Five players who should be shown the Anfield door.
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Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers has done pretty well in the transfer market since his arrival at Anfield, manging to both clear out the big-money mistakes of his predecessor Kenny Dalglish (Andy Carroll, Stewart Downing) and replace them with some top young talent on the cheap (Sturridge, Coutinho). Still, with much work to be done for Rodgers as he looks to rebuild this once-dominant and all-conquering giant of both English and European football, there remain a few players at the club who still don’t look like they truly belong there, and who must be moved on when the transfer window opens for business again in January.
Pepe Reina
For a while Pepe Reina looked as good as any goalkeeper in the Premier League, making himself a key player in the Liverpool team since his arrival in 2005 up until around 2009, when his form started to drop somewhat. It is not clear what is behind this transformation, but the Spanish shot-stopper is now something of a liability, and has been making costly errors for the club for several years now, coinciding with their slip down the Premier League table and out of the Champions League places.
Brendan Rodgers has already gone some way to solving the problem, sending Reina out on loan to Napoli for the season and replacing him with Simon Mignolet, who was signed from Sunderland for around £9m. Liverpool will be hoping that Reina can do enough in his time in Serie A to persuade someone to come in for him permanently and take him off their hands. Surprisingly, that could be Barcelona, who are chasing a new goalkeeper and who were linked with the 31-year-old at points in the summer. If he does end up staying, he will surely now be second choice to Mignolet, who has continued his fine form since making the step up to Liverpool.