Former Liverpool FC boss Brendan Rodgers seems to have blown the lid on the Reds’ transfer policy, and revealed that the bosses at Anfield promised him Alexis Sanchez, but gave him Mario Balotelli.
Balotelli was consistently unimpressive at Liverpool FC, which finally resulted in the club loaning him back to AC Milan this season, while Alexis Sanchez has been instrumental in Arsenal FC’s title challenge this season till he got injured, and has grown into an indispensable part of the Gunners’ starting XI.
“The huge blow was that we thought we were getting Alexis Sanchez and that he’d be a like-for-like replacement in terms of how he pressed the game, his aggression,” said Rodger on Sky Sports’ Goal, on Sunday [via Goal.com]. “It’s difficult because you want a player in but if the player is not on the list you couldn’t. We needed a player who could press at the top, because Luis Suarez gave us so much of that.”
However, it seems that the bosses at Anfield paid less heed to what their manager needed, and more heed to what they thought might have been more important to the club.
“But we didn’t get Alexis Sanchez,” said Rodgers. “I felt Mario wasn’t someone who suited the profile of what we were after but, come the end of the summer, when we were struggling to get in the type of player we wanted, the ownership thought this was perhaps one I could develop.”
Is Rodgers paving the way for new offers?
The Irishman has been out of a job for some time now, and has recently said that he would not rule out managing a club outside the Premier League. One of the main reasons why he was believed to have been sacked by Liverpool FC was that his ‘signings’ like Lambert and Balotelli could not get their act going at Anfield. However, with these revelations, the judgement on Rodgers could be a little lighter, as he goes around looking for a new club to manage.
