THE IRISH GUNSLINGER

For me, Keane is genuine top, top class.
Every time I watched him for Spurs he was a complete handful. Scores lots of goals, links well with all manner of front men, good vision and understanding and a good honest professional.
Touch wood, I can't see this partnership failing. And I can't see how Keane is going to play second fiddle to Torres either.
Keane is essentially a box player, for all his good work outside the 18 yard line.
Here's a statement. He'll be within five goals of Torres in all competitions. I'm pretty confident of that.
Keane won't be keen(!!) to settle for a role as provider, he's a centre forward through and through and he won't be setting up tap-ins for the Spaniard every week.
Remember him at Anfield last season? 2-2 and Keane got both. A couple of flick-ons from Berbatov and he was on to them like a flash, beating our defence, pretty mean at the best of times, to the ball and lashing home.
To be honest, what happened with Torres and Villa in the Euros could easily happen with Torres and Keane.
Villa became the goal sniffer, and Torres almost automatically became the workhorse, doing all Villa's dirty stuff, until Villa's injury in the final unleashed Torres and he became the main man again - playing to his strengths rather than those of the absent Valencia man.

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It was like the shackles were off Torres in the final.
I can see a similar thing happening with the Reds, although it wouldn't be necessarily a good thing for Liverpool.
Torres is great when he's the fulcrum. Now we've got two who demand to be the fulcrum. Still, both players are clever enough to work for each other.

It's good that we've got some real potency up front now, and won't have to leave things to Torres and Gerrard every week now.
I've heard some bizarre suggestions from Reds friends that the Irishman may even be stationed on the right hand side of midfield as Rafa favours the one up front system
If that happens, I can't see why we spent all that dosh in the first place.

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It's hard enough persuading ourselves that Kuyt's workrate and presence at the back post is enough to warrant him that slot.
Ok, so we've paid a fair bit over the odds for him. £19 is a bit of a joke for a player who has maybe 3-4 years still at the top, that's assumning he stays in tip top shape until 32.
Keane, however, seems like the kind of player who is very fit and could stay in really good condition until his early 30s.

At the end of the day, if we were to try and be cute and barter that few million off, we could end up getitng nowhere.
That seems to be the trouble when you're a big club. Other teams know they can take the piss, and they do so.
Everyone knew we needed a new striker with Crouch gone and Kuyt not the ticket, so Spurs knew we couldn't back down.
We just had to buy and accept we were being robbed, slightly.

On the plus side, we'll have a fair bit of the below going on in the player's wives box at Anfield. Another comely maiden for the WAGS seats.

In other transfer news, it'll be interesting to see if the Barry saga collapses. I hope it does. Is it me, or has O'Neill suddenly shoved up his ridiculous evaluation from £18m to £20m?
Ridiculous.
Ditch that, and let's go all in for Bentley. Though he seems to be way out of Rafa's thoughts apparently.
The word is that his scouts went to see the Blackburn winger three times, and each time they ruled that he wasn't the man for Liverpool.
Seems a strange one that. I think he's top quality. Probably more relaible than Silva anyhow. Truth be told, I can't see us getting a big name winger before the season startes.
So, we'll have to make do with Babel, Pennant and Kuyt for wide postions and that has its question marks.
In other news, I seem to have missed the specualtion concerning Arebloa (I was on holiday..)
Came out of leftfield a bit that one, but while £6m would represent a great bit of business for us, we almost can't afford to see him go now.
Degen has crocked himself already and has shown us early indicators he might not be good enough to be first choice.
Finnan is fading and Rafa was prepared to offload him for £3m recently. So, while Arbeloa is half decent at best, his departure would leave us with too big a gap.

Here's to a successful Keane. We'll have to find him a different song to what Spurs had. No 'Keano, Keano. Keano' mularkey.
And reckon we could write into his contract that he has to stop that pistols at dawn goal celebration?