Greetings and salutations, I am new here, but my grandmother always said, "it's okay to jump in with both feet just make sure you protect your nuts." So here goes...
With all of the activity going on in this transfer season it's easy to get dazed and/or confused. It seems we're making offers and moves every 15 minutes. I think we even made a 2 million pound offer on my grandmother to play left wing, and her last passing attempt was when she died 16 years ago. [Before you get upset that is just the type of joke Ma-Ma would have appreciated.]
Being new to the scene I am finding it very difficult to follow all of these moves and impossible to make any sort of intelligent argument for or against them. However, there is one rumor I do have an opinion on that I keep hearing repeatedly from a myriad of sources: that Raul Merieles is to be sold to some Old Lady from Italy.
Now I have nothing against old ladies (despite my tastless reference to my dead grandmother) or Italy (despite the fact that tomato sauce makes me flatulent), but selling Raul would be a huge mistake, in my opinion. I'll explain.
There are many reasons why I feel this way. Not the least of which is it would further drain the talent available to us off of the bench. I could say that a player capable of playing central midfield, wing, and striker with some quality would be enough of a reason. However, I have three specific examples of his play at these three positions that leads me to believe he has tremendous value to us.
As a striker versus Chelsea, alongside Kuyt, he scored the loan goal in 1-0 win. A goal that required no little talent. As a midfielder he stroked a top 10 goal of the season which I took as a flash of his true potential. Finally, the cross he fed to Carroll on his second LFC goal was brilliant, and it wasn't a fluke considering when Gerrard was injured it was Meireles who took the corners. I might be reaching on this last point. My knowledge of football mechanics and tactics is improving but limited.
Now I might be naieve, or even wrong, but it seems to me that for a club in our position a player like Meireles is invaluable. It doesn't matter how many midfielders and wings we sign over the next few weeks Raul Meireles is a quality player that has proven his effectiveness under Dalglish, and it's a quality that we can ill afford to waste. Further, I don't believe 13 mil will make real difference in the face of not having CL football next season.
I am not certain of many things in this offseason, but I am convinced that selling Raul Meireles would be a monumental mistake. Can you tell he's my favorite player? NOTE: I did a search and found many threads referencing Raul Meireles, but I didn't find any that were dedicated to this train of thought.
Finally, for the love of god, can anyone explain to me why there is a Larry Hagman avatar available on this website!?
feck me he's okay, really what's the big deal with him?