First and foremost, I feel for our owners. They entrusted Brendan Rodgers and the Committee with a substantial amount of cash over the past three years and you could argue that £20m of the £205m spent has been money well spent! You could argue that we may be less generous with our wage structure but its something that has to be taken into consideration when we were absent from the CL and the introduction of FFP - its not Football Manager but real life.
Anyways, onto the football side of things.
We do need a couple new faces in January despite spending over £100m over the summer on transfer which have failed miserably. Our primary objective should be to bring in a striker and secondly, a midfielder who can actually bring some presence into our midfield. However, before that we have to make do with what we have got and that means making some extremely tough decisions to wield results. I would try and play this team (should the players be available)...
Mignolet
Manquillo - Skrtel - Sakho - Moreno
Lucas
Henderson - Can
Lallana
Sterling - Sturridge
Subs: Jones, Flanagan, Toure, Gerrard, Allen, Coutinho, Borini
Despite spending heavily on the likes of Lovren, Lallana, Markovic and Balotelli, I believe we need to make some bold decisions and play the best 11 available. Players like Glen Johnson and Steven Gerrard need to make way for better players and understand that the team comes before individuals. Gerrard should not be starting matches week in-week out but should act as an option off the bench and perhaps start matches alongside either Can or Henderson (and not in the defensive midfield position he finds himself). It simply does not work when you do not have an outlet like Luis Suarez and when we are so shocking defensively anyway. Lucas Leiva needs to be playing the role as he is our best option at the moment.
So onto January. A striker is a must. Should that mean selling players to raise funds, then so be it. Glen Johnson, Joe Allen, Fabio Borini, Rickie Lambert and fringe players should be sold to allow a mobile striker such as Alexandre Lacazette or Wissam Ben Yedder to be brought in. Other options could be the most costly Jackson Martinez. All three players will suit our system and should score goals. Onto midfield and we should be looking at Morgan Schneiderlin, Yohan Cabaye or even William Carvalho. All three would get into our first team and improve fluidity as well as provide impetus further forward.
Other problems exist of course. Dejan Lovren has proved to be a shocking signing as has Lazar Markovic, Mario Balotelli and Rickie Lambert (£60m). Its rather shocking considering we have let Daniel Agger move on along with loaning out Jordon Ibe and Joao Texeira and simply refusing to allow Suso any game play (all four players could have provided the squad depth BR craved so much last summer). These problems need to be resolved next year though along with bringing in a quality goalkeeper.
For now, we need to play our strongest team as much as possible. Big name players need to be dropped, tactics need to be spot on and substitutions need to be made reactive rather than wait until the opposition equalise or take the lead. Its going to be a hard, long slog of a season but we seriously need to finish as high in the table as possible.