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This new series is going to be a monthly overview of all Liverpool FC’s players on loan at other clubs. As it is still very early in the season, I have spent a lot of this article talking about what can be expected for the loan players over the next few years as well as some of my own judgements on their suitability to Liverpool Football Club. Please leave comments and feedback in the comments section below, as I’m excited to hear what you think.
Suso
Suso has taken to his loan club UD Almeria like a fish to water, contributing 2 assists in his first 3 games. Whilst the newly promoted UD Almeria are yet to register a win, performances from some talented young Spanish players such as Suso have meant they are still above the relegation zone, taking two draws and a loss from their first three games.
Whilst many speculated that Suso may be used in the centre of midfield now that he is playing in the less physical Liga BBVA, he has found himself playing (and being very effective) on the right wing of UD Almeria’s forward three. This looks to be a promising season for Suso, who has the opportunity to make great strides forward with his development. All-in-all, this is fantastic for LFC; even if Suso doesn’t quite develop into the technician we all hope he can become, his performances in Spain will make him much easier to sell, meaning it is unlikely we will have another Pacheco on our hands.
Jack Robinson
For me, Jack Robinson clearly has a place in Brendan Rodgers’ plans. Rather than buy a young promising left back in the summer, our Manager signed a 25 year old established player on loan. If Jack can have a good season at Blackpool, I would not be surprised if we didn’t take up our option to buy Cissokho and used Robinson as our back-up, with a view to being a first team player in the near future.
In Blackpool’s first 5 games, Jack Robinson has started four of them. In those four games, they have picked up 10 points and conceded only one goal, leaving Blackpool looking good at the top of the Championship table. Quite simply put, this is another successful loan spell for LFC, and I’m looking forward to covering him more closely as the season progresses.
Fabio Borini
There is obviously very little to say about Fabio Borini, other than that I believe this is a make or break loan spell for the Italian U21 international. He will undoubtedly have a better chance of getting first team football at the Stadium of Light than at Anfield, where he is muscled out of the team by in-form Sturridge and world-class mercenary Suarez. However, he will still have to deal with competition for places at Sunderland, and with Di Canio being one of the favourites to be the first manager sacked, he may not give his compatriot a lot of time to start producing before replacing him with Fletcher, Wickham or Altidore in the starting lineup.
Pepe Reina
Of all the players on this list, Reina is probably one of the least likely to play for Liverpool again. Whilst we all love the Spanish keeper, he would have left us keeper-less if Barcelona had come in at any time and because of that I do not blame Rodgers for signing a replacement and shipping him out.
Napoli have won both of their first two games, with Reina starting in goal for both of them. He conceded two in his second game, which ended in a 4-2 victory for Napoli, and kept a clean sheet in Napoli’s 3-0 victory over Bologna on his competitive debut. If he ever does come back to spend a whole season in the Liverpool squad, he is still a quality goalkeeper who can stay at the top of the game for years to come.
Assaidi
Krisztian Adorjan
Adorjan is a player who has never played a senior game for LFC, and if rumours of his loan spell having an agreed transfer price at the end of it, he probably never will. He looks set to be another highly rated Hungarian youth player who just couldn’t make the step up, following in the footsteps of Hungary international Krisztian Nemeth (remember that guy).
So far this season, he has made two appearances for FC Groningen, who are currently 6th in the Dutch Eredivisie. In those two appearances, he hasn’t played more than 70 minutes in total, has scored one goal and has had one sending off. Whether or not he’s good enough for Liverpool, the kid seems to be a natural headline maker. We’d all love to see him do brilliantly over in Holland before coming back and doing brilliantly for us, but if that’s just not possible, best of luck to him.
Michael Ngoo
For those of you who don’t know about Ngoo, he is a big, strong, powerful target man who did well on loan at Hearts in the SPL last season and has found himself being sent on loan to Yeovil early on in the transfer window. He will, unfortunately, never make it under Brendan Rodgers.
It breaks my heart to write off a young player like I just have there, but in all honesty if Rodgers wasn’t interested in giving Andy Carroll a chance, he’s not going to look much more favourably on young Michael Ngoo.
Since making his move to Yeovil, Michael has made 6 appearances, although only two of them were starts and only one of those starts was in the league. He is yet to notch his first goal of this campaign and Yeovil are wallowing in the relegation zone with a win in their first game, but with four consecutive defeats following that.
Conor Coady
Unlike the last two, there is something that tells me Coady might still make it as a LFC player, although I do fear that is sentimentality overriding my more logical understanding of the footballing world. As a defensive midfield player who can also play as a centre back, it is not out of the ordinary that he is yet to make more than one senior competitive start for the club at the age of 20.
However, it’s becoming time to accept that we all put an unfair amount of pressure on the kid when we began saying 3 or 4 years ago that he could be the long term replacement for Gerrard. The kid, now a man, will never grow into being a star player for us at LFC but, being a Scouser, we could do a lot worse than having him as a good solid squad player.
Rodgers doesn’t seem to have given up all hope on the England U20 captain however, and apparently was very keen on Coady to get game time at Sheffield United in particular, as he rates Manager David Weir (that’s ex-Everton player David Weir to you and I) very highly.
His faith seems justified as Coady seems to be doing very well down in League one and has been operating in front of the back four for the Blades this season. Coady made a substitute appearance in Sheffield United’s first game of the season but has started all of the other four.
Oussama Assaidi
Similarly to Fabio Borini, there isn’t a lot for me to write about Oussama Assaidi in the article, although I’ll be able to tell you much more next month. I would, however, like to warn everyone that I am not a big fan of Assaidi. I think he was a bad signing and a waste of even the small fee paid for him. I believe him to be a poor player who’s impressive pace is negated by the fact he has absolutely no end product, and he is currently a problem for the club as we struggled to sell him on this summer, even for as little as £2 million.
I will admit one thing however; he may suit Mark Hughes’ style of football and he may even have a decent season. However, I doubt he’ll ever have the technical ability to fit into a Brendan Rodgers team. He only played the second half for Stoke against Walsall, so I’m going to wait until he plays his first Premier League game for the club to really start talking about how he’s doing at the Britannia Stadium.
