Caramba

If it wasn't for the white tape on the socks, he'd be impossible for a colorblind to spot on a football pitch. Fact. Good luck, Riise!

Some of the stuff written in this thread is embarassing, to say the least. Good luck in Roma, Riise. I hope he gets his confidence back, and plays well.

When you buy a house; does it matter if you pay in cash, or you take up a loan you pay in monthly installments? Of course not. The price for the house is the same. And the maths is really not that unclear, if Masch cost 17m, then that's 17m out of our transfer kitty no matter if it's financed with loans or liquid funds immediately.

Have a donut, Kaizer.

Why is it relevant?

Our defence is good enough to win the league. Our attack is not. We need one or two top drawer players in attack, players that can score goals and turn draws into wins on bad days. It's a no-brainer really. Kinda funny tho, how people always have the simple reason why we didn't compete for the title. A couple of years ago we needed to improve our away record. Now we need to turn draws into wins, and start beating the other top teams. But what we really need to is to get better.

Do you really watch him enough to say that he's inconsistent? He's someone who plays in small margins, like Luis Garcia, we have enough consistent performers in our team. What we need is players with an x-factor, and let him be a fancy prick if he wants to. Many fancy pricks have turned out to be good players before.

So are we not good fans if we disagree with Rafa on who's better for us; Alonso or Barry? In the beginning we were speaking of getting £20m for Alonso, and paying around £10-12m for Barry. That would have left us with £8m more to buy a decent winger or striker. Now that Barry most likely turns out to be more expensive than Alonso, many of us really don't see the point. Alonso is already settled in the squad, and with him we know what we get. Our midfield is fine as it is. As much as I respect Rafa, and trust his evaluations, I believe that we should focus our time, energy and money on getting a good winger. And for what it's worth, I think for £15-18 m we can get a better center half than Barry.

On the other hands tho, they might just be interested in getting a very high bid on Torres so that when they sell the club they can point at him and "he's worth £70m, what do you think Gerrard and the rest of the squad is worth?". And they might just convince DIC, or whoever is buying, to pay more for the club...

As much as I think Alonso is a better player than Barry, I find the passing comparison unfair. Liverpool is a better team than Aston Villa, we have much more possession and our opponents sit deeper against us, givin Alonso more time and space to make passes. Furthermore, let it be my statement Barry is a more offensive player than Alonso - and a pass is more likely to be intercepted the further up the pitch you are.

The difference is that this time, most of us don't mind if we lose out.

More from Carragher: http://www.dagbladet.no/sport/2008/06/12/537990.html

Agree. The comparison is totally out of context. Tevez will be more like 30 millions, Nani and Anderson cost what? Another 30 millions, then add another 30 millions for Saha and Carrick. While we don't have Barry yet, so it's more fair to put down Alonso for 10 millions in our side. And our bench adds up to an odd 30 million too.

I hope he gets his tie stuck in the fax machine. Paying more for Barry than we'll get for Alonso is insane.

G&H would not be stupid enough to sell off our best player. They'd sell the club before we get into such a bad financial state. I think.

Let's hope no one notice!

Even so, this is just like any other LBO. The Americans are in it for the profit, and when they find the timing is right - they're gonna sell out and then we'll see what the new owner is gonna do about the debt. Moreover, the extra loans we are taking out to build a new stadium are gonna be paid by the extra revenue the new stadium is gonna yield. These guys are business men, and they're not gonna build a stadium unless there is expected to be a net profit. But anyway, this is the transfer tread so let's get back to the discussion. Size of our warchest? I suppose only Parry, Rafa, Hicks and Gillett and a few others know...

Hardly any surprise. One of these clubs is the toy of a Russian billionaire, the other one just won the league, champions league and have 30 000 more people on their home games than us - in addition to having much bigger commercial revenues. Basically every club in the Premier League are saying the same thing - the clubs chasing the big 4 complain because they have smaller warchests (new favourite word) than us... The clubs chasing the clubs chasing us, complain because they have smaller warchests again. And so it goes all the way down to non league. And yes, Man City and Tottenham might have equally much or more than us this summer (we don't know), but then again, those teams don't have 4-5 world class players in their team already, like us.

Porque? So ShanksLegend is lying then?

People saying we're skint fail to see the fact that we're run like a multi million business, and not like a regular football club used to be ran 10-15 years ago. As long as our assets cover our debs (and it does, by far), we are by no means skint even though we don't have a bank accounts and a black mysterious debet card we can just withdraw from to buy whichever player we'd like. It's just not the way it works in modern football. But you do have a fair point tho, some people in here should be treated with some more respect.

What does it mean to be skint? Lack of immediate liquid funds? Parry & co. know pretty more or less how much we're gonna get for Alonso, and that we're gonna get it pretty soon. If we don't have liquid funds right now, getting a short term loan (1-2 weeks) from a bank or either one of our owners would probably not be a problem. Moreover, the fact that we're in for Villa would suggest that we're not at all skint. In fact, my theory is that Parry & co. are playing a game with the media, to make other clubs believe that we're poor in order not to inflate the prices of our targets.

Ojogo (a sports newspaper in Porto) is linking him to Inter Milan today for about 30-40 million euros. It says that Manchester City are also interested. I think we can forget about him...

Haven't seen too much of him, but from the little I have seen, I believe he is the type of winger we need, with a bit of flair and creativity and the ability to take on a man one on one. The fact that Porto has been excluded by the next years Champions League might improve our chances, and lower the price a bit. Although the source is probably not the best, he is just citing the Portuguese media who are holding Liverpool as favourites to sign him.

Don't know how reliable this source is... http://www.fansfc.com/frontpage/frontpagen...p?newsid=185971 Liverpool deal £15million blow to Mourinho! 06:45 June, 4, 2008 Liverpool Football Club are lining up a £15million bid for Ricardo Quaresma. Rafael Benitez is looking for a top-class winger to add to his Anfield squad for next season as he aims to finally end the club's eighteen-year wait for the league championship. And his top target has emerged as 24-year-old Porto ace Quaresma who can play on either flank and is expected to leave this summer, with the Reds plotting a £15million bid. The player has also been linked with a move to Jose Mourinho's Inter Milan in recent weeks, but the press in Portugal have placed Liverpool as the concrete favourites to land the Euro 2008 star.

Thanks for letting us all know, mate. Have a nice summer, and don't drink too much !