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Liverpool Fans Still Waiting

Article by Red Phil


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I’m always happy when we buy young talent and this Joe Gomez, who we are supposedly interested in, sounds like a good addition to the squad if we can get him. However, with the deals done so far and the rumours THAT I DON’T BELIEVE BUT WHICH I NOTICE WITH SOME INTEREST (is that clear enough for some of the morons who think I believe every rumour?) that we might be about to go for Charlie Austin. I think it is safe to say that I am not going to start singing “We’re going to win the league” any day now. Mind you, I’d rather have Austin than Falcao!


That said, I’d be pleased as punch, bloody ecstatic, if we could raid the Championship once more for that Patrick Roberts, of Fulham! He supports the Reds, comes from Liverpool and looks like he could be a real star. It SHOULD be a no-brainer!




I think the word under-whelmed, if such a word exists, sums up my reaction to our dealings so far but, hey, put a load of ingredients into a pot, stir them up a bit and then roll out the end result on to the plate, or the pitch in this context, and you might just get a set of players who gel together. It has happened before but I wouldn’t bet money on the squad we seem to be assembling tasting any better than the squads Chelsea, United, Arsenal and City will have!


If we get any old ingredients from the local pound shop though and the others get the best that Harrods can locate then, just perhaps, many people would expect the fare provided by the others to be that bit better, a bit tastier!


We certainly haven’t had the signing that will make my wife reach for the defibrillator to restart my old ticker – or she might just reach for the insurance policy and head off into the sunset with a big smile on her face and a large gin and tonic in her hand – so are we going to have ‘the big one’, the one that will make other teams think that, just perhaps, Liverpool are going to mean business this coming season? I’m not talking about a Lionel Messi here but somebody from the top shelf in footballing terms. Somebody to make the hear skip a beat, to get our pulses racing, to make other teams worry a bit and to give us what we need . . . hope! Anfield was too quiet last season.


Kovacic MIGHT be the guy. He MIGHT come. He MIGHT not come. Who knows? If you read the rumours, and remembering that I do NOT believe them all, his arrival seems to have been ‘imminent’ for about three months, as does the arrival of Martin Montoya, from Barcelona, so which definition of IMMINENT are we currently using? The definition of the word imminent that I personally use means that they should be signing today or in the next day or so. I’ll believe that when I see it because the definition of the word imminent seemingly used by the writers of these rumours would appear to be any time in the next six months, if at all and probably never.


Perhaps the saddest thing is that when rumours are spun about the other ‘top’ teams you have more confidence that they just might come about and happen. We seem to make every deal take forever-and-a-day to complete and have lost players such as Ericksen because of the endless delays. Living in Manchester – but a Scouser and RED through and through – I hear United or City may be after somebody and, hey-presto, that player is photographed wearing a United or City shirt within a few days. That is one major difference between our attitude to transfers and the other top clubs.


So far though, we’ve signed one or two bench-warmers from other top clubs, we’ve tried to get a couple of Barcelona squad players and we’ve targeted some players who will otherwise ply their trade in the Championship next season. We’re also probably scanning the free-transfer lists for any other excellent bargains so let us ask ourselves if it will be the same at United, City, Chelsea or Arsenal? Somehow I doubt it! The footballing world are not going to be sitting up and taking notice of Liverpool after these deals, are they?


Still, there is still time to make an impact signing so all is not lost. We need movement on the exit front as we have too many players clearly unfit to wear the shirt. One rumour I read hinted that Inter might want Skrtel as part of the deal to give us Kovacic! Now, as Skrtel is the only decent defender we have I’d become suicidal if we lost him and started the next season with any combination of Toure, Sakho and Lovren and with Can hopelessly out of position yet again. If we went down that path we are giving up on the league during the team selection meeting before the first match! I still think Lovren can make it at Anfield and Can is a good MIDFIELDER but I cannot abide the other two and would put them in a category alongside some of the other worst LFC players of all time.


Having one relatively weak player in an area is one thing but having two poor central defenders, who can’t head a ball to save their lives, and a keeper who is dodgy coming out for the ball is a nightmare scenario . . . and we’ve got it! Lump the ball into our box and watch the panic set-in! it happened time and again last year and would happen time and again next year.


They are utterly useless. Toure is too slow and has the same turning circle as a portakabin and Sakho simply cannot control a ball and his distribution is shocking. We MUST not start next season with these two anywhere near the squad! Sadly, one of them has just signed a new contract and the other says he is very happy at LFC!!!! How can anybody offer a new contract to a player who was offensively slow last year and who look completely off-the-pace on numerous occasions? He is now a year older and a year slower, for Heaven’s sake!


Again, it should be a no-brainer to even contemplate the new theory that somebody who is already too slow will suddenly increase his speed over the ground when he gets even older!! It’s never happened before so should we be sanctioning another contract for somebody based on that reckoning? Put a wheelie-bin, painted red, in his place and you wouldn’t spot he wasn’t playing until you noticed it was still on the pitch, in the same spot, during the half-time interval! In fact, you might even be a bit more impressed with the wheelie-bin’s performance than we were with Kolo Toure last year . . .


That means, obviously, that we must sign at least one top, top centre-back in the coming weeks. Who that could be I haven’t got a clue as they are quite scarce these days . . . but one or two MUST be found or we are going to look shockingly bad at the back yet again next season, unlike the other top teams. Remember, we’ve also got a keeper who we can’t really rely upon to do the right thing when it matters. When the ball is hoofed into our box I don’t have the sort of confidence in him that I think I should have, and it petrifies me when Sakho or Toure even try to get to a ball. That is a recipe for disaster!


Too many relatively poor teams attacked us, even at Anfield, last year and we looked awful at the back. If we went behind, as against Palace, we never looked like we could score and, for the first time in many, many years, opposing keepers and defenders probably looked forward to a trip to the home of the Reds. It was, for them, quite an easy game, no pressure, no diving around for the keepers, no dirty kit to wash and no need for the keeper to be helped off the pitch before undergoing therapy!


That must NEVER be allowed to happen again, ever!!!!!! Therefore, we need to strengthen our defence, protect our defence by getting a world-class defensive midfielder, create more chances and bloody-well take them. We aren’t going to do that without more investment and getting rid of some of the dross we still have.


We need a new Clemence, a new Souness to control and direct, a new Hansen to do the same at the back, a new Dalglish and a new Rushie, Owen, Fowler, Torres or Suarez. Can we do that with our limited budget? Hand me the free-transfer list again so I can see who we might get . . .


Suddenly, I’ve started sobbing uncontrollably again . . .


I think the fans have more ambition for the club than the owners or the management! How sad is that? Another shocking start to a season and I think the fans will be calling for heads to roll and for new owners . .


RED PHIL


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1 comment:

  1. It is unbelievable that the club seems incapable of concluding any deal for anybody costing more than loose change. Many of the players we'd like are being snapped-up by other clubs or seemingly suggesting they don't want to come to LFC because of our lack of ambition as well as the fact we aren't in the Champion's League next year. How the mighty have fallen! The club can't even seem to find it in themselves to say anything that might give the fans hope for what might happen before the transfer window closes. It is a worrying situation but I think we can only put it down to having a manager who doesn't share the ambitions the fans have and owners who either don't know the first thing about football or simply won't change from doing things on the cheap by buying young players in the hope they come good and can be sold later for a big profit.
    If the other top clubs buy big and we don't then the coming season is going to be a disaster . . . but I don't think we are going to get anywhere with this management and owners. He might be a good player but I don't know if we need, at this moment, to spend £10m on another young kid from Middlesbrough!!!!! The way it is going our chances of getting into the Champion's League for the following season are non-existent so that is another hit to our finances already more-or-less guaranteed and we haven't kicked a ball in anger yet. Free transfer players, squad players from other clubs, Championship players and kids, no matter how good they are, are NOT going to get us above the likes Of United and Chelsea at the end of next season . . . and that is where we need to be. Looks like we'll be jousting with Spurs and one or two other clubs for the Europa places again and I'm readily admitting that halfway through the Summer! More bloody Thursday night footie, if we are lucky!!!!! A few comments from our silent manager might just stop our increasing depression but he's been so quiet recently it is another worrying thing for us to dwell on.
    A sudden announcement about a couple of very big money signings might just do the trick but, at the moment, the LFC fans I speak to are NOT optimistic about next season in any way, shape or form. With the signings we've made and some of the potential transfers we've heard about it is IMPOSSIBLE to say that we are making inroads into Chelsea's lead over us from last year. What RED PHIL says is more-or-less correct, sadly, and whether that is down to the manager or the owners, God knows? With our first game at Stoke (6-1, remember?) and the third one being at Arsenal, it would be ludicrous to say we've done anything to make those games easier on the eye, for us, than last year!

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