Transfer Deadline Day thoughts

A mate of mine sent me a text asking if I was going to blog on the hilarity that was deadline day. Having spent most of it in work and then playing football, i missed out on the Sky Sports overkill and as a result didn't really feel like I would be able to write anything. However due to the madness of King Kenny and the arrival of the former golden boy of Merseyside in West London my mate won't go disappointed.

Starting with Carroll, let's get one thing straight; it's not his fault that he has gone for such a ludicrous price. However unless Liverpool change their style of play rapidly, he will struggle initially. Liverpool don't play with any width whatsoever and whilst he is more than capable with his feet, Carroll's strength is in the air and with a lack of service from the flanks he could find life on the red side of Liverpool difficult early on. Carroll can't be judged on this season but his high transfer fee means that he will be. On a completely different point, when Dalglish and Carroll met, could anyone else in the room understand a word that was said? Seriously I would have been amazed.

The biggest losers out of this are the Geordies, who despite pocketing £35m will be losing a lot more than that if they don't stay up this season. Without giving themselves anytime to get a proper replacement, Ashley has once again left them in the muck. Not that he cares.

Another highlight on deadline day was as usual, Harry Redknapp. I heard him on five live around 8.45 saying that he had put in one bid and that was for Phil Neville. "I'm going to head back to the hotel and put my feet up with a cup of tea and a sandwich." Anyone who believed him must have been mental and sure enough come the end of the night Charlie Adam was nostril hair away from becoming a Spurs player. Redknapp can always be counted on for some sort of entertainment on deadline day.

Speaking of Adam he hasn't exactly come out of the window as a winner. You can’t blame him for wanting to join Liverpool or Spurs, not one bit. But for his old man to call Blackpool a "cheap skate club" was one of the more ridiculous things you'll hear all year. The same "cheap skate club" that redirected your sons’ career. Seriously!!!

There wasn't a lot of movement in the top three with the exception of the fantastic rumour that City wanted to LOAN ( that's right, LOAN) Sebastian Larson from Brum. Yeah, that will end the trophy drought.

And I'll finish with Torres who has finally got the move to the big club he had been dreaming of all these years. Hold on a minute, I thought he got that in 2007. Quick history lesson Fernando ; whilst what you said made me chuckle, the facts speak for themselves. Liverpool is a proper football club built on winning trophies (although there's been a distinct lack of them recently) whilst Chelsea is a club built on a Russian Oligarchs cash and a few titles. That said though, signing for Chelsea does give him a better chance of winning trophies.

Liverpool should have got rid in the summer. He hasn't looked interested all season long, with the exception of ironically enough the Chelsea game when he scored two. Perhaps he was trying to prove a point to Abramovich. I asked a friend of mine who is a season ticket holder at Anfield what he thought and after using the 'C' word to describe his former hero, he said that there is no loyalty in football anymore. Well no there isn't. But the reality is that we shouldn't be surprised one bit by anything. In my first blog in July I talked about U.S basketball star Lebron James and how he shamelessly defecated on the entire Cleveland fan base. In the same blog I talked about how Tevez had done something very similar (in my eyes anyway) to United fans. Since I wrote this, Rooney, Tevez (AGAIN!!!) and now Torres have all either left or threatened to leave their respective clubs for various reasons, with fans of these clubs asking for loyalty. In reality we shouldn't expect anything because players are just like me and you; if someone offers them more money their head will turn, no matter how much they are currently on. I'm not saying its right, but it's a fact.

At the end of the day the Scousers have got good money for Torres, I'm just not sure they have spent it all that wisely.

What If Gerrard and Torres left?

It’s no secret that Liverpool is in a huge amount of debt and this has obviously meant that star players have been linked with moves away. New boss Roy Hodgson has said publically that he has no intention of selling Torres or Gerrard. But what if he did? Being realistic here, Gerrard would command around £30m and Torres £50m. £80m for two players, not a bad bit of business. But why sell them and where do you spend the money?



As I write this Gerrard has given his biggest hint yet that he is going to stay on but for me the time has come for him to move away. He will go down as a legend at Anfield and rightly so, but this past season he mailed in performances and looked disinterested. This may have been down to his disillusionment with Benitez for sure, but a lack of Champions League football and no realistic chance of winning the title this season mean that Gerrard could go his entire career without a league winners medal. A move to Madrid, which has been touted around, would make most sense given the calibre of the new boss there. As for Torres if Liverpool get offered £50m for a guy who has serious injury problems then they should grab it. Torres is world class, there is no doubt about it, but he is no good to Liverpool on the bench. The problem is that Hodgson would realistically only get £40m of the Gerrard and Torres money to spend.

The signing of one of English football’s most creative players in Joe Cole is certainly a step in the right direction for Liverpool. It is certainly not like me to praise those on the red side of Stanley Park, but I have a feeling they may have got one of the deals of the summer here. Granted he is coming off the back of a long term injury, but he is only in his late twenties and has a whole lot to offer any team. Where Liverpool struggled in part last season was a creative outlet to create scoring opportunities for Torres and dare I say it Ngog. Cole should be the man to unlock the door.

So what to do with £40m?

They are no longer in position to sign the best players like they were 30 years ago when Keegan moved on and was replaced by Dalglish, or 20 years ago when Rush was sold and replaced by Aldridge. So they have to buy smart in order to upgrade their squad.

Defensively only Chelsea and United conceded less goals than Liverpool last year but a lot of that can be put down to the form of Reina. Looking at their squad there isn’t a standout player for me in that defence. Carragher was destroyed by Jozy Altidore in the World Cup and will add another year to his already slowing carcass this season, whilst they haven’t had a good enough left back in a long time. Seeing the form of Stephen Warnock at Villa last season must have had a few people wondering why he had been let go so early in his Anfield career. I would look at Hangeland from Fulham who would be available for around £10m to sure up the centre of the defence. At left back they could do worse than to take a punt on the Mexican left back Salcido who had a very impressive World Cup. The PSV defender would cost at a guess around £5m.

The midfield looks surprisingly healthy even if you discount Gerrard from the mix. The most successful teams in the World Cup showed that two holding midfielders can be used to free up other attacking options. With Mascherano and Aqulani Liverpool have that already and this would enable Joe Cole to have free reign behind the striker. And I know he is very, very average at best but Lucas can serve as a back up to these two.

If you go with Cole supporting a striker that leaves two spots out wide and one up front. Ryan Babel has proven that he has got the ability to so I would give him one last chance and look to Alexis Sanchez from Udinese on the wing and Roman Pavlyuchenko up front. Sanchez had a fantastic World Cup and showed that he had the pace to threaten any team on the break, whilst Pavlyuchenko has shown that he is a natural goal scorer who will take chances when given them. These two could both be acquired for £25m.



So there you have it. A line up that would look something like this:

GK: Reina
RB: Johnson
CB: Hangeland
CB: Agger
LB: Salcido
DM: Mascherano
DM: Aquilani
LW: Babel
AM: Cole
RW: Sanchez
CF: Pavlyuchenko

Subs: Kuyt, Lucas, Maxi, Carragher, Ngog, Jovanovic, Diego(GK)

You may look at the team above and think that this is not a side that is going to win the title and you’d be right, but for Liverpool this season a top four spot is the aim. If Hodgson does happen to agree with me then this team can achieve that, I just hope he isn’t reading.

Fixing Fantasy Football

One day. That’s all it took; just one day. Just 24 hours after Andreas Iniesta had powered home his late winner for the Spanish in Soccer city, I received my invite to join the 7th annual ‘League of Keith’s’ Fantasy Football League. Normally the mention of the start of a new Fantasy Football League would fill me with a rush of boyhood giddiness similar to the likes felt when school had finished up for the summer or when my old man used to take me to games at OT. So why do I seem disinterested this time around?

I started playing Fantasy Football when I was eleven years old. Inspired by watching Baddiel and Skinner late on a Friday night, a group of us got together to do our very own fantasy league six weeks or so from the end of the 1992/93 season. We held an auction in my bedroom where the six of us went through our shortlists and bid on names such as Lars Bohinen, Colin Hendry and my own personal favorite, Darren Peacock, who I signed for a cool £37 million. Unfortunately our first attempt was short lived. After a day of watching the scores update on Ceefax we somehow made a huge mess of the scoring system and the league was abandoned one week in. A few months later with the 1993/94 season on the horizon, six or seven of us congregated at my friend Paddy’s house for the first real auction. This lasted a good couple of hours and by the end of the day we all had a squad of 22 players to choose from.

My main problem with Fantasy Football at the moment is that in a sense it is too easy (although I have never won one myself). By this I mean that everyone theoretically can have the same team.

You’re given a budget of £100m, a list of every player in the league and you go and pick your team. In a league of 20 people it’s pretty much guaranteed that fifteen of the managers would have Lampard, Torres or Rooney in their ranks. It usually takes people three of four weeks to get into the swing of things and if there team is struggling they give up and don’t bother with it for the rest of the year.

I’ve been playing the NFL version of fantasy league and have found this to be a much more fulfilling experience. The good thing about the American system is that you have a draft at the start of the season that determines which team each individual player lands on. Once the draft is complete you are then free to trade players between teams with the approval of the other league members. The system has proved hugely successful over the years, to the point where magazines are produced previewing the upcoming fantasy season and companies such as ESPN have their very own fantasy league section, with writers devoted to writing about nothing but fantasy sports.

In order to make Fantasy Football exciting again, I believe we should look to rip off the American way with five simple steps.

1. The Auction

Auctions are great because everyone’s football knowledge was put to the test. A budget of £50 million should be more than enough to assemble a squad of 18 players. I’m no tech geek but I’m sure that someone out there would be able to put this together online. Features such as last season’s stats would prove really useful for managers to review and help them make signings. As well as a chat board where you can give out stick to as many other managers as you want. A list of my own personal auction highlights can be seen below.

• My purchase of Robert Lee for £1.5m (brilliant deal)
• My signing of Kevin Gallen for £2m (not so brilliant)
• My Swapping of Eric Cantona for John Salako ten minutes after the auction had finished (god damn disastrous)
• Paddy signing Martin Keown for £6m and signing Jason Euell for a similar fee on the back of his “he’s the next Pele” claim
• Adam Cooper bringing up Kevin Richardson as his first player to bid on...there were no other offers.




2. Post Auction Transfer budget

This does exist to an extent at the moment in the majority of online Fantasy Leagues. On the Premier League’s official game site what you don’t spend when selecting your squad initially, you get to keep for yourself.

What I am proposing is a £15m post auction transfer kitty that every manager gets given as soon as the auction comes to an end. With this money the manager can bid for any opposing manager’s players, but only sign one player a month in order to limit the amount of players movement around the league. So if I wanted to sign Rooney from another manager I could in theory bid £15m for him. However, with a squad size limitation I would have to make room for him. How do I do that? I here you ask.

3. The Free Agent List

Similar to the NFL waiver wire, the free agent list would serve as just that; a list of players that weren’t picked up at the auction. In order to sign Rooney, I would have to release one of my players and they would join the free agent list. Anyone could then pick up my discarded player from the list and add them to their squad. As many free agents can be picked up by any one manager at a time, as long as they don’t break the eighteen-player squad limit. This of course can lead to great free agent signings like in 1993 when Kieran called Paddy’s house on a Sunday night at 10.30 to ask if anyone had Barry Venison in there squad. Surprisingly he didn’t get a positive answer.

4. Turning the league into one on one matches.

One of the best things about NFL fantasy league is that you square off against each other every week. One week you can face your mate at work, the next you can face off against your mate from home. This is great as it makes the league more competitive and keeps people interested from day one. Three points would be awarded for a win, one for a draw and nothing for a defeat. So even if you lose the first three games of the season, you don’t lose interest by the end of August because there is still so much more time left to make up the difference.

5. Simple Point Scoring

I can’t stand things like double points for captain and ‘Dream Team’ star man gets extra points. It’s a lot of extra fuss that isn’t needed. Also getting points for just playing is ridiculous. I would have the rules be as simple as this.

Goal Scored
Striker – 3 Points
Midfielder – 4 Points
Defender – 5 Points
Goalkeeper – 7 Points

Goal Keepers and Defenders
Clean Sheet 2 Points
Goal Conceded - - 1

Assists – 2 Points

Yellow cards - - 2
Red Card – - 5

This system makes the game a lot easier to follow.

So there you have it. Fantasy Football fixed in five simple points. Of course there is a 2% chance of anyone picking up on this idea but still, feedback is always welcome. Let’s start a fantasy revolution.