Liverpool FC Forum

Ok, to start with we'll go with the positives.

Kolo Toure - Free
Kolo has come in primarily as a squad player as cover for the out going Carragher and so far (a couple of performances apart) has performed very well. Without doubt this was a good signing. The lad is good quality back up and came without a transfer fee.

Verdict - A nice solid 7/10 signing that no-one can have any real complaints with.

Simon Mignolet - £10,000,000

Mignolet came to the club replacing one of our best ever goal keepers and one of the best keepers in europe. Not an easy task and was always going to be an uphill task. He has however not let anyone down. I don't believe he's an improvement on Reina whatsoever... for me the only one we could have got that was the same level/better is Begovic. However, he's definately not done much wrong and I'd say I'm alot more comfortable now than I was with this signing at the start of the season.

Verdict - 7/10, would have expected a better keeper, but can't complain too much.

Daniel Sturridge - £12,000,000
All in he scores goals. Questionable all round game and attitude, but goals are scored because of him and he scores them himself.

Verdict - 8/10

Phillipe Coutinho - £8,600,000
Excellent signing if we can keep him fit which is proving to be a struggle. The lad has skill and intelligence and I think has probably doubled his value since he signed.

Verdict - 9/10, Excellent value, for a quality player.

Now for the bad business.

Mamadou Sahko - £17,000,000
The lad is not a great player. He's dodgy positionally, he goes to ground to quick, he's not as quick as made out and I'm not convinced he's as good in the air as he's appeared either. For the kind of money spent was expecting a massive amount more. He is struggling to get into the side at present which is quite frankly not good enough. We can't be wasting £17,000,000 on a player to come in and be fourth choice... and lets not paper over the cracks here... thats exactly what he is. I'm quite sure had you swapped him for Wisdom so far (IE Wisdom playing in the games Sahko has in the same position) we'd be no worse off.

Joe Allen - £15,000,000
Had we signed him for £5,000,000 there wouldn't be any complaints. The lad isn't a bad player, he's just not a very good one. When you consider Alonso was signed for £10,000,000... if kind of puts this transfer into perspective.

Fabio Borini - £10,400,000
League one standard player. Cannot believe we paid the fee we did for him.

Oussama Assaidi - £2,400,000
Another pointless signing that has completely failed to show anything other than championship quality. Quick, good feet, no brain, no quality.

Iago Aspas - £7,500,000
Quite simply not upto it. Money wasted on a player who looks championship standard at best. Can't even get near the side in place of Sterling or Moses. How on earth did we manage to let Suso go out on loan and keep hold of this player?

Thiago Illori £7,000,000
All that money spent on a player who can't even make the bench?

Ali Cissokho - Loan
Some numpty on here said he was better than Enrique. The only thing he's better than Enrique at passing himself off as french. Never a footballer. How on earth can the management allow Robinson to leave on loan for this chump? I don't believe Robinson to be good enough, but he's twice the player of this muppet.

Victor Moses - Loan - £1,000,000
Moses or Suso... I know which one i'd rather have.

Massive questions need to be asked.

How can we allow better players to leave on loan that players we're signing? How can we waste so much money on back up?

Can't disagree on much. Allen, Borini, Aspas are obvious failures that I cannot see improving anytime soon.

However I think the Sahko signing is not all bad. So he hasn't adapted to the speed of the league yet, many players have the same problems in the first season. He regularly plays for France and his recent game in the world cup qualifier was a stand out game in which he impressed. Our goal is to get those performances out of him in the league. He warrants time IMO.

Cissokho is not up to it, I suspect his loan will not be renewed. Moses I'm split on, he started well but I think lack of games has affected his ability to perform.

In terms of the Suso loan, in hindsight Rodgers would have kept him but consider his development playing week in week out in Spain. He can only return a better player for it. Sometimes you have to ignore the short term benefits for a better long term reward.

SouthCoastShankly » Mon Dec 02, 2013 4:32 pm wrote:Can't disagree on much. Allen, Borini, Aspas are obvious failures that I cannot see improving anytime soon.

However I think the Sahko signing is not all bad. So he hasn't adapted to the speed of the league yet, many players have the same problems in the first season. He regularly plays for France and his recent game in the world cup qualifier was a stand out game in which he impressed. Our goal is to get those performances out of him in the league. He warrants time IMO.

Cissokho is not up to it, I suspect his loan will not be renewed. Moses I'm split on, he started well but I think lack of games has affected his ability to perform.

In terms of the Suso loan, in hindsight Rodgers would have kept him but consider his development playing week in week out in Spain. He can only return a better player for it. Sometimes you have to ignore the short term benefits for a better long term reward.

Even if you finish fifth by a couple of points?

A player like Suso may well have earnt you two more points than someone like Moses/Aspas/Sterling... Hindsight will prove whether or not that was good long term decision, short term... as far as I'm concerned, its a shocker.

The squad is still unbalanced. About two years ago we were overloaded with central midfielders. Now we're absolutely overloaded with centre halves but the back four changes every game so we can't get any sort of consistency. We still haven't got a decent left back and our midfield has gone from being the best around to non existent. Nobody in that midfield scores goals from open play. Gerrard plays far too deep these days. Henderson, Allen and Lucas couldn't create a chance from open play if their lives depended on it. Fortunately our strikers have bailed us out time and time again and yet with Sturridge now out for 6-8 weeks, Suarez will be even more knackered than he already is from having to carry more of the burden.

stmichael » Mon Dec 02, 2013 4:39 pm wrote:The squad is still unbalanced. About two years ago we were overloaded with central midfielders. Now we're absolutely overloaded with centre halves but the back four changes every game so we can't get any sort of consistency. We still haven't got a decent left back and our midfield has gone from being the best around to non existent. Nobody in that midfield scores goals from open play. Gerrard plays far too deep these days. Henderson, Allen and Lucas couldn't create a chance from open play if their lives depended on it. Fortunately our strikers have bailed us out time and time again and yet with Sturridge now out for 6-8 weeks, Suarez will be even more knackered than he already is from having to carry more of the burden.

B*ll*cks we don't have a decent left back. Enrique's one of the best full backs in europe. He was already there before the manager came in though. He should be looking to build around players like Enrique and Suarez.

Enrique one of the best in Europe? Jesus Christ.

There are always going to be people who don't like Enrique. Even his biggest fan would have to admit that he's not the most intelligent footballer on the planet - he's frustrating because he has all the physical and technical capacity to be consistently brilliant, but his lack of a footballing brain leads to a lot of dead ends, slowing down the play, and losing possession. For all that though, he's fairly defensively sound - his power and pace makes it difficult for opposition wingers.

He's exactly the sort of player who needs to be given rigid tactical instructions to see him through a game because when left to his own devices, it's madness personified and unleashed at a ball.

stmichael » Mon Dec 02, 2013 5:01 pm wrote:Enrique one of the best in Europe? Jesus Christ.

There are always going to be people who don't like Enrique. Even his biggest fan would have to admit that he's not the most intelligent footballer on the planet - he's frustrating because he has all the physical and technical capacity to be consistently brilliant, but his lack of a footballing brain leads to a lot of dead ends, slowing down the play, and losing possession. For all that though, he's fairly defensively sound - his power and pace makes it difficult for opposition wingers.

He's exactly the sort of player who needs to be given rigid tactical instructions to see him through a game because when left to his own devices, it's madness personified and unleashed at a ball.

Your description is nearly accurate of Johnson, except technically he's not great. Of Enrique its complete and utter rubbish. To suggest the lad doesn't have a footballing brain is like saying Suarez has a poor touch, its complete rubbish and quite frankly an embarrassing statement to make.

Among those listed under 'bad business", I would keep Sahko and Illori. The rest however, should be sold. It's shocking some of the prices we paid for players like Allen and Borini. I would go mental if I ever hear that our excuse for not being able to purchase a target is because we don't have the money. Our priority in January should be a striker and a defensive midfielder to replace Lucas. Bring Suso back and let him play, or buy someone like Dzagoev or Shaqiri. They can't be any worse than what we have. Hopefully BR isn't dumb enough to make the Moses and Aly moves permanent!

maypaxvobiscum » Mon Dec 02, 2013 7:01 pm wrote:Among those listed under 'bad business", I would keep Sahko and Illori. The rest however, should be sold. It's shocking some of the prices we paid for players like Allen and Borini. I would go mental if I ever hear that our excuse for not being able to purchase a target is because we don't have the money. Our priority in January should be a striker and a defensive midfielder to replace Lucas. Bring Suso back and let him play, or buy someone like Dzagoev or Shaqiri. They can't be any worse than what we have. Hopefully BR isn't dumb enough to make the Moses and Aly moves permanent!

Illori may well turn out to be a decent player. I do believe that to be unlikely, but I wouldn't write him off completely yet, Sahko on the other hand is the fourth best centre half at the club. Given that Skrtel isn't that good, Toure's 32 and past his best and Agger's probably the best of a very average bunch that doesn't fill me with any confidence.

It's clear that we need to find the balance within the defense. There's constant changing and chopping within it and it's really bad for the team in general, especially Mignolet. Hyypia and Henchoz, Hyypia and Carragher, etc. You don't change the partnership if it's doing well. BR screwed up by dropping Agger who probably has the best relationship with Skrtel after playing with him for so long. That partnership should be able to develop.

And then there's Sterling, whom I think like Jacdaniel said in another thread, should go on loan. The more I see him play, the worse I think he is. He's worse than Lennon and definitely worse than Walcott. Jordan Ibe seems more composed in the little bit of him I've seen. Hope to see more of Alberto though. He seems very intelligent and creative.

I hear that we're going after a Greek striker. No disrespect to the Greek league and I know he's scored 4 or 5 hat-tricks already this season both domestic and international, but shouldn't we be going for quality? Suarez and Sturridge are a great pairing but the latter is a moron. He's just stupid, selfish and over-complicates the simple stuff. If we're gonna be buying a striker to be a back-up, why not just use what we have in the reserves like Yesil or Morgan.

The club needs to understand that it's time we bought quality, not quantity, who will eventually end up preventing the progress of these so-called hot youth prospects. It doesn't matter if we bought just 2 players every season for the next 5 or 10 seasons, just make sure that they are top players, not fringe players like Allen, Borini, Aspas, etc.

We don't have the cash to buy the real deals so we operate by acquiring second class players that have the potential to become top class but unfortunately
this doesn't always pay off and why our recruitments are a real assortment.

Ideally we don't buy 4 players for £30m but purchase one, the class act, but for one not many want to come here and second we wont pay the rate, if anything
we are always looking to cut the wage bill not increase it.

Having the cash to chuck at it is no guarantee but it significantly increases your chances of success that's clear and our strategy to buy cheap and win big is a
hard one to pull off for any manager.

I don't think we can tarnish Sakho yet. He has yet to play CB in a back 4 - give him a chance and he'll show what he can do.

A settled / unchanged side is important. Spurs are failing cause they have so many options they're changing their midfield every single game and they're looking disjointed. We're failing cause we're changing our back 4 every game and looking like no one knows what they're doing - hence conceding 6 in 2 games.

coutinho and sturridge aside its looking close to being a shambles. i do have hope for sakho, alberto and llori but it worries me that they struggle to get game time. without having seen a lot of them i couldnt possibly write them off. i doubt they will be superstars but i dont think we need them all to be.
the crux of the matter is that we have somehow managed to repeat our mistakes on wasting money. we have faced little competition for any of our signings and overpaid for most. the impact on the team has been very little and worse seen as we have no quality in reserve to rely on. we let downing go and spent more to improve his position, we failed at that and ended up sending better than both on loan.
the next window has to be better or else rodgers is only wasting fenways money, his time and ours.

i think after the owners got their fingers burnt with carroll they are wary of spending big money on one player but imo not enough of the money we spend actually ends up on the pitch. we spend tens of millions on squad fodder.

Its beyond doubt that we have spunk... ed another £70 Million on players and the majority of them aren't up to the standard required at this level.

Only Sturridge, Continho and Mignolet have been what you would consider a success................

New managers will always bring a "favourite" player with them from their previous Club and BR was no different. Did no one at LFC think it expedient to let Brendan know that we had a clone of Joe Allen in Lucas Leiva ? 

Sahko - Its early days but its not been the finest start I've ever seen from a £17 Million player !

Assidi, Alberto, Llori, Borini, Aspas ......... 

Sissokho - ***** !