How good are our players?

[DannyMan2006]

We have a team/squad which is capable of finishing 4th.

[CJ]

wasnt douchebag niceys chosen phrase?

apart from that i cant see anything similar in the post of ldp or niceys posts

and thanks for the empty gesture

i imagine most people are not in real life quite how they come accross here or how they are taken if that makes sense

[CJ]

we dont have the 4th best team or squad but that doesnt mean they are not good enough to finish 4th.

i think i got that right

[red g]

with the league as it is this year. We have a team capable of challenging for winning the premier league and a squad that should be challenginf for top 4

[CJ]

with the league as it is this year. We have a team capable of challenging for winning the premier league and a squad that should be challenginf for top 4

i dont think i would go that far. torress is not fit enough for that.

i see what you mean though i personally think that with the right direction we could have lucked a 3rd with the league the way it is this year.

[Vermilion]

We have a team/squad which is capable of finishing 4th.

Especially this season. A good start with highly motivated players and good tactics and who knows what might have been, unfortunately Hodgsons appointment had the opposite effect.

[danperkins]

wasnt douchebag niceys chosen phrase?

apart from that i cant see anything similar in the post of ldp or niceys posts

and thanks for the empty gesture

i imagine most people are not in real life quite how they come accross here or how they are taken if that makes sense

Ah it just the internet and its just football we're all big kids when it comes to football, i don't take anything seriously or personally on here

And Arsenal/Mancs/Spurs and City all have much superior squads than we do IMO, our first 11 is decent but the overall squad quality pales in comparison to the other aforementioned teams

[RichC]

We have a team/squad which is capable of finishing 4th.

Certainly one that should be capable of challenging for the top 4, no doubt about that at all.

One massive stumbling block though is Royston!

[Kenneth]

We have the 6th best squad in the league.

[red g]

We have the 6th best squad in the league.

you have hodgson-itis

[PTP]

simple -

3 world class players - reina, gerrard, torres

6 good players - carragher, johnson, agger, meireles, cole, kuyt

8 either decent squad or youngsters worth keeping - skrtel, kyriakos, kelly, wilson, shelvey, pacheco, ngog, lucas, maxi

the rest aren't good enough and don't warrant a mention

what we need to do is add at least one maybe two to the world class section, and again another two or three to the good players section - (made up of a left back, pacy left winger, good striker, a combative centre mid and then one other bonus player)

if this makes sense.....if we had what we needed and then picked our starting XI and then our bench looked somehting like

Sub keeper
kelly
skrtel
lucas
kuyt
ngog



then....we'd be in a position to move forward, challenge top 4 and look to improve on from there.

At the moment there is too many people in that 3rd caterogry of 'decent' (and unfortunatley some from the not good enough one too) who feature regularly

[Kenneth]

you have hodgson-itis

Don't think so. The only debatable one is Spurs, but Arsenal, Man u, Man City and Chelsea are clearly stronger than we are. So 5th at best, but i'd still say 6th.

[CJ]

if spurs dont have a better squad (i think they do)

then at the very least they have more balance and options than we do

[Arn]

if spurs dont have a better squad (i think they do)

then at the very least they have more balance and options than we do

Spurs squad cost more than £100m than ours to sign so of course they have a better squad.

Give a new manager £100m+ to spend and we would most probably have the better squad.

NESV have this window and the one in the summer to close the gap after that it will be much more difficult because of the new UEFA spending rules.

It is spend spend spend the next two windows or else it will take a long time until we can win #19.

We don't have a top four squad at the moment but we could still be top four with a better manager.

Spend spend spend or be left behind. It is up to NESV and what ambition they have. After the spend spend spend thing then they can concentrate doing things the Arsenal way but they simply don't have the choice to do it the Arsenal way until after the next two transfer windows.

If they don't spend spend spend then our top class players will leave.

[badpiggy]

If we look at who's good enough to be a starter in 18 months, the complexion of the squad changes again.

Reina is world class as is Torres (notwithstanding potential injuries) and after that we're mediocre with no real game-changers (maybe Glen Johnson...). Raul and Lucas are very good at absolute best but neither have that something extra to change a game. Maybe that's a bit unfair on Raul but he didn't come here with a world class reputation. What makes SG great will 90% likely be gone at that stage. So will Carra. I'm still unconvinced about Agger. The Greek will be past it. I don't believe Skrtel is LFC material. So that's at least 2 and IMO 3 of the back 4 need upgrading.

We need serious young quality brough in. Hopefully at that stage Raul, Lucas, Reina, Johnson and Torres will be the older heads leading on the pitch so we won't have an Arsenal-type problem.

Overall, I think we are good enough to challenge for 4th at the moment. A better, more inspirational, aggressive manager would at least have us pushing Chelsea for 2nd. But that's more a comment on the PL than us. Without new top class young players - and obv. a new manager - we're only going to go backwards as we are mainly starting to age and mediocre.