Return of the King

Long live King Kenny! He's coming home to as joyous a reception and will take up a role with the academy and as a global Ambassador on the commercial side, similar to Bobby Charlton at Utd. Good news all round.Paul Anderson is off to Forest for £250000 according to sky sports. Leto is heading off to Greece to join Panathinaikos, rather than Olympiakos. He never really built on his early promise in my so called life and requiem for a dream.

Glen Johnson has signed a 4 year deal. The kids keep coming. The latest signed include Jesus Suso Fernandez. No doubt he'll be the second coming. Another young spaniard en route to L4 is Luis Alberto of Seville, if this is to be believed. If you can read Danish you might learn that we're signing 16 year old Nicolaj Køhlert of Esbjerg. N'Gog has be joined at Anfield by his erstwhile PSG team-mate, defenderChris Mavinga. He also suggests that Alonso will be staying unless he hands in a transfer request or Madrid make us an offer too good to refuse. Messi wants Masch but Rafa says you're not getting him.

I'm not even going to bother giving the Ribery story a mention, just a bookie trying to generate business. If you're expecting discussion about Owen I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. I was completely nonplussed by his move to Utd. The interesting aspect was how quickly the press went from branding him a has been and a laughing stock with his brochure, to it being a master stroke by Slur Alex. Pretty funny. Fergie must have been won over by the glossy paper.

Here's a new book from an Irish author who lives in Liverpool and works for the club. I heard him interviewed on Today FM and I was impressed with his research. Did you know that our first ever manager John McKenna, was Irish? Could be a good christmas present for a fellow Red in Ireland.

That's all for now. If we make a big signing I'll post a comment but otherwise, I'll be back in August with a season preview ahead of the Spurs match. Enjoy the sunshine, or rain if you're in Ireland.

Finally, some news to report.

Just like the renegade master, I'm back once again.

Andrea Dossena is thrilled to be signing for us. He declares that we're a great team and who am I to argue. I think that he'll do well this year. Capello rates him highly apparently. Riise is thrilled to be signing for Roma. While he should be remembered for this and this and this, he'll probably be remembered for this.

While one player has arrived, it looks like another is rapidly nearing the exit door. Xabi will be taking his raking passes and Mark Walburg looks to Turin by the looks and sounds of it. It seems more and more likely that we'll be exchanging basque pintxos for birmingham curry in the near future. I'll be sad to see Xabi leave and will moments like this and this. I think that Barry is a bit overpriced at over £15m, but that's the english player tax striking again. He does seem to link up well with Gerrard as we've seen for England. I'm hoping that what we lose in Xabi's long range passing, we'll gain in increased physicality, pace, set pieces and goal threat from Barry. I would expect that he'll play a little higher up the pitch than Xabi did, somewhere between Javier and Stevie, rather than sitting beside Javier. Charles Itandje looks to be on his way out with 26 year old Brazilian keeper Cavalieri replacing him.

Some media reports have linked us with a big purchase like Quaresma, Ribery, Silva and Villa. It sounds like they will all be on the move this summer, with the possible exception of Ribery. To be honest, I can't see Rafa having the cash to compete for a signature of this magnitude. Any of them would be superb and would improve our attacking play enormously. Ballague suggests that we haven't made contact with Valencia for Villa and that he'll probably end up at Real, Chelsea or FCB. He goes onto say that Rafa isn't interested in a striker while we still have Crouch, but for how long will that remain the case? Reports today suggest that Crouch will be on his way to Portsmouth on Monday for £10-11m. Given that he's only got a year left on his contract, I think that it's a good price for him. I'll miss him but he wants to play every week and he's not going to get that here with El Nino ahead of him. Thanks for the memories rampaging super spider. How about Crespo on a free to replace him? Ballague also has a great interview with El Nino which you can read here. Check out this footage of the artist as a young Nino.



This is Anfield have a great article on Nemeth. It'd be great to see him get a chance from the bench this season. He looks quality.

Speaking of the youngsters, it seems that we've signed a few more. Vincent Weijl is a 17 year old dutch striker who's arrived from AZ Alkmaar and Nikola Saric, 17 from Denmark, was signed ahead of Barcelona and Spurs apparently. A german kid called Buchtmann has signed from dortmund. He plays left back or left midfield according to setanta.

Rafa's also been adding to the backroom staff. Mauricio Pellegrino will be joining us from valencia where he was doing some coaching. He played a minor role for us in 05 on the road to Istanbul. While his performances were mediocre at best, it did enable Sami to get a rest and make sure that he was able to perform heroics alongside JC. This appointment coupled with the addition of Sammy Lee recently should help to fill the Pako sized hole that we had this year.

Hicks says that a shared stadium isn't back on the table. I am inclined to believe him in this regard even though he has a history of half truths and broken promises since he stepped through the Shankly gates.

Updates will continue to be sparse but if there are major moves, i.e. Barry, then I might put a post together. Otherwise it's the skeleton crew until the friendlies get underway.