Myth about Rodgers' Transfers

There is this on-going myth about how our transfer record has been a lot better under BR compared to Kenny, and frankly it's bollocks. For a team who's trying to get back up there and isn't supported by a sugar daddy, we need to have as little error as possible and make the most of our resources addressing NOW, and currently NOW to get back competing with the big boys. YET:

Borini 11M
Allen 15M
Aspas 7M
Alberto 7M
Ilori 7M


combined have cost 46 MILLION POUNDS , and have assembled LESS than 30 league starts between them so far. None of them demand a regular spot for the team either.

In a position of a team like us, we need to improve the first XI and spend so much money not on players who won't improve our first team.

Some bores will come here and say "BUT THEY ARE FOR THE FUTURE !!! " .....What's the point of future when those useless purchases won't help us get top 4 = our best player leaving...and we have to build all over again. Every year we don't get there, it just gets harder to get back up.

Of course BR has had some good transfers too, but he's not been efficient wit the money he's spent. or in my words, efficient enough. I hate the idea of buying "Squad players". If you're already a team on the top with a great foundation, then you can afford to pay BIG BIG BUCKS for a young prospect or squad players (Something Ferguson did for Ashley Young and Phil Jones for example) , but for a team already starting from behind, it's an idiotic idea.

I really hope we ditch this desperation for THE FUTURE 1! and in January buy players who'd improve our first team immediately like Sturridge and Coutinho did.

rant over.

Well since the committee has been formed we've done well

Coutinho
Sturridge
Mignolet
Sakho
Toure (free)
Moses (good loan)

Alberto and Ilori (although expensive, good potential to be regulars in the team).

I can only think of Aspas that's been a pretty shitty buy since the committee took over the reins. Cissokho was a back up loan signing which really doesn't count.

There is really no excuse for how much we paid for Allen and Borini though and that's down to Rodgers failure to understand the level of LFC from the get go.

And yes I get your point and I agree that we are not in a position to waste 7m a piece on Alberto and Ilori just for potential. Must improve the first team above everything else first.

However in 3 years we might look at both Ilori and Alberto as bargains.

I probably have the wrong attitude but tbh i don't really care, But all these signings look like bargains to me after Kenny's reign with Carroll, Downing etc.

Anyways, The only flops you can label are Borini and maybe Aspas ( still too early imo ), The others have done well enough tbh bar Allen.

I dont think its that big an issue all the clubs make mistakes, We have made very few since BR has come in. See this

http://liverpoolfc.wikia.com/wiki/Brendan_Rodgers/Transfers

Not only did BR do well to recuperate some lost money in shipping out the deadwood, But we got some absolute steals as well, Sturridge, Coutinho, Mignolet, Toure. Sahin was also a very clever loan which didnt work out.

Yes we dont have enough resources to make mistakes but we have to take chances, Im sure the club wasn't stupid enough to consider the price, inflation, availability etc of all players before heading for these targets.

I agree.. buying for the future and for squad depth is overrated to an extent, especially given the fact that we're not even in Europe this season and are already out of COC. If your starting XI is not good enough, you won't achieve anything.

Anyways, the transfer market has been a problem for us since a long time.. I think we might be having the worst success rate of transfers in PL.

Under BR, it has been drastically better though than under KK.. there is no denying that.

Carroll: Bought for 35m, sold for 17m, 18m loss
Downing: Bought for 20m, sold for 5m, 15m loss
Adam: Bought for 7m, sold for 4m, 3m loss
Total loss: 36m

Compared to these guys, our current "failed" signings will recuperate the money we've paid for them since they still are quite young and have untapped potential. That's the only plus point.

I agree wholeheartedly... Anyone who thinks Rodgers' transfer record has been good enough to help us compete for top 4 needs only look at our league position to be proven wrong. This squad is not good enough to compete for the top 4; the number of teams above us currently makes that clear enough to anyone dumb enough to claim otherwise.

I'm so tired of all these myths like "we're in third" and "we have two of the top strikers in the league" and "we're on pace for a massive improvement this season". Facts are facts, people.

We keep forgetting we don't have much choice other than Borini, Aspas etc. Players who can make us CL contenders have much better choices than a team which is not even in EL. Henrikh, Costa or Willian chose teams that offer them better platform and they made the right choices. People may point to Suarez, Sturridge, Shako or Coutinho but we all know the situations that allowed us to pinch them.

We may think we could have snatched Henrikh, Costa or Willian with an inflated fee and wage. Only a gold-digger would have swapped opportunity to play for a CL (and perhaps title contender) team for an inflated (and perhaps unjustified) wages. I'm happy we aren't blessed with an 'Adebayor'.

We were unhappy with Lucas, Enrique and Henderson too. In time; Allen, Borini and Aspas too 'might' become useful (if not vital) members. Yes they might become new 'Babel' or 'Ngog' but every team have their fair share of failures.

I'm not happy with our squad. Even our best XI is barely 'at par' with our competitors. Beyond that we have barely 3-4 players worth mentioning. We couldn't win against Swansea and Soutampton with just 2-3 players missing. If we don't qualify for CL, Suarez will leave and so might few others like Sturridge, Shako, Coutinho.

But what choices do we have!!! We can splash the cash on over-paid and underperforming super-stars or we can buy talented but unproven players (with occasional sprinkles of Sturridge or Shako) who will make us competitive in 2-3 years time.

For the money spent, Rodgers hasn't improved the squad enough.

But I count only Allen and Borini as true blunders in the market. Aspas I thought was good business for that kind of money (7m) and after the season he had in Spain, I don't blame Rodgers for thinking he could improve us. Alberto and Ilori I don't really understand, the former isn't good enough and Ilori is behind at least four CBs. If they were bought for the future I'd rather have spent that 14m on some other player who would have improved us straight away - plus they probably should, at 20-ish, be playing first-team footy to truly develop anyway.

But on the other hand Coutinho and Sturridge have been excellent buys, but we've wasted too much money on several hopeful buys.

Just as we are discussing this, we are linked with 21 year old Sergio Roberto from Barcelona for 20m

Btw, the signings were a victim of situation we are in after all we tried to sign Mkhi and even Costa but we failed. I feel the the argument in this thread is going in circles and ending up what we already discussed in some other thread. I think the club finally felt that instead of buying some random option ond overpaying for that option, we had decided to wait until Jan window when probably more options may pop up out of nowhere.

For me only the signing of Alberto was questionable since he has not improved the first team squad, neitther we went for our other option which was Eriksen (sorry to coin his name again), nor it makes sense to buy him for the fiture since we already have Suso who for me seems more than that 7m we spent on Alberto.

stevieg8 wrote:I agree wholeheartedly... Anyone who thinks Rodgers' transfer record has been good enough to help us compete for top 4 needs only look at our league position to be proven wrong.  This squad is not good enough to compete for the top 4; the number of teams above us currently makes that clear enough to anyone dumb enough to claim otherwise.

I'm so tired of all these myths like "we're in third" and "we have two of the top strikers in the league" and "we're on pace for a massive improvement this season".  Facts are facts, people.

Yes. We've made an impressive start (still only 1 point above 7th) , but given the money we've spent, we haven't improved the first team anywhere near as much as we should have.

Not going after Kevin Strootman, who was a gettable target, this summer....seeing our needs is absolutely criminal as he's exactly the type of player we are crying for.

We won't get away with having ZERO goals from midfield all season.

@ OP:

I swear I won't mention Eriksen, well after this sentence.

About time someone else sees it. I'm still not convinced by this committee, they still have a lot to prove. They wanted a number 10, couldn't get one and stated Coutinho would play that role. I don't want to get into this debate as I don't think he's ready to play that role and whatnot, but why bring in Moses on loan to play the number 10 role when it's quite clear he's a left winger. Then we go out and buy 2 CBs (when we only needed Sakho) and wasted 7m on Ilori. Come January, that 7m is going to be handy. Let's say we want player X for 15m who actually would help the starting XI. The selling club wants 19m for him. We can't afford him. Fans blame FSG for not providing cash and Rodgers comes off as the guy that got f*cked over when it's quite clear it was his mistake.

It was the same with Dempsey last season. I'm really glad we missed out on him, but that's not the point. He loaned out Carroll BEFORE we got him, and then wondered why we only had 2 strikers (Suarez and Borini) until January. We pretty much played with 1 because Borini was injured all bloody season. :S

I'm sick of buying for potential. Yes, bring in one or two. But you have to remember we have some gems in the academy and we brought in Allen and Borini last summer. We have the likes of Yesil, Teixeira, Suso, the other 2 (Borini/Allen), Sterling, and Wisdom to groom. Let's not forget Coutinho is quite raw. Pretty soon those players are going to leave like Shelvey for more game time ffs. Start buying for now. Achieve our goals now. Worry about the future later. The future is not going to be very good if we're not in the champions league.

Natalie Portman wrote:
Yes. We've made an impressive start (still only 1 point above 7th) , but given the money we've spent, we haven't improved the first team anywhere near as much as we should have.

Not going after Kevin Strootman, who was a gettable target, this summer....seeing our needs is absolutely criminal as he's exactly the type of player we are crying for.

We won't get away with having ZERO goals from midfield all season.

Strootman is pretty much a better version of Henderson / Joe Allen.

And he's not a goal scorer.

Person we missed out in the summer who was a gettable version and actually improve out starting XI was Ajax's former number 8.

Red Alert wrote:

Natalie Portman wrote:
Yes. We've made an impressive start (still only 1 point above 7th) , but given the money we've spent, we haven't improved the first team anywhere near as much as we should have.

Not going after Kevin Strootman, who was a gettable target, this summer....seeing our needs is absolutely criminal as he's exactly the type of player we are crying for.

We won't get away with having ZERO goals from midfield all season.

Strootman is pretty much a better version of Henderson / Joe Allen.

And he's not a goal scorer.

Person we missed out in the summer who was a gettable version and actually improve out starting XI was Ajax's former number 8.

Strootman would still score more goals from open play than Lucas and Gerrard combined.

not to mention he'd instantly be our best central midfielder. He'd walk into our first XI because at least he doesn't look shagged and tired after 60 minutes.

But yea. It's weird the committee was keen on spending 7M on Alberto and not 3M more on a 10 times more proven version of him in Eriksen.

I think it's fair to say we were all very disappointed that our committee didn't go for Eriksen. It was baffling that they thought Alberto who was the same age as Eriksen, had never played at top level regularly, cost almost the same as Eriksen be more worthy of wearing our colors.

Natalie Portman wrote:

Red Alert wrote:

Natalie Portman wrote:
Yes. We've made an impressive start (still only 1 point above 7th) , but given the money we've spent, we haven't improved the first team anywhere near as much as we should have.

Not going after Kevin Strootman, who was a gettable target, this summer....seeing our needs is absolutely criminal as he's exactly the type of player we are crying for.

We won't get away with having ZERO goals from midfield all season.

Strootman is pretty much a better version of Henderson / Joe Allen.

And he's not a goal scorer.

Person we missed out in the summer who was a gettable version and actually improve out starting XI was Ajax's former number 8.

Strootman would still score more goals from open play than Lucas and Gerrard combined.

not to mention he'd instantly be our best central midfielder. He'd walk into our first XI because at least he doesn't look shagged and tired after 60 minutes.

But yea. It's weird the committee was keen on spending 7M on Alberto and not 3M more on a 10 times more proven version of him in Eriksen.

But he's still not a goal scoring midfielder. If you wanted a goal scoring midfielder, you would go for someone like a Gerrard back in the day, a Mkhitaryan, a Ramsey type, not a Strootman.  

The problem with this committee, is that they find a quality target (Mkhitaryan/Costa) yet their "back up" targets are useless and not Liverpool standard when we fail to get the primary target in.

It was quite the opposite under Commolli/Kenny where our back-up targets were better than our primary targets. We went for Henderson instead of Gotze and Downing instead of Mata.

I don't want to even talk about Luis Alberto. We spent 7m on him to sit on the bench. He couldn't even get a game infront of Moses (who's a left winger) in that number 10 spot when Coutinho was injured.

The £14 million spent on Illori & Alberto was a waste. The former is a surplus (we have FOUR senior CB with Wisdom & Kelly as FURTHER back-up) while the later didn't have ANY competitive experience.

But there are very few players within our reach who would have improved our starting XI. It's not just about money. Players with that quality has and will choose better teams than us.

We have to lay in wait for another Coutinho or Shako to pop-up.

The £14 million spent on Illori & Alberto was a waste. The former is a surplus (we have FOUR senior CB with Wisdom & Kelly as FURTHER back-up) while the later didn't have ANY competitive experience.

But there are very few players within our reach who would have improved our starting XI. It's not just about money. Players with that quality has and will choose better teams than us.

We have to lay in wait for another Coutinho or Shako to pop-up.

The £14 million spent on Illori & Alberto was a waste. The former is a surplus (we have FOUR senior CB with Wisdom & Kelly as FURTHER back-up) while the later didn't have ANY competitive experience.

But there are very few players within our reach who would have improved our starting XI. It's not just about money. Players with that quality has and will choose better teams than us.

We have to lay in wait for another Coutinho or Shako to pop-up.

The £14 million spent on Illori & Alberto was a waste. The former is a surplus (we have FOUR senior CB with Wisdom & Kelly as FURTHER back-up) while the later didn't have ANY competitive experience.

But there are very few players within our reach who would have improved our starting XI. It's not just about money. Players with that quality has and will choose better teams than us.

We have to lay in wait for another Coutinho or Shako to pop-up.

ifti, did someone hack ur account

Huh! What!! Why!!!

i can see ur same post 4 times

Ney, it's something with your browser or PC/Laptop/Mobile. It's ok with me.

I had checked initially on my cel and now i am checking it on my office PC...it really is 4 times doesnt matter anyways

iftikhar wrote:The £14 million spent on Illori & Alberto was a waste. The former is a surplus (we have FOUR senior CB with Wisdom & Kelly as FURTHER back-up) while the later didn't have ANY competitive experience.

But there are very few players within our reach who would have improved our starting XI. It's not just about money. Players with that quality has and will choose better teams than us.

We have to lay in wait for another Coutinho or Shako to pop-up.

That's not entirely true, there sure are players at non-CL clubs who would improve us. We could have gotten Wanyama for the price of AlbertoIlori or could have gone for Capoue or Paulinho, Strootman, Eriksen... I'm usually very much supportive of buying young talent that could double, triple, quadruple their price over the years, but in our position buying hopeful 7m guys makes little sense. Leave that for the likes of Fulham or Sunderland.

Anyway, we've got a few very fine players in, too, so it's not that bad, but it would appear to me that it shouldn't be too difficult to act even wiser in the market. Next summer is also going to be a big test for Rodgers & co. in the market if Suarez is sold, that should mean at least £50m to reinvest. I don't want to see a handful of hopeful buys any more, we need to strike gold now.