The off-season for me is usually a period of blissful optimism.  Back in the Roy Evans era I would regularly check the gossip line headlines on teletext several times a day anxiously waiting for the “£10million superstar linked” rumour to turn into a new signing.  Last season it was message boards and transfer rumour blogs, but the feeling was the same.  That excitement that comes with new signings and the blind faith that this time it will be your season.

This year, however, it’s really hard to know what to think. 

Already we’ve signed three new first team players, two new coaching staff and added a handful of Europe’s finest young talent to our reserve and youth team setups.  Despite all this a number of unanswered questions are slowing grinding down my usual optimism.

Concurrent with the new signings has been the biggest morale sucker.  The Gareth Barry saga.  I genuinely don’t know now whether to admire MON’s steadfast refusal to budge from his £18million valuation (or £17million and Steve Finnan as it’s now meant to be) or be angered by his pig-headed valuations of not just Barry, but now Finnan too.  I guess it’s a mixture of both.

A bigger worry was confirmed on Thursday, when Rafa more or less admitted that we were skint, and in order to buy the one or two big name signings (It’s always one or two we’re missing isn’t it?) that we need he would have to sell first.   In my purest footballing dreams this is actually how it should be, managers wheeling and dealing with only a bit extra earned in prize money swelling there coffers.  Yet with the rest of the top four able to spend, spend, spend and even Villa supposedly having substantial backing available, as a Liverpool fan I’m left with a mix of fret n’ fury.  Just over a year ago we were assured of substantial Yankee Dollar.  Twelve months on and Snoogy Doogy has most definitely left the building.

Then there’s the new signings themselves.  Degen, Dossena and Cavalieri. All three come without any real national reputation and so for now have to be placed in the squad player (read Stop-Gap) signing pile under Rafa that includes the likes of Arbeloa, Bellamy, Benayoun, Kromkamp,  Pennant and Luis Garcia.

A major frustration is that when Rafa has been given the money to secure his first choices those players have become core to our first team and rarely let the side down.  Agger, Skrtel, Masch, Torres… successes so far everyone.  Given that Dossena has cost a Liverpool side watching the pennies a whopping £7 million perhaps we can expect a similar return, but unlike those four he lacks for International experience and at 26 years old is a couple of years than those players too.

There are one or two glimmers of hope however.  Rafa’s remarkable candour in press interviews for one.  Merrily confirming names such as David Villa and Robbie Keane were on his shopping list and confirming that there would be at least one new striker to replace the outgoing Crouch.  I’m taking it on faith, but surely a manager so passionately backed during our blackest hours last season by the Kop faithful would not be foolish enough to chase a Villa and deliver another Voronin?

Most intriguingly of all there’s the Fab four.  Insua, Plessis, Nemeth and Pacheco. Who?  The four stand-out young stars from last season’s title-winning reserve side.  Sure we’ve been here before – Besian Idrizaj, Le Tallec, Linfield… only this time there’s just that little extra buzz.  This time Rafa seems more willing to take a gamble.  It’s been a long time since we saw Carragher, Owen and Gerrard breakthrough.  With Torres and the Spanish lads still on leave post-Euro 2008 and Babel, Leiva and Masch heading off to Beijing in chase of Olympic Gold pre-season offers up a golden chance for new stars to be born and it all starts in just a few hours against Tranmere!

Karl Eisenhauer

I’m not enjoying this at all. Garry Barry has always seemed like a decent bloke, a hard-working and honest player. I’ve long had a soft spot for the Villa, through family and later friend-based connections. And they’ve usually been a club with whom we’ve had a good relationship – mutual appreciation of Steve Staunton, mutual dislike of Stan Collymore, that kind of thing. So to see all of that soured by the summer’s ugliest transfer saga is not pleasant in the slightest.

Not least because… well… do we actually need the guy? At that kind of money? If he’d genuinely been available for the £12m or so that we first came in with (and you have to bear in mind that despite his ethereal value to Villa as a talisman and club captain, he’s a 27-year-old with no European experience and a solitary year left on his contract), then yes – good signing. But £18m really is taking the piss. Sadly, the only realistic outcome of this situation is that we do eventually sign him for that fee. His position at Villa is just about untenable, and nobody else is showing signs of coming in for him. So we’ll spend five or six million quid too much on the guy, and be short of cash with which to strengthen areas of genuine need. I would much, much rather see us spend the roughly twenty-to-thirty million we’re likely to have left on David Silva and, at a pinch, Robbie Keane (if Crouchy does end up making the move, to Portsmouth or elsewhere) – and keep Xabi.

Meanwhile, relations with Martin O’Neill (a man who I’m sure many of us wouldn’t have minded seeing in our own dugout some years in the future) and one of the Premier League’s few genuinely likeable clubs appear to have been irrevocably damaged. Not to mention our own reputation – and for all that United and Chelsea fans might want to have a pop at the “whinging Scousers” on the F365 letters page and so on, we’re usually above this kind of thing. This is supposed to be the summer in which everyone unites to laugh at Ronaldo shafting the club that made him – we’re not supposed to be involved in something similar…

Now that all that messy Euro 2008 business is out of the way, and a whole host of new names (mostly Spanish, Russian and Dutch) have made their way onto the shortlists of managers with cash burning holes in their pockets the continent over, we thought it was about time to have a look at the various areas of the pitch in which Rafa and Liverpool might (or might not) be looking to strengthen over the truncated (because hey, nobody but Chelsea does business while there’s a cracking tournament to watch) summer break. Some of the players we’ve been linked with are clearly wild fantasy, others are the sort of name that always seem to pop up but never really seem like realistic targets – but others (not just a certain Villa captain) are clearly names that El Gaffer has in his sights, so just how will he be looking to fit these potential new signings in…?

In Goal
Despite the odd wobble here and there last season, you’d be hard pressed to find a Liverpool fan that would want rid of Pepe Reina any time soon. He’s arguably the most solid #1 we’ve had since Grobbelaar (three successive Golden Gloves awards tell their own story), and that’s no mean feat. Yes, he looks shaky when he loses confidence – but he’s still a class act, there’s probably only Cech or the ageing van der Sar and James above him in Premier League terms, and let’s face it – if we’d got to Moscow, would you have wanted anyone else between the sticks for a penalty shootout?

Where it gets complicated, though, is in that perennial problem – the backup keeper. We can’t all have our Carlo Cudicinis – genuinely world-class goalkeepers who are happy to sit on the bench until called upon. You want a great backup if your #1 gets injured or suspended – but anyone good enough to step in surely isn’t happy as the reserve. And you can’t rotate your keepers, either – you’ll only get the best performance out of one who’s in the team week in, week out. This is the reason why Kirkland left to seek his fortune (first at West Brom, now at Wigan, but don’t rule out a keeper-seeking club like Villa or Spurs having a look at him this summer), and it looks like the same will happen with Scottie Carson – if anyone wants him after his mid-late season wobbles. Personally, I still think he’s quality, and I’d be happy to have him competing with Pepe for the spot. But I don’t think he’ll want a year on the sidelines after two full seasons of Premier League football – and if Villa don’t decide to stump up the ten mill for him, then there are still other potential destinations. So with Charles Itandje on the verge of a move to Galatasaray, and David Martin already confirmed for a season-long loan at Blackpool, what are the options for a #2? Aside from Carson, the only real talk (although it’s quietened of late) has been of Bordeaux veteran Ulrich Rame coming in to replace his countryman. In other words, someone else who’ll sit on the bench all year and have the occasional average performance. Yay.

Back Four

For once, we’re actually looking alright on the centre-back front – assuming Agger manages to stay fit this year. After a shaky start, the scary-as-fuck Skrtel actually settled in pretty well, and depending on how long Carragher’s got left, we could be looking at an Agger/Skrtel partnership for years to come – and that’s potentially second only to Ferdinand/Vidic in terms of the Premier League. The only real need to bring in a CB would be if Hyypia left – but things have gone quiet on that front lately, and I think we’ll get another season out of him after this year’s renaissance of sorts.

As for the full-backs, we seem to have done all the strengthening we need, with Degen coming in on a free to compete with Arbeloa (and Steve Finnan, if Mr Reliable sticks around) for the right-back berth, and Andrea Dossena (possibly, I think, our most expensive ever defender?) arriving imminently to fill a Riise-shaped gap. Will be interesting to see how this affects Aurelio (if the guy can stay fit), as he’s shown glimpses of class in his time so far. But we certainly look to have decent cover in those positions now – even moreso if a certain transfer saga resolves itself…

Middle of the Park

It’s dragging on and on, and it’s doing no favours for the reputations of either club, their managers or the player himself, but it’s looking increasingly like a certainty – albeit an overpriced certainty – that Gareth Barry will be a Liverpool player next season. I do like him, he’s a quality player – and perhaps most importantly, he’s a bloody honest trier of a player, recent media outbursts notwithstanding – and he’ll also strengthen our position as this country’s best penalty-shootout competitors. But is it really worth spending more money for an English midfielder with no European experience than we’re apparently going to get from Juventus for a European Championship and Champions League-winning player in the same position? Frankly, I don’t care whether Barry or Alonso lines up alongside Gerrard and Mascherano next season – I’ll be happy with either of them.

Backup for that trio (whoever they turn out to be) looks fine, as well – Lucas is showing definite promise (and looks able to fill in in both the deeper and more attacking roles), while Plessis could well be the next Sissoko (only, hopefully, without the flightiness) and showed remarkable composure when taking on Mascher’s role a couple of times last season. Indeed, if it weren’t for the fact that Chelsea have just signed Deco, I’d say we might wind up with the strongest looking central midfield in the Prem next season…

On the Wing
This is the other area for which we’re clearly in the market, as if Rafa’s formation is going to succeed, he needs quality wide-men to backup El Nino. And the priority would seem to be for a right-footer. We’ve been repeatedly linked with David Bentley, and he’d be a decent signing – but can he make the step up to Champions League level? Surely at this stage, we want proven stars, not players untested at the level we need. And fifteen million quid is a lot to gamble on someone who could just turn out to be, as Football365 put it, “a 7/10 player”. Our name is still getting linked with players like Quaresma and Ribery, but they might be out of our reach financially – and besides, you’d assume that United would be first in the queue for that sort of player if the Winking One buggers off to Madrid. And I suppose it’s too much to hope that we might give up on Barry and just spend the money on David Silva instead?

Other mooted names include James Milner (!) and Albert Riera – the former is a decent enough player, but neither name really sparks excitement, and it’s interesting that the latter is a left-midfielder rather than right. Would there be an attempt to switch Babel to the right, if such a player came in – or is Rafa perhaps grooming him as a striker after all? So many questions, and until we start making some firm bids, not a huge number of answers.

Up Front
With Crouch (and possibly Voronin) on the way out, we could do with some strengthening here. Even if the formation only allows for one main striker, neither Babel or Kuyt (the latter also mooted recently as yet another potential makeweight in the Barry deal) look yet like a proper backup for Torres. Until recently we hadn’t really been linked with any specific names (apart from *shudder* Kenwyne Jones), what with all the focus on our midfield, but if we were to lose two strikers, you would expect at least one to come in. The most recent rumours, strangely, seem to be linking us with Robbie Keane – and that’s an interesting one. I can’t really see Spurs wanting to let him go (particularly if they lose Berbatov as well), nor could I see him being desperate to play second-fiddle to Torres in a lone striker setup. On the other hand, I’ve always quite rated him (even though his days of being the best possible signing on Champ Man 3 are long behind him), and he would be decent cover – he’s more of a similar player to Torres than Crouch is, so maybe that’s what Rafa has in mind. And he’s apparently a boyhood Red (although, y’know they all say that), which might persuade him to want to come and sit on the bench.

But don’t rule out Krisztian Nemeth, either. He may not be a second or even a third choice – but if there are three other decent strikers in the squad, his reserve team form last year suggests that he could well make the step up to be the fourth. Of course, we’ve been here with promising reserve strikers before (Craig Lindfield, anyone?), but you never know…

(Seb Patrick)