Liverpool FC Forum

[akumaface]

When Mascher is on, he breaks up play after play and can dominate the game defensively. His passing and movement is average but definitely better than Lucas. Mascher is a much better player. Lucas is really a below average player. I rather have someone like Mascher who is one of the best in what he does rather than a less than average player like Lucas that can do a little of everything but not being good in any of them. Lucas is improving but is he good enough? If we rely on Lucas again, we will be fighting within the middle of the table again like this year.

[Octsky]

If he wants to leave then do sell him but I'm pretty sure some players thought of that at our current form/position (even Gerrard on Chelsea)

Fair agument, but that bugger wants to leave even before a ball is kick during pre season.

I think Carra is right when he recently mentioned that those who remain after this "crisis" is over, will be truly a reds player.

Of coz Masch is way better than Lucas, and many defensive players around in the league, i am not blind, but if he thinks The Club is no longer good enough for him, then feck him.
We dont need players with half-a55 altitudes, the same applies when Gerrard wanted to play for Chelsh.i..t

But he decided to stay and his bond with the club becomes stronger.

[aCe']

I think the buying of Aquilani basically fcked up any chance we had of playing a normal 4-4-2 with Gerrard and a defensive midfielder playing down the middle...
That said, i still think Aquilani will come good (sometime next decade) and the manager will persist with the 4-5-1 ... Which basically means that even if we do sell Mascherano we'll still have to pay big money to bring in a replacement... Theres a few names i'd personally take ahead of Mascherano which is why i boted to 'sell' him.. Namely Y.Toure, Toulolan, and De Rossi... If the fee we get for Mascherano allows us to get any of the 3 above or a player of similar quality then i'd sell him.. If not, then we're probably better off keeping him for the time being unless we decide to do a Keane on AQUILANI and sell Mascherano too and use the funds to invest heavily on other areas in the side...

[kazza]

Keep him. In the summer, the manager (whoever it is) may need to generate some funds in order to buy. There seems little point to me in selling Masherano and giving Rafa the funds to "invest" when we are a couple of results away from mid table in year 6 of the 5 year plan. This is his team, which he has built having spent in excess of 200 million quid or whatever the feck it is. Lets see how he goes with it, if he can get us into the top four and maybe even win a trophy then we should start talking about next season. If he can't, lets reconsider then but now isn't the time to be cashing in on the family silver.

Another classic!

[Owzat]

Few that would countenance the selling Mascherano at such an important point in the season.

No way am I disparaging Mascheranos ability BUT it does seem that given the opportunity he'd jump ship quicker than you could say "Barcelona anyone ? ", with that in mind I'd take £25 million if it was on offer.

Use the money to get Pavlyuchenko to play along side or step in for Torres and the small change to get Nanny Red's shout for Scott Parker. 

Gossip today has citeh waiting to pounce if "Gerrard, Torres and MASCHERANO" are made available in the summer. I say rape citeh for £40m for Mascherano, go out and buy two or maybe three players. Perhaps we need to let go of the current system and realise it might never work again now Alonso has gone. Doesn't help that we didn't just lose Alonso but our RB has shifted emphasis to more attacking than defensive and despite a lot on here draining Mascherano of seed with their rating of him, his presence ain't made FA difference to our defence this season.

He's seen red twice, clearly we can't be sure whether he wants to stay or will jump ship and with him in the side we've only kept seven clean sheets in  games this season. Sure he [imight have made a difference in the 1-3 and 1-2 defeats to Fulham and Arsenal respectively had he not been suspended, but he's played in EIGHT defeats this season and his one dimensional football cramps our style.

Of course the problem now is we all crave "quality" so anyone we look to buy will cost us. Has the art of buying a relative unknown and him being a gem died?!?!? If we can sell Mascherano like we did Alonso for a big fee and buy say De Rossi at a profit, I say let's do it. Have a more dynamic midfield, without proper wingers we need more from the central midfield pairing and I'd rather have Aquilani and De Rossi than Lucas and Mascherano.

[made in UK]

Few that would countenance the selling Mascherano at such an important point in the season.

No way am I disparaging Mascheranos ability BUT it does seem that given the opportunity he'd jump ship quicker than you could say "Barcelona anyone ? ", with that in mind I'd take £25 million if it was on offer.

Use the money to get Pavlyuchenko to play along side or step in for Torres and the small change to get Nanny Red's shout for Scott Parker. 

Gossip today has citeh waiting to pounce if "Gerrard, Torres and MASCHERANO" are made available in the summer. I say rape citeh for £40m for Mascherano, go out and buy two or maybe three players. Perhaps we need to let go of the current system and realise it might never work again now Alonso has gone. Doesn't help that we didn't just lose Alonso but our RB has shifted emphasis to more attacking than defensive and despite a lot on here draining Mascherano of seed with their rating of him, his presence ain't made FA difference to our defence this season.

He's seen red twice, clearly we can't be sure whether he wants to stay or will jump ship and with him in the side we've only kept seven clean sheets in  games this season. Sure he [imight have made a difference in the 1-3 and 1-2 defeats to Fulham and Arsenal respectively had he not been suspended, but he's played in EIGHT defeats this season and his one dimensional football cramps our style.

Of course the problem now is we all crave "quality" so anyone we look to buy will cost us. Has the art of buying a relative unknown and him being a gem died?!?!? If we can sell Mascherano like we did Alonso for a big fee and buy say De Rossi at a profit, I say let's do it. Have a more dynamic midfield, without proper wingers we need more from the central midfield pairing and I'd rather have Aquilani and De Rossi than Lucas and Mascherano.

It makes me laugh to see you eager to sell Mascha and quick to defend Kuyt!

Just glad your not the manager thats all I can say!

[red_guy]

KEEP. And no Busquets, pleaseee!!!

[KennyisGod....still]

ok, we sell Mascherano. which then leaves us short of ANOTHER 1st team player with th dross STILL on th bench. we get th money, then we trust humpty an dumpty t giv it t Rafa. i'm already losin confidence here an he aint even off th treatment table yet. all this season we'v seen complaints on here that our SQUAD aint strong enuf, so what do alot of th contributors (almost 40% of voters) wanna do? Weaken th 1st TEAM neva mind th SQUAD!!  

ffs get a grip an av a word wi urselves. yes, if he comes rite out an says he wants away that difrent, i accept that. BUT, an like alotta butts its a big 1, we need t lose others b4 Mascher. has Voronin started a game this season an made an impression tellin us how much he wants t play? has Babel improved on th attitude he's shown for quite some time now? indeed, has his finishin got any better? lookin at th 'header' he had (or missed completely cuz his eyes wer shut) against villa wud suggest not. Degen.... Dossena.... yep, wudnt get alot for em, but theyre costin us rite now an what ar we gettin for it?

th whole idea of a transfer (best scenario obviously) is to improve th 1st team, an thus th squad. with no guarantee of evry penny bein made available wud th sale of a regular 1st team player for whateva amount we receive really improve us as a team?

an wile we're talkin money, lets not forget th fact about th talk of Rafa not bein here for too long. an then rememba that he jus signed a (quoted) 20 mill contract, got most if not all his backroom staff new deals an as yet th 'owners an custodians' aint really put much into the club financially otha than promises an debt. do we really think ALL of any money Mascherano cud raise wud be to our benefit in th transfer market? thort not. so that leaves for me only 1 choice. unless he makes it plain he wants out we dont sell.

i mite be talkin out me arris, an i expect a lil criticism from some members, but i'm jus givin me opinion fwiw.

[made in UK]

ok, we sell Mascherano. which then leaves us short of ANOTHER 1st team player with th dross STILL on th bench. we get th money, then we trust humpty an dumpty t giv it t Rafa. i'm already losin confidence here an he aint even off th treatment table yet. all this season we'v seen complaints on here that our SQUAD aint strong enuf, so what do alot of th contributors (almost 40% of voters) wanna do? Weaken th 1st TEAM neva mind th SQUAD!!  

ffs get a grip an av a word wi urselves. yes, if he comes rite out an says he wants away that difrent, i accept that. BUT, an like alotta butts its a big 1, we need t lose others b4 Mascher. has Voronin started a game this season an made an impression tellin us how much he wants t play? has Babel improved on th attitude he's shown for quite some time now? indeed, has his finishin got any better? lookin at th 'header' he had (or missed completely cuz his eyes wer shut) against villa wud suggest not. Degen.... Dossena.... yep, wudnt get alot for em, but theyre costin us rite now an what ar we gettin for it?

th whole idea of a transfer (best scenario obviously) is to improve th 1st team, an thus th squad. with no guarantee of evry penny bein made available wud th sale of a regular 1st team player for whateva amount we receive really improve us as a team?

an wile we're talkin money, lets not forget th fact about th talk of Rafa not bein here for too long. an then rememba that he jus signed a (quoted) 20 mill contract, got most if not all his backroom staff new deals an as yet th 'owners an custodians' aint really put much into the club financially otha than promises an debt. do we really think ALL of any money Mascherano cud raise wud be to our benefit in th transfer market? thort not. so that leaves for me only 1 choice. unless he makes it plain he wants out we dont sell.

i mite be talkin out me arris, an i expect a lil criticism from some members, but i'm jus givin me opinion fwiw.

Gd pst.

[maguskwt]

Keep, don't make the same mistake as we did with Alonso... as in lose an established first team player. Unless we can get another first team player which will improve our team right now, such as villa, silva, or a very promising youngster...

plus the promise from the owners that all the sales of players would go into getting new players and not for the renewal of exsiting players' contract... what a ridiculous thing to say by the owners... I blame the owner's 75% for the debacle that we're in this season...

[Paul C]

I'm a big fan of Mascherano but the state the club is in we need to buy players and if a big bid (£25m+) comes in for him then you would have to say sell to get some quality upfront, in my opinion Lucas can fill the void Mascha would leave until we had the cash to bring in another 'world class' defensive midfielder.

I still say Agger could play a role in midfield if needed but I'm sure I'll get slated for saying that.

[devaney]

It really comes down to how much of the potential sale money Rafa would get to invest back into new players. If it's anything like what happened with Alonso then id say try for a play swap deal + cash.

Agree I would take Sergio Busquets and Gai Assulin

Decent players. Whether we can fashion a move for either of them is another thing. Also have to factor in will Rafa even be here come the summer and how could that change things.

Masch is a good player but I think his mind has been at times elsewhere this season. He still bosses some games but he is a quality player so that will happen. Alonso was probably made up on going all of last season but he was still ace for us last season.

I fully expect Masch to leave in the summer barring a freak turn of events.

Well so far during his ban we have won two games without him and one was against quality opposition in Villa. We actually looked better with Lucas and Aquilani playing together. I think Lucas could be a reasonably cheap replacement for the not overly Loyal Mascherano and just look what we could buy with the funds. Mascherano has played a lot of games this season and we have leaked a lot of goals. He never scores and gives you nothing going forward. He is also generally incapable of passing the ball firther than ten yards.

I would sell him tomorrow if it meant we could buy Silva or Villa!

[vlady16.1]

i'm glad that someone had the guts to mention gerrard's little fling with chelski....he seems to have seen the light, but javier is a lost child...to many cards, passing below par and poor attitude. i realize that everyone hates lucas but he gives some offence.

i see 3 options
1.. sell javier and get a proper right wing to complement johnson....lucas can cover and aquilani may be great
2...sell javier and move carra to holding mid....let skertl and aggar play cd and again get a new rw
3..sell...move gerrard back to mid with aquilani then use benny as the link man

i just don't see the great value in javier....true arsenal have never been the same without viera but javier isn't viera...he seems to want to be a striker but can't get close to the net

i know you all will hate me but sir alec would have sent his packing as soon as barca made the deal....the team is above any player...take the 40 mill and get a proper right or left sided midfielder

[sixbuster]

If we sell who the feck is going to be our defensive midfielder?

Sums it up.

One thing is to say Mascherano and Lucas can't play together. I wouldn't argue against that.

Another thing is to say that Lucas without Mascherano plays better, at least yesterday it seemed the case without that meaning Lucas was brilliant.

But selling Mascherano? No. No. No. No.

No.

KEEP

no way sell him. crazy to suggest so,mad,easily the best at what he does. unreplaceable, loads of others to sell but not masch.

[Igor Zidane]

Madness to sell . If he wants to go though , rafa will have no choice . Will be put down to Rafa's poor man management skills anyway.