Haal of Mirrors
There’s only one place to start this fine Tuesday morning and that is with Stan Collymore – the ‘man who always speaks his mind’ – in the Daily Mirror. This week’s fine idea that is in no way utterly ludicrous: Liverpool should sell their three attackers just a year after winning the Premier League. And yes, that includes the man currently the Premier League’s top scorer. Just sell them all.
Collymore has previously argued that Liverpool should sell Mo Salah – because who needs a player who has scored 90 goals in 135 Premier League games? – but he would ‘go even further now and suggest moving on the entire Holy Trinity in one go’.
‘If the right money came in and I could get the players I wanted, I’d sanction deals for the lot of them.’
Now those are two pretty bloody massive ‘ifs’ there, Stan. So you would sell the most devastating attacking trio of the last five years if you got the right money and if you could get the right replacements. You have pretty much summed up the situation at every football club in the world right there. To be fair, you have just summed up the current situation with Mrs Mediawatch.
‘Sir Alex Ferguson was very good at knowing when even his best players needed to be sold and, if I were Liverpool’s transfer guru, Michael Edwards, I’d be heading to Boston with Jurgen Klopp as soon as I could and selling that as the best way forward to John Henry and co.’
Mediawatch is pretty sure that Sir Alex Ferguson never sold his entire front three in one summer. Selling Ruud van Nistelrooy because you have the really rather good Cristiano Ronaldo is not the same as selling the three attackers who have recently won you the Champions League and Premier League – largely because you have lost all your central defenders to injury so the whole team has struggled to function.
‘Edwards would get in excess of £200million for the trio, and more if he let Xherdan Shaqiri and Divock Origi go as well.’
Why stop there? Why not sell the whole lot?
Now, they might well get in excess of £200million for the trio – though Collymore fails to pin-point exactly who is spending three-figure sums on players in their late 20s in the middle of a global pandemic and recession – but that really means nothing if you cannot spend that money on footballers who are actually better. We’re just not sure how much better you can get than the Premier League’s actual top scorer.
‘And with that money, I’d be looking at Borussia Dortmund’s Erling Haaland for starters, with Jack Grealish brought in to play on his left and Barcelona’s Ansu Fati to his right.’
Anyone spot the minor problem with this plan? Haaland will have his pick of European football clubs and you think he will choose a team who has dropped out of the Champions League and reacted by selling their three best attacking players? You think this would sound like an excellent idea to a man who could instead join Manchester City or Real Madrid? It’s utterly bonkers.
Haaland might well fancy the idea of joining Liverpool – to play alongside Champions League winners Sadio Mane and Salah – but would he join a club on a downward trajectory to play alongside Grealish and Fati (assuming they would both join, which is a massive f***-off assumption)? Would he balls.
‘If Liverpool are serious about competing for the title in two of the next three seasons – even two in five – they have to be moving for Haaland, because I guarantee Manchester City, Manchester United and maybe Chelsea will be as well.’
Liverpool are currently in eighth place and seven points off a Champions League place. They can ‘move for Haaland’ all they want but we can guarantee that he will not sign for them unless they can secure Champions League football for next season. It’s a fantasy list.
‘I know people will say, ‘That’s just a fantasy list. Stan’, but the last two times Liverpool have thought and spent big – bringing in Alisson and Virgil van Dijk – they have reaped the rewards.’
Excellent work to counter claims of making a ‘fantasy list’ with two players who were not fantasy signings. Alisson and Van Dijk signed from Roma and Southampton; Liverpool were a step up and they had no better options. Haaland will undoubtedly have better options. Fati will absolutely have better options, including staying at Barcelona. Grealish may even have better options.
Pesky fact: The best attacking players available to a Liverpool side potentially out of the Champions League are the ones already at Liverpool.
Boing boing
Why move on from Collymore when there are so many levels of nonsense to uncover? Elsewhere in his column, he says that Steven Gerrard now has to manage ‘West Brom, Crystal Palace, or even Newcastle next because there’s no way he will go from the Ibrox hotseat to the one at Anfield without adding to his experiences somewhere more competitive than Scotland’.
Right. So Gerrard should leave his job with Rangers – where he has won their first title in ten years – to manage a West Brom side likely to be in the Championship? And that would better prepare him for the job at Liverpool? Seems entirely logical.
Collymore then argues that ‘Frank Lampard got Chelsea via Derby’ as if that was somehow an argument for managing in the Championship first. It seems that finishing sixth with Derby in the Championship is somehow a greater achievement than finishing actual first in the Scottish Premiership. After all, Collymore ‘guaranteed’ that Lampard would challenge for the title if Roman Abramovich resisted sacking him.
‘Current Rams boss Wayne Rooney will undoubtedly feel he’ll have a shot at Manchester United down the line while John Terry is keeping his head down as assistant coach at Aston Villa.’
And in the mind of Collymore, they are all ahead of actual trophy-winning manager Steven Gerrard, who takes his title winners into the last 16 of the Europa League this week.
And all of this is of course unrelated to Collymore being a converted Celtic fan.
England for the English
And to complete the Collymore treble, he writes that ‘the bottom six teams are all managed by English managers’ and ‘that’s why it’s vital for Aston Villa to finish in the top half of the table so Dean Smith can give credibility to his peers in the eyes of those looking to hire this summer’.
Where to start with this? So one English manager needs to finish in the top half so that other Premier League clubs will appoint other English managers? To replace the English managers they sack because they have gone down? Mediawatch has a headache now.
Oh and Stan, what happens if Smith finishing in the top half somehow means that Liverpool appoint Gerrard even before he has proved himself worthy at West Brom? Will your head actually explode?
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