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Its Goal.com but still worth posting. Goal.com Special Report: Nearly entire Liverpool squad up for sale - Goal.com Only Gerrard, Carragher, Torres, Reina & Agger 'untouchable' 22 Jul 2010 09:24:00 EXCLUSIVE By Wayne Veysey | Chief correspondent Only a handful of Liverpool players are safe from the axe as the first-team squad faces its biggest cull in the club’s history. A combination of the club’s £351 million debts and the inadequacies of the team that new manager Roy Hodgson has inherited from predecessor Rafael Benitez means that Liverpool are willing to listen to offers for more than half of the squad. Lucas Leiva, David Ngog, Sotirios Kyrgiakos, Damien Plessis, Charles Itandje, Diego Cavalieri, Phillip Degen and Nabil El Zhar are all up for sale while Hodgson has not yet made up his mind on Dirk Kuyt, Ryan Babel, Martin Skrtel and Maxi Rodriguez. Liverpool are also willing to allow Glen Johnson and £17m flop Alberto Aquilani to leave, although switches are unlikely this summer as the club accept they will not receive the fees they paid for the pair 12 months ago. A more realistic timeframe is for Aquilani to go back to Italy in January when he has had a run of games for the first team. The only players who are deemed untouchable are Steven Gerrard, Fernando Torres, Jamie Carragher, Jose Reina, Daniel Agger and Javier Mascherano, although the Argentinian has made it clear that he wants to move to Inter Milan and link up with former boss Benitez. With Yossi Benayoun and Fabio Aurelio having already moved on and Emiliano Insua and Albert Riera set to join them, an astonishing 18 senior players who were at Anfield at the end of last season have left, are leaving or face the prospect of being surplus to requirements. “Everybody apart from Gerrard, Carragher, Torres and a few others are up for sale,” a Liverpool source told Goal.com UK. “Agents have been told to find new homes for all the fringe players and it is fairly obvious that big names will go too if they get the right offers.” The astonishing rate of turnover among the Academy players is set to continue as the club seek to rectify some of the mistakes made after Benitez took full control of youth team affairs last summer. The source added: “It will take years to repair the damage that Rafael Benitez has done at Liverpool in one way or another. If you look at the amount of money he spent, it is an absolute fortune. Some of the agents' fees are frightening. Five years of mismanagement has now come to fruition.” Hodgson was told when he took the Liverpool job earlier this month that he would have a transfer pot of £15m plus whatever he could generate from player sales. However, so grave are the club’s financial problems that Anfield sources are concerned that cash generated will be used to pay off the huge debt leveraged on the club by owners George Gillett and Tom Hicks. Liverpool’s parent company Kop Holdings is £351m in the red with annual interest repayments of £40m while the club itself has debts of £237m. Since the end of last season Liverpool have brought in four new players – Danny Wilson for an initial £2m, Jonjo Shelvey for £1.7m and Joe Cole and Milan Jovanovic on free transfers. The five-times Champions League winners have recouped £6m on Benayoun and are set to bring in another £9.2m by off-loading Insua and Riera to Fiorentina and Olympiakos, respectively. Behind the scenes, there is confusion about who is actually sanctioning the incomings and outgoings. Managing director Christian Purslow and chief scout Eduardo Macia, Benitez’s former right-hand man and fellow Spaniard, who held the title of sporting director at Valencia, are understood to be heavily involved in decision-making as well as transfer negotiations. “If Roy Hodgson is the person buying the players I will have far more confidence,” said the source. “Also, will he be allowed to use the money by the Americans? If Roy Hodgson gets it, he will use it well.”