Simão to Liverpool and Cissé's exit

As we approach the winter break the media is again saying Sim‹o Sabrosa is headed for Liverpool.

As the legend goes Liverpool offered 15 million Euros then Benfica asked for 18 and when Liverpool agreed to it Benfica raised the bar to 20 million Euros very close to the market close and the deal was suddenly off.

Now the media says Liverpool will get Sim‹o in January for 12 million Euros.

I honestly don't believe it because of 2 reasons:

First, when Sim‹o was bought from Barcelona by Benfica in the Summer of 2001 he costed 12 million and it makes little sense to sell him now for the same ammount when he's become their key player and a regular with Scolari as well.

Secondly, Sim‹o is Benfica, it's as simple as that, he's been there for 4 seasons during the firts 2 he was head and shoulders the best player in the team, in the latter 2 his form dipped a bit because he naturally wanted to move to a bigger club and more mediatic league but he was still Benfica's best player with only Tiago Mendes edging him in that department during the 2002-03 season.

But now with the prospect of leaving Benfica for Liverpool he's sudenly woken up and has been fantastic this season once again and as his form rises it becomes VERY apparent that he's Benfica's best player by quite a distance. Not only is he the best but when he doesn't play it's like the team lack confidence BIG TIME, to say he carries the team on his back is not an exageration both on the pitch and animically.

Sim‹o is currently out for a month (and had been playing injured before) and Benfica hasn't won in 6 or 7 games without their talismanic Captain and this might be the thing that makes this deal go up in smoke because Benfica was dependent on Jo‹o Vieira Pinto in the 1990's and over the last 4 years it's become dependent on Sim‹o just as much. While he's injured the team keeps sinking in the clbuttification table so I doubt the board has the guts to sell their MVP unless they have a REALLY good replacement lined-up (there's talk of Robert Pires).

I don't believe for a second he goes for 12 million but if I was Benfica chairman for 18 million he'd definitely goes, too good a business to pbutt up.

If Benfica keeps losing over the coming month it will definitely be more difficult for Benfica to part with it's best player unless a great offer comes up with a lot of cash or possibly cash + player (CissŽ).

I'm no Liverpool fan at all but if they pay 12 million euros plus Djibril CissŽ for Sim‹o then as good as Sim‹o is I think Liverpool's board might as well shoot themselves in the head by letting go of CissŽ so easily.

Frankly as an outside observer I'm perplexed at the lack of appreciation for a great talent like CissŽ by both Benitez and some fans, it's a good manager's job to make players work but Benitez can apparently afford to spend a fortune to bring him in and then just discards him rather than take the trouble to work with him and smooth out the rough edges. It's too easy to claim CissŽ is a jerk or arrogant or whatever, why are they paying a manager if he can't sort this out in any other way other than getting rid of the player, it's what they do in smaller clubs when they can't afford to send players away just because he's incompatible with the manager.

Shame there's so few inter club deals in England these days a Robert Pires for Djibril CissŽ swap might actually sound acceptable to moronic Benitez.

An Henry and CissŽ forward line, oh baby.

CissŽ to Benfica in a swap for Sim‹o? Yeah, I can really picture Benfica matching the salary he has at Anfield, I really can('t).

AndrŽ

A Cisse Henry forward line sounds good in theory, until when they break at speed and Henry pbuttes to Cisse then makes the run, and after an initial mis-control, Cisse's return pbutt ends up in the back of the stand. Cisses is in the wrong sport - he's not too old to switch to an olympic sprinter.