Summer of 2014: Part 2

Twoism wrote:Time will tell if Lovren is 1 season wonder or not, he had 3 not so good year in France, Lyon fans were glad he's sold. That's quite high price for player with 1 good year.

Exactly. Flopped at Lyon (in Europe atleast) where he definitely looked like he had potential after a few stand out games in L1, but he's not THAT good ffs. Like you said, Lyon fans weren't upset seeing him go and rightfully so.

20M for a defender buys you world class. Instead, we buy mid-table. All because he had one good season in the PL being "proven" and all. Again.

We really don't learn.

We get rid of Torres at a time where he became a mid-table striker with another mid-table striker in Carroll.
We get rid of Kuyt/Maxi because they were getting old and not good enough and replaced him with 20M Stewie Downing who was on the same level/inferior. You could argue inferior ffs.
Get rid of Suarez for what looks like Lallana as his replacement.
Will get rid of either Skrtel/Agger for not being good enough, and replacing him with 20M defender Lovren who JUST reaches their level where both players are, let's be on honest, on their decline and not good enough.

guys, 15m € for Agger, I would happily take it, I think he also may want to leave...if he is not going to play for us regularly, we should better sell him, for his wages are high. We already have Reina hanging by our neck

Red Alert wrote:Exactly. Flopped at Lyon (in Europe atleast) where he definitely looked like he had potential after a few stand out games in L1, but he's not THAT good ffs. Like you said, Lyon fans weren't upset seeing him go and rightfully so.

He hardly flopped, and he just turned 25...it's not like he spent the prime of his career in Lyon. Also sometimes players are better suited to different teams and leagues. Lovren had a good first season at Lyon, and was inconsistent beyond that. He reeled it in at Southampton and played up to what he had shown capable of in stints of L1 play. Plenty of Inter fans were not sad to see Coutinho go either, and Chelsea fans were not sad to see Sturridge go...the list goes on. Not every great player starts out great at every level and age.

Will get rid of either Skrtel/Agger for not being good enough, and replacing him with 20M defender Lovren who JUST reaches their level where both players are, let's be on honest, on their decline and not good enough.

The thing is that Lovren is better than either of them now, and better than either of them were at 25 years of age. He's not 'just reaching their level', he is coming off a season where he was better than either of them (at times by a wide margin) and is still trending upwards to his prime while both Skrtel and Agger are both trending down in age and ability.

As for the other things it just seems like revisionist history. You are leaving out too many factors.

I'll be devastated if Agger leaves. This is a shit world we're living in.

Don't call me James wrote:I'll be devastated if Agger leaves. This is a shit world we're living in.

I would love to keep Agger. I think though that he's unhappy with not being a first team regular anymore, and if he can't make the grade he could request to leave. If that's the case it's time to let him go.

I know he's not as good as he used to be but he's still better than Skrtel and Kolo. And imo on par with Sakho and Lovren. It hurts that we're keeping Skrtel over him even though he's an absolute donkey that's going to cost us again this season.

btw Origi is official

I think at this stage, Skrtel will be more useful than Agger and Agger being so injury prone is one of the reason actually. So selling Agger makes sense and also Skrtel has been a better defender between two in recent times.

Skrtel being the better defender is a myth. It's not a coincidence that out of 11(?) clean sheets we had last season Agger played in 9-10(?) of them. Doing last ditch tackling because you are terrible at reading the game defensively or completely positioned wrong and keep getting caught out is not good defending contrary to how good his tackles may look.

I can understand your point with him being injury prone. In an ideal world we'd all like players better than both tbf.

the fact about skrtel is, he always performs better when a defender like Agger is his partner, you can really see the stark difference, the reason is as you said 'he is pathetic at reading the games'. His most defensive errors in the last season were when he was paired with Sakho or Toure. It doesnt mean they carry the blame.

You just cant ignore the fact that Skrtel had good passing success and also he tried to initiate few attacks last season and he does carry the ball forward at times when Gerrard goes deep to get the ball.

I think Agger is a step below Sakho and Lovren now, but I don't think Skrtel is any better. I think Skrtel brings a bit more on set pieces, but he plays them dangerously and is more than likely to cost us big goals this year than Agger is IMO.

With that said it seems like Skrtel is in Rodgers' good books and Agger isn't. He gets to play his team his way.

Love the Origi signing. Will be watching more Lille games this year. Also just got my Coutinho kit in the mail today awwwww yeaaaa so fresh.

yeah I should be getting my Coutinho and Lazar's kits in soon Couldn't wait till the end of the window. We're sure as hell not signing Reus so went for it.

Was considering Lazar but I'm going to wait and see if he eventually decides to switch to 7 or 11 (depending on what Sterling gets). I may just end up doing Sterling at some point instead, but I've always been a 10 guy.

In other news supposedly we're really in for Jay Rodriguez...not sure how I feel about it. Just not sure I see him improving the squad even in terms of real depth.

Transfer table:

Ins:

Rickie Lambert - Southampton 4m
Emre Can - Bayer Leverkusen 9.75m
Adam Lallana - Southampton 23m
Lazar Markovic - SL Benfica 19.8m
Dejan Lovren - Southampton 16m
Divock Origi - Lille FC 10m

Kevin Stewart - Tottenham Hotspur - Free


Outs:

Luis Suarez <3 - Barcelona 75m

Armin Hodzic - Dynamo Zagreb (Undisclosed)

Yalany Baio - Released
Villyan Bijev - Released
Yusuf Mersin - Released
Michael Ngoo - Released
Craig Roddan - Released
Stephen Sama - Released
Jakub Sokolik - Released

Luis Alberto - Loan - Malaga CF
Iago Aspas - Loan - Seville FC
Andre Wisdom - Loan- West Bromwich
Divock Origi - Loan- Lille FC


All prices are in English pounds and do not include add ons.

Total in: 82m
Total out: 75m
Current Net: -7m

Add ons:

Lallana 2m
Lovren 4m

#Aspas says he'd tell #Moreno that he'd never feel as good as he does in Seville (compared to Liverpool), & he's only been there 3 days #LFC


AsPOS

Agger linked with a 12m pound move to Barca. Looks like ill be watching the Spanish league a lot as things stand.

lol Aspas was a laughing stock at Liverpool and Moreno knows that. He'll be in a completely different situation and he knows that as well. Glad he's gone that pos. One of the worst and pointless signings in our history.

Not Aspas' fault we signed him. I thought he was potentially a discovery for that price. Didn't turn out that way. I kinda hope I'll hear of him never again.

So how much signings do you guys think were still going to make? Personally i think a max of 2.

We have so much money to spend, based on nish's figures were at a positive 7 mil in the market, if we sell Agger for for 15mil, we'll be at positive 22mil, meaning we could potentially still have like 70 mil to spend.

Aspas is very relatable to Chamakh.

Both of those players were key forwards for their teams before joining Arsenal and Liverpool respectively. However both players weren't used to play in a secondary role. Problem with Aspas was that he couldn't play upfront in a free role like he did at Celta because of Sturridge and Suarez. And Aspas at RW wasn't working either because eventhough he had played wide at Celta, it was much different sort of wide role than he was going to play at Liverpool. And there were superior players who fit the system than him.

I was a fan of Aspas at Celta and said to few of you that he will do well, but it was without considering his adaptability which was poor. Some players are just better off playing in their home countries.

Another attacker (forward, if Borini goes) and a leftback should just about wrap up additions in this window. Still a lot of players I expect to leave (on loan or permanently) though...
Coates
Reina
Agger/Skrtel
Kelly
Robinson
Teixeira/Suso
Ibe

El Cujo wrote:

Red Alert wrote:Exactly. Flopped at Lyon (in Europe atleast) where he definitely looked like he had potential after a few stand out games in L1, but he's not THAT good ffs. Like you said, Lyon fans weren't upset seeing him go and rightfully so.

He hardly flopped, and he just turned 25...it's not like he spent the prime of his career in Lyon. Also sometimes players are better suited to different teams and leagues. Lovren had a good first season at Lyon, and was inconsistent beyond that. He reeled it in at Southampton and played up to what he had shown capable of in stints of L1 play. Plenty of Inter fans were not sad to see Coutinho go either, and Chelsea fans were not sad to see Sturridge go...the list goes on. Not every great player starts out great at every level and age.

Will get rid of either Skrtel/Agger for not being good enough, and replacing him with 20M defender Lovren who JUST reaches their level where both players are, let's be on honest, on their decline and not good enough.

The thing is that Lovren is better than either of them now, and better than either of them were at 25 years of age. He's not 'just reaching their level', he is coming off a season where he was better than either of them (at times by a wide margin) and is still trending upwards to his prime while both Skrtel and Agger are both trending down in age and ability.

As for the other things it just seems like revisionist history. You are leaving out too many factors.

He was average in L1 after a decent first year, yes.

He had a solid season last year for MID-TABLE Soton, yes. But that's his level ffs.

I seem to remember a lot of Inter fans AGAINST the Coutinho deal as they knew he was one for the future and knew the Inter management were stupid they'd buy another pensioner, and Chelsea fans came with mixed results. Not many were happy to see Daniel leave, especially to Liverpool.  

Are you kidding me? He's better than Agger AND Skrtel when THEY were both 25? REALLY? I'm sure Lallana was better than Gerrard when Stevie was 26 too.

Skrtel AND Agger are trending down age and ability and they're both still above him ffs. And at the end of the day, they're both not good enough to be starting for us anyway. Basing a player's overall form over just ONE year is ridiculous.

And it's not revinionist history. We've been deluded in the market ever since I've supported the club. We "waste" a lot of money on average players, like A LOT. We then try year after a year to hype ourselves up for the new signing, only for them to be average as hell a year later and bitch and moan how poor they are at the end of the season. It's the exact reason why we've only really pushed in a title challenge twice in 20 years. Top teams buy quality, Liverpool try and make quality where there's a dead end.

it is not that simple to say Lovren is better than Skrtel as of now. You can look at the stats or whatever. Skrtel has done so many mistakes in the past season, it is not even countable. It may be just your opinion but I dont agree with it at all.

I don't know what's funnier. That you think it's easier to play as a defender and have a good season for a mid-table club, or that you are comparing Agger and Skrtel to Gerrard.

Funny how it's "simple" to say Lovren is better than Skrtel though.

Stats get manipulated to no end.

Skrtel made mistakes, yes. But that was more because we don't know how to set up defensively (since Clarke has left anyway) and were just focusing on outscoring the opponent last season... our CBs were pretty much left to dead with the mistakes / poor positioning / poor cover from the players around them. Your defence isn't just around 2 CBs ffs. Like I said, Skrtel needed to be improved upon, spending 20m on a player that's not going to improve the starting XI because he's not "better" in any way, shape or form over Martin comes down to stupidity and makes it look like Skrtel is the bad guy when in fact he's become the scapegoat

El Cujo wrote:I don't know what's funnier. That you think it's easier to play as a defender and have a good season for a mid-table club, or that you are comparing Agger and Skrtel to Gerrard.

Just out of curiosity, how much did you rate Skrtel and Agger under Dalglish? We were a mid-table club then. They were obviously good enough back then. What happened? It's a lot easier to shine when you play for a mid-table squad ffs.

Also, you claimed Lovren was better than Agger and Skrtel at the age of 25. In what universe was Dejan Lovren better than Martin Skrtel and Daniel Agger when they were at the age of 25? Laughable, really.

You are probably the only person that thinks Lovren is not an upgrade to our defence, especially over last season.

Lovren at 25 was just one of the very best defenders in the EPL last season.

What's laughable is your crusade against this signing and then spouting on like you didn't watch Liverpool at all this season, let alone Southampton. 'Stats get manipulated to no end' -- you can't manipulate the number of mistakes a player makes, the number of interceptions they had, the number of aerial duels won, etc. Nobody is manipulating any stats they're just posting them to be seen.

There are a few players I would have preferred over Lovren who were probably realistically within reach, but he is not a bad signing.