Liverpool have had arguably the most frantic deadline day since transfer windows were first introduced with a fallen her making way for two new ones.
Fernando Torres abandoned Liverpool at a moment of need but in doing so opened the eyes of fans who’d stood by him for perhaps too long. Lack of form and lack of enthusiasm were forgiven, often put down to the injuries he was increasingly beginning to suffer from.
He’s understood to have met Chelsea long before this transfer window, but with no firm offers forthcoming after he’d been suffering from injury he left fans thinking he was staying out of loyalty to them. They’d have understood had he left anytime after the summer of 2009, when Liverpool became a club that had to sell players to buy more. They’d have understood had he said he’d had enough of Roy Hodgson’s awful brand of football.
But now that Hicks, Gillett, Purslow and Hodgson were out of the way he no longer had any excuse.
He signed for Chelsea for £50m. There was said to be a tricky moment during negotiations of personal terms, his demands over image rights taking some time to be met.
In his place comes Andy Carroll. Just 22 years of age, this is a player who will serve Liverpool for years to come. His fee might seem high, but by the time his five-and-a-half year contract is up he’ll still have years left to play. He takes the Liverpool number nine shirt.
He also makes a huge emotional sacrifice in joining the Reds. He’s swapped the pride of playing for the hometown club he supported all his life for joining the Reds at the beginning of their effort to get back to where they should be.
The fee hasn’t been disclosed, but is believed to be £35m. It’s a record for an English player moving to another English club and we look forward to seeing him in the shirt worn by legends like Ian Rush and Robbie Fowler.
We also look forward to the first match for Luis Suarez. He also signed a five-and-a-half year deal, signing from Ajax for a fee that was, briefly, Liverpool’s record transfer fee. The Uruguayan international will cost the Reds up to €26.5m.
Suarez will wear King Kenny’s old number, 7, as also worn by Peter Beardsley and Kevin Keegan.
A youngster also arrived on loan on the last day of the window. 17-year-old Conor Thomas was brought in from Coventry City until the end of the season, when the Reds will consider making it a permanent deal. He’ll join the reserves squad.
Daniel Ayala was set to join Derby County on loan, but the two clubs later agreed that Ayala should continue his rehabilitation from a hamstring injury at Melwood. Another former no 7 for Liverpool, Nigel Clough, is now Derby’s manager and he confirmed that all being well the defender would still be joining up with The Rams: “We still want Daniel to join us and we are pretty confident that will happen, albeit later in February.
“We have had him checked over and the advice we are getting is that he won’t be ready to play for a number of weeks yet It makes sense for everyone involved that Daniel continues his rehabilitation with Liverpool at Melwood.”
Clough praised the club and its staff, as well as the player: “Liverpool have been tremendous to deal with throughout this process and I would like to thank Kenny Dalglish and Damien Comolli for their help and willingness to allow Daniel to come to Derby County.
“The player himself is a great character and the time we have spent with him today showed us he is the right type of person and player we want to bring to Derby County.”
One player who did leave the club on loan today was Paul Konchesky, who will spend the rest of the season on emergency loan at Nottingham Forest.
Moves for Ashley Young, Charlie Adam and Stephen Warnock didn’t come off.
LFC fans don’t need to spend any more time thinking about Fernando Torres. He’s officially a player of the past and with him we achieved very little. The only time we need to actually deal with him is when we play Chelsea which will be usually only twice a year. I’m going to put him out of my mind and move on. We now have two two strikers under the age of 25 who already command international recognition and they will want to only get better. I can’t see any way in which, as a combined strike force, they don’t offer more than Torres ever did. We’ve clearly come out of this window on top and it’s barely cost us 5 million quid, possibly the best set of combined transfers we’ve ever completed. We’ve lost one temperamental talent and replaced him with two far more willing players who will give us such a more significantly dedicated effort … there is no doubt that Liverpool are a better team having seen the end of Torres.
Not sure what to make of the past 7 or so days..
Should be happy but feeling gutted!
First of all the owners came two weeks late, they arrived around 15.1 and window was wide opened already. Like Rafa once said: there’s no one to make decisions, no one to sign cheques.. Then we sell Babel for around £6m and Kenny says he’s not sure if we manage to buy anybody, but it’s not about lack of effort. What!! Show some ambition and pay what is needed! Torres get’s the picture and fears we are not going to sign anybody like before. He informs the club he wishes to go to chelsea. Only after that we up our pathetic £12,6m bid for Suarez and buy him for a reasonable price. (without Torres moving i think we would have ended up buying nobody) Well done, but a little bad taste because we upped the bid just to try to convince torres to stay. Then we realise that Torres definitely goes and we panicly spend £36m for a
young striker (who apparently didn’t want to come and was forced to move from his hometown club) AMAZING. We pay massively over and yet refuse to make a decent offer for Adam who has by far been the best central midfielder this season. Yes he has if you have followed any blackpool games..he’s better than let say like’s of: Carrick, Hargreaves, Anderson, Barry, DeJong, etc. and those were bought by £12-20m each. Comolli puffed and uffed like Hollowoy told, offered £6,8m and didn’t put the money in the table and we got egg in our liverpool face! Almost we lost the lad to Spurs only for minutes saving us to scramble for his signature in the summer with like of mancs!
So we ended up like the last four transfer windows as a selling club. Sold two, loaned one
and bought two. Net sell 57m, net spend 57m. Not much of a spending spree and a show of the new owners intentions! And really not sure if we strenghtened or weakened the squad only time will tell.
In Kenny i trust always and just think he didn’t got the support for buying Adam..
A typical negative comment from someone who sees the glass half empty rather than half full.
I empathize with Carroll’s situation. Clearly he has passion for Newcastle, and if he shows half as much passion for Liverpool he will be infinitely better than Torres.
Well, I am not sure I would spend more than 6 million on Adam. Big fish in small pond. If he was so good to begin with he would not be at Blackpool. Anyone remeber Sidwell at Wigan?