2011-12

[LeTallecWiz]

I think it's safe to say Kenny's main objective in this season is to guide this team away from the relegation zone, and push them as far up the table.

Ensuring we survive this campaign (yes, I'm still worried about it), we need to purchase 4 players (if not 5 for a :

----------------------------------REINA------------------------------------------

Kelly-----------------Carra----------------AGGER*--------------LEFT BACK-

RIGHT WING---------GERRARD-------MEIRLESS-----------LEFT WING----

-----------------------TORRES**----------STRIKER----------------------------

* He's always injured, so we may need to replace him
** If he wants to stay

I don't know how this will be possible - considering how much money it would take to buy quality at each of those positions.

I think Oncey made the point in the match thread yesterday, but this will be a long rebuilding process.

I'm still excited though - We have exciting youth players in our reserve set up, and I like (so far) how Comolli & our scouts are focusing on the best young talent in Europe. I'm confident we'll be 'there' in the next few years, but until we get there - it won't be an easy ride

 

[mark1975]

Torres will be gone next season and we need a spine. We need a big centre back and another central or defensive midfielder.

 

[Hansern]

The thing is, we're so deeply in the shits now that we need to spend some cash short term aswell.

Our squad lacks at least 3 new players to ensure saftey in my eyes. We desperatly need to add a striker and a winger. We have no pace whatsoever on the wings and it's killing us.
FSG needs to act now. Cause in april when we're 1 point of the drop zone, not having spent 12-15 mill on two short term solutions will come back to bite us in the ass.

When Poulsen, Jova, Lucas and N'Gog are involved wer'e no better than the teams below us.
Yesterday was our 5th straigh away loss, thats relegation form. The King has got a very big job infront of him, and to be honest our main aim this season should be to stay up...

 

[Sven]

Meireless is not good enough! We need a better holding player than he is. He is just an another southern european player who cant make it in England.

 

[Fabio]

We know raul can dominate games though sven you misery. For some reason he's hit a bad patch. He seems to be shitting out of challenges, which hopefully kenny can knock out of him

 

[doctor_mac]

On yesterday's performance Ming would not hold his own defensively in a CM partnership with SG. Let's hope he learns how to tackle, quickly.

 

[keniget]

Meireles and Gerrard is not really a midfield partnership. Utd perhaps would be better at getting away with it because they seemingly have been winning with less solid midfields for a few years now, but we wouldn't for a number of reasons.

Torres will go unless we go on some kind of City-esque splurge.

 

[Hansern]

If there is invested money in the squad and we look geniunly like we can compete for a top 4 finish next season, Nando will stay. That I'm pretty confident of, but if we don't invest he'll leave.

 

[jan]

I don't want Gerrard to play CM, especially not with a player like Meireles next to him. He should be given a free role, it's where we get the most out of him. Meireles did play well for us in the past so I haven't given up on him after a few shit games but we most definitely need a new DM and I'd still argue that should be a top priority. Someone might say I need my head examined again but DM is a crucial position and being constantly run over in midfield is much worse for me than having players who are either made of glass, absolutely shit or out of position at LB. We need to start defending as a unit again, the defence under Benitez our 2 DMs were often doing the centre backs' job and the 2 CBs were only filling the gaps behind them. Obviously the system stopped working when Lucas established himself in the starting lineup, he tries hard but really is a truly abysmal player. So we need one DM who can step right into the side and one for the bench as currently our options consist of Lucas, Poulsen and Jay Spearing and none of them is even remotely good enough. Shelvey can be a back up for Meireles and Gerrard can still play there if Shelvey turns out to be shit.
Carra's age is also an issue, I wouldn't rely on him playing week in week out as his form over the last 1.5 years has been erratic to say the least. As is Agger's injury record so we also need a new centre back that will compete for one of the starting spots. Skrtel can obviously only play with someone like Carra who can organize the defence and shouts the instructions to him all the time so he's not the solution, Kyrgiakos is simply not very good and we don't really know anything about Wilson (it would be ideal if he started some games this season and looked awesome so he could come in but I wouldn't count on it).
It's clear we don't have a capable LB besides the perma-injured Aurelio and I don't want either Konchesky or Insua to play for us ever again. Do we have anyone who could make the step up in the reserves?
Our wingers are and have been gash for years although they aren't as hopeless as they're being made out at the moment. Kuyt can be effective most of the time but needs a dynamic player on the other wing (like Robben in the Dutch side) but the bigger problem is that when he's out of form (which happens every season at some point) he's about as useful as Antonio Nunez and desperately needs to be benched. Maxi sometimes plays well when we're controlling games but h never performs away from home and more importantly, he's slow and weak and shouldn't be anywhere the starting lineup. Cole is an enigma, he could still turn it around and come good but that's another big "if", like Pacheco who hasn't really looked all that whenever he came on. Jovanovic and Babel can comfortably fuck off although the latter can at least pop up with the occasional goal and is sometimes amusing because of his general thickness. I was usually against this but now it sems it wouldn't hurt trying Johnson on the right as he could hardly be worse than anyone else we have there.
A back up striker is also a necessity although I'd say DM, LB and the wing are more important. There's also the option of Torres leaving which would leave us with a new top priority signing.

Ideally we'd be looking at

Reina
Kelly - Carra - Agger - X
X - X - Meireles - X
Gerrard
Torres

bit more realistic

Reina
Kelly - Carra - Agger* - Aurelio
Kuyt** - X - Meireles - X
Gerrard
Torres

* Or (preferably) a new CB
** Johnson if he turns out to be a success on the wing

Konchesky, Insua, Poulsen and Jovanovic are the first who should be moved on, followed by Lucas, Babel, Skrtel and virtually everyone else except Reina, Kelly, Carra, Gerrard and Torres and maybe some youngsters.