Liverpool Has A New Poblem As Highly-Paid Players Will Not Leave

A fresh problem is threatening to hit Liverpool as several out-of-favour players are refusing to walk away from highly paid contracts.

Manager Roy Hodgson and director of football strategy Damien Comolli want to reshape the club's 25-man Premier League squad but are being held up because certain players will not go unless their Anfield salaries are matched elsewhere.

Hodgson will not name the players he wants to leave, saying only that he hoped out-of-favour players put ambition before money. Now this situation has come to light, it could explain Hodgson's bizarre comments about Joe Cole last week.

Hodgson said: "It's the usual question - money versus playing. How much does playing mean to you and how much does money mean to you?

"Some players not in the team will find other clubs want them, but the same sum of money [in wages] is not there. So the player has to ask if they are so uninterested in playing, will they sit for three years despite the fact that the club has made it perfectly clear they don't want them and there's no game for them.

"If they want that for three years, they've virtually got to kiss [their career] goodbye. If you spend three years on your backside, not kicking a ball apart from the odd reserve game, you'll find you're not going to be a player at all."

Hodgson appears to be coping well with the pressure he has been under since virtually day one, saying that even long-serving Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has been under pressure in recent times.

"If there is speculation about me, I'm in good company," he said. "It's easier to name the people who aren't in that position than those who are.

"I remember going to Arsenal with Fulham a couple of years ago and after we held them 0-0 the booing [from Arsenal fans] towards their team was quite incredible.

"Arsene was visibly upset and saddened by that reaction, and at that time people were suggesting he'd had a good run and it was time to bring in the man with the magic wand.

"That's what we have to live with, we have to live with the situation. People are quite happy to see changes on a very regular basis, and a fan will have no qualms about seeing three managers a year at his club, waiting for a man with a magic wand that can turn all of the ills that everyone has seen into something different.

"Those of us who work in the game and have been working in the game a long time know that magic wands don't exist. You work with the set of players you find at your club and before you can really say this is a team I put together, this is a club I have fashioned, you're going to need quite a long time before that day will come around.

"In the meantime, results give you that time or they might not and you might be in and out before you've had a chance to do that."