Just Liverpool News

The Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez has been talking about his transfer business, and admits he has bought a lot of players cheaply that just haven’t worked out, and he says Liverpool could only ever afford one or two big name signings a year.

“When we have spent big, normally it’s been very good business,” he said. “Torres, Mascherano, Reina, Alonso.

“Robbie Keane is a good player but we had to sell him because he was not playing at the level we knew he could play. Ryan Babel was signed for the future and we are waiting for his improvement. He has to be more consistent. With the fringe players we needed to take a gamble on Bosmans and one-, two-million pound players. Some of these have not been good enough. It is a risk you have to accept when there is not too much money about.”

But he thinks that he got a good deal when he bought Alberto Aquilani, and is sure he would have cost a lot more if he had been fully fit.

“We can only buy one or two big, £20 million players a year,” Benítez continued. “If we want to have money available then we have to sell some players. We have to sell expensive and buy as cheaply as possible.

“Aquilani fit would be £20m to £30m. We checked with doctors and they said he would be out one, maybe two months. We have lost some time but I signed the player for five years, not five weeks.”

Some might say that the big problem with that attitude, is that Liverpool have lost a lot of points because they didn’t have an adequate replacement for Alonso from the beginning of the season. Aquilani may be the right man for the job, but his unavailability has been very costly.