In January 2011, Mike Ashley was bracing himself for bids for his club’s top scorer, Andy Carroll. He reportedly told friends he’d be willing to accept a bid well under £10m.
Meanwhile, on Merseyside, Fernando Torres had made clear his desire to leave Liverpool Football Club. Liverpool let it be known that they were ready to accept offers for the want-away striker and were looking at bringing in a replacement.
The rest, as they say, is history. Liverpool ended up grossly over-paying for a young centre forward who was relatively unproven in the Premier League whilst simultaneously losing their star striker. Despite being informed of Torres’ intentions well in advance, the club was seemingly caught with its pants around its ankles. Fans were not impressed.
Flash forward 18 months and a new man in the Anfield hot seat made it clear that he wasn’t overly keen on Andy Carroll as his main centre forward. Brendan Rodgers let it be known that Carroll could leave if the right sort of offer came in. It did, in the form of a loan move to West Ham that took the player’s wages of the club’s books.
Rodgers wanted a replacement for Carroll and he had his eye on Clint Dempsey from Fulham. With Carroll having already departed, however, the West London club knew that they could squeeze more money out of Liverpool, given that the Club was in desperate need of a striker. Liverpool wouldn’t pay what Fulham wanted, Dempsey went to Tottenham and LFC headed into the remainder of the season without a backup striker for Luis Suarez. The fans were furious.
Aaron Sorkin, the creator of the TV show The West Wing, was at a charity dinner attended by the cast of the show. Kathryn Joosten, who played a small role in the White House based drama, mentioned that she’d been approached to play a regular role in a TV show whose pilot was getting made. Sorkin, a consummate script writer, saw an opportunity to add a dramatic twist to a plot-line he was toying with and got straight to work.
Joosten later informed Sorkin that actually she didn’t want to take the role and had decided to stay on at The West Wing. It was too late. Sorkin had already used her character to add a dramatic twist to what would become one of the finest plot arcs in television history. The die had been cast. Joosten was out.
It has been known for some time at LFC that Pepe Reina wants to move on. He’s been a fantastic servant for the Club, as the cliche goes, and now he sees his future elsewhere. When Victor Valdes announced his intention to leave Barcelona, it seemed like a perfect fit – Reina could return to his spiritual home. The Club realised he was mentally out of the door and started to prepare for life without him.
In truth it wasn’t the disaster it might at first have appeared to be. Most Liverpool fans would freely acknowledge that Reina’s form had dipped dramatically after the departure of Rafa Benitez and the more direct style of Roy Hodgson. There were questions already being asked of the Spaniard and, although his form improved under Rodgers, he wasn’t free from errors in judgement or poor decision making.
So when the Club knew he wanted to go they had a decision to make – who to replace him with. Simon Mignolet is widely considered to be one of the top ‘keepers in the Premier League at the moment. Most critics would put him in the top 3 with a large number putting him ahead of Reina himself. So it appeared to be something of a no-brainer.
But how should the club go about it? If they made it clear they were happy for Reina to go and wanted to get in a replacement, it would be Torres all over again. If they let him leave before bringing in a replacement they would be in a position were they could be held to ransom once more, like with Dempsey, and would either have to pay over the odds for the ‘keeper they wanted or go for a different option all together.
So instead they let it be known that they were hoping to bring in some competition for Reina and needed a top class goalkeeper to make that worthwhile. It worked a treat and the Club signed what most assume was their number one target for £10 million – about the right price for a ‘keeper of quality in the current market.
But then noises started to emanate from Barcelona that Valdes was going to stay for one more year. Reina wasn’t going to get his dream. What would the club do? What should Sorkin have done when Kathryn Joosten said she wanted to stay on at The West Wing after all? Re-written his entire end of season arc? Or stuck to his guns?
Simon Mignolet is going to be Liverpool’s number one ‘keeper. That much was clear from the moment LFC decided to sign him.They were right to sign him because Reina wanted out, and they were right to pretend he was coming in as competition because otherwise anyone hoping to buy Reina would be in a better bargaining position than the Club. Yes Rodgers may have lied to the fans when he said that Mignolet was competition, but that’s the price of doing business.
Now Rafa Benitez’s Napoli have come in with a loan move for Reina and some sections of the fanbase are furious. He wanted to go to Barca! We were going to sell him! Now it’s a loan to Napoli?! FSG are asset stripping the club into the ground!
No. No, no, no. First of all you can’t be “asset stripping” something if you’ve gone out and bought the player widely considered to be one of the top replacements in the business. Secondly, Reina wanted to leave. It’s not Liverpool Football Club’s fault that the team he wanted to join doesn’t want him at the moment. He wanted out and FSG moved forward on that basis whilst making sure to learn from their mistakes while they were at it.
Plus, a loan move makes sense. Valdes will be leaving Barcelona at the end of next season and Reina will presumably be the number one choice to replace him when he does. A season sitting on LFC’s bench doesn’t do him any favours. But a season in the first team of Napoli with the manager (and goalkeeping coach) who got the best out of him during his time at Liverpool, plus Champion’s League football, will do him wonders and may even improve his transfer value.
Sometimes as fans we need to decide what we want. We also need to realise that not everything is the fault of FSG and they are actually doing quite a good job.
Yes Reina’s personality will be sorely missed. Of course he’s a world class goalkeeper that we’ve been very fortunate to see play in the red of Liverpool. In a perfect world he’d want to stay and he’d be the player he was in 2008/2009. But it isn’t a perfect world. It’s the real world and FSG have responded as well as they could to his desire to leave the Club. Do we really have to complain about everything?
If we’re being truly honest, how many of us knew how good Pepe Reina would turn out to be when he arrived at the club in 2005? How many of us knew what a big personality he would be and how important he’d be to LFC? I know I didn’t. After the revolving door of goalkeepers we’d had for years – from Westerveld to Kirkland to Carson and on again – I assumed he would just be another quick fix. So can we really know for sure that Mignolet isn’t going to be just as big a presence for Liverpool in the years to come?
It’s likely our new ‘keeper will make mistakes. But so did our old one. We just need to hope that, much like our owners, he learns from his past to improve in the future.
