This weekend we play Newcastle in a game that seems like the perfect opportunity to compare our front sixes as 6th meets 7th.
I’ve looked over the midfielder’s and attackers from both teams and the attitude in which they were bought is abundantly similar, they were risks. Liverpool went with their fair share of unproven but promising talent, and Newcastle, well they went for some players that would have been deemed ‘injury prone’ by knee jerk fans at first glance. Alan Pardew and his team of scouts went with quality players with something to prove, they possessed injury records that could put off many other clubs but injury records that would keep them ‘cheap’. So what about Kenny Dalglish and Damien Comolli? Well they bought bold and British, all of the players they bought had to step up very quickly or risk being hung out to dry.
So lets see how the two clubs transfers compare.
Liverpool: (I’ve gone with 6 that have been regulars to form a 4-4-2 formation)
Henderson – 16 million
Gerrard – (academy product)
Adam – 5 million
Downing – 20 million
Suarez – 23 million
Carroll – 35 million
TOTAL: 99 million
[sidenote: I understand we brought money in from deals such as Fernando Torres, but I’m focusing on what we spent and where we spent it, and just because you have the money that doesn’t mean you should spend it straight away]
Newcastle:
Ben Arfa – 6 million
Cabaye – 4.5 million
Tiote – 3.5 million
Jonas – 5 million
Cisse – 9 million
Demba Ba – Free
TOTAL: 28 million
So we’ve spent 71 million pounds more on our acquisitions noted and we’re going into Sundays game 8 points behind them, with 8 games left. Of course you can place a few arguments of “but we had to spend big to achieve a top four finish”, I’m not sure when that became a rule, obviously it helps, but if you spend your money in the right places then there’s no doubt you’ll benefit, spend it in the wrong places, and well you become a laughing stock. You can also argue it’s a matter of budget, “It’s ok because we had 100 million to spend” It doesn’t seem like great business by FSG to spend all the money you have in the first year of purchase unless you can guarantee return. We saw in January when we quite evidently needed a striker that either a player wasn’t available, we thought it wasn’t an issue or it’s quite possible that John Henry and crew didn’t trust Dalglish and Comolli to spend again, just a theory. Newcastle went out and bought Papa Demba Cisse and he already has the same amount of goals that Andy Carroll and Dirk Kuyt have produced all season. Worrying.
Just because I’ve named players in my article it does NOT mean I am blaming them for their price tags, their respective clubs set the limits, and rather than assessing our options and looking abroad, we bit their hands off. 5 of the 6 players Liverpool bought were British, none of the 6 Newcastle bought were. If you’re qualifying for European competition the amount of British players you have at your disposal is important, but that implies we’re going to qualify for Europe every year and if it wasn’t for Liverpool’s Carling Cup win, I reckon we’d be panicking a lot more than we are right now. 2 points off a chasing pack that includes Sunderland and Everton. Worrying.
In summary, it goes without saying that I’m behind the management and the players 100% every game, the problem is we’ve planned for seasons ahead when what really matters is the right here, right now. Liverpool Football Club can’t really afford to be out of the Champions League, and the longer this transfer plan continues the chances of us getting back in it will look slimmer every year. We have to give Kenny another crack next season and then address the situation this time next year, fans calling for his head will be the same fans giving Chelsea abuse for their owner Roman Asackhimquick (yeah I’ve just made that up) doing exactly what his name suggests.
So I like to leave a question at the end of my articles to infuse debate rather than argument.
Question: Are you happy planning for the future with our long term project or would you rather see us find a quick fix for Champions League football and risk another 100 million? For me I’m split on it, but what about you?
YNWA
Ben Carr
@DoctorBenjy on twitter, be sure to tweet me!
*Remember to look out for my April Fools article soon, you might remember last years