cuppatea

£15m for a 23 year old with 26 England caps and over 100 appearances for Man Utd is a fair price (we just paid £25m for Lallana, who is behind Welbeck in the England pecking order and was playing in League 1 at 23). I reckon he's a decent player; hard working and good technique, just shits himself in front of goal. Get him playing regularly with a bit of belief and confidence and I reckon he could be a very decent player.

Bizarre transfer all around. If he's shit, we pay his wages for 2 years and then Atletico take him back. If he's good, we get a bit of money for developing him and then Atletico take him back. What's his role going to be here? Have we signed a 20 year old with virtually no experience of first team football that Atletico don't seem to rate very highly to be our first choice right back? Is he here to add depth to a position in which we already have 3 senior first team players? Is he another highly rated prospect at right back, to go along with McLaughlin and Randall?

If we take the 2 players you named then the difference between the strongest XI now and at the end of last season is Lovren in for Skrtel (a minor uprade at best) and Can in for Suarez (a massive downgrade). With almost £150m to spend and Champions League football on offer, I think we've mostly signed players who would have jumped at the chance to join regardless of where we finished last year, to add depth to the squad as a whole, whilst the first XI, as it currently stands, is weaker than a few months ago. Manquillo is a 20 year old with virtually no experience of first team football and will be another squad player and if we sign a striker it looks likely be someone to play second fiddle to Sturridge, rather than a genuine upgrade to any area of the first team. As it stands, left back looks to be the only position in which we'll sign a player better than anything we already had, and thank fucking Christ Chelsea rejected our bid for Bertrand for that one.

He was one of our best players last season and instrumental in our run of 11 league wins in a row, why the clamour to drop him for an unproven 20 year old?

Hopefully Moreno will be a big upgrade on the left back position but Manquillo is a 20 year old who played 3 league games for Atletico last season, I'd be stunned if he displaced Johnson from the starting XI this year. I always think the best way to add depth to a squad is to sign improvements on what you already had on the pitch and let the previous starters either up their game or drop down the pecking order. We seem to have spent a lot of money buying players who are, at best, on par with what we had, giving us greater depth but no great injection of quality. We'll have to wait and see how the new arrivals do but with almost £150m to spend and Champions League football on offer, I'm a bit underwhelmed by the window so far.

Kewell Pongolle Le Tallec Diouf Cisse Morientes Gonzalez Sahin Take your pick.

After spending almost £100m on players, is this our strongest XI? Mignolet Johnson Skrtel Sakho Enrique Gerrard Allen Henderson Sterling Coutinho Sturridge

He was desperate to earn a move away and he had a World Cup coming up, why would he have done anything other than give his best on the pitch. It certainly wouldn't have done his hopes of earning a dream move away from Liverpool any good if he had "acted like a twat" last season.

It's obviously disappointing to throw away a 3 goal lead but I don't think THAT much has changed. Winning the league on goal difference was never on the cards, the only real change is that before last night we needed Man City to lose or draw one of their final 2 games and now only a loss (or 2 draws) will do.

He was one of the top talents in his age group all through his teens, that's how he ended up at Chelsea in the first place. He'd won Champions League and Premier League winners medals, been capped for England, had a successful loan spell at Bolton and played over 60 games for a very good Chelsea team by the time he came here at 22. He was in the Coutinho boat of being a very highly regarded youngster who seemed destined for the top but whose career at one of the best teams in Europe had stagnated. He's a prime example (and Coutinho is another) of looking at a player's career as a whole and concluding he can probably play far better than his current form. What we did with Sturridge/Coutinho would be like Ross Barkley going massively off the boil for the next 12 months and then taking a punt on him for £10-15m, hoping he can get back on track. What people are suggesting we do with Lallana would be like Lee Cattermole playing out of his skin for the whole of next season and then signing him for £20-25m, hoping he will continue to play at that level, rather than the level he's been at for the rest of his career.

The eyes of every big club in England, if not Europe, were glued to Southampton when Lallana was playing alongside Walcott, Bale and Oxlaide-Chamberlain in the lower leagues. Don't you think if there was even the slightest hint that he could be as good as you now think he is, they'd have signed him when he was available for buttons? He's either that one in a hundred case of a player who makes a sudden and dramatic improvement in his mid-20's, or he's an extremely common example of a player who has merely hit an exceptionally good run of form, which he's unlikely to maintain in the longterm. I can't think of a worse transfer policy than spunking huge wads of cash on flavour of the month players whose current form (and therefore cost) is far above their career average.

You'd think we, more than any club, would have learnt the hard way how foolish it is to ignore a player's career as a whole and judge them entirely on the current run of form they're in. Class is temporary, form is permanent. Andy Carroll is the future of English football and Daniel Sturridge is a useless, shit cunt who can't get in the Chelsea team.

Swap "Lallana", "Southampton" and "England" for "Adam", "Blackpool" and "Scotland" and you could have posted the same thing 3 years ago about 13 goals, 8 assists, PFA Player of the Year nominee, Blackpool captain, "Premier League proven", "hit the ground running", "I wish we had his set piece delivery", latest in an infinitely long line of average players who have great seasons, Charlie "the new Jan Molby" Adam.

Southampton must have been the most scouted club in English football during the time Lallana has been there, why has no one ever noticed his abundance of natural talent? How much could he have possibly cost when he was playing in League 1 at the age of 23? £3-4m? Surely worth taking a punt if any of the scouts watching his team extensively (and there were many) had any hint of his talent? I actually like Lallana but signing players with average careers for huge fees after a run of good form is such a terrible and horrifically cost inefficient practice, I'd hate to see us repeat the same mistakes of the Dalglish/Comolli era.

He was signed after an abnormally good season for a massively inflated fee despite his career as a whole suggesting he was completely average.

It's easy to bring up examples of players being plucked out of obscurity decades ago but in the modern game it's incredibly rare for top players to go unnoticed into their mid-20's (especially at a club like Southampton who have been scrutinised by the scouts from every big team in England, if not Europe for the entire time Lallana has been there). Not impossible but there are dozens of Charlie Adams for every Didier Drogba and I personally wouldn't fancy gambling £20m+ on the off-chance that Lallana is one of those inredibly rare cases of an ordinary player blossoming into something special at a late age.

Sturridge and Coutinho had massive reputations in the game as youngsters and their careers always looked to be heading towards the top, we signed them after they had stalled a bit for cut-price fees. That's the complete opposite of waiting for a player with no reputation in the game to perform far above his career average and then signing him for ridiculous money. Henderson and Allen were signed at the ages of 20 and 22 respectively, having already established themselves as very good Premier League midfielders. Lallana was playing in the Championship as a 24 year old, while every half decent player his club produced was poached by a big team before they'd left their teens. You give me a list of players who have been completely average for the first 24 years of their lives and then gone on to be absolutely superb footballers (which is what you'd hope to get when you spend over £20m). And I mean in recent years, when every club in the land is run over with a fine tooth comb by dozens of scouting systems, all looking for anyone who can play at a higher level than they're currently at.

It's a Comolli signing really. Wait for a player with a bang average career to have an exceptionally good season, then sign him for 4 or 5 times more than he's ever been worth before and pray he's not another Zaki, Jones, Downing, Carroll, Adam, Mido, Santa Cruz, Zarate, Nugent, Papiss Cisse, Jeffers, Drenthe, Michu, Babel, Alfonso Alves (I could go on forever) etc.

They're both around the same age and this is the first season of their lives you could claim Lallana is even as good as Fellaini without getting laughed at, never mind "miles better".

Possibly, but you've got to remember that Lallana has been at Southampton for years while every top team has run a fine tooth comb over that club looking at Walcott, Bale, Oxlade-Chamberlain and Shaw.

As for Isco, that story came from the Metro, meaning it's completely made up bollocks. There's no way on earth Real would let him go, he's no more gettable than the likes of Bale and Modric.

I'd be wary of a signing like Lallana. This is a lad who was playing in the Championship at 24 and, on the brink of his 26th birthday, has only had 1, maybe 2 at a push, seasons in his career that would suggest he's good enough to play for Liverpool. You'd be signing a player in the form of his life, which means his price would be at an all-time high and he would have to maintain this career-best form just to justify the fee. I'd rather look for another Coutinho or a Sturridge, who were considered special talents from an early age but whose careers had stagnated a bit, making them available for a cut-price fee. If they realise the potential they had shown throughout most of their career then you've got yourself a top player and an incredible bargain and if they don't then you've got exactly what you paid for, a fairly ordinary player for a fairly ordinary fee. I think genuine late bloomers are very few and very far between and the overwhelming majority of players who appear that way soon revert back to mediocrity (which is why I never wanted us to sign Charlie Adam, for example). If we're going to part with £20m+ for a player I'd be looking at their career as a whole rather than just recent form, otherwise you end up spunking a huge wad on players like Downing and Carroll, who were worth a pittance a year before we signed them.

What for? Virtually every team in Europe has a clear number 1 in goal and then someone whose job it is to sit on the bench, play in the odd cup match and be ready on the off chance they're required to play a single league game in a season, which odds are they won't. I'd hate to miss out on a priority target because we'd allocated a few million quid on someone who is unlikely to see first team football outside of the league cup.

Such an annoying cunt to play against...

Henderson Sturridge Allen