KopTalk.com Forums Football Liverpool FC Forum We have improved the most since last year .

Wow...

They never stop, IK. The same usual suspects. Grumpy old men moaning and bitching. They're not happy unless they're at that. Miserable sods.

Lol... +1

Ok guys i made this thread to actually show that we have improved this year , we have been unlucky , we havnt finished well , bu then we will get another striker in, in the next window. Our team has many newly signed players who have not settled in yet , the team chemistry is not like before , it will take time i dont wana panic i think apart from carroll our other signings have been good , downing has class hel come good , adam is a good player , even carroll will be ok wen he starts scoring but he will never be worth 35 mil . I think we all should just chill out a bit coz i know if any 1 can turn it around , kenny can. and f#ck city guys any 1 can be there by spending 400mil on transfers in 2 years , we will be there in 2 years and our youth players will play a very important role in taking us there , YNWA

The problem with faz, Stanley and co regarding how much we spent is they assume we had no money to spend in the beginning, and everything we recouped through player sales and a reduction in the wage bill is lost to the owners ala Hicks and Gillet. Unfortunately their line of thinking is flawed because H&G no longer own the club.

If we take those quoted figures as roughly accurate, our investment in the squad is 35.75m. That is what "net spend" represents - our squad is now 35.75m pounds better (not 119m pounds better, as these people try to argue). Adding in the BBC estimate made back in the day that our wage bill reduction amounted to approximately 30m over the duration of the various contracts (Torres, Miereles, Aquilani, Cole the biggest offenders), one can see that in making these "astronomical" buys FSG have lost no more than 10m pounds.

Now we can argue about whether the players were worth it at those prices, and we'll always come back to the fact that English players are sold at 50% more than their value due to the 8 player home grown rule. This will not change in the foreseeable future, so please stop harping on about it! Perhaps we didn't need to buy so many English players, but Carra is already past his sell-by date and several of our players coming through that would otherwise satisfy the HG requirement are not up to scratch.

So yes, it's true we spent 119m pounds. But that was NOT 119m pounds worth of investment. Try to remember that this was part of a process - we removed SEVENTEEN players from our books in the summer (not just from the first team obviously), and bought only 7. For us to have made dramatic strides up the table after such a clear out would have been a legendary effort, because it was blatantly obvious that our squad was seriously short of quality before we started, and we only improved the value of the squad by about 36m pounds (unlike say Manchester City or Chelsea who sold no one while spending money like water).

It really would be nice if certain people would stop looking at only one side of the equation.

The sad part is that we should be so much better off points wise than we are, we have been dominating games and not killing off teams. Even if we were scoring 1 in 10 chances we would be well up that table, it's like Heskey has given the whole team a pair of his shooting boots.

I am adamant I could have more than 5 goals so far this season with the chances we have wasted.

Supplemental: Carroll cost 35m, and our net spend is 35.75m. If we add Carroll's struggles with our system and assume he brings nothing to the squad, then we are essentially exactly as good a squad as we were last season (though we've lost 35m pounds). So 6th on the table is exactly where we should be. Not first, not 4th. 6th. I can assure you that 35m is not the difference in quality between LFC and Chelsea (who are currently 4th), not just in terms of players but in terms of gel etc because we've had a much higher player turnover than they have in recent times (and they've strengthened their squad without selling anyone, unlike us).

If Dalglish requests 50m on top of whatever he can recoup from sales in Jan I would not be in the least surprised, even were I John Henry. It didn't take Man City one season to become a force in the EPL - it took 2 years of continuous buying. As the owner of FSG I would expect nothing short of the same if I wanted to win the EPL title.

Given that player sales have roughly balanced purchases thus far, and we are no worse than we were (and could be so much better if our players could learn to hit the target rather than the keeper or the frame), I could think of no reason as owner to not give the manager what he wants. Dalglish has made exactly one potentially poor buy (and I say "potentially" because Carroll is still only 22 - don't forget the lesson of Lucas), which isn't bad as he bought 7 in total (typically only half a manager's signings work out). As the owner I'd like to see us higher up the table, but I need to remind myself how poor our baseline was, and consider that we still need to improve our depth as well as our first team. Maybe we need 1 ready-made attacking player (eg a right winger) to help out with the goals for column, 1 ready-made defensive player to replace Carragher, and 2-3 squaddies to help out at places like DM and LB where our specialists are few. The ready-made players will cost 18-25m each, and the squaddies perhaps 10-15m in total. 46-65m pounds, in other words. Even if we don't buy a striker (like everyone here wants) we still need another 30-40m pounds!

As owner I couldn't take the risk that Carroll may come good this season, so I'd have to bite the bullet if I'm determined to make a success of this venture this season. I would retain the hope that Carroll comes good as well because then we are much stronger for next season when I would hope we can at least mount a challenge for the title that lasts into the new year.

Rebuff: I know people will seize on the fact that I say we need 30-40m pounds, and Carroll was wasted at 35m, means we should not have bought him and instead focussed on those other weakenesses. But such arguments are made with a) hindsight, and b) no consideration for the timeline. Torres was sold on the last day of the transfer window, and for various reasons I've already outlined in other posts we needed to reinvest the money in a striker. I would have been impossible to sign Enrique, Downing and co or a quality right wing at that time.

Finally some sense. I was starting to lose faith in people after reading some of the nonsense in this thread.

So around £35m (or 1 Andy Carrol) added to the squad. I guess the question now is will FSG invest heavily in the next 6-8 months for the players people are asking for, or will we need to sell/reduce the wage bill? Interesting times ahead. I'd be happy with another 35m + players sales (Kuyt, carrol, aqua +)

I don't know why people always post that Henderson was 20 mil, it was well stated that he cost 14mil plus bonuses going up to 16 if he meets certain criteria. I love how people always inflate the figures when it suits one's argument.

they wont listen, they believe what they want to.