Can Liverpool still make it In Europe?

As new manager Brendan Rodgers take the helm of affairs at Liverpool Football,iNewsGh assess the chances of Liverpool,writes Graham McCarty and Kojo Owusu-Okyere..
WITH the football world having been fixated on the excitement of Euro 2012 there is an air of inevitability with the somewhat laboring pace of this summer’s transfer window activity. The comings and goings in the Premier League have been kept to a minimum as the cream of European talent embark on a period of re charging following this summer’s European Championships.
Champions League winners Chelsea and fellow Londoners Arsenal have already spent big since the opening of the window with Marin, Hazard, Podolski and Giroud arriving in the Barclays Premier League for a modest sum of £75 million. Arch enemies Manchester United have spent a reported £20 million on Japan superstar Shiniji Kagawa and young Crewe hotshot Nick Powell and are reported to be close to acquiring services of England left-back Leighton Baines from our fierce rivals Everton.
With Premier League Champions Manchester City certain to strengthen with yet more world class talent, the need for new boss Brendan Rodgers to strengthen last season’s hugely underachieving squad is as big as it’s ever been.
The coming weeks will serve up the answer to an extremely pivotal question for Liverpool Football Club: is Anfield still an attractive destination for the cream of world footballing talent, or will Brendan Rodgers have to settle for the so called “second tier“ footballer if he is to add quality to his playing staff in preparation for his first season at Anfield. The silly season of transfer rumours is well under way and it is no great surprise to see Liverpool linked with a multitude of players since the start of the summer including just about every winger and striker on the planet.
There seems to be a notable difference over the last few months in the caliber of player that the club is being linked with. With the greatest respect to the likes of Davies, Sigurdsson, Moses, Allen and Sinclair, is this really the caliber of player that a club of Liverpool’s size and stature in world football should be looking at.
Whilst there is no denying or hiding away from last season’s disappointing campaign we still have some fantastic footballers at the football club and should be targeting players at the same level as the likes of Gerrard, Suarez, Reina, Skrtel, Agger and Johnson. The likes of Spearing, Shelvey, Adam, and Henderson are better options than the players we are being linked with currently and these players also have the added advantage of already knowing and understanding the expectation at Anfield.
Let’s not forget of course that despite our return to European football next season our absence from the UEFA Champions League is a huge stumbling block in our quest to add the quality of players required to challenge for a place in the top 4 of the Barclays Premier League. Despite the huge variation of views on both the amount of players and positions that Brendan Rodgers needs to strengthen this summer, one view that Reds fans will almost certainly agree on is the caliber of players that must be brought into the football club if we are to mount a serious challenge for Champions League football this season.


What we need is for our first signing this summer to send a message out to the likes of Suarez, Reina, Gerrard and Skrtel, but also to the rest of the footballing world that we have the ambition needed to restore the club to the top of English Football. If this message is indeed a positive one and we manage to capture a Gaston Ramirez, Joao Moutinho or Ibrahim Affelay then this will encourage yet more top quality players to head for Anfield, in the same way that Torres, Johnson and Suarez followed players like Alonso, Reina and Mascherano to Merseyside.
The flip side could be equally as telling for Liverpool fans though. If the first signing under Brendan Rodgers is a Mark Davies or a Scott Sinclair, with the greatest respect to those players then rightly or wrongly then it will seem that the required standard needed to wear the famous red shirt is much lower than our football club and its legendary supporters are prepared to accept.
With August approaching fast, the ambition and attraction of Liverpool Football Club will be severely tested over the remaining days of the transfer window. We will of course be watching this particular space with the keenest interest possible.

Posted in: