This is exactly it. Why RedForever, who’s seen players come in and have to spend months learning the system, expects players to come in and contribute to the title challenge I don’t know.
Besides, if we short because Keita hasn’t settled, wouldn’t it be better to let him settle than get another body in?
I think too much is made of this 'learning the system' issue. There is nothing extraordinary or magical about the way we play, we use a style that many sides use. In fact, many of our performances this season have been so disjointed that it's kind of a none argument.
Keita simply hasn't settled into life in England and/or the Premier League, be that cultural/language or the pace of the game.
This is fine, not every player is what you expect, or settles as quickly as hoped. But what you do is take stock of the situation and act accordingly. You certainly don't use it as an excuse not to sign anyone else.
At the start of the season Sturridge looked like his old self. He has shown glimpses, but he clearly only remains free of injuries by limiting the work he does in training and on the pitch and doesn't contribute enough when called on.
Origi has done one or two good things but is nowhere near rotatable level. Keita has not settled at all. Shaqiri for me is your 5th choice player in a forward squad, he is fine when playing with two of the first choice forwards (or all three), but not enough when asked to be the main man himself, alongside another of the front three or in a shadow front three. Lallana continues to be unreliable, you never know if he's going to be fit and for how long.
This is not good enough, as we sit here today we know that none of the forwards can be rotated without a significant drop off. We know that if we get past Bayern Munich we'll have intense periods with intense midweek CL matches and must win PL matches at the weekend, two of which are against Spurs and Chelsea.
If we play Mane, Salah and Bobby in nearly every match our performances will suffer, as they did in that intense run in September, when we played Chelsea and City in and amongst tough CL matches. The same happened in April and May last season.
That group of 8 attacking midfielders come forwards is not enough to see out the title and go deeper into the CL.
The front three with a similar level 4th option, means you can play two of them and one of the backup group and still be high level. It's a huge step up in terms of challenging on both fronts. Never mind what happens if Bobby, Mo or Mane get injured.
I'm sorry but this isn't good enough. The club is in a wonderful situation, with two major trophies there for the taking but clear identifiable issues in the squad that could be addressed this month.
My own view is that the club is working to financial constraints that are not in keeping with the club's turnover. In part this is because FSG are taking money out via FSM, money that could be the difference between actually winning both the CL and PL this season.
It's bad enough if this is to give the investors a return now, because it's a short term approach when a multi trophy winning LFC would increase long term revenues more than the £30 to £50m that could be spent this window to bolster us.
I actually think a cut of LFC's commercial revenue is being siphoned off by FSG to part fund the Redsox, which is in effect a siphoning of LFC's trophies into Redsox trophies.
LFC will never win what it could over a period of time, against clubs wholly focussed on success, if our owners have agendas of short term financial return or funding other sport franchises they own with a cut of our commercial revenue.
LFC needs to start winning things and regularly. Every possible trophy, year in year out.
The fact that we can't compete in the domestic cups alongside the CL and PL is bad enough. If we can't manage both the PL and CL that's another thing entirely.
You may be happy with glorified near misses, excused away by bad luck, injuries or poor refereeing.
You may be happy for the owners to pick your happiness pocket with their right hand whilst patting you on the head and telling you they value your support with their left.
Perhaps if our support stopped having orgasms at the fees we get for selling players, which aren't even always what they seem (seems like we'll get creamed for £40m on Coutinho), or giving Edwards and FSG a knighthood for merely recycling such money, our fans would see more of the cream in terms of witnessing trophy successes and having bragging rights, instead of FSG's investors and Redsox fans.