Bored with Barry, anxious with Alonso

I'm glad the whole Gareth Barry debacle is seemingly over now. Like everyone else, I've spent weeks watching events unfold, secretly sick at the sheer ransom which Aston Villa were trying to hold us to.

If he is meant to be at Liverpool, then I really hope he holds out on signing another contract as next summer he will be far more reasonably priced and O'Neill can shove his £18 million where the sun don't shine.

Which leaves us with Alonso, undoubted quality, awesome in his first couple of seasons. But for the last 2 seasons, his form has dropped considerably and he looks disinterested, which makes me wonder if we can depend on him. Should Alonso find his form of old then I won't be too bothered about missing out on Barry this time round. Time will tell.

A new song is needed for our 'Keano'

Robbie Keane and Fernando Torres are likely to form the most potent strike partnership we've had since Dalglish and Rush. Torres has his awesome 'bounce song', Robbie is deserving of his own too.

I think it's fair to say that Scousers can be counted on to come up with a cool new song rather than sing a Manchester United 'song' (the mere thought of the Kop singing there's only one Keano makes me cringe). I wish I had the creativity required to come up with a cool song. But alas, I'll just have to wait and see what other far more talented people can come up with. Any ideas ?

No room for youth in our central defence

There's no question about it, in central defence we're blessed with truly world class players. Agger & Skrtel, could potentially go on to produce the greatest partnership LFC has ever had in central defence (I remember Hansen & Lawrenson well). Also with Carragher & Hyypia providing some excellent cover it doesn't leave any room for any aspiring young players (at least not this year).

Jack Hobbs has potential, but seriously lacks experience. Thankfully he's going to get some, albeit in League One. Hopefully he can use his season long loan with Leicester City to impress and then next season look towards gaining Championship level experience or possibly even provide backup cover for LFC.

Prolific first team striker signs for us....

....but not the one we were all hoping for. There's quite a few surprising things about the signing of David Ngog, we're getting him for a mere £1.5m, he's French (and Wenger wasn't chasing him), and at just 19 years of age he's walking into the first team squad (LINK).

He's got a pretty cool reputation at international youth level for being extremely fast and a natural goalscorer, definitely highly desired traits in a striker. Although me thinks Rafa might do a Babel with him and develop him on the wings.

It's great that Rafa continues to strengthen at youth/reserve level, and with the sheer quality we have at those levels, surely it's only a matter of time before some of them emerge as genuine first team regulars. Exciting times indeed :-)

Teal Blue Euro Away Kit 2008/2009

No big surprises here, it had long been rumoured that our new away kit would be teal blue.

The styling of both our away kits are very similiar, although the grey one has chequered squares (LINK).

Not sure what you lot think, but me thinks it's a lot cooler than our grey shirt.

Emmanuel Mendy signs for Liverpool

Surprise, surprise, we've signed yet another Spanish Starlet on a free (from Murcia Deportivo). It's interesting that the official Liverpool site describes Emmanuel Mendy as being 'petit' (LINK).

WTF ? How often do you hear footballers being described as 'petit' (Arsenal might beg to differ) ? Still at least they also describe him as being 'powerful' which is considerably more reassuring, although at 18 years of age, it's not like he's got much 'growing' left to do.

Sold on the cheap to West Brom

Well it's finally been confirmed that Scott Carson has signed for West Bromwich Albion. I'm sure we all knew his recent loss of form would hurt his resale value, but it still kinda sucks to see his value drop from £10 million last year to a mere £3.25 million (at least it covers the cost of Cavalieri).

My main memory of Carson was against Juventus back in 2005 when in one half he pulled off a mind blowing save to deny Del Piero but in the second half made an absolute howler of a mistake to gift Juventus a lifeline for the second leg. He played his part in us winning the Champions League so for that I'll always be grateful and hope he does well in the future.

Hello Cavalieri, bye bye Carson

I think it's safe to say that the signing of Diego Cavalieri for about £3 million, finally signals the end of Scott Carsons career with Liverpool. I also think it's safe to say, that Cavalieri will likely play second fiddle to Reina. If he somehow manages to displace Reina, then I reckon we'll have ourselves the best keeper in the world. No wait I already think we have that with Reina :-)

As for Carson, he's a good keeper but his form has suffered badly since his shocker against Croatia and that has hurt his resale value, hopefully Aston Villa will still fancy him and he can be used as a makeweight in the signing of Barry.

Farewell Crouchinho, you'll be missed, maybe

Well the writing had been on the wall all season long, so it's of little surprise that Crouchie has finally left Liverpool. Despite only having one season left on his contract, we made a tidy profit and the £11m we got for his transfer to Portsmouth should help when [if] trying to land Robbie Keane.

Although he was our second best striker, he never got much of a look in last season. If we do end up landing the likes of Keane or Villa then I doubt Crouchie will be missed. Otherwise then I wonder who else will present a significant scoring threat for us. As for the future of Crouchie I wish him all the best, he was a good signing and servant for us.

Only a top 40 striker - wish he was number 1

I was curious enough about our latest unknown youth signing (Vincent Lucas Weijl) to do a little research and was disappointed to find he was only the 40th top scorer (LINK) in the Nike A-junior Eredivisie last season.

As far as I'm aware, strikers who go on to really make it as pros are usually very prolific at youth level, so this doesn't bode too well. Perhaps the kid has other attributes I'm unaware of such as pace, skill and dribbling ability, maybe we're signing him with a view to developing him as a winger. If anyone else has any other information on the kid, feel free to enlighten us.

Liverpool FC - Live Season Calendar

Click on any of the events to see more, or use the scrollbar to cycle through months/years. It can be accessed from the top-left of this blog.

Consistent and attack minded full backs....

.... are something which Liverpool needs. With Dossena putting pen to paper yesterday and Degen the day before that, we now have 2 full backs who [one way or the other] could bring an added dimension to our play.

My gut instinct is that Dossena will be the better of the two, with Degen showing some early promise before fading in similar fashion to Voronin. Regardless of how the pair of them work out, their arrival should result in us seeing Arbeloa & Finnan raising their games.

The net effect of which should see us with more consistent [defensively and offensively] full backs, which combined with our already world class central defenders, could give us the best back line in the Premiership.