Been realistic and looking at the teams who finished above us id have to say 6th and within 5/6 points of 4th . Still with no European football and waiting to see who we sign in the transfer window I still hold a lot of hope for 4th spot. Chelsea will be stronger with Jose and a £100m+ spend City will be stronger under pelli Spurs will keep Bale IMO and add to their squad again Utd won't implode yet Arsenal will spend big this season Thoughts ?
Hard to know until we see what each team does in the transfer window but it's going to very tough to get ahead of 2 of the teams you mentioned
I reckon Brendan came get the group into the battle for top tour if backed by FSG If they persist with cost cutting, then we won't. 100k a week freed up with Carraghers wages, lets hope it's used on a top quality player. The players that the club have leaked as targets all have potential (apart from Toure) and my guess would be they would be 30-50k a week. When City made the jump they signed players on 100k a week. Silva and Yaya Toure moved to City without CL football. We are nowhere near the spending power of City, however if we spend 6th/7th highest on wages, that's were we will end up.
Likelihood is that teams around us will strengthen. Possible ins: Utd: Baines, Fellaini, Lewandowski City: Cavani, Isco, Pepe Arsenal: Jovetic Chelsea: Di Maria, Moutinho, Pepe, Falcao Spurs: Benteke, Villa, Moutinho Seems to be strong word for each of those signings to happen. Obviously there will be a few surprises. We've lost Carra, Carroll & Reina could be on his way. If he goes I fear we'll end up with McCarthy from Reading as our no.1 and it'll be down hill from there. Depending on the summer signings. If Reina goes and we sign: ter Stegen Papdopoulos Kolo Toure/Llori Eriksen Defensive mid Gameiro (loan) Tello (loan) another striker Then I feel we could challenge for top 4 comfortably. However if we sign a couple of no marks, and some relegation fodder, we'll finish 8th to 10th. So this summer is really REALLY important for LFC to get right, with all the changes and slight instability at the top clubs(Arse, Spurs excl) we could get a huge advantage on them with the right signings. I feel there will be a huge surprise in the league this season. (Spurs to win)
Heart says 4th. Head says 6th. Some very good squad's ahead of us, and they will all strengthen to some degree. Will be very tough to break back into the top 4.
if as reported our transfer budget for the summer is £20 mil plus any sales then we will be looking forward to a relegation battle next season , a realistic transfer budget for ANY team that wants to qualify for cl football is £50-60 mil minimum and if we are not spending that kind of money then we will be further behind our rivals for the cl places if you strip a football club of its best players then you can't compete . we need to improve the squad with quality players not potential and if Rodgers doesn't get the backing from fsg to do it then we will struggle next season
With the right signings this summer, retaining the right players, a good start and given that four of the clubs that finished ahead of us this season have new managers coming in I can't see why a 4th place finish wouldn't be a reasonable aspiration.
thread is pretty pointless until august when we see who we and the clubs around us sign. MASSIVE summer ahead of us
If we manage to sign Papadapolopopadolopis, llori, Eriksen, Toure and keep hold of Reina,Skrtel and Suarez I think we'll be well set for 5th or 6th next season. Going off into fantasy land here but if we could get Mertens and someone like Diame/Lucas Biglia, I think we'll comfortably make one of those positions mentioned above and will close the gap on fourth. Just wondering what people think the make up of the midfield/forward line will be if we sign Eriksen and keep Suarez? Midfield 3 of Gerrard, Eriksen and Lucas with a front 3 of Downing/Coutinho, Sturridge and Suarez? Would Henderson be willing to sit out a stretch of games again and have to fight for a place he pretty much nailed down over the last 3 or 4 months?
I'd go with Lucas Gerrard Eriksen Sturridge Suarez Coutinho Henderson can play in the Eriksen or Gerrard role, Gerrard can drop into the Lucas role, and Eriksen can move into the Gerrard/Sturridge/Coutinho roles. Gives us a lot of flexibility and depth of quality players. We'd be far better off with Eriksen than without IMO. But he could be Goetze's replacement I fear.
I like the sounds of that! I wouldn't be surprised to see him trying out a 3-1-2 with Coutinho in a midfield three and Eriksen in the No.10 role behind Suarez/Sturridge. If we cut out the individual errors across the back 5 and the front 5 (Gerrard, Cou, Eriksen, Sturridge and Suarez) click, it could lend itelf to a very interesting season.
we dont even know yet who our keeper will be, what our back 4 will be etc. Also, we dont know what each of the other teams are going to do yet... Spurs, Arsenal etc. So it's just pure guess-work at this stage, total shot in the dark stuff. We'll win it by a mile!
This. Long summer ahead before we can start guessing with any degree of accuracy. Chelsea - Manager not confirmed yet, will Torres stay or go, new striker in? Season of transition for them, 3 managers in the space of a year! Arsenal - When have they ever spent big. They have been on the decline over the past few years. Nothing seems to have changed that... yet. ManU - Massive season of transition for them. Who knows what way their season will go. Summer transfers will be very telling. Man City - Another team in transition with a new manager. Totally mis-fired this season so I can see a lot of ins and outs this summer. Spurs - It's all about Bale. Can they hold on to him and can they add any more top talent to help him out. Liverpool - We've (hopefully) had our season of transition behind us. Our attack is looking in great shape so fixing up the defence is priority. Do that this Summer and we will be a strong team to be reckoned with next year. Optimistically, I think 4th is achievable, 3rd depending how the other teams progress next season. Odds are that at least 2 of the top teams will be in form next season so I think 3rd is about as high as I dare hope for.