Liverpool are now favourites to sign Lloyd Kelly from Bournemouth in January, Tottenham and Newcastle are moaning
Suarez was later. Although not a whole decade later. Still a dry gap where we had no special forwards for numerous seasons. Extends longer if you consider Owen was already crocked for at least a season before we sold him.
is this seriously still going on? I though it was a joke. 2004 Owen left 2005 morientes, cisse and garcia signed 2006 KUYT and crouch 2007 TORRES give your head a wobble. owen goes, we win cl with morientes etx then torres arrives then we go torres to suarez on one window, when suarez goes theres short gap of one bad season, mane and salah arrive in consecuitive seasons.
When was Owen last good? 2003? Torres was good for one season. Maybe world's best striker for a season, so was an anomaly in that gap. Suarez arrived in 2011. Not quite a decade, but a long spell for a big club to go with makeshift forwards. I love Kuyt, Garcia, Pongolle, and Crouch, but they weren't exactly the same league as Mané, Suarez, Salah, etc. Hard workers and needed but would only make the bench for the last decade of Liverpool. (Although I bet Klopp could have made Kuyt better). Oh God! I just remembered, we used to field Heskey too! The early part of this millennium didn't live up to the eras of Rush, Dalglish, Keegan, Fowler and before and the Suarez and Salah eras afterwards.
I'd suggest you go checked their figures as you are being really really unkind there. entitled almost. we have been very very lucky rush to fowler to Owen to torres to suarez to salah. most clubs never get near that. heskey and Owen together were a huge part of 2001 and heskey was actually good til his ankle was done.
This kind of makes my original point. We're not guaranteed for a next Salah to happen quickly. The gap between when Owen was the club hero until he got broken and sold to Suarez (with a couple seasons of Torres being good) was pretty big compared to our history... so we don't have much dryspell to compare with other clubs. We kind of expect to just stumble onto the next Salah, but it's certainly not guaranteed. We won the Champions League in 2005 without a decent forward, but we had other quality players in the team. We can win things again without a Salah in the team, I'm not peddling gloom... but we could have another relatively dark patch like we did the 00's. (And if you look at every decade. 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s, 20s... the 00s do stand out as having been our weakest for forwards. Yeah, we had Owen who was fantastic first few years of the decade. Torres was good for one, and absolute world class for another. A nice brief respite in the uncertain years between Owen being his best and Suarez joining and starting our tradition of good forwards again. Fortunately, I'm optimistic for our current front line (sans Salah) and think that they're an improvement over the years when Cisse, Morientes, or Baros were our best hopes. We're not guaranteed another Salah or Suarez though.
Yes, although, despite dodging the bullet and him picking Chelsea over us, I do feel sorry for him. I'm sure the wads of cash help ease the pain, but tough situation for him nonetheless.
Hardly a dodged bullet though, if Mac Alister get's injured in your next game will you have bought a bullet?
I think the point is: there were worries about his fitness due to injuries in youth teams. He's already picked up a lengthy injury. If we had signed him instead of Endo and Gravenberch, that would been a massive blow to us... Chelsea can get by, they've got twenty other midfielders to pick from... but that's definitely a bullet dodged for us. And it's probably foreshadowing of lots of time on the bench in future seasons for Lavia.
