Are Liverpool Obsessed With Acquiring Full-Backs?

Article by Red Phil

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Call me old-fashioned if you want but when I was at school, and we were choosing players for various games periods football games the worst players – me included, and I was normally the last of the last to be picked – were always selected last and always played at full-back. I don’t think I played in any other position other than one game when I played in goal and, through my superhuman heroics, kept the score down to thirteen!

Therefore, it worries me that some of the latest transfer rumours – yes, I KNOW they are only rumours – are suggesting that we might spend £21m of our supposed £25m transfer budget on a young French full-back. Am I missing something here? With a dodgy keeper, a plethora of useless centre backs, no defensive midfielders that we can rely on, no creativity other than Coutinho and no strikers worthy of the name I somehow struggle to see why we might potentially be spending that sort of money on somebody to fill that particular position . . . and especially as he appears to be a relatively untried kid (again)? That Trippier of Burnley might be an option but I wouldn’t spend BIG money on a full-back until other weaknesses are sorted and, boy, have we got weaknesses!!!!!!!!

In the great scheme of things I think getting a new full-back would come very low on my list of priorities for next season, recalling that we couldn’t defend to save our lives and we scored something in the region of fifty goals in the league, instead of the near-hundred or so we got the season before!

I know we spent big last year but if we subtract the money we got back for Suarez from that amount we only paid out something in the region of £40m of actual dosh. Not earth-shatteringly bad so we need to more than pay that out this year, plus what we get for out-going players such as Sterling, Balotelli, Lambert, hopefully Sakho, Borini, etc. We could still end up with a hundred million to spend . . . so just think of how many full-backs we could get for that?

It looks as if we might actually be getting that Kovacic – Hallelujah, get out the bunting and fly the flags – and I’ve seen rumours about us doing swap deals with City or Arsenal for Sterling. Does the idea of Nasri and Dzeko coming here to apply their mediocrity at Anfield instead of the Etihad fill me with joy? Not really. Can I think of anybody at Arsenal who would come to LFC that I would want? Walcott and Sanchez would initially spring to mind but that is probably being a bit too optimistic. Did I say optimistic? I meant laughable!

Granted, we’ve got that Belgian kid Origi coming here, at long last, but as he was named as one of the worst players in the French league last year my hopes and expectations are not too high based on that assessment. Indeed, I think he may be working in one of the fast-food franchises around the ground before Christmas if his lack of goals follow him from France to Merseyside. Mind you, another striker capable of four goals a season should fit in quite well at LFC at the moment, bearing in mind the morons we’ve currently got who laughingly call themselves strikers whilst getting paid more dosh in two or three days than I get in a year!

If you look at the press they are hinting that we are keen on Tevez, at 31, Ibrahimovic, at 33 (or thereabouts) and Yaya Toure at something in the region of 33 or 34 and Andrea Pirlo still gets the odd mention . . . at 36! Add to that list of geriatrics the name of Falcao, the 29-year-old failure at United, and you can see a worrying trend! If we are trying to get rid of the theory that we won’t win anything with too many kids in the team I think you can safely say that you won’t win much with kids and near-pensioners in the team either! Spending big bucks on players with one or two seasons left in them, at most, is a bad choice to make.

As I mentioned in my last article the City fans I work with say Toure is now well past his best and is both slow and unlikely to last another full season in the first team on a regular basis. Why, then, could he be of serious interest to Liverpool? Charlie Austin is also being mentioned and he is of a better age but is he good enough when we fans have title aspirations? Good player, yes, but is he good enough? Will he get us 20-25 goals per season? If so, sign him ASAP!

A midfield squad of Lallana, Coutinho, Kovacic, Henderson, Ibe and Milner, with Henderson being the defensive player, is the best way to go without having a lumbering oak tree of a person increasingly struggling to keep up with the pace of the game. Mind you, I’m not sure that Henderson is a defensive midfield player as I’m yet to see how he is supposed to fit into the team in ANY midfield position. I can’t fathom out what he does, what he brings to the team, other than a high work-rate on the periphery of the game? If it comes about, the most likely purchases, if not the most ideal ones, I’d love to see Milner and Kovacic start as our central midfield attacking pairing with Ibe and Lallana on the wings and Coutinho floating near the striker! Kovacic is supposedly very mobile, as is Milner, so that could be a decent pairing to begin the season with.

If Santa came early I’d go for William Carvallo or Sissoko as the defensive guy and Vietto or Firmino up front. Does Santa ever come in late August?

I notice United are close to getting Firmino and are still hoping to get Bale, Hummels and even Harry Kane. Boy, how they would tremble coming to Anfield to face our free-transfer signings if they get that lot! I’m sobbing on to the keyboard at the very prospect of such events coming to pass. With City after Pogba and Sterling I wonder if we can bribe the guy who does the fixture lists to give us a season or five without playing any of the top teams? I can only take so much pain, I’m getting old . . . slightly older than Yaya Toure and a few others we might see at Anfield next year if the rumours are true.

Arsenal and Chelsea haven’t even given much of a clue as to who they might be buying (although we know Arsenal would like Sterling and he’d like to join them) but can you imagine either of them rooting through the free-transfer lists, as we do? As Abramovich is likely to want to out-perform United, etc., in the transfer dealings I dread to think what he’ll go for!! Just by buying a better quality of meat pie for the fans he’d manage to out-do LFC on the evidence of our summer business so far.

Still, got to enter next season expecting to easily win the league, several cups and to dominate Europe as we used to do. Then I switch my brain back on and begin to sob.

Just think, we could start next season with this team: Bogdan, Dani Alves, Kolo Toure, Sakho, Emre Can playing out of position yet again, Nasri, Yaya Toure, Andrea Pirlo, at 36 years-old, unproven Danny Ings, 33-year-old Ibrahimovic and Falcao or Balotelli!!! We’d be leaping off the top of the Liver Building like lemmings on a particularly bad day if that ever came to pass!!!! Every few seconds there’d be another ‘SPLAT’ as a fan hurls himself, or herself, off the roof to the uncompromising pavement below!

My pessimism could easily be cast aside by spending a hundred million on Vietto, Sissoko, Kovacic, Firmino (quick, before United tie him to a deal), Begovic and two tall, commanding, thuggish centre backs who like hurting strikers! Somehow, I can’t see our owners giving us that sort of cash to spend but it is good to look on the positive side even if it almost certainly won’t come to pass. If you couldn’t be optimistic, occasionally, even fleetingly, you’d be an Evertonian!

RED PHIL

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