Alonso? Amazing from day one? IIRC, he spent the 2 seasons prior to his departure moping around on the pitch without doing much at all.
350K per week on players not playing.............if any of these were to be kept. i would keep Dirk as he is par tof the fabric of the club and his experience could be invaluable, saying that I cant see him playing regularly so if he wants to move on we should let him. the others should go, maxi has been a star when playing, but again he wants game time, and he wont get it. 350K could be well spent on some quality young players who could really make a difference for us and also increase their own value. It is far better to pay 350K per week to an asset that is increasing in value than to pay 350K per week on an asset hat is depreciating in value.
What I am most interested in is seeing if the manager can play a system that plays to the strengths of our attacking players; last season we really did not play to the strengths of anyone and yet we dominated a lot of games. If we could play a system that aloowed Suarez to float, Downing to get balls in early, play to Carrols strengths and allowed Gerrard the freedom to arrive late in the box then we would have a great chance of scoring plenty of goals.
I hope Aqualani comes back and is fully commited and place a part in next season. Midfield 3 of Lucas, Gerrard & Aqualani would be up there with most teams in the league and with Henderson, Adam & Spearing as back up we'd have plenty of squad depth. Cole is a strange one. I really wanted him to do well and the Cole of 5 years ago would be exactly who we need, someone clever and isn't afraid of trying to take on a man. Now though, not too sure. If we got an offer of 3-4mil for him I'd prob take it and free up his massive wages.
Cole reminds me of Kewell; you just keep hoping he will turn out to be both the player he was and the player you know is there somewhere! Sadly I don't think Cole will come good anymore than Kewell did!
This is exactly how I felt. It's almost as if we were trying to force getting the ball onto the wings and playing pointless crosses all the time.
I swear to god. AC negotiate a price now want to renegotiate. In others words just keep going until we say oh feck it have Aqualani for free. I'd ask AC what price & then sell him to the first Italian club other than AC that will take him for one euro less than that price. feckers.
They're taking the piss now. I rather we just keep him than sell to Milan. If no one else wants him, then I'd force him to play for us. IF he doesnt, then let him rot in the reserves. We let Juve have him for free for a season, then Milan purposely decide to play for x amount of games so they don't activate the clause - how sneaky can you get. IF they genuinely didn't want him, then fair enough but don't come back and say 'let's renegotiate'. Time to get tougher in the transfer market.
Probably one of the reasons Camolli went. Think we have been had over on more than one occasion in our transfer dealings both in and out.
The whole Aqua saga seems bizarre to me; I know he doesn't really want to play for us and I can understand Kenny's reluctance to have a player who is not committed around but something feels off about this whole thing! Not sure what but many players want to leave other clubs and it doesn't descend into the fiasco that this has been, perhaps its just because it is the Italian clubs we are dealing with, seems bizarre though!
