Where’s My Liverpool?

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The summer window opened in May. It’s almost the end of July. Eight weeks gone. I’ve read almost every English newspaper available on the website about football. I’ve read the gossip columns. I’ve scanned the rumour websites. I’ve twitter’s application on my phone which I scan many times a day. I’ve read hundreds of blogs. Not even a semblance found. Not an iota. Not a word on any big player wanting to leave Liverpool FC? That’s not how it was! Where is the club I knew? What did I miss. Wasn’t it like that till the last window? Or is it that we don’t have ’em big players no more?

Weren’t we supposed to the media favourites for speculations about most of our big players wanting to leave? And they were true more often than not. Even Stevie G ‘wanted’ to leave once. Xabi, Mascherano, Reina, Torres were all linked away from us. Some of them left.

And since when did we start spending £45 on reinforcements?? We hardly ever spent much on replacements, leave alone reinforcements. How can I not think – ‘Stevie injured? There goes our season’ anymore. For us, who still miss Xabi (more as a person for his love for the club, I must say), why don’t we miss Torres anymore? And by miss, how come we’re playing better without him than with him? How are we hoping to do better without than we did with Torres. Wasn’t he supposed to be integral? Why aren’t we signing half-fit and hardly deserving free transfers on exorbitant wages? C’mon, at least one for old times’ sakes?

Ok fine, may be we’ve bought some. And since some are new, the talk about them leaving cannot make too much sense (even Daily Mail understands this much). But not even Pepe? Hell, he’s been linked with moves away since so long. What’s changed that? If there are no reports, it might be understandable, but not even rumours?

How come I’m only worried about whether Milan’s Anderlecht move will happen or not? Or how soon would Poulsen, Cole and N’gog be sold. How come the players are suddenly so happy wanting to ‘fight for places’? And why am I even worried about that? Since when did the owner’s profits become my concern instead of his debts and interest payments? Since when did our owner start interacting with fans like friends? Since when did I start caring so much about the owners?

This new club hardly bears any resemblance with the one from the last two seasons or more. How I wish I never had to bear 2010.

23 Comments

  1. Good fun reading, and quite true.

    Sorry Matt, Joe has still looked a mile off the pace in the friendlies, but Aquilani has looked like a real player.

  2. Those who think we’ll challenge for anything above 5th this season without significantly strengthen our CB-department will recieve a brutal and painful awakening in late October/early November.

  3. @Joe.
    A couple of good friendly games against chinese and malaysian teams does not make aqua a good player. The real aqua was was you saw at hull city. He is too lightweight for premier and the game is too quick for him. I just hope some Italian team buys him before end of window. Terrible signing by Rafa. I was in Rome this year chatting to Roma fans and they said he was average not as good as either totti or rossi.

  4. @Joe.
    A couple of good friendly games against chinese and malaysian teams does not make aqua a good player. The real aqua was was you saw at hull city. He is too lightweight for premier and the game is too quick for him. I just hope some Italian team buys him before end of window. Terrible signing by Rafa. I was in Rome this year chatting to Roma fans and they said he was average.

  5. @Joe.
    A couple of good friendly games against chinese and malaysian teams does not make aqua a good player. The real aqua was was you saw at hull city. He is too lightweight for premier and the game is too quick for him. I just hope some Italian team buys him before end of window. Terrible signing by Rafa

  6. Aquilani isn’t a second striker. He lacks Gerrard’s ‘all-action’ style and Suarez’s ‘Dalglishness’.

    I’m still guessing Adam and Aquilani will be the central midfield pairing with Coady and Henderson as back-up (though I do wonder if Coady and Henderson are a little too similar).

    People rave on about Leiva, Spearing and Meireles. None of these three are Champions League quality (I include Poulsen and Joe Cole in that list) so I assume they will eventually move on. However its debatable if Aquilani’s heart is in Liverpool…everyday there’s speculation about him suggesting he’s off.

    Defensively Liverpool still look wanting, though replacing those players depends on how much money remains in the kitty

  7. I don’t miss Alonso anymore> He was vital at the time but we now have Charlie Adam who has similar skills but isn’t as lightweight. We should all remember than only Alonso’s first and last seasons were good. The two inbetween he was average bar the odd decent game here and there. His cracking last season was to prove his worth but should have played like that every season not just when he fancied a move to a top Spanish club.

    Charlie Adam is our future! Long live the King!

    1. Agree with most KD. Charlie is the way forward. While I’m not sure how Alonso’s physicality mattered. If he could do what he did in 2008-09 being lean, I dread how he could be if he was bulkier.

  8. @Ahmad Zaman…Meireles not Champions League…someone should’ve told Porto, who has consistently been in that said competition for the last few years. Leiva is in the Brazil first team so i would say he is Champion’s League quality.

  9. Quite an amusing article. Well done.

    It makes a change the papers not trying to s**t stir. Then again, there’s one less paper, and the others are keeping their heads down. ;-) lol

    It slightly concerns me that the players that seem surplus don’t even get talked about moving, Jovanovic and Aquilani aside.

    We have players who are on huge wages, and it will be very hard to get rid of them unfortunately. Maybe a season on their a*ses may change their expectations when they get an offer. Sadly, maybe not.

    Aquilani, imho he’s never been given a chance to prove himself. He shouldn’t have been put out on loan last season, and if he was it should have been guaranteed that Juve had to buy him if he played a certain number of games. As it was the tried to be funny and try and get his agreed price reduced, and quite rightly we said ‘no’. :-) He has looked good in the pre-season games, and before the opposition gets mentioned again, there are some who haven’t exactly played well against the same teams, so if Aquilani isn’t worth a run in the team, then there are few others who should be further away from the 1st team than him.

    Meireles is quality, Lucas has turned into quality, though he was never as bad as the boo boys made out. Spearing is average, if he wasn’t from Liverpool he’d already be gone. Henderson? I’m not sure yet. Coady? I think it’s a year or two too early though I’m willing to be proved wrong. ;-) Adam? Skilful player, dead ball and penalty specialist, but the Blackpool team revolved around him, and that is not going to happen at Liverpool. Wait and see with him I think. Cole? He hasn’t exactly sparkled against this ‘poor’ pre-season opposition ha she? Gerrard? Well, he hasn’t been too good for over a season, and I’m hoping with all the midfield competition it spurs him on back to form, but I somehow doubt it. I hope the King is strong enough to leave him out if he’s not playing well. The last two managers weren’t. :-(

    There should have been a left back sorted before all these midfielders though, and maybe a central defender too.

    I think there may be a few twists and turns before the season starts. ;-)

  10. @martinmarx… true mate…. need a couple of defensive signings and may be a decent back-up striker to suarez and carroll if we want to mount a serious challenge for the top four!

  11. @Carroll9

    I based my assessment of Miereles in the Europa Cup…the entire team looked average. My assessment of Lucas was on Liverpool’s last Champions League participation. He and Mascherano looked out of their depth…perhaps Masch was to blame, perhaps they both were inadequate, though Masch was fine alongside Alonso…so who knows

    1. Lucas has grown an enourmous amount as a player in the last couple of seasons, so how can you base your judgement of how well he’ll go on how he played in the CL a couple of years back? If you check out how well he did coming up against the likes of Chelsea, Man U, Arsenal etc. last year, this would be a much better indication of how well he would go.

      Meireles wasn’t the only one who had a shocking Europa League last season, in fact, I’m struggling to name any player who played well in that competition for us, which leads me to believe that it’s not that he can’t play CL, more that the dodgy tactics/formations of Roy’s reign made us play some shocking football. Raul played for Porto who are consistently in the CL, and I’ll assume he was in their starting 11. So I’m gonna have a guess that he would be more than able to cut it in the CL

  12. Joe Cole must go. We need another Suarez. Aquilani is the missing link. Liverpool plays better football without Gerrard. New signing of LB and CB is a must. King Kenny should not be too racist.

  13. Great article with a great sense of humor! I’m a recent Liverpool fan, and i would agree that i sometimes get a surreal feeling from this transfer window. It’s nice to have such positive problems to worry about. We’ve seen the worst and its in the past!

  14. This is a really bad blog post. Reads more like the stream of consciousness ramblings of a drunken person rather than the views of someone with sensible points to make.

    1. Thanks Scouseman. That’s the idea with a ‘blog’ you see. It’s just your opinion. The intention wasn’t to come across as a ‘sensible person’ in this post. And, if I can come across drunk without drinking, I think I need to develop that skill. Might save some dough for the monthly budget.

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