Liverpool FC Forum

[Dimshen]

Firstly I am looking forward to the summer already. Rafa has had to work within a very stringient budget since he came here but I am hoping this deal with DIC Investment group will bring much needed spending power and unshackle the restrictions that has made Rafa look round in the bargain basement instead of the shop window. I like the signings he has done. Gonzalez, Sissoko, Agger, Luis Garcia, Xabi Alonso, Crouch, Kuyt and Bellamy were all shrewd signings and I believe they will feature heavliy in the clubs drive for success. He is a manager who is very, very strict about his transfer policy and he will not buy players who's prices are vastly inflated. He does not waste money or throw it around easliy unlike his predecessor and I for one, am glad we have such a shrewd player at the table.

    Due to this investment, people will think we will start spending £££'s on players just because we can. We won't. Rafa Benitez will not be bullied into paying over-inflated prices and he certainly will not pay money for players he does not think justify the the transfer fees. Also the DIC group will not insist on "super" transfers ala Abromovich. They will back Rafa, of course they will, their ventures into the horse racing and the entertainment market ( Madam Tussauds) show how they work. They spend the money as they like to be the best, but the money will be wisely spent.

   I expect we will see a lot more youngsters coming to the club from abroad. Rafa was recently in the papers talking about Arsenal and how he had tracked many of the youngsters have signed in recent years but he did not have the funds to bid for them, the examples were Walcott, Diaby ( a player clearly with the world at his feet) and Denilson. The youth systems is obviously a big part in Rafa's management style, experience from his days as the youth manager of Real Madrid, and I fully expect a lot more money to be pumped into our Academy and the aquiring of the next generation of potential stars, something I am desperate to see at Liverpool.

I also see a better quality of player coming to Anfield as well over the coming years. The SWP fiasco is a prime example of what will not happen now Liverpool have the financial backing of someone who can mix it with the big boys. We missed out on SWP because the coffers were empty and Chelski took the pi$$. The next time this comes round, Liverpool will be at the forefront in the bidding for such an exciting young talent that he was. I expect Rafa to go for the higher tier of quality players that we are currently aquirng, instead of Pennant's will we get Simao's etc.

  I cannot however see us under any circumstances bidding for players like Kaka. He is a very good player, one of the best passers in the world. However if he wanted to come, and thats a very big if by the way as AC Milan although they are not setting the world alight and are struggling in their league, they are one of the best 5 teams in the world. He is happy there and there a World Class club who would not let him go for cheap. Also the amount being spent on this one player is just not Rafa's style. I would welcome a bid with open arms for such a class act but I just cannot see Rafa going for it. Kaka is indespenable to AC Milan and I cannot see them even considering selling there best player.

  Villa is a viable option in my opinion as is Torres. Yes they would both cost money, in the £20m plus range but both play for teams that are not World Class. Valencia are a big club, there fan base and previous titles suggest so, but Valencia are not up their in world football, with your Liverpools, Man Utds, Barcelona and Real Madrids. Villa would be expensive but not in the same bracket as your Kaka's and Eto'os.

  I don't know who Rafa will have ear marked as possible signings in the summer. I cannot even tell you what plans he has for Watford at the weekend. He is a very clever fellow and I trust him totally with the management of our football club. However he will already know who he wants, when he wants and I am certain he knows what he is doing.


My thoughts anyways...

Rafa-Dodd

great post, and while i agree with the majority of what you said, but i have a few points of contention.

I think your views on the capture of players like kaka are accurate but i think there lies our problem. It Is considered impossible for us to lure such players to the club, but surely its this type of player we need to have real success. I think it really is a catch 22, as we cant win the league till we have these players and i doubt we'll win it until we do.

I hear your points about investement in youth and the shrewd activity in the market by rafa, which are both very important, but both long term solution with no garuntees.

I think its clear that we need to find OUR kaka, and OUR Ronaldinho but of course this is alot easier said than done.

[Rafa D]

Yes I agree. We need to find our own stars and thats why I am extremely happy that Rafa values the youth systems as much as he does. This club needs to be breeding its own generation of superstars. The trouble is, its like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. Your Kaka's, Rooney's and Gerrard's are one in a million players, they are very difficult to find and when you do you have to keep hold of them. Hence our reluctance to let Gerrard go a few seasons ago. Players like Kaka, Rooney, Adriano, Gerrard, Ronaldinho are invaluable. There are only a handful of these top class players around so why would a club, who has no debt, no reason to sell, let go of these players?

   Kaka came from Sao Paulo for around the £8m mark to Milan. A gamble some might say?  Ronaldinho went for around £15m from PSG. Cristiano Ronaldo went for £12m. These were all gambles on some scale. Unfortunatley we have not have the funds in recent years to take these type of gambles.  Our funds were limited to the tried and tested. Rafa could not afford to take a risk when his job was on the line. With this new investment, I expect to see us at the front of the que now when young talent starts to emerge. Micah Richards is a player I would love to see Rafa sniff round. However I think he has emerged a bit too soon for our new ownership to have a chance in sercuring him. But he is a prime example of the type of player I expect to see Rafa pursuing.

[monkey 20]

Firstly I am looking forward to the summer already. Rafa has had to work within a very stringient budget since he came here but I am hoping this deal with DIC Investment group will bring much needed spending power and unshackle the restrictions that has made Rafa look round in the bargain basement instead of the shop window. I like the signings he has done. Gonzalez, Sissoko, Agger, Luis Garcia, Xabi Alonso, Crouch, Kuyt and Bellamy were all shrewd signings and I believe they will feature heavliy in the clubs drive for success. He is a manager who is very, very strict about his transfer policy and he will not buy players who's prices are vastly inflated. He does not waste money or throw it around easliy unlike his predecessor and I for one, am glad we have such a shrewd player at the table.

    Due to this investment, people will think we will start spending £££'s on players just because we can. We won't. Rafa Benitez will not be bullied into paying over-inflated prices and he certainly will not pay money for players he does not think justify the the transfer fees. Also the DIC group will not insist on "super" transfers ala Abromovich. They will back Rafa, of course they will, their ventures into the horse racing and the entertainment market ( Madam Tussauds) show how they work. They spend the money as they like to be the best, but the money will be wisely spent.

   I expect we will see a lot more youngsters coming to the club from abroad. Rafa was recently in the papers talking about Arsenal and how he had tracked many of the youngsters have signed in recent years but he did not have the funds to bid for them, the examples were Walcott, Diaby ( a player clearly with the world at his feet) and Denilson. The youth systems is obviously a big part in Rafa's management style, experience from his days as the youth manager of Real Madrid, and I fully expect a lot more money to be pumped into our Academy and the aquiring of the next generation of potential stars, something I am desperate to see at Liverpool.

I also see a better quality of player coming to Anfield as well over the coming years. The SWP fiasco is a prime example of what will not happen now Liverpool have the financial backing of someone who can mix it with the big boys. We missed out on SWP because the coffers were empty and Chelski took the pi$$. The next time this comes round, Liverpool will be at the forefront in the bidding for such an exciting young talent that he was. I expect Rafa to go for the higher tier of quality players that we are currently aquirng, instead of Pennant's will we get Simao's etc.

  I cannot however see us under any circumstances bidding for players like Kaka. He is a very good player, one of the best passers in the world. However if he wanted to come, and thats a very big if by the way as AC Milan although they are not setting the world alight and are struggling in their league, they are one of the best 5 teams in the world. He is happy there and there a World Class club who would not let him go for cheap. Also the amount being spent on this one player is just not Rafa's style. I would welcome a bid with open arms for such a class act but I just cannot see Rafa going for it. Kaka is indespenable to AC Milan and I cannot see them even considering selling there best player.

  Villa is a viable option in my opinion as is Torres. Yes they would both cost money, in the £20m plus range but both play for teams that are not World Class. Valencia are a big club, there fan base and previous titles suggest so, but Valencia are not up their in world football, with your Liverpools, Man Utds, Barcelona and Real Madrids. Villa would be expensive but not in the same bracket as your Kaka's and Eto'os.

  I don't know who Rafa will have ear marked as possible signings in the summer. I cannot even tell you what plans he has for Watford at the weekend. He is a very clever fellow and I trust him totally with the management of our football club. However he will already know who he wants, when he wants and I am certain he knows what he is doing.


My thoughts anyways...

Rafa-Dodd

great comment

[monkey 20]

i've been hearing some of you guys slate riise, this just isn't on. the guy is a great defender. since rafa has come in, he has improved his defence game heaps, and his attacking game speaks for itself...i think lfc are lucky to have a left back like him! i wouldn't swap him for any other left back in the world!!! maybe bar heinze, pity he plays 4 such a team..

[CarlosRocks]

imo i dont really rate him as a defender. he's great at going forward down the left and as we all know he cant half hit a ball but his defence just seems to let him down sometimes...

[bigmick]

The influx of capital will be particularly handy in my view for the blokes who are destined to be an obvious success but which we have always been excluded from bidding on in the past. The most obvious recent example was Rooney who Manchester United absolutely stole for twenty five million three seasons ago. He represented absolutely zero on the gamble scale but due to their superior spending power and the change of management at Chelsea they were able to pick him up virtually unopposed (no disrespect to Newcastle of course )

Rio Ferdidnand was another obvious who was way out of our transfer bracket, and though he had a pretty poor first eighteen months the performances of Didier Drogba surely can't be that surprising to those of us who remember him beating both us and Newcastle virtually single handed in the UEFA cup a few years back. Whether or not the buying of people like Kaka is a good idea remains to be seen, but sometimes the player you need who the manager is pretty certain will be a success remains tantalisingly out of reach due to lack of finanacial clout. If that is to change then all well and good, Daniel Alves anyone?

[FRfanatic]

IMO LFC has a world class squad. Next season they will be much better just give the new players time to settle.
To buy an expensive player is no garantee for succes e.g. Sevchenko, how much did he cost ?

[andy_g]

daniel alves, exactly. i will be very very surprised if he is not a liverpool player by the beginning of next season at the latest.

as for the rest of the mega-bucks i just don't see the point. we've just revolutionised the squad in a way that hasn't been seen for ages and brought in a crop of genuinely quality players (and yes i include pennant in that). the ONLY position we need to strengthen in my view is the right wing back type player, i.e. alves, and another top quality option at left back. but that doesn't mean dumping finnan, pennant or riise by any means - just gives us more options and more strength in depth. overhauling the team with major new signings in positions we are strong in, i.e most of them, seems pointless to me.

[bigmick]

With the greatest respect I think Shevczenko (or however the feck you spell it) is an entirely different kettle of fish to the ones I have mentioned. One thing I would also point out about the Ukranian is that he is playing in a system which patently obviously doesn't suit him. The feeling remains that for this reason it was more than likely the work of his chairman to procure his services than it was his manager.
Though he is clearly not the player he once was, I have the notion that playing in a team which offers more width and adopts a more conventional 4-4-2 he would still be successful over here. The Premiership is not that strong currently in my opinion and top-class strikers who retain most of their ability have plenty of opportunities to rack up decent stats against reasonably poor opposition. Shevczenco is still a good player don't worry about that.

[Mikz]

Andy s back!! I thought you were Lost brother!

[andy_g]

i was, mikz mate

[Ciggy]

i was, mikz mate

Alrite Andy lar where the bloody hell have you been hiding?
p.s. welcome back Big Mick 

[JC_81]

The summer should certainly be interesting, but we aren't necessarily needing a lot of players.  The increased spending power should imo be used as needed to compete for those players (as Bigmick touched on) that are available, guaranteed to be quality, but who would cost a fair bit. 

Players like Ronaldinho (pre-Barce), Rooney (pre-ManU), Robben (pre-Chelsea), Duff (pre-Chelsea), SWP (pre-Chelsea), Eto'o (pre-Barce) and Van Nistelrooy (pre-Man U) spring to mind in recent years.  We could never have afforded them, but with the exception of Rooney (because of his Everton links), we could well have seen these players in a red shirt had we had the money available.  But these players don't all come along at once, which is why we should sit on the money and spend it when we need to, bringing in about 2 top quality players each season, rather than beefing up the squad with numbers, because we still need to give the younger players coming through the ranks a chance.

At the moment, I'd say Micah Richards fits the bill.  The guy is quality and I can see him playing to a high level at either centre mid or centre back in the future, he's wasted at right back imo with his attributes but I can see the point in playing him there at his current age.  Arguably Villa and Torres are other names, as well as people like Alves who Benitez clearly rates but couldn't afford.

But let's also not forget Benitez will not be held to ransom over players, it could well work against us having money, as clubs will hike the prices as they do with Chelsea, and we know Benitez will not pay over the odds for someone.  The summer will certainly be interesting either way.

[bigmick]

Micah Richards is not a bad shout John to be fair. You wouldn't be taking the biggest gamble you'd ever taken if you stuck your neck out and said you thought he was going to be an international regular before too much longer. However his footballing abilities develop, he is an absolutely fantastic athlete and as such will always be able to defend competently. I guess you'd have to go well into the teens to get him but he'd be worth it.

BTW thanks for the mention Lynds. The family have just arrived in New Zealand and I've just got up. We went via USA so I've seen next to no football over the last few weeks. Hopefully it should stop me getting all "know-it-all" as i haven't seen the games.

It doesn't really feel like crimbo here but a very happy one to everyone on the forum anyhow.

[mikopool]

Rafeal Van Der Vaart. When Hamburg get relegated (which is pretty much a cetainty) we should snap up Van der Vaart, he is young, boat loads of experience, bags quite a few goals, and reminds me of Garcia, with a better touch. Other then that, Lucas Neill as back up to Finnan, other then that I don't think we need anyone else, maybe a defensive midfeilder for situations like now where Sissoko is out and Stevie and Alsono will begin to get tired. Don't see the point of having another defensive midfeilder, but in reality, having only 3 out and out first team midfeilders is dodgy.