Frustrated: Roy Hodgson is losing patience with his
big name stars
Liverpool's rebuilding plans are being threatened by the
refusal of several out-of-favour stars to walk away from fat
contracts.
Stars like Ryan Babel, Milan Jovanovic and Joe Cole will not go
unless their Anfield salaries are matched elsewhere.
The situation is frustrating manager Roy Hodgson and director of
football strategy Damien Comolli, who want to free up space in the
club's 25-man Premier League squad.
It may even explain Hodgson's extraordinary comment last week
that Cole was not his original choice of signing.
The 29-year-old England international has struggled at Anfield
and is wanted on loan for the rest of the season by his former club
West Ham. Hamburg and Genoa are interested in Jovanovic, while
Babel turned down moves last summer to Birmingham, Tottenham and
West Ham because they could not match his £70,000-a-week wage.
Cole's friend, Glen Johnson, would also like to leave after
falling out with Hodgson but he is struggling to find another club
prepared to offer the £120,000 a week he is paid.
It leaves Liverpool in a difficult position to reshape the squad
and owners NESV are furious that previous managing-director,
Christian Purslow, awarded several long-term contracts in the dying
embers of the Tom Hicks-George Gillett regime.
Cole was given a four-year contract worth £90,000 a week last
summer while 29-year-old Jovanovic arrived on a three-year deal at
£60,000 a week.
£90,000 per week: Joe Cole
If neither goes, it adds up to a staggering financial
commitment of £27million.
Hodgson will not name the players he wants to leave - although
his comments about Cole were particularly revealing - but he did
say he hoped out-of-favour players put ambition before money.
He said: 'It's the usual question - money versus playing. How
much does playing mean to you and how much does money mean to
you?
'Some players not in the team will find other clubs want them,
but the same sum of money [in wages] is not there. So the player
has to ask if they are so uninterested in playing, will they sit
for three years despite the fact that the club has made it
perfectly clear they don't want them and there's no game for
them.
'If they want that for three years, they've virtually got to
kiss [their career] goodbye. If you spend three years on your
backside, not kicking a ball apart from the odd reserve game,
you'll find you're not going to be a player at all.'
Hodgson has been under pressure from virtually the first day he
succeeded Rafa Benitez, whose decision to spend Christmas on
Merseyside in the house he bought when Liverpool manager is doing
little to ease the situation.
There is certainly no chance that NESV will welcome back the
Spaniard who has been sacked by Inter Milan, but Hodgson still has
to improve on a record of just one away win all season if he is to
keep his job.
Yet the Liverpool boss seems remarkably calm about his
situation, saying even long-serving Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger
has been under pressure in recent times.
'If there is speculation about me, I'm in good company,' he
said. 'It's easier to name the people who aren't in that position
than those who are.
£70,000 per week: Ryan Babel
£60,000 per week: Milan Jovanovic
'I remember going to Arsenal with Fulham a couple of
years ago and after we held them 0-0 the booing [from Arsenal fans]
towards their team was quite incredible.
'Arsene was visibly upset and saddened by that reaction, and at
that time people were suggesting he'd had a good run and it was
time to bring in the man with the magic wand.
'That's what we have to live with, we have to live with the
situation. People are quite happy to see changes on a very regular
basis, and a fan will have no qualms about seeing three managers a
year at his club, waiting for a man with a magic wand that can turn
all of the ills that everyone has seen into something
different.
'Those of us who work in the game and have been working in the
game a long time know that magic wands don't exist. You work with
the set of players you find at your club and before you can really
say this is a team I put together, this is a club I have fashioned,
you're going to need quite a long time before that day will come
around.
'In the meantime, results give you that time or they might not
and you might be in and out before you've had a chance to do
that.'
With Jovanovic unlikely to accept a drop in wages to move on,
Liverpool will have to decide whether to give him a 'Golden
Goodbye' to get him out.
Hodgson at least is boosted by the return of captain Steve
Gerrard at Blackpool today if the match survives the big freeze,
and at home to Wolves next week.
But the manager's New Year resolution is to pick up more away
points after that one Barclays Premier League victory at
Bolton.
In all, he has just one win in his last 27 away games as a
manager in the top flight 'We have to take more points away from
home.
You can't finish in the top four if you have so few away points
as we took in 2010. That's a no-brainer,' he added.