Maybe if he comes, we can send Gerrard around to welcome him and whisper in his ear, "Look, if you score 30 goals, Barca and Real will come for you."
Loan move will be a good idea. Permanent move, I'm not so hot about, but only because he's such a distraction for the manager and staff. My impression is that he's never really been a disruptive force in a team but rather more of a little rascal or irritation for management to contain mainly with his off the pitch antics and occasionally with his on the pitch pouts.
On the pitch, he can have days when he's great, or days when he decides he wants to be a child and play in his own sandbox. If we can take him out of that sandbox mode and get him to play in the common playground more often for a few years, who knows - maybe we can actually be able to pack him off to Spain one day with a wad of colourful euros in our pockets.
There's shades of Dennis Rodman here. For those unfamiliar with NBA basketball in the mid/late 90's - when Rodman was at San Antonio (coached by Bob Hill at the time), he impressed and won the fans over initially, but then turned into a disruptive force in the playoffs and was packed off to Chicago in exchange for peanuts after the season.
Here, he came to be coached by Phil Jackson, and played with Jordan and Pippen, superstars whom he'd previously been a fierce adversary of during his Detroit days. Somehow, the trio managed to get him to buy into their common objective, and while he still had his off-the-court shenanigans, he mostly just went out and did his work and be the rebounding force and defender they needed on the court every game. Three straight championship rings later, he went to the Lakers for a year (that was before Jackson joined them) and was released after only 20-odd games. Then he went to Dallas, got waived, and fell away. Detroit under Chuck Daly (before San Antonio) and Chicago under Phil Jackson managed to get him to focus on being good on the court without trying to convert him into some altar boy.
And Balotelli really, is like a novice in the bad boy act compared to Rodman. So, who knows, maybe there's hope.
Tony Barrett @TonyBarretTimes 
