He was 17 when at Inter bought him and 20/21 while at City - people mature, so until he does something stupid I'm well up for supporting this guy. I'm sure once he has a few training sessions with us and see's what we're all about his attitude will change, he may even realise that he could be part of something special happeing at Liverpool. Let's face it - he's 24 and been to various clubs, has never felt settled and acted out because of this. All we need is for him to feel settled and I believe he'll change to the point you'll be eating your words. I have every faith in Rodgers getting the best out of him, and introducing our philosophy of play to him - Potentaially we could be looking at a world class striker, obviously a hell of a lot of work to be done before that. But at 24 he has his best years ahead - and there is no doubting he can do things with the ball that most players can only dream of. He just needs to feel settled and buy into Rodgers man management - for me a very likely scenario. £16 mil is a snip, when you comapre the likes of Long, Borini, Welbeck etc. Sturridge and Balloteli combined cost less (or the same?) than Lukaku (obviously ingnoring wages). On a similar note - Diego Costa was a huge risk, he had one great season in a top league and went for £32mil. If he fails to deliver Chelsea are completey ****ed. I have a feeling he'll do well though, but that doesn't mean he will.
So it's a reported £116m spend. That still leaves around £20m plus player sales to spend!! Borini, Agger, Assaidi alone could be worth £30m....that's potentially £50m in the bank. Who's next?
Napoli loan Lucas for €2m with option to buy for €10m Spolier alert: they will not take the option and will offer €1.5m instead
Look in the context of welbeck, long and indeed borini badontelly does look value for money no question but Costa is an absolute bargain too cos he is tops. I think balotelli f'd up recently for Italy, the same crap so I feel he'll do the same for us so we have to manage that but the reality is once he's got along he's done well. We will just have to see
£1.6m with option to sign for £8m. Not bad I guess, but doubt they'll try and buy him, similar to what they did with Reina. Only hope is he has a very good year and other Italian clubs become interested either forcing Napoli's hand or we get other offers from other clubs.
as long as it clears wages but i feel that this is not good as we are short in midfield even if he was short of legs fro the prem.... we therefore now need a buy.
Gerrard, Henderson, Allen, Can, Lallana, Coutinho They are all capable of playing in a midfield 3. Problem is, we still don't have a top quality defensive player. Lucas was defensive, but on his form he was about a good as Gerrard is defensively which is poor so I don't think we've really lost anything there. Whether Can could possibly be that player, but I thought I read somewhere that he prefers playing further forward.
Italian clubs are ****ing leeches, when was the last time an Italian club actually went all out to get a player? All they do now is loan, wait for players contracts to run down or by old players on the cheap. The money has really vanished from Italian football and the club to blame is the only one reaping the benefits from a weak league. Juventus cause the downfall of people's interest in Italian football and thus the money with it. If we can get Napoli to stump the money at the end of it then we'll have done well, but can't see it happening. It'll be another year loan and at the end they'll claim they can't afford him.
well someone is racking it in over there cos the tv money and cl money is still big. it was on the decline for year... but i think racism, violence and frankly corruption has caught up with it.
well.. the thing is unlike sturrdige he's down a heap of things which are nutty. sturridge has never caused trouble
But Sturridge isn't a frigging ticking time bomb. At least with Suarez everyone knew what he's capable of, this boy wouldn't look out of place in a straight jacket
How is he a timebomb, he's done enough nutty stuff to just be described as a bomb, or we could just settle on nutjob
As long as he doesn't disgrace the club he can pull whatever pranks he likes. If he scores 20 goals this season we'd probably forgive him that too. As would majority of supporters of whoever he played for. After all look what we forgave Suarez for.
