I always feel a bit silly talking about things like this, a bit of FM on the brain I guess. Somewhere between the realm of pure fantasy and imagined reality, here's my suggestions for the summer.
OUT:
Clearance Sale 4616For my twopenny's worth, we already have a very good right back in Steve Finnan. Outside Carragher, possibly our best players of...
£20m - nice round number for the money we get to spend from CL money, tv cash and such £7m - Baros - I hope he does well wherever he goes £4m - Diouf - I don't think this is an unreasonable expectation as a number of Spanish clubs are allegedly interested in him. £3m - Kewell - hasn't produced £2m - Dudek £2m - Kirkland £2m - Diao + Cheyrou + Mellor + whomever else
£40m total
IN:
GK - Gabor Kiraly - £2m - I think Carson is our keeper of the future and I'd personally prefer a veteran to come in and give Carson a couple years to season rather than bring in another youngster like Reina and guarantee neither playing time. I don't think Kiraly is going to be willing to go down with Palace.
LB - Patrice Evra - £4m - I still don't rate Traore and I think Evra gives us Traore's athletic ability with a much better positioning sense.
AMC - Pablo Aimar OR Juan Roman Riquelme - £8m - Everyone knows Riquelme will not go back to Barcelona but no one knows exactly how much Barcelona want for him. Aimar rumours have been floating about since Rafa took over the club. I rate both players highly, although the transfer fee might be low.
LM - Vicente - £18m - Vicente is undisputed clbutt. I don't think Valencia could turn down this much money, no matter how much they love Vicente.
CB - (?) - £8m - This gives us £8m to bid on a CB. I honestly don't have an answer for this one as we've not been strongly linked with anyone as far as I know and the list of available targets is woefully short. Maybe Mexes from Roma or Dimichelis who seems to be out of favor at Bayern. Maybe Metzelder if he can regain full fitness.
copies of EC 4618I googled for Bernie The Bolt in groups and couldn't be arsed to look thourhgh all...
This would give us Rafa's favoured 4-5-1 and would possibly look like (this will probably come out distorted so use your imagination):
Cisse (Morientes)
Vicente (Riise) Aimar-Riquelme (ALT) Garcia (Nunez)
Gerrard (Hamann) XA (Biscan or Diarra)
Evra (Traore) Carragher (Hyypia) CB (Whitbread) Finnan (Josemi)
Kiraly (Carson)
We'd still be short a decent backup for Garcia and one more squad CB, which we would hopefully be able to address in the January transfer window.
Let the piss taking commence. Please feel free to poke as many holes as you want, as it's all an exercise in futility anyway. :-D
