Liverpool football team manager Brendan Rodgers has warned the club owners that they need to sign 'ready-made players' as captain Steven Gerrard is ready to exit the club at the end of the season.
Jamie Carragher has retired, Luis Suarez has departed for Barcelona and Gerrard announced that he is leaving the club he joined as a nine-year-old, in the space of 18 months.
Rodgers rejected suggestions that the club could have done more to keep their iconic skipper at Anfield beyond his 35th birthday in May, although the manager's admission that Gerrard was not offered a role on the coaching staff would stun fans, the Mirror reported.
However, Liverpool's owners are reportedly sure to come under scrutiny over why it took until November to offer the former England skipper a new contract.
Rodgers himself has cranked up the pressure on John W. Henry and his Boston-based Fenway Sports Group when he admitted that money is now needed to buy world-class players.
Rodgers, who saw the club invest the 75 million pounds raised by Suarez's sale in the summer on a clutch of signings that showed potential, said that a large part of their squad is young players but there's no doubt that if one wants to take steps forward, one needs to sign ready-made players.
Rodgers claimed that the model at the football club is clear in that the owners want to bring in young players in order to develop and create them into world-class players. He added that of course, that can be a longer and more difficult process, claiming that it is certainly something he knows the owners look at.
Rodgers claimed that if one is going to keep progressing, one also needs those ready-made players.
