I think it’s fair to say that Liverpool have had a shoddy time of things this season. Whilst fans will be feeling hard done by as a result of Sunday’s 2-1 defeat to Manchester United, the truth is they’ve been poor this season.
They look like a team that’s bought into their own bad press. Their passing is much too slow and they lack threat moving forward. Indeed, they have all the goal-scoring potential of a blindfolded Emile Heskey. Things just aren’t looking good.
As a result, many fans are looking to the January transfer window as a kind of salvation. A promise land, filled with choice offerings of forgotten players and want-away money-grabbers. The sad thing is, the transfer window can’t reopen soon enough for Liverpool.
Because of the club’s dismal deadline day antics, the Reds are seriously short up front. Luis Suarez isn’t a natural goal-scorer, Fabio Borini looks questionable and Andy Carroll is at West Ham for no good reason.
And yet the best player Liverpool have been linked to since the transfer window slammed shut is a midfielder. More specifically, it’s Benfica’s ace playmaker Nicolas Gaitan. Manchester United are also thought to be interested. (Source: CalcioMercato).
The 24-year-old Argentine has grown increasingly influential over the last couple of seasons. In 2010/11 he scored 9 goals and grabbed 10 assists. In 2011/12, his creative juices really started to flow as he grabbed 15 assists. He’s become a key cog in this Benfica side and Liverpool will find it hard to tempt them to sell, if their interest is genuine.
Indeed, the Independent claim that he’d cost around £29.3m. That’s no small sum for a club that’s clearly struggling financially. The reason Liverpool didn’t bring a striker in on deadline day must surely be down to the fact that they couldn’t find one in their price-range. And now we’re supposed to believe they could shell out almost £30m for a midfielder? Sadly, these kind of signings have become unrealistic for Liverpool.
The emphasis must surely be on smart, affordable purchases, with a view to the long-term. Anything else is just untenable. We’d love to see a player like Gaitan at Anfield, it’s just not likely to happen.
What’s your take? Do Liverpool need to manage their expectations when it comes to transfer activity?
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Harry Cloke you are a joke
I wonder just what it was you had to smoke.
Don’t smoke it too often…
There is some part of truth though in your statement.
That’s why BR forced some out by making them benchwarmers. I really appreciate that Carroll did not allow that to happen. Rather be on loan than allowing BR to get £+20m to spend.
I rather think that the youngsters we have are sufficient for our needs after their display at WBA last night. It is common sense to understand that we are in no way going to win the league this year so the sensible thing is to concentrate on the re-build. The young Academicians have been given the go-ahead and to now push them back in the shadows would be totally non-productive and also lead to much “unrest” as they have shown admirably that more than just one or two are ideally suited to first game showing. The time is now and the players are now. We have nowhere to go but up so let’s start!
firstly: harry cloke some of your article is utter garbage and I think you may be confused with some of our performances last year.
our major problem is scorring.
this season we played both utd and city and made them look average and played them of the park.
We gave a good performance at sunderland controled the game and should have taken three points.
we were also good against arsenal appart from individual errors leading to the goals
but i have to agree that we have been poor this season but that was the first game of the season against west brom. but hardly a reason to secribe the whole season as poor
I also have to question why you state we are strugling financialy, we spent nearly thirty million in the summer hardly a club that is struggleing and how much debt do we have = yeah thats right none
to finish our youngsters are coming through and have been very impressive so do we need these mega money buys I think not
quite frankly I think you have wrote a terrible article based on media speculation