Comolli exit means the Reds' grand plan has been "scrapped"

LAPTV

18Apr

Comolli exit means the Reds’ grand plan has been “scrapped”

Amid the excitement of reaching this season’s FA Cup final, the ruthless and swift dismissal of Liverpool’s director of football Damien Comolli has gone largely unnoticed outside of Merseyside. The Life’s A Pitch team assesses the significance of this decision by the club’s American owners and wonders just what the future now holds for Kenny Dalglish and his side.

Attempting to fathom the reasons behind Liverpool’s axing of the well-regarded Frenchman, The People’s Tom Hopkinson wonders if it was down to the high costs of players he helped bring to Anfield. “If you take a step back and look at the players Comolli did sign you can’t actually blame him for going for them,” he says. “The problem was, the amount of money they spent on them, and if Comolli was the man that signed off the cheques and said this is what we’re prepared to pay, I think that’s where the problem was.”

Rumours abound that Kenny Dalglish’s relationship with his director of football had broken down, but the Sunday Mirror’s David Walker thinks the duo got on just fine. “Because of the way the business was presented to Kenny and Damien Comolli, they became allies,” claims David. “I’m told about people in America watching YouTube [videos] of a kid in Japan that does amazing tricks and scores from 50 yards and asking: ‘Why don’t we sign him?’ and you’ve got Kenny and Comolli looking at each other and saying this is crazy.”

According to Duncan White of the Sunday Telegraph, the sacking is much more significant than it appears at first glance. “When he [Comolli] came in there was a plan, this is a blueprint for how things are going to work. What they’ve now said is, what we were all planning, we’ll scrap that and start again from the beginning,” he says. “It’s a momentous decision for the club. The next appointment now has to be bang on, otherwise it could become a cyclical issue.”

The panel also discusses Andy Carroll’s England prospects.

Watch the full video discussion by clicking on the image play button above.

Related articles:

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Video: Crunch time for Everton and Liverpool

Video: “Kenny Dalglish wasn’t meant to be Liverpool manager”

Michael Cox: Dalglish’s muddled tactics have confused Liverpool

Video: Kenny Dalglish: Legend or liability?

Follow Life’s A Pitch on Twitter @BTLifesapitch

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Anonymous

No more British players signed for Liverpool please god. If Comolli thought Carroll was worth 35 million he should never work with another football club.
Zico

The plan is the same, just somebody else in to implement it. and we should continue to buy British. Other clubs will come a cropper by not doing so. In this respect, the buy British policy is expensive but good for the lnog term.
IN RAFA WE TRUST

we have enough british players to qualify for the homegrown rule, it is now time to go foreign and buy some flare players in order to keep up with the rest of the top sides in england. an all British team will not go far these days….
Paul Www Smith

I totally disagree with continuing to buy British as there’s not much ready made quality British talent out there. The blue print should be a globe one, concentrating particularly on South America.
Anonymous

John Henry said the deal with Chelsea for Torres was – whatever Newcastle want for Carroll PLUS $15 million.

Chelsea agreed to that and then Newcastle drove a hard bargain. If Newcastle had asked for $10 million for Andy Carroll we would have ended up with….

Andy Carroll plus £15 million.

As it is we ended up with…

Andy Carroll plus £15 million.

The only difference is the amount Chelsea paid for Carroll to Newcastle.

As it was the last day and the last minute of the transfer deadline. I don’t know how Liverpool could have gone back and said – well if you’re willing to pay that much just give us the cash – it would have been bad faith, and in business, good faith matters.

That doesn’t mean necessarily that they couldn’t have gotten the deal directly with Chelsea themselves, but it’s not true to say they went out with the intention of paying £35 million for Carrolll and this all happened in the last few hours of the transfer window.

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