AS the start to the new season dawns ever closer by the day, the excitement builds and the anticipation grows. But does the reality live up to our high expectations?
With much transfer business being done very early on in the window, it undoubtedly allows the fans to feel more at ease knowing that the club have learnt from the disastrous window of 2012 in which £35m club record signing Andy Carroll left the club on loan, with no replacement signed.
However one still cannot deny that something just doesn’t feel quite right.
Luis Alberto, Iago Aspas and Kolo Toure have all been drafted in. Whilst the signing of the Belgian, Simon Mignolet from Sunderland, broke the club’s goalkeeping transfer record at £9m. Whilst Jonjo Shelvey has headed out the exit door.
Alberto and Aspas have both shown early promise in the first three pre-season games, whilst Toure looks to be a very astute piece of business on behalf of Rodgers following the loss of Carragher to retirement. And Simon Mignolet is regarded on the whole as being the best goalkeeper of the past season.
Yet the club is still screaming out for that marquee signing. That signing which will make others sit up and take notice, and the player that can be the difference between another 6th/7th place battle, or a return to the top four.
The missing out on Henrikh Mkhitaryan to Borussia Dortmund could be deemed to send all the wrong signals to Liverpool fans.
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If we are to believe reports from apparent close sources to the player such as Artur Petrosyan who at the time of negotiations took to Twitter to claim:
“Ian Ayre now has to be an absolute Kerzhakov to miss on Henrikh.”
With Kerzhakov of course being that notorious Zenit striker famed for his goals to shots ratio of around 1 to 100. It seems Ian Ayre and the club, lacked the ruthlessness and desire in order to make such a statement of intent.
However the window is far from over and the keeping hold of star striker Luis Suarez remains paramount to the club’s ambitions this season.
It needs to be made clear that despite clubs such as Arsenal may have Champions League football this year, they will never have the authority to publicly mock this immense institution with a derisory pound increase on the £40m clause in his contract, and then succeed in signing their star player.
Christian Eriksen, Roberto Soldado, Xerdan Shaqiri and Brazilian ace Bernard have all been linked with the club this summer.
And one cannot help but feel that in order to capitalise on the most unpredictable Premier League season to date, that Liverpool FC need to make their intent clear with a high- profile quality signing. Watch this space…
if the lying press is to be believed, every player out there has been linked with Liverpool, I suppose with the law of average they are bound to get it right once, followed with just remember you read it here first.
That article was a total load of crap. ‘Marquee signings’ mean nothing, it’s just a fancy term for an overly expensive player. I’d rather have young good quality cheaper players like Phillipe and Daniel who will fight and play well for the team. ‘Marquee signing’ is a trite term for lazy follow the pack so-called crap wanna be writers.
You must be sitting too far away from the television Jim.
sorry jim i disagree with your comment, “so called” marquee signing is what we need. Good young, cheap players we have more than enough of. A marquee signing(eg cristian eriksen) don’t always cost an arm ‘n’ a leg, he’s reported to cost around 15m-18m, thats relatevly cheap. Not only does that increase the all round quality of the sqaud it also lifts squad moral, players (ie SUAREZ) see the ambition of the club an maybe decide(ie SUAREZ)to stay around for a little while longer.
Nonsense from Jim
Anyone convincing themselves that we don’t need a major signing or two.quite simply are living in fantasy. I think we need Eriksen for 15-18m, a decent left-back (cissokho maybe), and one proven high-profile player
We can’t continue to take big risks like we have lately. We were lucky with Coutinho and Sturridge, but unlucky with Assaidi, Borini and Allen. Aspas, Alberto and Toure are not guaranteed regulars, which is what we need. We need to invest more in fewer players that are more likely to play well than to spend more on semi-expensive players who are going to be primarily subs and who have a big risk of not settling to the English league well and having bad form.
If we can get Eriksen and Papadopolous/Sakho to replace Toure and Henderson as regulars, I will be satisfied, though I have doubts about Lucas.
Henderson improved a lot last season but you want to get rid of him? Stop being so impatient. He will come good. Sick to death of the ‘off the shelf’ mentality that prevails in the epl. Stick with hendo. He’s still developing
Yawn .kop on stevie
Very good piece, agree with all the points made. YNWA
Lazy lazy article. Even agents don’t always know what’s going on as Pere has proved here, so nobody has a clue what exactly happened in the Mkhitaryn story. Mr Suarez has been very badly advised by what seems like incompetence on behalf of his representatives, who seem to know very little about the PL an how it operates. Any agent who would advise Suarez to join Arsenal doesn’t really care about his client. Whether they like it or not it’s a soulless club with pompous fans who abused & baited Suarez as much if not more than any other the last two seasons. While certain anti LFC media may now take it easier on him there are others who will put the boot in (just wait till Utd loose a few games & are under pressure & the media need someone to distract from their woes). From Liverpool’s point of view, even to keep him in the reserves for the season would be better than selling him to Arsenal. He’ll still fetch 40 odd million next summer anyway & I doubt he’ll fancy reserve football in a world cup year. Arsenal fans are just sick that Wenger didn’t have the bottle to stand up to other clubs over the last 10 years, & they wouldn’t have next Summer either when Suarez’s agent would move him on again.
Saying Suarez wants to leave only because of representatives is totally false Josek. The player wants to go, don’t convince yourself otherwise
Jim clearly is too far up his own *. Good piece we nneed to make a statement this summer. And this is the way to do it
Good article, i’m sure Suarez would have been best encouraged to stay had we signed Henrikh Mkhitaryan. But suarez seems to have gauged the Reds’ intent of fighting for trophies this season. We need one great signing to even boost the morale of the squad…
ask Arsene wenger jim about good young players ! change of tact now hence the pursuit of luis and several other marquee potential signings. A mixture is needed.
sorry about the trite term .
Wenger hasn’t got the bottle to table a bid of 50m+ just in case LFC accept it! It’s all to appease the cheesed off Arsenal fans, to show them they’re willing to spend the money. If they were serious it would’ve been at least 45m to start negotiating and as for the first bid they made (abd the second to be fair) what was the point?! LFC will only sell to another EPL team for a premium and in my opinion that’s going to be 53-55m plus add ons. He’s a better all round player than Cavani and he went for 54m
Suarez simply is ungrateful and as a lot of players are these days he’s a mercenary , if Arsenal did get him it’s only a matter of a season or 2 and he’d be angling for a move to Real or Bayern. Arsenal would be in the same position as LFC but 50m spent as well. All this talk of Chanpuons league is rubbish, bottom line playing 5 games a season in it is neither here nor there, it’s not like he’s going there to win it!
Do people not *realize dat we are broke,we hav no money,our owners are worse then the last 2 cowboys who bought us,our *braindead chairman turned down the chance of the billions offered by a sheik in the middle east and now look at this *mess,Ian ayre is like a fan getting a dream job at his boyhood football team,out of his depth and running us further into the ground,den we hav brenda who hasn’t a *clue,this is just gonna get worse and worse
Pls we need two experience midfielders,lky Alonso and Eriksen,and one more defender.
Agreed. Good article pal. Eriksen maybe is the answer?
nice article too bad we may not be actually getting Christain Eriksen. This transfer has not been taken very seriously by Liverpool so far so it is easy to assume that that the Dane is not a priority. Eriksen is someone whom Liverpool has have linked with well before Henrik Mkhitaryan even came into the picture.
I mean we were linked with Eriksen for so long the poor folks at the website “Caughtoffside.com” got confused. They’d taken to announcing every day that we were really close to signing Christian Eriksen. Then when Eriksen still didn’t come to Liverpool they would wait for a short time before reporting once again that we were really really close to signing Christian Eriksen. Ultimately one day it got too much for them to handle and they went on to state that we had actually signed Christian Eriksen which we all know to be false since no one has seen him on the 2013 Asian tour. It is hard for me to watch what not signing Eriksen is doing to the good people of “Caughtoffside.” I informed them of their error and now i have been blocked from ever making comments on their page.
What this tells me is just how important signing a creative attacking midfielder is for the fans of the club . Rodgers has been forced to use a lot of different players in the attacking midfield role all not to very good success. Henderson has been deployed in that position, Shelvy has been deployed in that position so has Allen , and very recently Philip Coutinho. With Coutinho easily the most successful of the players in that position so far. With the failure of the Mkhitaryan signing Eriksen became the natural solution. A real marquee signing has not happened in a long time for Liverpool as the emphasis has been to save money by pursuing the cheapest signings possible. i think it is becoming very apparent to the Brendan Rodgers and the Liverpool board that you can’t attract quality signings if you are not prepared to spend a little bit of money. That policy work out well in the pursuit of Sturridge and Coutihno but with many clubs looking for that specia diamond in the rough type phenoms it only drives up the price of those with recognized talent. Liverpool needs to sign more creative technical talent and unfortunately it means less British signings for the most part if we mean business of a top 4 finish. A marquee player is long overdue as Xavi Alonso has never been truly replaced since he left in my humble opinion.
It’s the ‘marquee mentality’ that pissed away 35 million on Andy Carroll. I think FSG learned their lesson and now with Brendan as manager they have decided to be more prudent and smart in the transfer market. It’s clear that FSG and Brendan are buying good players at good prices. We didn’t get ‘lucky’ with Phillipe and Daniel, it was good scouting. It was clear that Daniel was a real talent at Man City and then wasted at Chelsea. There are far too many ‘so called’ supporters who are far too quick to judge harshly players that sometimes need time to settle into the club before they really shine. Lucas, then Henderson, and now Borini and Allen. We don’t need marquee signings, we need good players at sensible prices and that’s exactly what Brendan and FSG are doing and about time too.
Caughtoffside is full of crap . Don’t believe everything you read over there. This website is many times better than them. Seriously I don’t think we really need a marquee signing … all we need is a player who understands the importance of wearing our jersey and is a fighter and team player who can made a difference . Just look at our January signings.
I have a strong feeling that our transfer business is done unless of course Suarez leaves.
I am not sure about what’s going on between the manager and the players. With Suarez desperate to get out, Reina going to Napoli, Carragher suddenly announcing his retirement plus the players who have been sold and the replacement the club bought. Looking at the six players left from the squad when BR took over ( Downing, Henderson, Enrique, Lucas, Johnson and Gerard ) the first four are not convincing according to the manager so might be sold soon and the last two have got a maximum of three years to keep performing. Now instead of aiming to win the title next season we are a bit shy to ensure the fans that we will finish in the top four. I think it’s gonna take years to be there unless the club start spending money on bringing big players instead of selling who’s left of big players they still have. Sorry I forgot about Agger and skertel but they might be sold as well.
FSG should dig hand in there pocket and make these signings mention in this article. benard,shaqiri and soldado.
if possible gustavo..ynwa