Keane does not complete the jigsaw

Sometimes I weary even myself with the negativity I bring to following football. However I must again register scepticism as to whether investing £20m in Robbie Keane is likely either to provide the crucial part of the jigsaw which brings the title to Anfield or represent good value, considering that the player is a 28 year old centre forward.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe that Keane is a good player, and I’m pleased to have him at the club. I just wonder whether, at the price, if he is to form the centrepiece to Rafa Benitez’s close season reshuffle, whether that is enough. Rumours abound that flush with cash from the Keane transfer, Tottenham will attempt to lure David Villa to north London. Without slighting Keane, I know which player I would rather have linking up with Fernando Torres, and which player I believe would be more likely to provide the impetus for a title challenge. Neither do I believe that Gareth Barry offers the answer for Rafa Benitez, particularly at the expense of a world class midfielder like Xabi Alonso.

Keane is a subtle player with an eye for goal. He should provide a crafty foil for Liverpool’s Number 9 with his clever link up play. But Liverpool need much more than Robbie Keane to win the Premiership.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Liverpool won't win the permiership just because they signed Keane, but he is a far better player than Peter Crouch. He's not just skillful but very committed and hard working. He's a Liverpool fan, which always helps. I think he will prove to be better value than say, Michael Owen has been for Newcastle.
29 July 2008 at 16:58
Anonymous said…
Can't see Spurs signing David Villa, although they're on the verge of splashing out £18m on David Bentley. Keane will be a good signing for Liverpool, intelligent player who will work well alongside Torres.

Kenny
30 July 2008 at 12:25
Owen Polley said…
Aye. Bentley's departure is one of the first acts in Blackburn being relegated.
30 July 2008 at 13:05
Anonymous said…
Well we finished above Spurs so it's clearly a backward step for Bentley ;-)
31 July 2008 at 01:26
Dinamo said…
It's nice to know he's a boyhood fan and for £80k / week will wear the No 7 shirt worn by dalglish and keegan in the 1970s. Is n't that enough?
1 August 2008 at 00:03
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Football fever in Russia

Russia Blog is getting excited about Euro 2008. Indeed it is drawing parallels between Guus Hiddink and Peter the Great in terms of successful Russo-Dutch exchanges of expertise. Meanwhile, in Moscow, fans have been taking to the streets in order to celebrate the national team’s achievements.
Read more

Stormont might not collapse but paramilitaries continue to disfigure Northern Ireland

Image
The devolved institutions in Northern Ireland are supposedly ‘teetering on the brink’ of collapse yet again.  After repeated failures to agree a balanced budget or implement welfare reform created months of uncertainty, the Executive’s future is now in doubt because the PSNI believes members of the IRA were involved in murdering a republican hit man.  Despite its apparent seriousness, this particular predicament is unlikely to bring the shaky edifice at Stormont crashing down. The IRA was supposed to have disbanded its military ‘structures’ and decommissioned its entire arsenal of weapons back in 2005.  It was on the basis of this understanding that power-sharing resumed in 2007 and the DUP entered government with Sinn Féin.  From the outset it was a fairly flimsy pretext.   Less than a year after John de Chastelain, the retired Canadian general, oversaw decommissioning, the Independent Monitoring Commission reported that the IRA retained a substantial haul of arms.
Read more

Walker loada rubbish

Former BBC employee Brian Walker has overrun Slugger O’Toole lately with countless poorly structured, poorly written posts. It is possible quickly to recognize and avoid these by subjecting each Slugger piece to a cursory inspection and identifying those which feature characteristic lack of paragraphing and a tenuous grasp on the technicalities of linking source articles. Although I generally evade Walker’s posts by this method, occasionally (and unfortunately) I have persevered and found that their content is as unrewarding as the style in which they are written. Today, for instance, I inflicted upon myself Brian’s thoughts on a mooted Fianna Fail / SDLP merger . In actual fact, he is right to welcome news that the Southern Irish party has dropped this proposal from its agenda; however, the logic by which he arrives at this conclusion is parochial nonsense. To summarise, Walker believes that pursuing realignment with larger parties, whether they are from the rest of the UK or fro
Read more