I do see a difference between the three. Aspas was cack, didn't get his way straight away and then almost stopped trying. Then did stop trying and that was that. Waste of money and should never have been bought. Borini, not quite got the quality. But can't fault him on his effort and frankly effort is what we need from the forwards at the moment. Borini and Lambert should start the next game. Balotelli, where to start? There is something there, some talent or clubs wouldn't keep buying him. But his attitude is all wrong, no effort, no desire, no passion, no impulse to improve. If nothing changes between now and Jan then he's finished, not just at Liverpool but also in the main European leagues. I can only see him playing in somewhere like Turkey or Russia where they pay big wages to past it/average players.
We work hard to get back into CL and our main targets were Lovren, Lallana and Lambert... and for £50m. Small club targets who would look out of place at any big club (Lallana is a useful squad player but nothing more). There in itself lies the problem.
I agree with this. Gettting CL was suppose to help us attract a better quality player but we went for players we'd have got had we finished sixth again!
Getting Moreno, Can and Markovic is pretty good - 3 good young top quality talents, and I doubt we could have got them without CL. But we needed to supplement them with real, senior, experienced quality. It's as if we like to take the risks in foreign markets for young players but the senior players, we wanted to go for the easy targets who are 'Prem Proven'.
I do worry about Lovren, his one time at a big club, Lyon, with European football was a disaster. Did ok with Southampton where the expectations are lower and even the Soton fans question his ability after what was a fairly decent season for him. Can he make the step up to the next level... his time at Lyon is danger. Lallana too expensive, should have walked away when the price went over £16m. Lambert was a cheap sentiment buy, just wish we'd use him more at the moment. But yep they aren't really the targets a CL club should be looking at. Strikes me that they were the previous years targets, when we didn't have CL and the scouting team didn't reassess the targets.
I think Lovren and Lallana can definitely be good squad options. Problem is - both are supposed to come in to make big impacts on the first team. But for £45m, it's not good enough. We lost one of the best players in the world - you cannot replace him with Lallana, Lambert and Balotelli.