Cisse and Bellamy have left the building for a combined fee of over £16m according to Chris Bascombe in the Liverpool echo. Not bad business as far as I'm concerned. When you add in the money from Gonzalez, Garcia, Pongolle, Rafa has some change left over after the Torres deal.



Where will he spend it? Well he said that that a winger was the next priority and he wants two players in total. News of Ryan Babel came to light online on Sat and has hit the main media today. Sky have confirmed that we've lodged a bid with Ajax. I must admit that I've only seen highlights of this lad bar the U21 final last month which I watched in full. Ryan really impressed me that night with his pace, strength and intelligence. He scored one but could have had a hat trick and well deserved his man of the match award. I think that he could do a good job for us on the left wing where we're lacking options since the departures of Zenden, Gonzalez and Garcia. Arsenal have been after him for a long time so I wouldn't expect them to give up on him without a fight.

The pre season kicked off for Liverpool on Saturday with a 3-2 win over Wrexham. It was mainly two teams of youngsters over each half, with a few exceptions like Momo, Finnan and Pennant. Jermaine had a superb first half and set up three goals for Bes Idrizaj. Pennant looks like he's going to continue the good form that he showed after Christmas last year. I hope to see him float a few crosses onto Fernando's head over the next few months. Idrizaj is a player who's been at the club for a few years but hasn't had much first team exposure. He took his goals well on Sat and looks a game sort. He's only 19 and has time on his side but I would imagine that he'll go on loan again this season, maybe back to Luton where he spent 3 months last year. Adam Hammill also got a run out and looks a lively winger. He's been talked up for the past few years and did well on loan in Scotland last year. But he's still young and learning and I expect that he, like Idrizaj, will go on loan rather than spend the year in the reserves.

Crewe are up next on Saturday and we may see some of the senior stars getting a run out, including the soon to be ex-England player, Jamie Carragher. Good lad Carra.

Auf wiedersehen, adieu.

The boardroom situation is reaching boiling point. By all accounts, Rafa has had enough of Rick Parry and his incompitence and indecisiveness. It now looks like he wants someone else to come in and do Parrys job with more authority to make quick decisions and sign off on players. Foster Gillett seems to be the man that will take the job but he is having work permit issues at the moment. Where this leaves Parry, I don't know. Rafa is on holidays this week and seems to think that it should be sorted out to some degree by the time he gets back. I hope he's right. He has said that we need to spend money now or else we'll only ever be contenders for third/fourth spot in the league. It seems that he has two deals lined up now that need signing off on to go through. These are rumoured to be Simao and Gabriel Milito. We've seen when Rafa was at Valencia that he walked when he didn't recieve the backing he needed. I fear that it might be the same situation here if he doesn't get what he wants. That would be an absolute disaster for the club.

In trasnfer news there's been a few bits and pieces. Bellamy wants his future sorted. I don't blame him but I do think he'll leave to go to one of Villa, Blackburn or West Ham. Marseille want to do a permenent deal on Cisse. I hope that we get a decent price for him. Momo isn't happy with his current status. As I've said before, I can see him being sold for the cash. Samuel Eto'o made some very positive comments about us over the weekend. If he does move, I can see us getting involved but I would imagine that he's more likely to stay at Barca and he'd be very expensive anyway. Finally, we've signed two Hungarian kids, called Krisztian Nemeth and Andras Simon from MTK Hungaria. Nemeth is highly rated and played well in teh uefa u-17 competition last year.