, Skrtel, Agger, Lucas, Allen, Sahin, Gerrard and Suarez. We’ve got capable players around them in the likes of Johnson, Enrique, Downing (stop laughing!), Assaidi and the most promising batch of young players in the country in Sterling, Suso, Morgan, Shelvey, Kelly, Borini, Robinson, Coates and now the most promising young striker in Germany, Samed Yesil.
All of these young kids will, without doubt, see first-team action and I am very excited about that. Our squad is certainly thin, in terms of depth, but I’d much prefer to see our youth teams utilized than squander another £100 million on players that will add nothing, like last summer.
So, if you want to point fingers, then blame the people responsible for the shambles that occurred last summer. We’re still paying for the ‘strategy’ they had in place last summer and likely will be through to next summer too, unless we somehow manage to claw our way in to the Champions League spots. The only thing FSG can be accused of is standing by the principles they set out from the start and being far too generous (not to mention, unquestioning) when asked for money to sign mediocre players last year.
With just three games played, the season hasn’t even properly got under way and there’s a lot of football to be played. With a talented young squad and a few top-class, experienced players, I have faith that, come January, we’ll be looking to build on a strong first half of the season and August 31st will just feel like a bad dream.
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Wow. Thank Robbie Fowler (God) there’s a journalist with a bit of perspective writing something vaguely positive. I just wonder sometimes the way everyone has lashed out( and granted there were mistakes made) what ppl were really expecting this year. A title challenge? Fourth? It’s just not on so why not pick up some young guns that will develop further and bring us to another level in a couple yrs because it’s not happening now now now! There were mistakes made in the summer but there were a lot of positives and the money we did spend we spent well. It’s like a lynch mob out there! These ore our owners, these are out players and Rodgers is our coach. Let’s give them our support.
No we did not expect to challenge for the title and even finished 4th to be honest.
What we did not expect either are :
1) Losing 3-0 to essentially a mid table team on the first game.
2) Made our worse start in 50 years.
3) An unwielding philosophy that is clear the players are need time to adjust to but BR is too inflexible to recognise this.
4) Played candy football but with no results. Just a younger version of the disaster that was KD.
We do not expect FSG to spend another 100 mill either but to put in danger our season/future over
2 mill?
I wish people would f**k off blaming our current predicament on Comolli and Kenny. They weren’t the ones who let Kuyt, Bellamy and Carroll go without signing any replacements. They weren’t the one’s who promised Rodgers Clint Dempsey, then told him we weren’t getting him because we weren’t willing to pay £6m for him. They weren’t the ones who left us with one senior striker and no senior wingers.
So f**k right off with your bulls**t, and the same to everyone else who comes out with that s**t.
Oh, but KD and DC are the ones who blew :
1) 35 mill on striker who can’t score even if the goal post is the size of airplane hangars.
2)20 mill on a winger who return the favor with 0 goal, 0 assist. He was so bad that BR is now contemplating him as a left back. Oh he can only bully teams from the SPL it seems.
3) 20 mill on a midfielder whio can barely pass the salt.
4) 10 mill on another midfielder who at best made a few Hollywood pass in a few games and can’t tackle. He was so bad we had to take a 6 mill hit on him.
Other than the above, i think we could safely says that other than blaming the goalpost (32 times) and the ref, he offers no solution how we can train our strikers to be more accurate eventhough he is was a top striker himself.
Yes, even though KD and DC had F*** off now (as in your words) we are feeling the effect of their stupidity and blunders and we would be for years to come.
For any remants of KD fans outthere, you guys too can F*** OFF (not my words, it’s from one of your own). We dod not need fans like you as your hero is no better than the Yank Cowboys.
I’m pointing my fingers right at FSG, and I’ll be pointing them at you bunch of muppets when this house of cards comes crashing down.
Mick, I won’t be expecting us to finish outside of a relegation place now that we don’t have any out-and-out strikers or wingers. We’ll be able to pass it around nicely in midfield though.
Matu you are right my son,this mess is all down to
these P..ck faced yanks i wish they would F..k off
and stick to robbing the red sox in the Zion states of America,if its a fight they want they will be ko in round 1.Yanks out!!! YNWA redmen.
Great realistic article. Just imagine if Downing has come out the blocks like Sterling has, or Adam and Henderson had come to the party like Allen and Shelvey, and Carroll had been as successful as Suarez in scoring goals ( Not that Suarez scored a lot, but another 8 goals would have been welcomed in the PL however and whenever they were scored) who knows where we’d be…..but it didn’t happen that way for whatever reason we can all think of. There is one thing I can tell you, allocating blame when the chips are down, is NOT the way forward, and I will tell you why…..Allocating blame and pointing fingers is easy to do, but doesn’t fix anything, although it does create an environment of anger and negativity to justify our opinions….but still, it doesn’t fix anything. I for one love the enthusiasm on the field shown by Sterling, Allen, Shelvey, Kelly, Coates, Borini and Morgan. If I have to compare them to the signings of last year, well it’s Chalk and Cheese. Even with the limited and somewhat inexperienced resources we have in the team now, I would rather build now, than on the team we had last year. Yes, I am disappointed with the start of the season…who isn’t. But these new youngsters and the ones that will be given the opportunity to play this season I believe have and will grab the opportunity with both hands and give us some memorable shows of pace, strength and character this season, and its still a long one, with a long way to go. YNWA