6 Oct 2013

'He's free to leave': BR to make Jan bid for 'great' €18m attacker. Next signing...?

Liverpool are reportedly considering a bid for Anzhi Makhachkala star Lacina Traore, and according to his Agent, there is strong possibility that the striker will leave Russia during the January transfer window.

Multiple sources this week claim that:

* Anzhi have told the 6'8 striker that he can leave.

* Brendan Rodgers is keen to bring him to Anfield

In November 2012, Traore's Agent Dimitry Seluk confirmed that Liverpool 'were on the list' of clubs who'd 'made contact about the possibility of a deal, and when asked recently about the striker's future, he told reporters:

"If a good offer arrives that suits us then Lacina is free to leave in January. The demand for him is huge in Russia and especially in Europe"

In April, Traore described Liverpool as 'a good team', and revealed his love of the Premier League. He told Sky Sports:

"England is a great place to play, I am no different to any other player. It is a dream but I am happy here, although you never know."

Soon after, last night, Seluk - who also looks after Manchester City midfielder Yaya Toure - told Russian newspaper Izvestia:

"I support the gradual development of players, and one day soon, Lacina will play in the Premier League"

In December, Manchester United legend Andrei Kanchelskis urged the 22-year old striker to sign for Liverpool. He told Isvestia

"Traore has all the attributes, height, technique, speed, in order to start playing in England. For Liverpool, he would be a great buy, especially given the current state of affairs in the team. If he receives offers from Premier League teams and especially from Liverpool, he has to go".

To be honest, I'm not convinced.

* The idea of having a 6'8 striker up front is not appealing, principally because it opens up the possibility of route-one football, which is seemingly the opposite of what Brendan Rodgers wants.

* Traore - who cost Anzhi €18m in 2012 - may be good on the ground, but the presence of such a tall striker on the field could have a psychological impact on team-play at times, i.e. with a massive guy up front who will win everything in the air, players will probably play more high balls as a result.

* The club has already gone the huge striker route with Peter Crouch, and although he did a good job for the club, he couldn't scale Sturridge/Torres-style goalscoring heights.

* Traore's goal record is creditable (14 goals in 28 apps for Anzhi), but this is the Russian league, which is not the greatest standard.

Having said that, Traore would give the club a completely different option up-front, which could be a positive thing, but would he be happy playing second fiddle to Sturridge, and possibly Suarez (if he stays)?



Jaimie Kanwar


51 comments:

  1. not a chance of liverpool signing this player,god knows who starts these rumours.

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  2. lose borini and have this guy as an option on the bench isnt a bad idea...if suarez scores like hes doing im expecting a big bid by real in jan so we need to start looking at a few strikers im not saying hes as good as suarez as hes not but hes a start

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  3. Traore is not the kind of player Rodgers is after.


    If anything we should go back for Diego Costa. If we qualify for the CL then there should be no problem with him wanting to join us.

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  4. I dont see it happening, unless he is Suarez replacement, someone to feed Sturridge, and knock the odd goal in himself.
    Maybe after LFC won the Ladies league, we are gonna start a Basketball team.

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  5. 18M for a sub?
    I think not.

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  6. It's Anzhi, it's money. Maybe we will put a 12m and he will go to Spurs or Chelsea.

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  7. I read reports that a 7.5m bid will be made in Jan and I wouldn't mind having him as an option from the bench for that price because most of our bench players cost around 8m.

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  8. In a word. BULLSHIT. When will these feature writers get a life instead of living in this make believe world they live in.

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  9. Precisely Peter. These feature writers just keep turning out fabricated bullshit by the hour. They need to get a life.

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  10. Albert Nana Hagan7:45 pm, October 06, 2013

    At 6'8 he's certainly a physical presence but I don't think his goalscoring merits a bid. If br wants a physical presence it has to be in the middle. Some one like matuildi or wanyama. But he's the boss and if he wants a big physical striker, then it has to be that Pele guy in the Dutch league. He has the same presence and scores more than this guy. And players from the dutch league usually come good in England. I also think the dutch league is marginally better than the Russian league. So if he's tearing up the dutch league he's certainly worth a bid. Oh not forgetting he's called Pele. The last time a guy called "Pele" scored q lot of goals somewhere we all know what happened.

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  11. can we instead start grooming hendo and coady to be the replacements for gerrard and lucas instead ???? time is passing rather swiftly

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  12. No way traore coming to us. its true we need another striker but this guy isn't it. id rather see us shell 12m out on keisuke Honda. the guy would be a great replacement for suarez when suarez moves on and think of all the money LFC would get in the Asian markets.

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  13. Kanchelskis comments also came at a time when Sturridge wasn't at the club and we had one fit striker.

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  14. big useless streak of pi"s but would be handy to have if a blub goes in one of the floodlights

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  15. The blog is about Lacina Traore though, not Sakho. I think you're replying to a different article.. :-p

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  16. well depends on the price really
    liverpools main are of concern should be the gk
    mignolet needs competition , from what i have seen of him he is not good enough
    always lets the easy chances in
    he just stood there for dwight gayles goal and he let shelvy score as well


    liverpool should sign thibault courtois next summer

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  17. JK even though we lack a top midfield like arsernals they are envy of our strikers
    ozil is better then coutinho by a long way but liverpool compensate with suarez againts girou
    same with wilshere better then allen but sturridge is much better then walcott
    then they are pretty even eg
    gerrard - arteta,lucas -flamini , henderson-ramsey , sterling-ox , arsernal just have a bit odf extra depth with carzola there

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  18. liverpool should get an italian supercoach working with lfc sometimes like lippi or capello , that way they can perfect the 352 formation
    my best team would be : mignolet,toure,agger/skrtel,sakho,,johnson ,gerrard , henderson ,coutinho , SAS
    bench : jones ,agger/skrtel,kelly , allen ,lucas,sterling and moses


    aspas,alberto,iloris , and cissoko all seem like waste
    out of all the players aspas needs to step up the most signings ,22m altogether could have been better spent

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  19. ähhm, alberto played pretty well against palace, ilori will take time to adapt to the PL + at the moment we have enough CB, in fact hes one for the future. and cissoko hasn´t really played for us, why do you write them all of? dont get it ...

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  20. mignolet is not good enough? go home youre drunk...

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  21. haha but ill give sakho a chance imo hes doin ok

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  22. are u postin from ashworth or maybe rampton time 4 the meds I think !!

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  23. I would much rather see us get a normal size, fast, tricky sniper kind of striker with better scoring history than another 'tree' in the middle. I agree with you JK we might end up losing the multi-person flow we are trying to create. Please, there are loads of other strikers out there that fit the bill.....

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  24. You must be out of your damn mind about Mignolet. What planet are you watching games from?

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  25. Its a big mistake writing off Cissoko already. I think he will be just fine once he is healthy again. Don't get your comment DerBaum Mann.....Aspas, yes, so far is a waste....Ilori too new to tell and nothing yet expected. Cissoko and Alberto haven't had any time yet to speak of...........

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  26. I would humbly say that I don't think Tra0re will be good enough for LFC. Please don't try to waste your money on this guy. I don't like him.

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  27. Except that Atletico Madrid also have Champions League football and he signed a new contract with them in the summer so would cost a bomb

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  28. Also, you're missing a left wing back, your "best team" only fields 10 men, you are confident. My best team would have 11 men starting... just my opinion though

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  29. No chance. Had BR been interested, probably he would have a RED by now. I don't think he is that good for 18mn & suit our style. Stoke, West Ham, WBA or Norwich, may be even MU, but not LFC.



    If we can dish out 15m+ for another striker, my first choice 'll be Balotelli, then Muriel. I am sure, someday one Manager 'll be able to manage Balotelli, & can make a George Wiah out of him, he is that good.

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  30. i would rather have a striker like bojan or damiao who fit into our system like rihannas bra*....
    either of the above along with javier pastore would be a grt window for us as our defence is already buckled up...

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  31. Jamie..let me be honest with you. I was one of your sternest critic. I found your articles negative always and you as a person arrogant. But for past 6 months, yours is the first article i read from newsnow. All your points make sense and has always been a good discussion. Keep up your great work

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  32. I can't believe people still utter the phrase "Suarez replacement" after the last two matches...

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  33. Pelle? I'm not one to write off players from smaller leagues based on the "look at what happened with..." argument but trust me, Pelle would do worse than Kezman.

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  34. Aspas is doing exactly what you should expect from a player with his pedigree.

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  35. Aspas has a great engine, and has one assist. He's far from this doombringer you guys all make him out to be.. Also, he's been played out of position this whole time

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  36. my nissan has a great engine but i dont want it in the team

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  37. at this moment we need a couple of midfieders more than anything preferably ones with pace who can tackle

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  38. the only way i want this guy is if we can swap him for borini ....who cant even get a game for sunderland

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  39. I watched the Spurs game and was surprised by how far up the pitch Diame was. For the rumoured 3.5m you can't go wrong. Honda on a free could be decent too.

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  40. Anzhi ain't buying a thing right now...Besides, Sunderland have the likes of Altidore, Fletcher and Wickham. I think the reason Sunderland wanted him was due to Di Canio Italian connection and with him gone, its all over for Borini I guess. Poor Guy.

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  41. Is there a recall option? It would be better to have him in our squad. If we have Borini and Aspas we can just focus on signing at least one mid.

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  42. we got way better defenders...all 4

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  43. hahah youre right :)
    he´s just just missing that sharpness in front of the goal, due to his lack of confidence... but i quite like this italian guy, whenever hes playing for italy u21 he´s looking great. he can still become good :)

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  44. not so sure about coady - but hendo should definitely get a run in CM, he looked class on saturday

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  45. I think the fixture with Arsenal will be close but we won't win.

    Let's just say the midfield is a big gap, and to compare henderson to ramsey and sterling to chamberlain at the moment is ridiculous. But it's not the point, we'll see how the game goes.

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  46. When have the standards dropped that much? We wanna be a strong CL team?
    Get Van Bruymen to fight with Gerrard and get Pastore. Then think of a Lucas replacement. I would like to see Montoya as well for he is strong strong future, and an extra striker yes [Traore will be too expensive], and eventually an Enrique proper replacement as well. Divide these spendings between Jan and the summer window. It comes up to about 50 for midfield, plus about 35 for the rest spent wisely [and this calculation is a bit on the generous side. but hey Rodgers already spent more than that in a year's time], without any sells put in. Do that and we can start to compete for anything.

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  47. We can never be sure of any of our youth team players if we never give them chances..... coady has never got a chance let's give him benefit of the doubt for now

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  48. No thanks, with his height and presumably lack of quickness, we'd have to orient the whole attack around him. Really didn't work with Peter Crouch and I can't see it working with htis guy either...just a taller version of AC. Probably talented enough...but not enough to reorient what BR is trying to build.

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  49. No Bawlotelli, not now...not ever...a constant state of self-destruction punctuated by moments of brilliance is not a recipe for success.

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