The walters step over

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See, I'd disagree with you on that, I can see what you're saying but I do think if top quality is available to you then you get them in and change the style to suit the players. As for Juve and Aguero, that's kind of my point - it's taking them so long to commit the deal that if it falls through, then what do they do if their second and third choice targets have signed for other clubs? I do think that was part of our strategy this summer - do we go for the likes of an Aguero type big name and maybe miss out on the likes of Downing because other clubs come in first for him or set our sights a litlle lower and have more chance of getting them in.

It is,of course, possible that we could perform really well and play fantastic football, but just fall short because there are teams that little bit better than us - who should we blame then?Things are never as black and white as you're portraying. For instance, I don't think anyone doubts that the players we've signed have all been Kennys choices but if he could've realistically signed Sneijder,Mata and Hazard this summer does anyone honestly think he still would've gone for Downing,Henderson and Adam? It's not Kennys fault that we can't go for the top tier of players this summer, and it's not FSG's either - I can't understand why it's so hard for people to see where we are as a club, we are re building (again), we're not in Europe and therefore aren't a particularly big drawer to a lot of continental players so the players we've signed are probably the best we could have hoped for. Who else could we have realistically got? Imo, expecting top 4 as a minimum and an outside go at the title is just adding silly amounts of unfair pressure and asking who would be to blame if we missed out on CL next year is just bananas.I can see people jumping on Henrys twitter come November giving him dogs abuse because we're ten points off top.. We have a good manager that knows the club inside out, one of the most highly repected coaches in the British game and a board and chairman that have so far done little wrong, and it seems a lifetime ago when each week the club was splashing the back pages with it's in fighting. Can we just give the benefit of the doubt until at least Christmas? .

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I would disagree with that slightly, my idol growing up was Johnny Barnes, but he made it perfectly clear that he didn't really want to join us and he did more than a couple of "I'd love to play in Italy" interviews around '90/'91 - it didn't stop him from being one of our best players of the last 20 or so years. There's no doubt that Clichy turned us down for CIty but if that transfer had broken down at the last minute and he'd signed for us I don't think anyone at the club would've been bothered by his initial "snub" in the slightest, and quite right, we're not in a place where we can turn our nose up because players don't proffess undying love for LFC the moment they are linked to us. Players are mostly professional, they do the best for whoever they're playing for until they leave, then they do the best they can for their new team and no matter what we as fans think, for most players we're just another club.

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Compete for what though? Has a team gone from 6th or lower one season then challenged for the title the next? Man City spent hundreds of millions and still only improved by about 3 places. All we can expect from the club is for them to bring in players who are either better than we have right now or youngsters with potential and as far as I can see, that's what they're at least trying to do.

It may be possible that the agenda is the one we're telling him to run, it actually suits us for people to think that we haven't got a bottomless pit of money for transfers. If Blackpool can use the media to try and force Adams price up, then we can use friendly journalists to keep things more realistic. There's no need to panic in the slightest as far as I'm concerned, we're just playing the game, if the stories were true that Utd wanted Adam then they would have signed him by now in the same way as they moved so quickly for Vidic and Evra. I don't doubt for one second that FSG want to get rid of huge wage earners that aren't contributing anything on the pitch but nothing they or Kenny have said or done so far has said that we only have what we bring in to spend on players so people are getting worked up over nowt imo.

Agreed, I just think we've got to be more realistic and patient. If FSG had taken over when the two ball bags did then yeah, we would've been after the best players in the world and we would've had a serious chance of signing them - after spending two years out of CL we're not as attractive, and no matter how many people protest about how big we are unless we look as though we're about to win the league, or finish top four at least, we will be pretty far down the list for any player that wants a move. There's no point in calling for *big name continental player* because they probably won't want to join us at the moment so going for home grown players makes quite a bit of sense, if Kenny has a straight choice between Mata and Downing and chooses Downing then we can be critical - but does anyone here really think that's the case? Isn't it more likely that we've been in touch with Matas agent, not had a positive response and then gone for someone that's an improvement on what we've got whilst actually being a player that wants to join us? In the case of Wickham I can't see how after spending what we already have that £2m would make the difference, and as someone pointed out, why didn't Wickham wait longer for us? It might be 2+2=5 but it looks very much like we've been given the nod about a different forward and have told Wickham that we don't want him anymore.

Aye, when Kenny took over people we were in a mess, and you'd expect that he'd have wanted to put as many experienced heads as possible in the team - the fact that he hardly ever turned to Cole as a solution says a lot imo. There's still too many people that judge him on what they thought he was going to turn into and not what he actually shows when he plays.

I know that they're different types of midfielder but imo that would only make sense if we made a decent profit. On a similar vein, who do we think is untouchable in the squad in terms of being sold? For instance if we had a decent sized bid for Glen Johnson would anyone be upset if he were sold?

As do the three main men at Blackpool apparently. After Holloway, Oysten and the other felIa have taken their cut and given money to Rangers I wonder how much Blackpool have to sell him for to have any money to actually buy a replacement. I think it's a fecking scandal that the press haven't made any sort of noise over this transfer.

If a deals close to being done for Downing then it's in McLeishs interest to make it look as though he's fighting for the club - he gets one of the biggest transfer pots in the Prem by selling their two best players but he gets to say to their fans "if it was up to me..".

Aye, tbh, I'd do the same as them. Probably having bets between them to see how many replies they get in an hour - They're not going to waste any decent info on twitter without it going in the paper first, and why would they? Without wanting to sound arsey, it wasn't too long ago that fans were complaining that all club business was being conducted in public - it feels very LFC again to not have a clue who we're going to sign or when.

Heard anything about transfer fees?

Completely agree, the whole point of this place is for people to put their opinions across, I've lost count of the times I've read variations of the line "what, don't you trust Kenny?" line used to counter arguments with regards to transfers.

There is a genuine belief with a lot of Newcastle fans that there isn't much to choose between the two clubs..

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I'd say the opposite, if we played those players in that formation against a decent side we'd get murdered in terms of possession. I just don't think Kuyts got the skills to play just off the front man, or as a creative wide(ish) player, if we're going to spend all this money but still end up with Kuyt playing the majority of games as an attacking mid then imo we're going to suffer the same problems with regards to creativity that we've had the last couple of seasons. Has Henderson played on the left of a three before? and we need to get Gerrards starting position as close to the oppositions box as possible. If we do go 4-3-3 I think Kenny would go with : Henderson Lucas Adam (as a tight three with the full backs pushing on) Gerrard Suarez new signing Carroll/Kuyt Imo, we need Suarez and Gerrard as close as possible, playing the give and goes and one touch through balls - Kuyt just can't do that and imo he should be either up front or on the bench. I know everyones saying that to beat the smaller teams we need to out muscle them, and I agree to some extent but I think it's far more important to be able to move the ball quickly with one touch passing to carve teams open.

I'm hoping that he's going to be doing the Molby/Alonso role for us in the coming years, let the younger players do the running and let him spray the ball about.

Yeah, I agree with you here - St. John thought that if Evans had to be sacked then why not Houllier? You can argue the point but in my eyes he was just sticking up for his mate.