agreed. 75k per week and some say 100k. if his loyalty bonus is 750,000 then we will pay it out anyway so get him gone IMO. he's going to be poison around training and he's just no good to us. This is why it is said to run til last day.
Six figures? If someone was willing to buy him I'd round it off to a sweat £1m to persuade him to ****off
Couldn't agree more. I don't mind having one or two talented players that are a bit lazy (note the words 'a bit') but a team full...? No chance. You'd get relegated in the PL if you had no work rate. There needs to be a good mix but IMO, every single player that wears the shirt should be willing to work for the team and their teammates.
even if a player is lazy you expect: a) they turn up on time b) they eat with their team mates c) they know their team mates names d) they don't actively disrupt training and team talks e) they don't have a hanger on servant at thier call at all times. small expectations there granted... but even the laziest guy i ever saw ryan babel could achieve these.
yeah but we've been told time and again by club sources and the echo that we were not after anyone.... I think in the end thats the case... villa get a good player and more options out wide and they need a top striker now.
The curious case of Mario and Borini......... Makes you wonder why Rodgers didn't see the flaw in Borini after working with him at Chelsea and Swansea, his time at Roma must have made him lazy after performing so well and scoring goals for them in a very defensive minded league.
It has to be a working combination of both- not one preferred to the other. All the talent in the world means nothing if you can't be arsed to put yourself out. Similarly, work rate isn't enough if you're talentless. However, Milner is not talentless, just not as gifted as some others, and teams need players like him to do the donkey work with efficiency and allow the more flamboyantly skilled to do their stuff. I think there were some signs that Mario was working a bit harder at one stage, but it was never enough.
Many Everton fans say we missed out on Shaquiri too, we had an offer accepted....But funnily nothing was ever mentioned in the press
I'd be surprised if that were the reason- he doesn't seem particularly motivated by money. (He doesn't seem particularly motivated at all, tbh)
Effort is always enjoyes by a set of fans, even if said player is not as gifted as his teammates the crowd loves a player who will do all he can for the side. Grafter will work hard no matter the situaation or opposition. Most flair players will drift in and out of games/periods of games
sure but we've all seem balotelli's antics on the one hand and how he's called so talented and then joey barton on the opposite end whos a toruble maker who is the grunt. The point is balotelli has the perfect storm of a bit of talent, a huge stupidity, a bit of a sulk, poor work ethic and then he ends up as the guy peopel wonder why ca't he succeed I still say its a sackable offense to sign him and i still want the people who did it to go. who offered rodgers balotelli OR and why did he pick the guy in the end.. i'd rather buy nothing and embarrass the club and have my name linked to him as being my ego trip.
I genuinely think rodgers had no clue about expectations or difficulties awaiting him and he walked in to anfield thinking allens and borinis would succeed. Day one he arrived rodgers called him a power player.. total joke that and then played him and a blind man could see the guy was a willing runner but missed the target far too much when he did manage to get on the end of stuff. he then got an injury (dislocated shoulder) and by the end of the season rodgers had already moved on. What bemuses me is that rodgers didn't get him sold off and that he wasn't as definitive earlier As it stands rodgers has "ostracized" 3 players who refuse to go. How far i don't really know but enrique, borini and balotelli are pure poison to a squad. they have to be loaned off with lfc paying their wages if they can't be sold. hopefully west brom and sunderland are desperate enough to cover their sizable wage packets but with balotelli he is so bad i'd pay up his loyalty bonus if it gets him gone... as mentioned earlier. Borini has sunk IMO into a malaise where italian squad and week in week out games are so far in the past he's thinking only about the few hundred thousand (joke sin't it) he might lose moving now and not thinking about the millions he is costing himself by not moving. The clubs like fiorentina won't come back in a year after you refuse them... end of.
Of course - players needs to have both. If it was a case of prioritising, then I rather have a player with talent but is a bit lazy, than a player with limited ability but works hard. But the way I see it is a talented player can play well if no one else does i.e. they dont have to rely on anyone. A 'worker' can only ever look good when he has the quality players around him. But it's not a slant on players like Hendo or Milner - I do like them and think they're good squad players. I just don't see them as anything more.
Why is it an "ego trip"? That makes it sound like he had a number of better options but chose the high-risk one out of an arrogant belief he could turn water into wine. We had unexpectedly lost Suarez, Sturridge was looking brittle and we needed some more up front. For a number of reasons we couldn't get our first targets and were running out of options. Rather than it being arrogantly thinking he could make Balo a success I think it was more a last ditch effort- hope born out of desperation. At the time it seemed like a risk-with hindsight it's easy to say it was a mistake.
I agree with everything but that. I clearly said it would be a mistake before we signed him so hindsight as nothing to do with it in my eyes
people have said (on here as well as in media) that rodgers took him to "fix him"... as his ego told him that only a man of his genius could fix such a lost cause. thats how it was said and that's in the end when the dust settles on rodgers short anfield career that he lost his job "buying ****e and his ego lead him to it... just look at balotelli FFS" I think if we didn't expect a big bid on a 31 goal man going to world cup in the prime of his career from spain then we are fools. i also think with 75mil pocketed there were any number of better options than markovic and balotelli we signed bad on telly on the 25th august. markovic was signed middle of july AFTEr saurez sale was agreed. in short that 36mil that should have gone on a proper striker. If we ran short of options the truth behind why we ran short of options has to come out. as of now i see zero reason why we needed mr markovic at all at 20mil... given ibe, sterling, coutinho and lallana all lining up. that was a piss poor buy and then to top it all off to put 16mil down late in the window on mario? nahhhh... rightly or wrongly rodgers carrer at anfield will be defiend by mario balotelli when lads look back at it. there a litany of piss poor buys, borini, aspas et al.. but badontelly tops the pile. As i said If i were manager offered that choice. what rodgers said last DECEMBER; "And asked if he had any regrets over Balotelli’s move, Rodgers said: “No. I think as a club we felt that was the solution at the time. “In the summer, we had Rickie Lambert and Fabio Borini was looking as though 100% he was gone. “Obviously Daniel (Sturridge) has shown in his career so far that he gets injuries. “So it would be unfair to leave Rickie Lambert, a 32-year-old, as the only striker we had. “I felt this (Balotelli) was a risk we needed to take and as a group we couldn’t afford not to at the time. “It was obviously late on and we need to have someone in. “It’s something that we can’t regret. “I made it clear at the beginning it was a calculated one and that is why he probably cost the money that he did.” ....................... It's clear the club made very bad choices during the window.... very bad indeed... but to end up with balotelli or... whomever the other choice was i forget is unforgivable and thats why at the time i said sack the lot of them.
I did too... Rodgers has been accused of ego with it http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...just-like-Spurs-Liverpool-ended-wannabes.html http://www.footballfancast.com/prem...-signing-just-a-poorly-thought-vanity-project even our rivals http://www.ja606.co.uk/articles/viewArticle/300002 http://www.theanfieldwrap.com/2014/09/mario-balotelli-just-stop-talking-brendan/ ................... sorry but there you go.. there is some element out there that views it as a giant ego trip there's also those who say rodgers was offered balotelli or... who i can't remember... anyone anyone?
There are two standouts on this forum that were dead set against signing Balotelli; myself and @luvgonzo I'm sure there will be others (you've just proved you were) that said it would be a mistake too although quite a few came around to the idea just before/after he was signed.
