If we could get Gala to take Cole and pay a substantial portion of his wages that would be great. It would be even better if someone could convince him to just leave on a free/nominal fee somewhere he is actually wanted. What has Reina done to draw the ire of Buck I wonder. IS it a form thing or something behind the scenes?
He's currently injured, isn't he? The last few seasons he's been linked away to better teams now that he's out of form he's being linked away to be replaced. Journalists are very, very lazy. Gerrard is to old to be linked away, Sterling to young, Dagger has just signed a new contract, Allen just joined, Downing not wanted, Lucas injured, Sahin on loan, they said Skrtel was leaving all summer for him to stay and admitting that other teams are interested in Suarez would ruin their agenda against him. Not many options left for them so back to Reina...
How dare Reina lose form? I mean he has practically been in form for seasons and to see this happen lets all get the pitch forks ready and seek a better keeper elsewhere.
I suspect you're right, although he probably is one of the most realistic options of a proven goal scorer we could buy in January. He'll likely be available and probably for a decent price.
I hope not. He's been very disappointing this season when it comes to scoring, I don't think anyone should expect him to repeat last year's numbers.
I am more concerned that LFC is repeating last years numbers for failing to convert chances. We need someone to finish and score goals.
Let's also not repeat last year's errors in acquisitions. I think we need to be very shrewd, shrewder than we've ever been for a long time.
I don't disagree. I am just very concerned at the lack of goals we are currently scoring. You cannot win games without scoring goals and we are barely scoring any, and thus not winning games.
I wonder if there are any bargain buys (or perhaps even loans) that would be worth pursuing from some of the clubs in danger of relegation such as QPR. I remember thy spent a ton on players in the window and look in real danger of going down at this point. I don't know much about their squad though. Anyone worth taking a look at there? What about Lambert (I know nothing about him really other than he scored a lot in the Championship IIRC) or Ramirez (if the Saints go down, would he go too)?
Well I don't know if getting an inconsistent out of form striker will solve those problems. We need players that fit BR's system first and foremost. In my opinion, KJH is not that guy. I'd rather we target someone like Adrian or Diouf.
AVB and Spurs linked with a permanent move for Carroll in January. 9m being quoted for KjH. I don't like this move. 9m for a 29 yr old whose form over his career can best be described as patchy? How good is the 8m for Jackson Martinez looking right now? We're batting our eyes at 18 yr old CB Tommie Hoban from Watford. Rudi Garcia casts furtive glances at Joke Hole in an interview yesterday. I'd give Lille 1m to take him on a free, technically making it a negative. Anzhi linked with Skrtel, again.
Not going for him was a big mistake. In a couple years he's gonna be another South American forward Porto sold for 25mil+
It seems odd that we'd be after KJH to me. He is 29 and the fee being quoted is 9 million. He's never played in the premier league. It just seems expensive for a guy that age with a spotty record. Is he that much better than Dempsey?
That ship has sailed. They tried to get him on the cheap as the player made us believe that we were his main destination. That's what you get with dealing with players first rather than clubs. As for Huntlaar, I'm not sure why we are after him as we have our central striker in Suarez. He's banging them in, what we need is the other positions to start contributing so either a goal scoring wide forward or AM is the priority.
KJH can play the central striker and Luis can continue being the roaming forward that plays all over the front that he is. We need a poacher. Someone who knows his job is to be in the box looking for the final pass or a the quick rebound. Luis hasn't had those kind of players around him since Maxi and Dirk were crashing the box in the spring of 2011.
When Borini was fit Rodgers played him wide so I don't see why he'd be targeting someone to take Suarez's position, especially not when Luis is already into double figures. Changing his position might affect the amount of goals he's getting and there is no guarantee that KJH or anyone else will hit the ground running. Last year around this time some were stating that we should use the winter transfer market to reinforce the central defence. I argued that it was stupid to disrupt our strongest area on the pitch when other area's are lacking, well this season CF is our strongest area on the pitch. Suarez is working as the CF, why change that.
We need another scorer up front to take some load off Suarez, and an additional forward for some depth at a minimum. At this point I don't care if its a 9 , a 7, a 7.9 or an 8.324. A couple people who can play roaming forward would be perfectly nice as I agree let's keep Luis on the boil as long as we can doing what he's doing now.
True. But as we are only playing one CF, wouldn't the money be better spent on bringing in a goalscoring wide player or AM instead. Rodgers is pretty confident in his tactics and system, he's not going to abandon that and start playing 2 centre forwards. The reason why he targeted Dempsey and not an out and out striker to replace Carroll was because he wanted Suarez for that central position and truth be told its the one thing on the pitch that is getting us results. Is Rodgers going to change his system? No. Is Rodgers going to abandon his youth policy(Allen, Borini, Yesil, Assiadi) and sign a 29 year old striker? Pretty sure thats also a no.
Two things, tenuously related but not sure where else to put it... Rafa had it right. As he gets older, he needs to be playing higher up, not further back. Is Gerrard the striking backup that we've needed? But on the same hand, I really feel that since the groin problems of 09-10-11, he hasn't been anything near the same. I think the surgeries and recuperation have taken out that snap he always relied on. I just can't remember him taking a crack from outside in the longest. Maybe he's matured as a player, maybe he doesnt have the mobility to find the space to take the shots, or maybe he just doesn't 'have it' anymore. But he's definitely not the same player from 3-4 years ago. So, could he still be that striking option Rafa envisioned? Or does he need to drop further and further back a-la Scholes and rely on accurate and long passing? Post Script: Something I'll always remember from this board was someone making an analogy that Gerrard was our metronome in midfield, ticking things along and keeping us moving. Someone replied smartly that was Alonso. He said Alonso kept the tempo. Gerrard was explosive. He was the whammy bar, the distortion peddle of the team. Whacking the ball and making things happen. I've always appreciated and used both of those anologies/similies.