Liverpool FC Forum

by **Reg** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 3:20 am

Phil Babb, possibly 'one' of our worst buys ever. Again like with Diao, we inexplicably didnt sell him.

by **The Manhattan Project** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 4:47 am

I remember Phil Babb for only one thing.

Crushing his nads on the post.

by **The_Rock** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 5:02 am

bigmick wrote:Similarly, the excellent David Nugent was allowed to sign for an unopposed £6 million at Portsmouth. Once again, very little risk at his age as if he doesn't work out, they will probably get 2/3 at least of the fee back when they sell him on.

On a separate note...i read somewhere that we let David Nugent leave when he was in our youth team years ago.

Just wondering ... Do you think he would have progressed into our 1st team (or even bench) if he was still here ? I do think
foreign managers tend to harsh on british youth players.

One example is wenger. Although he is credited in unveiling potential gems..look
at the following english players he let go (pennant, upson, bently, the charlton winger...forgot his name think its thomas or something).

After letting cole go, i don't think arsenal has even one british player in its 1st team.

by **eds** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 6:51 am

bigmick wrote:When you read through the list and consider others just from our own club that are not even given a mention (14 million for Cisse, 4.5 million for Bruno Cheyrou, 10 million for Diouf) it makes you realise just why so many of us are extremely sceptical when it comes to buying foreign players. Yes many of them succeed, but the fact that the English Premiership is absolutely unique in the demands it places on a players character as much as anything else means that many fall by the wayside, sometimes even good players.

I sense sometimes that some of our non-British supporters find this reluctance to get over excited about players until we've seen them do the business "over here", a little bit frustrating. There will continue to be many who fail though, and I can't help feeling sometimes that managers are guilty of plumping for exotic sounding "Carlos kickaballs" to quote Alan Sugar without being willing to take a chance on home-grown players who have potential.

I'm not necessarily talking about us here as we arguably require a better standard of player, but I can't help thinking for instance that Everton aquiring Phil Jagielka for £4 million is a purchase without an ounce of risk attached, a smallish sum for a good young player who has proven his abilities. Where was the competition from unimaginative managers for his signature? Similarly, the excellent David Nugent was allowed to sign for an unopposed £6 million at Portsmouth. Once again, very little risk at his age as if he doesn't work out, they will probably get 2/3 at least of the fee back when they sell him on. I do wonder sometimes at these managers of middle ranking clubs. They can seemingly lose one job and then be taken on by another club within weeks and far from complaining about the Chairman lacking knowledge, they should be thanking their lucky stars in my view that their employers aren't more knowledgeable.

Good post Mick, but the fact that players like Cheyrou, Cisse and Diouf failed is more a testament to Houllier’s incompetence (in buying quality foreign players), then the fact that they were foreign players. I really don’t know why people are skeptical of foreign players when they should really be skeptical of how much time has actually been spent researching and doing all the ground-work before buying them. How else do you explain Wenger having brought over the whole French Foreign Legion and getting them to play one of the most exciting and attractive styles of football for the last decade. Or even Rafa building a better team in less time AND with less money?

Sure Houllier brought in some gems like Hyppia and Hamaan but they were too few and far between. Compare this to Arsenal’s Henry, Viera, Pires, Ljungberg, Overmars, Petit, etc or Scumchester’s Ronaldo, RVN, Solskjaer, Stam, Vidic, Schmichael, etc and it becomes very embarrassing. In fact the money that Houllier literally wasted on “foreign talent” would be more than enough to buy you a team of actual foreign superstars with enough change to buy you a few “imported” sports cars!

So what I am trying to say is that the dangers in buying foreign players is not whether they are actually foreign players, but whether they have been researched and evaluated properly. In the long term we should be much more critical of “Miguel the Manager” who buys a team of “Carlos kickaballs”……………………

by **bigmick** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 6:56 am

I think that it's unlikely Nugent would have got much of a look in at Liverpool and it ws probably right for him and the club that he moved on elsewhere. Young players really have to be something extra special to break through at one of the big four clubs and the chances are that he wouldn't have. Even now he's probably not up to it, but he's certainly good enough to get a game at most Premier League clubs and the fact that only Portsmouth were prepared to stump up the relatively reasonable £6million fee says a lot about the lack of imagination of the middle ranking teams managers. You only need to look at the profit Charlton made on Darren Bent to see that taking a chance on Championship players can pay huge dividends if you choose carefully.

by **Leonmc0708** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 8:50 am

Nugent was at Everton I think.

by **The_Rock** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 8:55 am

I got my info from wiki.... could be wrong though

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nugent

by **David Villa** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 10:56 am

This is how :censored:

The Times is they have got Top 50 players in the world, and Buffon is in the top 10 haha, Fabio Cannavaro who won worlds player of the year isnt even in there. There was one amusing one in there though Carragher was 30 and big man Rio Ferdinand didnt make it in there

by **Wilhelmsson** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 1:00 pm

“40 Michael Owen, Real Madrid to Newcastle United, £16m, August 2005

The English striker has fared reasonably well when fit but injuries mean Newcastle have yet to see anything like a decent return for their money.”

“8 Bosko Balaban, Dynamo Zagreb to Aston Villa, £6m, August 2001

The Croatia forward did not start a league game in his two and a half years at the club.”

These two are very silly, IMO, Balaban was never presented with the chance to prove himself, therefore it’s hardly his fault, its more to do with Villa wasting money on a player that never featured in their plans.

As for Owen, he hasn’t had much of a chance to prove himself at Newcastle due to his injuries and I am sure once he gets a good pre-season under his belt and warms up, he’ll start scoring the goals. £16m for Owen wasn’t a bad price to pay, after all Newcastle knew what they were buying, a natural goalscorer.

Who is Paul Furlong?

by **chrisrafman** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 5:04 am

was forlan there? also westerveld was dump for us. mickey thomas was :censored:

also mark walters. souness did great there. scum had the best ever with taibi. he was a legend

by **Owzat** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 1:55 pm

I have to laugh at two of the more expensive flops not making the top 10 :- Veron £28.1m (11th) and Shevchenko £30m (26th) They had a lot to live up to and failed to even be passably good, to such an extent their stays at the respective clubs were very short-lived. Others may have failed to make any mark whatsoever but the odd million is nothing compared to TWO of the three biggest transfers in English and indeed British history.

I'm surprised Fowler isn't in that list (I have checked and done a CTRL + F, I don't think he's in there) considering most say he failed miserably at Leeds. I suspect whoever did this checked his record which wasn't that bad and decided to disregard that particular myth

by **lakes10** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 5:37 pm

The Manhattan Project wrote:I remember Phil Babb for only one thing.

Crushing his nads on the post.

Pmsl , i had forgot about that, that was so funny :eyebrow

....poor sod

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