The Liverpool FC Thread XII

Chelsea under Mourinho don't really do never top level talent and if we do they're usually out of the door in a couple seasons.

30m euros is 24-25m pounds? Which means it's hardly much more than Balo, and we basically had 50m to spend on a striker last summer.

Wrt the options in general, I just threw out a few names. I'm not a European football expert and I don't know the names of every decent striker around. I could throw out a few more, like Jackson Martinez, Firmino, Adrian Ramos, Immobile, whoever.

The point is that you said initially that 'there was a lack of options'.

Which is a club-peddled line, and absolute bull****.

Balotelli didn't a) fit our style, b) come with the required goals record, or c) come at a vast cut price, d) come with guaranteed scope for growth, e) have the required mentality.

Now C, D and E are minor points, but the main things are that he didn't fit our style AT ALL, and he didn't come with a reasonable goalscoring record AT ALL.

It is an awful, awful signing. I slagged him off all summer before he came to us, once he was our player I guess we all dreamed that Brendan could get some of his potential out, but we all underestimated how ingrained in his ways Balotelli is and how he just does not fit our footballing philosophy or ethic in any way at all.

AND THAT WOULD ALL BE FINE IF HE COULD SCORE GOALS OCCASIONALLY, but he can't. His finishing is absolutely atrocious statistically, it has been for most of his career, and it's been even worse than trend for us.

Genuinely the worst signing we've made under Brendan and your suggestion that he was there because of a lack of options is just wrong. I don't know the truth, idk if Brendan's superiors or Brendan's ego signed him, the truth is that he's just wrong in every way.

This has turned into a rant about what a **** signing he was but the point stands that there were better options if Brendan wanted an experienced striker and there were far more options if he would have been happy with youth as well.

No-one knows how we stand wrt FFP because the accounts for this season aren't within our reach. Considering the market isn't really an issue for me, spending an extra 5m now instead of the summer is worth the 6 months acclimatisation and the boost in the race for top four. Easily worth it.

The club worked hard on Sturridge when he got his initial injury for 6 weeks. And no doubt when he got the next one for a further two months. And no doubt after that as well. He can't be relied upon.

I'm not suggesting Raheem isn't a serviceable striker, because he is. Anyone who knows me on these forums knows that I'm Raheem's biggest fan and wish I was one of his 14 baby mommas. He's a good enough 3/4th choice striker, but he doesn't have the composure in his finishing to lead us to top four. Statistically he was immense at finishing last year and he's doing pretty good this year too, but I think we all know that he doesn't have the technique/power, and the goalscorer's instinct, that someone like Daniel does. That's all I was saying. He'll score, but not enough for the super run of form that we need to get top four.

[video="youtube;NoS2TrZppmI"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoS2TrZppmI[/video]

The club must have watched this video and not the recent years of Balotelli before signing..

Balotelli cost £16mil so we would've needed another 50% to be able to buy Bacca, which is a lot of money. I presume Rodgers/the transfer committee decided to spend more money on squad depth rather than just one striker? We obviously had the funds initially since we offered £35mil for Sanchez. Not sure what happened after that.

Completely agree that it was a misguided transfer and I'm not sure who made the final call or why it seems sensible at the time.

Even then, I can still see why it happened considering the circumstances.

I'm sure the club have a handle on it and I imagine FSG let Rodgers spend as much as was available. We weren't exactly shy with how much money we spent.

Well it seemed to be the England duty which really screwed Sturridge up. Really do hate that Owl.

Haha pretty sure Sterling came out on record and said he's only got one kid.

If we don't buy a top striker in the summer, I'm going to be furious though.

This is utter rubbish btw, no matter what Rodgers says.

There's 20+ 'great' strikers across Europe who were available last summer, probably 50+ who had better open play scoring records than Mario.

Either he was forced upon Brendan or Brendan ego-tripped and thought he was the one who could unlock Mario's potential.

Now I'm not saying we had a chance with the likes of Mandzukic or Griezzman (who I wanted all summer) but to suggest Balotelli was our only option when there was the likes of Bacca, Volland, Lacazette, Berardi, Balde Diao, whichever names you want to bring up. The truth is that you can actually play football manager in this instance and just say random names because the idea that not a single better player than Balotelli, who's scored something like 6 open play goals in two seasons, was available, is silly.

The least we could have done was overspent on Origi returning early

England got him the original injury, the rest has been with us. He's not dependable enough right now and it's a poor gamble to rely on him and Raheem for the rest of the year.

The least we could have done was overspent on Origi returning early

Not sure Origi would've added more than Sterling/Lambert/Balotelli/Borini - he's not having a stellar season at Lille. Be interesting to see how Ibe gets long since we recalled him from a loan he was doing well on.

Do you think we'll go back to the 4-1-2-1-2 with Balotelli and Sturridge?

I know we've been playing well with the 4-3-3 but if we can get Balotelli and Sturridge to link up like they did against Tottenham together then we might be in business. I'm sure Rodgers would like to incorporate Balo in to the team if only to get our £16m's worth. We played really well against Spurs with the 4-1-2-1-2 Diamond earlier this season. Only problem is, Markovic and Moreno only seem to have settled in to the wingback style.

Balotelli will be out in the summer. There's no way he'll stay.

Didn't his agent say he'd only leave for £80mil
It's tough because he's running out of clubs to go to. Is there anyone else in Italy or England who will take him? We might struggle to sell him unless he scores a couple of wonder goals.

Turkey/Russia makes sense - he'll get paid big, and clubs will indulge him. He'll have to put up with the racism from the crowd, though.