Tuesday’s Paper Talk

Apparently John Terry’s latest injury is the most fascinating thing in the world according to most of this morning’s national newspapers (incidently the Chelsea skipper is sidelined for six weeks). So instead, we start off by looking a bit closer to home.

The Liverpool Daily Post discusses the news that the club’s new stadium will be scaled back due to spiralling costs of previous designs and that there will be delays on it’s completion.

Liverpool are now considering their options but Parry moved to reassure fans that the club remains confident that a new stadium will be delivered in time for the start of the 2011/2012 season, a year later than the club originally planned.

It had been reported the credit crunch in America had made it harder to get funding for the new stadium, something Liverpool deny.

Meanwhile the Daily Mail reports that the talks between Rafael Benitez and Liverpool’s American billionaire owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett did not go as smoothly as reported.

Benitez has reportedly been told he must raise the cash he wants to buy new players in the January transfer window himself, by offloading dead wood.

Rafael Benitez’s future at Liverpool remains delicately poised after he was told by the club’s American owners that he will have to raise his own transfer money next month.

But although the three-hour meeting was understood to be amicable, Benitez is having to come to terms with the news that he will have to sell before he can spend significantly when the transfer window opens in January.

Similarly, The Independent continues:

It came as a major blow to Benitez whose long-term future at the club has been under serious doubt ever since his first fall-outs with the Americans last month. Although Liverpool and Gillett have attempted to put a more positive spin on the events of the last two days it is not how Benitez sees events in private. He is disbelieving at the limitations placed on him by the board who will have seen first hand on Sunday the need to strengthen the Liverpool squad.

Whether the Americans’ position changes in the next few weeks is not clear but Benitez certainly went into Sunday’s meeting on the understanding no funds would be made available for transfers in January. Yesterday Gillett, who spoke at a meeting of former Liverpool players, was ambiguous about January signings saying only, in terms of the transfer window, “we might use the option that gives us, or we might not.”

And, worth a mention, Liverpool Reserves beat Tottenham Hotspur Reserves 2-1 in a friendly match last night at Leyton Orient’s Brisbane Road.
Craig Linfield got the winner with a header from a Jay Spearing cross, after Martin Kelly had cancelled out Spur’s opener.