As the days, hours and seconds of the transfer window ticked away, Melwood remained quiet. Dalglish himself admitted that “there’ll be no one moving in or out” and but for an audacious bid to prize wantaway Carlos Tevez to Liverpool, there was very little to excite the fans.

Rewind a year and there could not have been a starker contrast. Following the arrival of Luis Suarez from Ajax, Fernando Torres sensationally switched to Chelsea, opening the door for Liverpool to break their transfer record to sign Andy Carroll for a staggering £35m.

This year, Liverpool had yet again been in the hunt for a new striker according to the gossip columns. With Andy Carroll and Dirk Kuyt struggling for goals, Liverpool have relied heavily on Craig Bellamy and Luis Suarez for moments of inspiration.

Dalglish clearly recognises that this is a problem and if his outrageous offer of a swap deal involving Carroll and Tevez had paid off, it would have been seen as a real coup.

Jermain Defoe was another name mentioned. His predatory instincts and clever movement would have seen him score many goals for Liverpool, who have created countless chances this season but struggled to turn this superiority into goals.

Luis Suarez has undoubtedly been a revelation since arriving of Merseyside, yet his strike rate of just nine goals in 31 appearances for the club is proof that he is not a natural goalscorer.

Bellamy chips in with his fair share of goals, but rarely plays as a central striker. Dirk Kuyt has been a consistent scorer for Liverpool, despite regularly playing as a right winger, but has had a very poor season so far. His late winner against Man Utd does not hide the fact that he needed to be moved on in January.

Liverpool’s lack of goals hasn’t been a problem of late, with Kuyt, Carroll and Bellamy all scoring in the last three games. But if Liverpool are to make the top four this season, a goalscorer was needed.

There has been a lot of talking saying that Liverpool chief Tom Werner got Liverpool to sign Stewart Downing from Aston Villa based on seeing a fake video of Downing kicking balls into trash cans.

The video is impressive (as you can see below) but surely anyone who knows their football knows that was a fake video.

Werner has explained this by saying, “Someone told me about this. It’s a great story, but unfortunately for the person who wrote the piece, it isn’t true. It actually comes from an interview I did five months ago with Ian Ayre for our club TV channel in which I said that when we first talked about signing Stewart, we’d found a video of him kicking footballs into some trash cans.

“I explained in that interview back in August we knew the footage had been doctored but I guess that detail doesn’t really help stand up the story.

“The amount of people involved and the work that goes into a signing a player is huge so the suggestion that we’d buy someone on the back of one doctored video is ridiculous.

“The story that a hoax video caused us to buy a player is more of a hoax than the video. John and I don’t get involved in choosing footballers to acquire.”

With only a few hours left in the January transfer window, many fans have been keeping a close eye on the rumours linking us with bringing in a new player. The latest rumour had us linked with a loan move for Manchester City’s Carlos Tevez but any chance of him joining Liverpool have been dashed by Kenny Dalglish announcing Liverpool’s transfer decision for this January.

Dalglish was speaking ahead of the Wolves game and said that there would be no new players coming in or leaving Liverpool this January.

He said: “There’ll be nothing happening here in the transfer window, in or out.

“There’s no need to ask any questions about transfers or speculation or anything else.”

Do you think this is a good idea for the Reds or should we have gone out and signed someone?

It had long been suggested that we need to bring in a new striker but following Carroll’s decent performance against Manchester United, hopefully the giant striker can start firing in the goals for Liverpool and this will coincide with Luis Suarez’s return from suspension.

Dirk Kuyt is not leaving Liverpool to go to Italy, this according to the Mirror.

It is no secret that Dirk Kuyt has had a poor season for Liverpool thus far as he is no longer one of the first names on the team sheet. But following his late winner for Liverpool yesterday (Saturday) against Manchester United in the FA Cup, he is the darling of Liverpool fans right now.

It has been suggested that Kuyt is unhappy with his role at Liverpool right now which has seen him come off the bench for most parts of the season. Italian clubs Fiorentina and Roma have reportedly enquired about signing the Dutchman but Liverpool have turned them away saying that the striker is not going anywhere.

If Kuyt is happy staying at Liverpool and coming off the bench like he did yesterday, then I would be more than happy to have him remain with the squad. He is all about hard working and running around and at times popping up with a crucial goal. It is squad players like this that we need if we are to build a strong side to challenge for major honours.

Seeing the likes of Kuyt, Adam and Bellamy coming off the bench against Manchester United made me happy as in the past we have often been starved of quality players coming off our bench. All three substitutes made by Dalglish yesterday played an important role in getting us the victory.

DO you think Liverpool should sell Dirk Kuyt?

What a result! What a game! It is matches like yesterday (Saturday) that make me proud to be a Liverpool fan. We dream of games like that and they do not come any sweeter than beating Manchester United.

Going into the match, I was confident of a victory especially knowing that United has some serious injury problems. When I saw their starting lineup, I was chuffed as it was a team that we could easily beat without most of their big name players.

But when I saw our starting lineup, I paused for a second a wonder, “What are you doing Dalglish?”

King Kenny had opted to go with three centre backs, Carragher, Skrtel and Agger. I wondered how they would line up and it was clear from the beginning that Carragher was to play as the defensive midfielder i.e. the Lucas role. I was shocked! I believed Dalglish has gotten it wrong and we could have lost because of that.

Many fans though that Carragher was bought in so he could take care of Rooney if he were playing but he was not, thus his job was to look after Paul Scholes and it is fair to say that Scholes had the better of Carragher as he controlled the game. When United took Scholes off, the game changed and we started to boss the midfield. Even if Rooney was playing, I do not think Carragher has the legs anymore to play as a defensive midfielder. In all honesty, Carragher had a terrible game as he never got into it. But you can not blame him, I blame Dalglish.

Thankfully, Dalglish saw his error early in the second half and decided to take the ineffective Carragher off and bring on Kuyt. If Dalglsih had opted to carry on with Carragher in midfield, we may not have gotten the winner and we may have actually lost that game as we were being run over in midfield.

The substitutes Dalglish made in the second half were excellent. I know many fans were shocked to see Gerrard come off for Bellamy but that was a stroke of genius only someone like Dalglish could have done. It was clear to see that Gerrard was getting tired and was becoming more and more ineffective in the game so why not take him off and let Bellamy have a go? In the end if worked out well for the Reds.

It is also worth noting how well Andy Carroll played yesterday. I am not the strikers biggest fan but credit must be given to him yesterday for playing a part in both goals. Hopefully his confidence is up now and he can build on that. He looks a much better player now as his first touch seems to be improving. In my opinion I think he needs to play with another player alongside him upfront. With Suarez coming back, hopefully the Carroll – Suarez partnership we have all dreamed about will finally start working.

Reports this morning in the Mirror are saying that Liverpool tried an audacious transfer deal during the week when they tried to offer Andy Carroll to Manchester City in an exchange for their want away striker Carlos Tevez.

Apparently Manchester City have rejected this swap deal and Tevez himself is not keen to move to Liverpool at all.

Now all of this happened before the game on Saturday against Manchester United in the FA Cup which many fans have said has been Carroll’s best game for the Reds this season. The giant striker has received a lot of criticism from Liverpool fans for his lack of goals but yesterday (Saturday) he may not have gotten on the score sheet but he was heavily involved in both of Liverpool’s goals.

Maybe Carroll heard about this potential deal with Manchester City and thus decided to pull his socks up and put in a brilliant performance for Liverpool.

There is no doubt that Tevez is a talented striker and he will score goals for you but I doubt he has anything against Liverpool and he just wants to leave England and play in a different country.

Man of the moment, Craig Bellamy could easily have been an Everton player. The Liverpool striker signed from Manchester City in the summer on a free transfer has revealed that back in 2005 he was so close to joining David Moyes at Everton.

Bellamy was speaking to the Liverpool magazine earlier in the season and he said that he flew to Liverpool to sign for Everton and meet with Moyes. But the deal did not go through because someone had been “in the manager’s ear”. Apparently a list of rules was produced by Everton which Bellamy was not happy about, thus the striker opted not to sign for Everton but rather join Blackburn.

Looking ahead to the clash against Manchester United on Saturday, Bellamy is going to be critical to the success of Liverpool. The question remains though if Bellamy will be 100% ready to go following his heroic performance against Manchester City which surely must have taken something out of the 32-year-olds tank.

Do you think Bellamy should start on Saturday or should we save him for the last 20 minutes?

I have been recently diagnosed with hypertension and my doctor told me to take it easy and not stress. But I can assure you that last night my doctor would have had a fit if he saw what I was going through as I sat watching Liverpool play Manchester City.

Football is a funny old game, one moment you think you are down and out and the next moment you are on cloud nine, all in the space of 90 minutes.

At the end of the day we are going to Wembley, and I do not care what the Manchester United haters are saying we are in a cup final and they are not! I am even starting to see ourselves going to Wembley twice this season as we will progress through in the FA Cup. It will not be easy on Saturday against Manchester United as the players gave their all last night against City and I just wonder how much they have left in the tank come Saturday.

It has been a long time since we were last at Wembley but I am looking forward to every moment of it. It will not be easy against Cardiff as we all know what happened to Arsenal when Birmingham beat them. You can be rest assured, Liverpool will not be taking this final lightly: hopefully no white suites this time!

One of Rafa Benitez’s biggest mistakes whilst he was still manager of Liverpool was trying to sign Aston Villa’s Gareth Barry at the expense of losing Xabi Alonso. Benitez had this fantasy of Gerrard and Barry in midfield for Liverpool but his dreams never came through. And instead he never got the chance to sign Barry and at the same time lost Xabi Alonso to Real Madrid.

Gareth Barry opted to join Manchester City ahead of Liverpool and the midfielder has revealed why.

“I remember when the transfer saga was going on, I was watching a Liverpool friendly [against Lazio at Anfield] and the home fans were singing, ‘you can stick your Gareth Barry up you’re a***’,” Barry said in the Daily Telegraph.

“I was at home, but I could just hear it vaguely. That might have got into my head a little bit.

“Liverpool were still interested when I decided to join City. I thought about it really hard, but the things the club were talking about, I felt City were on the up, whereas Liverpool were maybe finding it a bit tougher than City.

“It wasn’t an easy decision. I was signing on promises being made really and, in football, promises get made all the time.

“They can backfire and people can end up saying they made the wrong decision. But sitting here now, I think it has been a very good decision.

“Four years on, people say to me that I’ve made the right decision joining City. Obviously Liverpool is a fantastic club with a great following but I won the FA Cup last year and I’ve played in the Champions League this season.”

I am sure Barry is laughing at us now as he has seen where we stand and where Manchester City are: challenging for the title. There is nothing more I would love than for Liverpool to knock Manchester City out of the Carling cup tonight (Wednesday) and show Gareth Barry that we are still a much bigger club than Manchester City could every dream of.

It is a shame to the game of football that the power of money has taken over. We saw Real Madrid do it first by buying all the best players in the world and building them in one team. Chelsea also did that in the past and they won some titles now with the money at Manchester City, they are close to buying their way to the title. But then again, that is just how football is these days, it is about the club with the most money being successful.

I look at our situation at Liverpool: we got in new owners who were not afraid to spend money. They bank rolled Kenny Dalglish’s shopping spree for new players and it is fair enough to say that some of his signings have not worked out. Now is there more money for Kenny to spend or was that it? Is he going to have to make do with the players he has or will we see another huge outlay of players come the summer?

The Metro is reporting that Liverpool have opened talks with Dutch side FC Groningen about Uruguay striker David Texeira. It is no secret that Liverpool need to bring in a new striker before the January transfer window closes if we are to start firing in more goals.

Luis Suarez has been out banned for 8 matches and the goals of really dried up without him. £35million striker Andy Carroll has not been able to deliver since he signed from Newcastle and we can not continue hoping and praying that he will finally come good one day: we have no idea when that one day will be, if it ever comes.

So for now it makes sense to me that we spend a bit of cash and go out and buy a striker who can help score goals for us. Now, not many of us have heard of David Texeira before but he has done very well thus for in the Dutch league having notched up 8 goals in 14 appearances. He may not be the ‘star’ striker that many of us want to see at Liverpool right now but let’s face it, which world class striker would leave their club in January and come to a side fighting for a fourth place finish?

A player like Texeira could just be the answer to what we are looking for. He is still only 20-years-old and has already shown us what he can do in Holland. A fee of £8million is being banded for the striker who could potentially link up with his fellow country man Luis Suarez upfront at Liverpool. If Texeira can come in and do half a good a job at Suarez has done, I would be happy as it would be a far better return than some of the current players we have now.

Transfer rumour courtesy of Metro