David Hodgson

So, in conclusion : Hurray for everything ! I'm also happy and optimistic about being a Liverpool supporter, but occasionally question things about the club. Does that make me bi-sexual ?

I didn't say anyone was 'incompetent, I said it was reasonable to 'pose a question' about a 'possible' lack of guile. Or are we not even allowed to contemplate that possibility ?

This thread is getting crazy. We're begining to argue with oursleves here. Let's accept the following : 1) None of us knows how much the club has to spend but there are clues that it's not insubstantial, given the players we've been linked with and the very small amount we spent in net terms, in the summer. 2) LFC sometimes buy players for small amounts that turn out to be great. 3) LFC sometimes buy players for large amounts that turn out to be great. 4) There is a reason that some players cost much more than other players, and it's down to the basic laws of supply and demand. Those 'in demand' cost more, and they generally cost more because they have proven their quality. Some will say players prices are inflated due to hype but when the worlds best managers are pursuing them I think we can dismiss that argument as spurious. So, therefore, and I'm sure there's a mathematical formual to describe this, there is a direct correlation between the likelihood that a player will be highly effective for a team and the price paid for him. Of course the pedants will point to the lengthy list of high priced failures, and low priced legends, but if you're talking in terms of 'probablity of effectiveness' then my 'theory' holds. 5) Given the above, it is then reasonable for a manager to want more money, rather than 'less money', to strengthen his team. 6) As we guessing that LFC have a decent-ish pot to spend and that a manager would rather have 'more money' to improve his chances of success, it becomes logical to hope, as supporters, that the club is successful in securing a relatively 'big' name signing for the long since identified right wing position. 7) It is then, also reasonable, as the original poster posited, to question the clubs guile in it's application to the process of buying, when it has failed, thus far, to secure a player for that key position, despite over 6 months of trying. This in a climate when the club has never been a more desirable entity for a player to join, and given the likelihood that the club has reasonable funds. Of course if you choose to hold the stance of 'whatever. I trust everyone who works at LFC forever, amen' then fine, but why even waste time getting drawn into this topic? Or football discussion forums full stop ?

Thanks Toni. That is correct, but there are some (ahem) people who seem determined not to understand quite a simple concept.

Is he your brother ? The posting style is uncannily similar.

I think it comes down to this : LFC don't have the money.

I'm not the polarizer here. I'm trying to illustrate a point. There are those that would have said if we'd just signed Bolannos, 'good, that'll do me', as if it was implicit that that was the extent of Rafa's ambitions. We both know Rafa wants a top quality right midfielder that he can put straight into the team. That means he's likely to be after a player that costs closer to £10m or more. If he's unable to secure that player I think it's fair enough for supporters to wonder why, given we've been trying to plug that position for over 6 months now. The reason may be that sellers are taking the piss, or it could be that the club are keeping too tight a rein on purse strings, or other reasons. Anyway, this is all geting highly theoretical as I'm reasonably confident the job will get done in the next fortnight. My guess is that it'll be Walcott, FWIW.

Agger do nicely. One down, on to go. Promote Parry.

My whole point in this thread was to defend the poor lad who started the thread with concern that we may miss out on our two major stated targets, for a second successive transfer window. He has a valid concern. I'm not going to get too fulsome in praising the club for the purchases it secured in the summer because I expect us to be able to buy those level of players for the money we were offering. People seem to be getting into a mindset whereby they look upon the job of buying players as akin to challenging for trophies. It's not a sport. We don't have to clap just because we convince a man to accept money to play for us, or another business to sell us one of it's assets. Rafa chose good players, and the board secured them. Rafa has identified other players, ones he's stated as his priorities, and in a period of over 6 months we've so far failed to secure them. End of.

Depends what you call a 'big' signing. I consider spending £7m plus to be 'big'. It represents the purchase of a player that a fan can seriously expect to see in his side's first team in the very near future. I'm interested in our low cost signings like Hobbs, Anderson etc. , and full of praise for the forward planning in bringing them in, but I can't get excited about players whose odds are against them ever making the grade at LFC. Having said all this, we're getting off the point. I didn't start arguing about whether we should buy x, y or z player. I have just stated that it is clear, and has been for some time, that we need a right winger and centre back, who are ready, if necessary, to hold down an LFC first team place. Common sense suggests that those type of players don't come cheap and I'm sure Rafa knew this when he asked for the board for the money to buy them. The combined cost of buying Simao and Agger would be in the region of £16m, which is hardly hunting in the bargain basement, beloved of so many of you. Regardless of who the targets are, and how much they cost, our only concern should be that Rafa gets himself a sofa and an armchair during this transfer window, and isn't left waiting until the big DFS clearance sale in the summer. It's not a lot to expect. £7m is not cheapish. Arguably we paid over his market rate, but Rafa saw him as so important that it was worth paying extra to secure him now. I'm quite confident that had we hard-balled Southampton we could have had Crouchy for nearer £5m this January. Should we have done this in the interests of prudent buying ? What happens if we, say, lost Gerrard and Kewell for a month, to injury ? We'd still put out a competent midfield, but not the dream foursome (of Kewell, Alonso, Sissoko, and Gerrard) that we have at the moment. I genuinely believe that one more really class midfielder, whose not far off Gerrard, Alonso, and definitely at Kewell level, would give us the platform to keep playing at the top of our game, regardless of changing circumstances. A Damien Duff would do the trick.

So you weren't excited at the prospect of seeing transfer record near breaking buys like King Kenny, Greame Souness, John Barnes, Peter Beardsley, Ian Rush, Xabi Alonso etc. ? FFS, the desire of many people here to want to polarise is unbelievable. I am far too experienced a football man to be a secret 'sign big names' merchant. I full well understand how some of our greatest players were plucked from obscurity for peanuts. Long may it continue. But guess this people : You can enjoy, or even want your club to sign a player of proven pedigree, and also appreciate the need to nurture talent, and spot bargains. They aren't incompatible stances.

I'm sure his tongue was in his cheek but let's not get po-faced here Anny. Are you seriously saying you wouldn't like LFC to make an exciting transfer record breaking signing ? Of course plenty of people just want Champ manager big name signings and don't understand the need to scout unknowns and work within budgets, but the day you stop feeling a chldish glee at your club wanting to bring in a 'superstar' is the time to pack following football. It's not simplistic at all. It's like saying it's simplisitc to blame a manager if his team gets relegated. At the end of the day there are expected results within an organisation, and a hierachy of accountability for getting those results. If you fail the buck stops with you. Did anyone think it was an unrealisitc target for LFC to set iself in the summer to get in a centre back and a right winger ? There may have been lots of mitigating reasons why it didn't happen, but the FACTS remain it didn't. At some point we've got to be able to turn round and say 'I don't care what reasons there may have been, the end product simply isn't acceptable'. FWIW I'm not getting twitchy about the lack of progress on the two key fronts, yet, but if we get to the end of this week with no end in sight then I think it's correct to ask questions.

Dearest Vladimir, I'm not oversimplifying I'm merely theorising, and expressing a valid concern. I don't have zero confidence in the powers that be at LFC. Far from it, but I also do not have the 100% confidence that you seem to have. What happened in the summer, in the final weeks, was poor and not what we'd planned. Surely no-one can sensibly deny that the club 'got it right' at that time. This followed a period, earlier in the summer when apparent procrastination nearly cost us the services of Gerrard too. I'm keeping my powder dry, as concerns criticising anyone, yet. I fully expect us to secure top quality right wingers and centre backs this transfer window, and we can then largley forget the mistakes of the summer. However I'll defend those who are getting a bit twitchy early on in this window because there were transfer failures that are still fresh in the memory. If we get the guys we want you can all post all the ironic 'sack Parry' statements you like, and you won't get much complaint from me. Should we fail I hope some people will consider, maybe for the first time, that our club's administrators maybe less than 100% perfect.

Anny, the club did 'not achieve it's targets last summer' in as much as our stated aim was to prioritise the signings of a right midfielder and centre back. That we failed to secure either is a statement of fact.

Rubbish. The transfer window is constantly open in real terms. The window is just the period in which deals become formally registerable. Liverpool secured Anelka before the January window opened, why is not possible for us to have used the four months since Aug. 31st to secure our stated targets (right mid and centre half).

I have to agree with most of that, in principle, but the problem is. it is also a charter for 'question nothing, accept everything'. Some fans are more knowledgable than others, and some have more experience in 'industry' than others. You can't just write off the opinion of a club's entire 'public' so glibly. I judge by a combination of common sense and results. Many of us were very nervous throughout the summer at a lack of progress on important fronts in the transfer market. We were constantly told to stop being panic merchants. All those concerns were finally vindicated during what was a poor last week of the summer transfer window. Anyone who apologises for those failures is doing themselves and the club a disservice. Mistakes were clearly made and even if Rick Parry won't acknowledge it, Rafa certainly has. Of course, we could be on the verge of two good new signings (Agger and Simao) that will calm nerves and make up for the summer. However, it is not crazy to suggest that some patterns could be repeating themselves. Buying in the January transfer window is surely best conducted at the begining of it rather than the end, because a) you run the risk of being 'timed out' on targets (as in the summer), and b) you lose a whole month of the remaining 5 of the season when you could have been bedding that new buy into your squad. It also has to be pointed out that , in reality, the window never closes, just the period in which negotiations are formalised is. It's not unreasonable to ask why we couldn't sealed our major targets before January 1st even arrrived. We have done so in the past and Man utd seem to have virtually done so this season. If we're after Simao or Agger why not submit our full and final offers for those players back in November ? We may fail to secure the players, but at least we won't be held to ransom during the tight January wndow, and would have time to move on to other targets.

You've got the short memory. Henchoz and Hyypia were oustanding for us for several seasons. For many of these Carra was a target of the boy-boys in our crowd. Carra certainly didn't deserve that treatment but he was the one doing the learning from the likes of Henchoz. Last night was comfortably Carra's worst of the season.

Yes indeedy. GH was always talking about how vital substitues were to his game plan. You had the impression with Houllier that he more or less made the substitutions he was going to make before kick-off.

Stevie, that wasn't my point. HR mentioned Cisse and Diouf as examples of 'paying over the odds', but that's only with hindsight. Nobody at the time suggested we were paying too much for those players. I only mentioned Xabi and Crouch because we spent large-ish sums on them. Many people felt that 7m was too much for Crouch. Not that he was a bad player, but that 7m was too much. Hindsight says he's worth every penny, but maybe if we'd played a waiting game with Southampton we'd have got him for 5.5m in this transfer window. Would that have been the clever thing to do ?

That may all be true HR, but you don't know what Rafa's view is. He's intimated enough times that he was disappointed not to get the players he wanted and was very keen on doing so in this window. I get the impression that, whilst he'll be very happy at the progress the team's making, that he urgently wants to fill certain places in the squad. It's OK to be laid back about squad strengthening on the back of 10 straight wins, but I'm sure Rafa's thinking of a time when we might not have such a fortuitous period with injuries. I also notice that you don't mention the 7m spent on Crouch or the 10.5m spent on Alonso (when refereinng to Diouf and Cisse). Who's to say we weren't 'paying over the odds', at the time, for those two, as well ? I don't think anyone can say Simao's worth 8-9m but definitely not worth 10-11m. It's impossible to judge. The reasons to hold out for the lower price must be based on your belief that the selling club are desperate enough to sell at that price. That is the only sound reason not to be prepared to raise your bid (by 1 or 2m), unless you have a very comparable, and cheaper alternative lined up. What would not be acceptable is to let another window pass with no right winger just for the sake of haggling over 1 or 2m. FWIW I'm sure we'll get Simao this time and that we'll pat just shy of £10m.

Yep, and so did Crouchinho. I don't think fatigue could be to blame. We'd had days to rest and didn't look tired when we needed to chase the game. I think the problem was that we simply weren't ready for another team starting, and sustaining such a tempo. I also think we hugely understimated the opposition. It's tempting to think of anything below the premiership as pure cannon fodder, that you can send the kids out to face. Then, mentally, when you do put the big guns out you expect a walk-over. The truth is that 6 months ago there wasn't that much to chose between a Luton or a Wigan or West Ham. It was always going to be a tough away game, and we didn't treat the fixture with enough respect. Hopefully a lesson learnt.

Well, I had this sense we'd score many, many goals......and so it came to pass....

That's obvious, though isn't it. There remains, though, the basic challenge of 'getting the job done, and the 'job' in this case is getting the quality players in that a manager wants. Comparisons with Leeds are spurious. We are talking about a club there bidding out of all proportion to their turnover and future earning potential. For LFC to scrape together another few million to turn possible transfers into definite ones would not cripple the club's future, and if that small of porportion of money would endanger us, then you'd have to ask serious questions of those running the finances. It is a non-argument to say we've done alright despite the failures to strengthen in the summer. If we say we believe in the manager then we must also believe that his judgement call that we needed another striker, winger and defender, for the purposes of improving our prospects. It is nonsense to suggest that had we brought in Figo and Owen in the summer we could have done worse in the league and CL. Of course it's possible that we would be, but only in the most theoretical, fatalistic sense. Failure in this transfer window would be to again not secure a right winger. Nobody could call it 'failure' if we got one but paid a million or two over the going rate.

I'm sorry my friend, but I don't deal in predictions of chance, just clear logical analysis of factual likelihoods/certainties.

Some of my 'fans' may remember that I more or less accurately predicted our recent 10 match winning sequence. This privileged group will be delighted to hear that my, frankly, amazing powers of foresight now tell me that the coming months will yield further joys. The new red bandwagon rolls into town tonight at Luton to start another long triumphant sequence. Dare to dream.....