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Who are all your clubs tracking and whats needed at your club?

Last night we snapped up German Full back Andreas Hinkel which imo is a great signing just another full back a creative midfielder and a striker and we're sorted!!

And another keeper,2 decent central defenders,a creative midfield player and then you might be sorted !

Lyon have enough creative midfielders.

Well i think there is no doubt chelsea will be buying a defender or two, due to injurys!!

can someone please take Bryan Robson away!!!!

Alan Hutton to Spurs for 8 million is the latest rumour up here.

nope..you're getting Nicholas Anelka :)

A centre half and some strikers who can finish.

No point buying strikers if the manager leaves them sitting on the bench til the last ten minutes.

Torres hasnt been left on the bench much and he can finish.

Yeah but only one genuine striker last night at home v Wigan then another two chucked on at 1-1 with ten to go?

BBC claim Hutton has knocked back the move after Rangers were ready to deal.

Not sure what to think of this one. Presumably he is hoping for a bigger club to come in.

I'd imagine Rangers would have been delighted with the fee, but not so keen on losing one of their better players.

we dont need no transfers aberdeen are good enough

LOL

If Arsenal had played 5 in their attack minded midfield and drew would you have doubted Wenger? When Fergie rotated Ronaldo out and lost to Bolton was he hammered for rotation? How comes when Man U beat a team in the 90th minute after playing terribly it's championship winning form but when Liverpool score twice in the last ten minutes to beat Fulham we're lucky to get a result?

To answer your question...

Kuyt and Voronin have been pants and Crouch hasnt been playing and when he has hes not been his usual annoying self.

Add to that 5 other teams have come to Anfield this season and gotten something - usually by parking the bus, even when we've played THREE strikers.

Then, as most reds will realise, our wingers have been our best threat this season whilst at home (Gerrard aside).

So Rafa plays high wingers (much higher than a 4-4-2) hoping to pull defenders out of position and it works as we do open them up earlier than normal. (That we went on to concede has nothing to do with one up front)

Could be why he's a very successful manager and all the pundits out there are simply pundits.

Essentially your strikers are simply not good enough..(Other than Torres) another top quality striker wuld be what Liverpool needs first...probably even 2 more.

Why are the spuds going after Hutton, when the last i heard was that Chimbonda's the best thing since sliced bread ?

Because he's a rangers player and, like Fergus will tell ya, they are  A LOT better than anyone else...ever!

Wenger and Ferguson don't get criticised by their own fans as they are living legends at Arsenal and Man U. The media back off as well, firstly because they have both won multiple titles in their reigns and alot of criticism will seem ridiculous.

Im good mates with Liverpool season ticket holder and he comes out with this "zomg teams come and park the bus in front of the goal" speel, well you think teams don't do this at Highbury, Stamford Bridge and Old Trafford? Course they do the other teams are just better at breaking them down.

Benetiz is a good manager imo, but will never get universal approval until he wins the title, which lets face it is the big one not the champs league.

When Arsenal played with five in midfield at Anfield earlier this season the bus was parked in front of liverpoo's goal  ::)

what was the result in that game again?

Dundee have signed Craig McKeown from Clyde on a pre-contract, and are interested in Dougie Imrie I believe.  Riveting.

Leicester City will continue to set fire to Milan Manaric's money, usually on the basis of video viewings only

If you are a 35 year old striker, apply to Filbert Way, Leicester

nah, I'm holding out for the managers job :)

Have Leicester got the biggest squad in history?

how many are over 30?

we currently have

5 goalkeepers

7 right backs

5 centre backs

3 left backs

only 3 midfielders

5 wide players

about 12 "strikers"

of these maybe 15 are 30 or over, we still have some from Levein's time we can't get rid of and stay taking their wages such as Rab Douglas

of these, we have a "usable" squad of 20 or so..of those maybe 10 are good enough

Holloway has a huge job on

How about contracts?

many on long term deals?

how about loaning some out to the lower leagues to help the wage bill or get them in the shop window

many of the contracts expire this summer (3 year contracts 2.5 years ago)

some were loaned out, a few sent back

9 were sent away before xmas to get trials/deals elsewhere. If not, Holloway has said he will train them

I'm not bothered about approval becuase it's generally influenced by "expert" pundits such a Paul Merson and Andy Gray and The Sun newspaper.

Perspective would be nice though....

So everyone bar the living legends are open to critisism no matter how well they've done? Benitez is quite clearly a decent young manager (relatively) who's done little wrong and a lot right at Liverpool. Yet no one in the press or outside of Liverpool wants to see it. Liverpool are MILES ahead of where they were when he took over. We're now one of the top 6 teams in Europe maybe? We werent even making the Champions League when he arrived.

Wenger and Ferguson only had one major team above them to overhaul when they both arrived. Although Wenger didnt have huge resources admittedly, Ferguson did. Benitez has 3 teams above him all with huge resources if they need it whlst being denied clearance to sign a FREE Kahkaber Kaladze! And he's FREE! Not quite the same playing field really. We're probably going to lose out on Mascherano too.

An interesting stat... prior to last summer's spending Benitez had spent within £4 million of Wenger yet won more trophies since being here. Obviously that's not true now with the players we've recently bought but people still thought Benitez should be sacked going into this season! No perspective whatsoever.

This is complete guesswork but I'd love to see the points per £ ratio between the top 4 since Benitez was here. I think he'd be second behind only Wenger.

"Im good mates with Liverpool season ticket holder and he comes out with this "zomg teams come and park the bus in front of the goal" speel, well you think teams don't do this at Highbury, Stamford Bridge and Old Trafford? Course they do the other teams are just better at breaking them down."

Precisely my point on my first post in this thread - we need better strikers.

As for universal approval, I'm not sure any manager will get that whilst managing Liverpool purely because large sections of the press hate us and are so obviously happy to write untruths and people believe what they read.

An example... 6 months ago it was Sven. He's going to get City relegated etc becuase he had bought players no one had heard of blah blah blah. I'm sure it was mentioned on here too. Obviously that one was spot on....

I hate most of our media. Rant over.

Seems I touched a nerve when I wasn't even attempting a subtle dig!

We can talk all day and night about the merits of respective tactics but if it seems that 'parking the bus' at Anfield is good enough to give a visiting team roughly 50% chance of a draw or better it's hardly a sign the manager is totally on the case.

I think the above quote is somewhat optimistic. According to the current league table Liverpool are the 5th best team in England (albeit with a game in hand on City) so they can hardly claim to be one of the top six in Europe on current form.

Returning to the original topic, Celtic have confirmed Hinkel has signed - fee somewhere around £2m apparently.

Can't say I know too much about him, but he is a full back and has 17 caps for Germany so presumably isn't a total donkey. The things that caught my eye when reports of an interest initially surfaced were he is over six feet tall, and allegedly very quick. Both desirable attributes as our current first eleven lacks physical presence and pace.

Thank god  Rafa has confirmed we are not going after Wayne Bridge for Chelsea for £7m

seems hinkels nickname back in germany, loosely translates as "the lesbian".

sounds excellent.

I would argue that the top 4 in England are within the top 7 or 8 in Europe and I doubt the Uefa rankings would say much different. So Liverpool being in the top 6 isn't that unreasonable.

About a manager not really having a clue when he gets loads of bad results at home because of teams parking the bus... do you think Wenger didnt have a clue in his first season at the Emirates where every team did the same and quite a few went away with a point?

Now we are into lies damned lies and statistics! This link would tend to prove you right

http://www.xs4all.nl/~kassiesa/bert/uefa/data/method3/trank2008.html

assuming you are happy to agree that Chelsea are the 2nd best team in Europe on form over the last five years. Hmmm wasn't this discussed on another thread recently  ;carlocitrone;

On the football transfers front, latest rumour up here is that Artur Boruc has signed a new long-term deal at Celtic. If true, possibly the best bit of business we could hope to have done  ;D