by Homebooby » Mon Feb 07, 2005 1:31 pm
It's an old story regarding Kewell, but in fairness to the lad, he has never been allowed a fair chance to overcome his injuries. Hopefully he'll get the ops he needs now and be given a chance to shine. I have a lot of faith left for him.
The big area that we need to concentrate on next season is the defence as far as I am concerned. Sure we could use an extra striker and maybe a midfielder, but we need to make our defense inpenetrable. It worked in the old days for us and it is working for Chelsea and Everton, worked for Arsenal and Man U in the past as well. Arguably, both Chelseas' rise to the top and Manu and Arsenal falling from grace can be traced back to their defensive changes in personnel. Even when Houllier was doing well it was down to a great defensive structure.
Riise and Carragher I am happy with. The verdict is still out for Josemi....he dives in too much for my liking. The old pairing of Hypia and Henchoz are long gone. Since Henchoz has been out of the frame, Hypia has looked far from the stable force that he once did. We need to start ensuring that there is someone that can take over from him as he isn't getting younger.
As for Dudek, he is just the victim of a long list of decent keepers that have been ruined at Anfield. When he first started for us, his confidence and ability was a breath of fresh air compared to the insecurity and dodginess of Westerveld. 3 yrs on and we have almost the same situation again. In Dudek we have a quality keeper and I am still hopeful that Benitez is capable of bringing the confidence back out in him.
That said, we can't be relying on kirkland to be backing him up or even better, competing for a place. From what I have seen so far, he is destined to be tagged one of the those players whose career has been blighted by injury. Great talent, but almost never fit. I am sure I am not the only one who holds his breath every time he's going for a 50/50 ball. That feeling must be there in the defence as well and you can have that. The back four need to know that the keeper is solid. So I would like to see a new signing there.
The question of a new forward really depends on whether Cisse will ever really recover. Looking at how it broke and how he almost lost his leg, I personally don't hold out much hope for him.
As stated, we need to bring more people in before we start throwing out who we already have. Diao, Diouf and a few of the other midfield chaff can go. How much we get for them is less important than how much we are paying them on a weekly basis over a season to do F ALL.
50000*52 = 2, 600,000. Take that as an average for these guys (ok, maybe a little less), but any money lost in transfer is easily gained back.