Monday, April 18, 2011

Liverpool Plan Mass Clearout: Eight To Leave To Create £40m Transfer Fund Injection

Liverpool boss Kenny Dalglish is expected to be offered the manager’s position at Anfield on a permanent basis in the coming weeks and the Scot is determined to conduct a significant clear out at the end of the season. He then hopes to use funds raised by the sales, along with a transfer budget handed to him by the club’s owners in order to dramatically improve his current squad.

American owners Fenway Sports Group did not have to pump a great deal of cash into the big money purchases of Luis Suarez and Andy Carroll as those moves were in the main covered by the sales of Fernando Torres to Chelsea and Ryan Babel to Bundesliga side Hoffenheim, they are therefore amenable to providing funds to the Anfield boss.

Dalglish and director of football Damien Comolli have identified players who they deem as either ‘surplus to requirements’ or are simply not good enough to represent a team they are looking to make genuine top four chasers for next term and perhaps unsurprisingly a number of those players were brought in during the brief Roy Hodgson regime.

Milan Jovanovic will be offered for sale and the likes of Atletico Madrid and Hamburg are said to be interested in the powerful Serbian attacker. Midfielder Christian Poulsen is set for the axe and Liverpool will hope to recoup the £4.5m they paid for the Juventus man last summer and La Liga side Valencia are thought to be ready to make just such an offer. Paul Konchesky is thought to have no future at the club and could well find himself on his way to Nottingham Forest on a permanent basis although his former club Fulham are also said to be keen on the left back.

Philipp Degen is likely to make his loan move to Stuttgart a permanent one especially if they manage to pull away from the relegation zone and avoid the ignominy of a drop to the second tier of German football and Emiliano Insua is unlikely to be offered a new contract when his current deal runs out in the summer.

Liverpool are also likely to sell Italian midfielder Alberto Aquilani who is currently enjoying a loan spell at Juventus but is also a target of Man City boss Roberto Mancini. Argentine Maxi may also be sacrificed after an unconvincing spell at the club and there is some talk of a possible return to Spain where he enjoyed eight seasons with Atletico Madrid and Espanyol.

The jury appears to still be out on Joe Cole and with the former England regular unable to win a place in the starting eleven and therefore unable to prove his worth, it may be that any reasonable offer would be considered and in January the 29 year old attacking midfielder was linked with a move to West Ham and Newcastle United.

Of these eight saleable assets only Alberto Aquilani cost a significant fee and as such any sales would represent a positive return on original investments, making the potential for a clear out all the more palatable.

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