The OFFICIAL Liverpool FC thread - we go again

[supersub]

Haven't been linked to any new names for at least 12 hours....what's wrong!!  hope alonso stays, don't like seeing key squad members sold! Wonder how much more cash Rafa has to spend, I reckon he has the budget for one more £10m+ signing and any of the rest would have to be on the cheap!

[full back]

Torres believes the Reds need "small players with quality" to finally wrest the Premier League title from Manchester United – and he has recommended David Silva, Juan Mata and David Villa as players who fit that bill.

"English football is very difficult because it's very physical and played at a high tempo," Torres said. "We have a fantastic team to play against the big teams and we are competitive.

"But maybe against those teams lower down we are not good enough. We have to improve that and I think we can.

She is spot on there

[Chrisowc]

Isn't she lovely.

[Gabriel_Hurl]

They'd love to have "her" over at OT no doubt



Meanwhile

Xabi Alonso has reportedly told his agent: Finalise my transfer to Real Madrid by July 19 or I will stay at Liverpool.

In a highly-detailed account of the emerging saga, The Daily Mail reports that 'The Liverpool midfielder, who has been on international duty with Spain at the Confederations Cup in South Africa, met his representative Inaki Ibanez immediately after flying back to Madrid yesterday. Alonso went straight to lunch with Ibanez at Madrid's Hotel Melia Barajas after getting off a 10-hour flight from Johannesburg.'

It was at this meeting that Alonso is said to have set a deadline - July 19 is the date on which he is scheduled to return to Anfield for pre-season training - for his proposed move to Real. He is quoted as saying to Spanish newspaper AS: "I don't know what will happen. The clubs now have to negotiate."

According to the Mail, 'Madrid are considering a £55million combined bid for Alonso, Javier Mascherano and Alvaro Arbeloa, but are prepared to negotiate players separately as Liverpool are unlikely to even contemplate losing both Alonso and Mascherano. In a bid to scare off suitors, Benitez has quoted a price-tag of £50m for Alonso, but sources in Spain say the actual valuation coming out of Merseyside is £35m.'

[supersarsfields]

They'd love to have "her" over at OT no doubt



Meanwhile

Xabi Alonso has reportedly told his agent: Finalise my transfer to Real Madrid by July 19 or I will stay at Liverpool.

In a highly-detailed account of the emerging saga, The Daily Mail reports that 'The Liverpool midfielder, who has been on international duty with Spain at the Confederations Cup in South Africa, met his representative Inaki Ibanez immediately after flying back to Madrid yesterday. Alonso went straight to lunch with Ibanez at Madrid's Hotel Melia Barajas after getting off a 10-hour flight from Johannesburg.'

It was at this meeting that Alonso is said to have set a deadline - July 19 is the date on which he is scheduled to return to Anfield for pre-season training - for his proposed move to Real. He is quoted as saying to Spanish newspaper AS: "I don't know what will happen. The clubs now have to negotiate."

According to the Mail, 'Madrid are considering a £55million combined bid for Alonso, Javier Mascherano and Alvaro Arbeloa, but are prepared to negotiate players separately as Liverpool are unlikely to even contemplate losing both Alonso and Mascherano. In a bid to scare off suitors, Benitez has quoted a price-tag of £50m for Alonso, but sources in Spain say the actual valuation coming out of Merseyside is £35m.'

£35 Million for Alonso would be some lift. Can't imagine that they would be willing to pay that for him. Great player who I would hate to see leave but if he does want to go (and you can't really blame him after the chopping and changing from Rafa) then getting £35M would definitely lessen the blow.

[full back]

'She' is starting to be a pain in the hole TBH

Its bad enough that she is banging in goals left right & centre, but she is trying to influence players to come to anfield as well as advising the managers on what type of quality players the scousers need. (and she is spot on)

[bingobus]

Some sites claiming that £3m was got for Leto which is a great bit of business if true. He couldn't play for Liverpool and I think the EPL was too fast paced for him.

[corn02]

Some sites claiming that £3m was got for Leto which is a great bit of business if true. He couldn't play for Liverpool and I think the EPL was too fast paced for him.

Yeah apparently £3 million. Echo had it last week and they're usually close enough. Super business. He was acting the maggot over there too.

[Norf Tyrone]

A watery rumour on the Chelsea forums of Joe Cole to Lpool.

[corn02]

A watery rumour on the Chelsea forums of Joe Cole to Lpool.

Always seems to peek up every window. Personally I would be delighted.

[longball]

A watery rumour on the Chelsea forums of Joe Cole to Lpool.

Always seems to peek up every window. Personally I would be delighted.

Heard couple of weeks ago that he wasnt fancied at chelsea as he is too 'one footed'.

[corn02]

Good interview with Craig Johnston – he gave up the game to look after his paralysed sister and he also invented predator boots, interesting fell.

Craig Johnston

What are you up to?
I've basically stopped everything I do including coaching kids and developing shoes and I'm exclusively a photographer. I've walked away from football and coaching. I had a photography exhibition in Orlando that went really well and was well received by the art crowd. I do a lot of photography for Sotheby's, the auction house. I specialise in sculpture and still life. And I recently photographed Tiger Woods for Tag Heuer. That was my first real paying job as a photographer. I've been doing it for years for free. I'm hooked on it now as a career.

Where did interest come from?
In Middlesbrough my first wage was £8. It was an amazing place – cobbled streets, misty mornings – and there was a camera shop on the way to Ayresome Park. In the window was a second-hand German camera called a Zenith EM and the moment I saw it I knew I wanted it. I had to save up £64 – so eight weeks' wages – to buy this camera. As I got more successful at soccer and earned more money I was able to buy more expensive photographic equipment and when I moved to Liverpool I actually started a photography business in Bold Street. And in my home at Anfield Park I had a darkroom with the old fashioned enlarger and the chemicals. I was making money playing football but almost every penny of it I spent on photography.

How did your passion fit with other footballers?
I think they found it an annoyance to start with because I always had a camera in their face, but then when they saw the quality of work they would say 'Oh can I bring my kids over to your house to take some family pictures'. I photographed Alan Hansen or Greame Souness and his kids. I also did Rushie and Mark Hughes together with Porsches. I had a lot of the players over to my house and I've still got all the pictures somewhere. One day I'll have to do a book. I'd photograph them in black and white and develop them and hand colour them.

Is it true you wrote the Anfield rap?
Absolutely. Conceived, wrote it, directed the video. I went to London and sought out a guy called Derek B who was Britain's first ever rapper. This is before rap had even come to Britain's shores and I was on it and I went to this guy and said: "Look it's a piss-take - let's write it". So I wrote the words and he got the Twist and Shout hook. There wasn't a single Englishman in the team at the time. They were all Scots, Irish, Welsh, a Dane, a Zimbabwean, an Australian... So the whole thing was about the dressing room craic. It was about McMahon and Aldridge and accents and how the other lads didn't talk like them.

"Ah eh mate, we're great me and you but the other lads don't talk like we do."
"No they don't like we do, do they though-la, we'll have to learn them to talk proper."

The whole thing was about accents and how there was only two who had the proper Scouse accent. Now and again I get a royalty from Virgin Records and it's always a cheque for like £1.27 or 89p. I never bank it because it's not worth it. I should frame them though.

You've now had several careers. You must have a lot of drive and entrepreneurial spirit.
I had a lot of drive and entrepreneurial spirit but when you're a pioneer you usually end up with arrows in your back so in older age I don't have the same drive and enthusiasm, I just do what I want to do. I think that is why I love photography because I'm responsible for the end product. It doesn't have to go through a whole process or a bureaucracy or a filter. You don't have to please anyone except yourself.

It tires you; you get a bit jaded and cynical with the whole thing. I've always liked to achieve and to me getting a great picture out is an achievement but there's no-one else to blame if I f**k up but then non-one can blame me if it fucks up. I've been lucky to have 3 or 4 different careers in things I wanted to do. Writing music wasn't a career – it was just a piss-take. I co-wrote the New Order song World in Motion on which John Barnes did the rap. Then I had a game show called The Main Event which was primetime over here which did extremely well. Then there was the Predator boot.

There was a really good documentary about that.
Well yeah people still say now "There was a really good documentary on you" like I had nothing to do with it. But I totally engineered that. And what was particularly pleasing about that was that I had the foresight to film the development of the shoe the whole way through and then present it the BBC as a fait accompli. It was Janet Street-Porter at the time and I went to her and said here's almost a finished story of how I have taken on the boot world because I think I have a better idea. But logging the process visually was hugely helpful.

And what's this about mini bars?
The minibar thing called The Butler is still going. I've spent a long time in hotel bedrooms in my career and as footballers we always used to get blamed for pinching stuff out of the minibar. Some of it was true but sometimes it wasn't. So I thought there's got to be a better way. Rather than reinvent the fridge I thought why don't we put some shelves in place with sensors that link to the phone. It's a simple idea so when I was living in Ireland I decided to make one and it went from there.

It was design and I've just got a design head. I love the way things are made. As a kid I didn't play with toys I used to pull them apart to see how they worked and then see if I could put them back together again. It was all about how it worked. If you're a designer and you like things that are 3D and are aesthetically pleasing, then you can get immense satisfaction out of good design.

For me it's the same with football. I get a real buzz out of a great performance from a team if it crosses that line and becomes art. There's a wonderful joy in watching someone like Gianfranco Zola beat a man by using ballerina-type moves. Again it's art.

I've always thought visually; I've always thought in 3D space. Hence the love of fine art photography which is what I'm doing now. I'm photographing lovely stuff, you know. How does all this come about? Because it just comes naturally. I was made to be a designer. People say, "How does a footballer end up being an inventor and patenting this and that and that?" And I say, I was an inventor and then I became a footballer.

But you almost didn't become a footballer at all. Didn't you have some problems with your leg?
It was worse than that. My mother actually signed the amputation order to have my leg removed because it was that bad. Osteomylitis is like polio – it rots the bone. You've got to have it off so that the infection doesn't spread. At the time there was a famous American surgeon who was touring Australia and by chance he intervened and said that there is a way of saving limbs. I was days away from losing my leg, it had all been signed off, but then this surgeon came to my rescue. Funnily enough I was there on the weekend at Newcastle hospital. It brought it all back. I was there for nearly eight months.

Do you think that made you more determined?
Absolutely. I lost 8 months to a year when I was five years old and should have been running around. Did you ever see me play football? I'd run around like a f**king lunatic and that is because I used to love doing that as a kid, not having been able to do that for so long when I was five. So I actually made a career out of running around and making a nuisance of myself. It's why I love surfing as well because the hospital is actually on the beach. So it was all of that looking out the window and seeing the surf. That's why I have such a love of surf. I could see all the kids running around and I was just like "let me out of here".

One last thing, didn't you have a big falling out with the FA recently?
Yeah, they fucked me over. Because of their delaying tactics, incompetence and gamesmanship I went bankrupt. It cost me £1.5 million and my marriage. At one stage, after countless pointless meetings with them, I lost it. I nearly punched one of them out. Instead I ran around the car park with a pair of women's knickers on my head shouting "You're a bunch of twats!" But listen, that's a whole other story so I'll have to tell you that another time.

[Lecale2]

No pardon for Michael Sheilds - yet.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/8126083.stm

[Archie Mitchell]

1124 BST:Barcelona are set to bid £17m for Liverpool midfielder Javier Mascherano after Barca's technical director received permission from Liverpool boss Rafael Benitez to make an offer.

Who will Liverpool have for midfield if Mascherano and Alonso are sold? Gerrard back to midfield and buy a striker to partner Torres?

[supersub]

I don't think Rafa will sell both of them. Alonso looks more likely however I hope neither go as they are both quality players! I one were to be sold I think he should definately bring in a replacement rather than work round it, as this is just making the squad weaker rather than developing it, like we have been!