Rodgers Still Looking for Hunger and Ambition from New Recruits

With the World Cup in Brazil keeping the football jonses in check, there hasn’t been much official word coming out of the Liverpool camp. Despite being continually linked with a host of players, Reds boss Brendan Rodgers has been more or less mum as the summers show-piece event plays out in South America.

Although the Alberto Moreno transfer saga has been filing column inches for weeks now, there have also been whispers of moves for the likes of Bayern Munich midfield maestro Xherdan Shaqiri, Manchester City fullback Micah Richards and a spectacular swoop for Barcelona striker Alexis Sanchez — but with all eyes firmly on the World Cup, Rodgers seemingly hasn’t been doing much besides recycling old quotes and enjoying a little time away from all the day-to-day craziness of football.

As he looks to build a squad capable of competing not only in the Champions League, but domestically as well, the Northern Irishman has already gone on record to outline the type of player he’s targeting by confirming that the Anfield outfit will be looking to bring in quality over quantity — and he was quick to re-iterate that. “What we do need to do to ensure we kick on? We need to ensure we continue with our thinking in terms of the types of players we’re going to bring in,” the Reds boss told the Liverpool ECHO. “We want to bring in players who are hungry. They must have the ambition to want to come in and succeed here.”

With each player mentioned above — Moreno aside — complaining publicly about a lack of playing time, it’d be easy enough to twist this quote to say he’s signalling a move for whoever the flavour of the week is is imminent, but that doesn’t look to be the case. “We need players who there can be no doubts about their quality” he continued. “We’re in a position now where we’re going straight into the group stage of the Champions League and we’re going into the Premier League next season with an expectation and a belief that we can win the league.”

Does that mean Shaqiri is on his way? Or that Richard’s touch of European experience is going to finally get him a move away from the Etihad? Will the Reds go in balls deep for Sanchez because of his ambition to succeed? Or did Rodgers just grab a quote off the pile and feed it to a media starving for something to write about?

You make up your mind for yourself…