Where the transfer policy has completely failed

[Charly]

Just on Lucas...

When you say a Lucas type play, before he came to liverpool he was more of an attacking player at Gremio, not a holding player. HE doesnt appear to have much in his locker going forward, cant dribble or shoot, does not possess a passing range, so I am not sure what it is he has lost since joining us.

I have noting against the guy, I think he is a good player to have on the bench. But he doesnt bring anything to the team, other than workrate.

[anfieldanfield]

The bottom line is Crouch, Bellamy, Pongolle, Alonso, Arbeloa, Warnock, Hyppia and a few others are far, far better footballers than some of the ****e currently playing for us.

And that in itself is ****ing criminal.

[Fivex]

Have a word with yourself AA mate. Take out the one's on your list who wanted to leave, i.e Crouch, Alonso, Flo Po, Arbeloa, Hyppia, that leaves Bellamy and Warnock. You honestly think those two are "far, far better footballers" than what we have? Perhaps we could have used Bellamy this season, but we sold him as he was a disruptive cunt.

[anfieldanfield]

Have a word with yourself AA mate. Take out the one's on your list who wanted to leave, i.e Crouch, Alonso, Flo Po, Arbeloa, Hyppia, that leaves Bellamy and Warnock. You honestly think those two are "far, far better footballers" than what we have? Perhaps we could have used Bellamy this season, but we sold him as he was a disruptive cunt.

Just because players 'want' to leave doesn't mean they have to leave and certainly doesn't mean they should be replaced with inferior footballers.

And yes, I think Warnock (or Riise for that matter) is as good as, if not better than Insua, Dossena or Aurelio. And Bellamy would be a lot better than someone like Voronin.

[Fivex]

Just because players 'want' to leave doesn't mean they have to leave and certainly doesn't mean they should be replaced with inferior footballers.

If only it were that simple.

[BFG]

Just because players 'want' to leave doesn't mean they have to leave and certainly doesn't mean they should be replaced with inferior footballers.

And yes, I think Warnock (or Riise for that matter) is as good as, if not better than Insua, Dossena or Aurelio. And Bellamy would be a lot better than someone like Voronin.

If we still had Bellamy we'd not have Torres because we couldn't have afforded him.

I can see your point and it is a shame but when you have to improve incrementally by wheeling and dealing sometimes a good player has to go to get a better one in. We're simply not in the same position as Chelsea, Man Utd/ City when it comes to finances and maybe that should be reflected in our expectations or at least taken into account when we're disappointed.

[Charly]

That hides the fact we seem to have wasted 12m on Babel, and £8m on Dossena, both of whom never play, and are 3rd choice at best - and the £20m on Keane. I would also put the £8m spent on Riera as being a waste

No manager has a perfect record, but you have to be clever if you dont have much cash. Rafa surely knew he only had peanuts to spend this summer, so why blow your wad on a fullback. That will never make sense to me.

Going into this season, I would have said we needed to replace Hyypia, ALonso and Arbeloa, but that we also needed a right winger, a left winger, a good striker and an old head for the middle of the park, but we didnt strengthen any of these positions. We literally replaced the players leaving, and thats it.

If they had stayed, we would not have had a penny to spend!!!

It seems to me Rafa has started to run out of ideas in the transfer market. The first 3-4 years, he made a lot of cheap purchases who were good players, or made a decent profit on them later. More recently, there have been too many poor or indifferent signings. We are not going to afford proven talent in the years ahead, and we dont seem to have any of promising young players signed in abunadance challanging for the 1st team

The lack of recent success is going to cost Rafa, as the money will almost certainly be less for next summer (and we made a net spend of 0 ths year).

Its slightly depressing, as we dont have much scope for sales to generate cash by selling Babel and Dossena, maybe Riera. Thats £20m tops. Everyone else worth something is too important to sell

[BFG]

That hides the fact we seem to have wasted 12m on Babel, and £8m on Dossena, both of whom never play, and are 3rd choice at best - and the £20m on Keane. I would also put the £8m spent on Riera as being a waste

No manager has a perfect record, but you have to be clever if you dont have much cash. Rafa surely knew he only had peanuts to spend this summer, so why blow your wad on a fullback. That will never make sense to me.

Going into this season, I would have said we needed to replace Hyypia, ALonso and Arbeloa, but that we also needed a right winger, a left winger, a good striker and an old head for the middle of the park, but we didnt strengthen any of these positions. We literally replaced the players leaving, and thats it.
If they had stayed, we would not have had a penny to spend!!!

It seems to me Rafa has started to run out of ideas in the transfer market. The first 3-4 years, he made a lot of cheap purchases who were good players, or made a decent profit on them later. More recently, there have been too many poor or indifferent signings. We are not going to afford proven talent in the years ahead, and we dont seem to have any of promising young players signed in abunadance challanging for the 1st team

The lack of recent success is going to cost Rafa, as the money will almost certainly be less for next summer (and we made a net spend of 0 ths year).

Its slightly depressing, as we dont have much scope for sales to generate cash by selling Babel and Dossena, maybe Riera. Thats £20m tops. Everyone else worth something is too important to sell

So we needed to sign seven top players with no money as all three wanted out so we couldn't keep them?

I'm not sure if you're saying the lack of money is somehow down to Rafa wasting it but there does seem to be that suggestion in your post. IMO Rafa has actually made cash for us by being very shrewd for the most part. For Dossena, there's Insua and Aurelio who we'd make more profit on by selling now than the loss we'd make on Dossena. Most of us thought we'd have a hell of a player on our hands with Babel but it hasn't worked out but again if you sold Torres now you'd probably get what our entire squad was worth in 2004. Keane cost us very little because Rafa acted quickly to get rid, like he does with most players that don't work out.

Every manager has big hits and big misses in the market but I'd argue that Rafa is better than most. The fact that the squad is worth so much more than it was without Abramovich-like money being spent is proof of that.

[Charly]

[QUOTE=BFG;1464224]So we needed to sign seven top players with no money as all three wanted out so we couldn't keep them?

[QUOTE]

Oooh. Words in mouth!!!

I never said top players. Just better ones There must be better atacking wide players that can dribble. Owen was free. There must be an old git in the midfield going cheap. £10m could fill that if you look around a bit, generated by not spending 17m on a fullback. Thats just my opinion.

Rafa did have the best recod of any mamnger up until the previous summer. But since then its taken a big drop. So much so its left us where we are now. A squad that cant function without Torres. Unless you want to blame Rafas tactics instead

[BFG]

Owen was free, but Owen is ****. He's to them what Voronin is to us. The big difference is they have two forwards they spent £35mil on so their reserve players are usually in reserve. We have one forward we spent £20mil on and a 20 year old we got for 1.5mil.

I'd say it's a multitude of factors, some completely out of the manager's control and some mistakes on his part. I believe he's capable of righting all the wrongs and getting us back on track though.

[Charly]

I hope you are right. I really want Rafa to succeed. But I am begining to become sceptical. If he fails to make the CL, then he should go.

[Maxiedge]

8 million on Lucas... I'll support the lad as long as he wears the shirt but we got taken to the cleaners while stopping at the mug shop.

That money there as well as Dossena fee (8 mill too?) should've been spent wiser.

Those are my only criticisms of our recent transfers. To be really nit-picky, we should've also assessed Babel's mentality a bit more thorough.

[Exiled_red]

Just on Lucas...

When you say a Lucas type play, before he came to liverpool he was more of an attacking player at Gremio, not a holding player. HE doesnt appear to have much in his locker going forward, cant dribble or shoot, does not possess a passing range, so I am not sure what it is he has lost since joining us.

I have noting against the guy, I think he is a good player to have on the bench. But he doesnt bring anything to the team, other than workrate.

I've no idea what has happened to Lucas' attacking game, he must have been better in Brazil than he is showing at the moment as he would the brazilian footballer of the year he had 11 goals in 75 games which is decent if not great, but it's more than he's showing at the moment. I hope it's just a confidence thing and his form in this are a will pick up

[Exiled_red]

That hides the fact we seem to have wasted 12m on Babel, and £8m on Dossena, both of whom never play, and are 3rd choice at best - and the £20m on Keane. I would also put the £8m spent on Riera as being a waste

No manager has a perfect record, but you have to be clever if you dont have much cash. Rafa surely knew he only had peanuts to spend this summer, so why blow your wad on a fullback. That will never make sense to me.

Going into this season, I would have said we needed to replace Hyypia, ALonso and Arbeloa, but that we also needed a right winger, a left winger, a good striker and an old head for the middle of the park, but we didnt strengthen any of these positions. We literally replaced the players leaving, and thats it.

If they had stayed, we would not have had a penny to spend!!!

It seems to me Rafa has started to run out of ideas in the transfer market. The first 3-4 years, he made a lot of cheap purchases who were good players, or made a decent profit on them later. More recently, there have been too many poor or indifferent signings. We are not going to afford proven talent in the years ahead, and we dont seem to have any of promising young players signed in abunadance challanging for the 1st team

The lack of recent success is going to cost Rafa, as the money will almost certainly be less for next summer (and we made a net spend of 0 ths year).

Its slightly depressing, as we dont have much scope for sales to generate cash by selling Babel and Dossena, maybe Riera. Thats £20m tops. Everyone else worth something is too important to sell

I still think something happened to our transfer budget in the summer and I'm not sure what. Everyone was under the impression when Rafa signed a new contract that there would be ~£20m made available for transfers (on top of sales). That obviously changed at some point but the question is when. We were quick out of the blocks in signing Johnson and hadn't sold anyone at this point, and we were reportedly looking at big money attacking players, before everything went quiet until the Alonso sale. So I suspect whatever financial issue arose happened in the middle of the summer affecting the signings we made (or didn't make)

[Pablo]

I still think something happened to our transfer budget in the summer and I'm not sure what. Everyone was under the impression when Rafa signed a new contract that there would be ~£20m made available for transfers (on top of sales). That obviously changed at some point but the question is when. We were quick out of the blocks in signing Johnson and hadn't sold anyone at this point, and we were reportedly looking at big money attacking players, before everything went quiet until the Alonso sale. So I suspect whatever financial issue arose happened in the middle of the summer affecting the signings we made (or didn't make)

Im certain it did, he definitely had his budget slashed near the end of the summer. I guess it was the Yanks using some of the transfer funds to pay off the £60m they had to pay off their loan