What Sort Of Signing Is Kolo Toure?

 Liverpool have confirmed that a deal has been agreed in principle with Man City's central defender Kolo Toure, stating that the Ivory Coast international will join once he becomes a free agent at the beginning of July.

 Toure is 32 years old and will come with a hefty wage packet though the lack of transfer fee for an experienced Premier League player is an obvious plus point. Only time will tell if he proves to be a good signing or not but there are arguments that could be made both for and against us adding him to our squad.

 The retirement of Jamie Carragher leaves the squad short of both a central defender and an experienced professional, Toure ticks both of those boxes. He's played in England for over a decade, won trophies and been a solid, consistent performer. On the face of it you'd have to say it's a sensible signing, not spectacular or exciting, but sensible. 

 He's older than any of FSG's previous signings but I don't think they've particularly broken their transfer policy to bring him on board. A measured approach to recruiting new squad members has been their trademark so far, only buying players they feel will hold or even improve their values, and signing somebody on a free clearly fits into that category. 

 I don't see Toure being a first team regular, I think Daniel Agger is our first choice centre back and it remains to be seen whether Martin Skrtel is trusted to play alongside him or if we bring in another defender (Shalke's Greek Kyriakos Papadopoulos has been strongly rumoured to be on our radar) to partner the Dane. Giving a regular starting berth to a 32 year old signing would be against everything that Brendan Rodgers has done so far and I don't see him changing his policy any time soon. Where we have struggled this season has been with our 4th choice centre back. Sebastian Coates has potential but there was no way you could put him into the starting XI and be fully confident he would deliver, meaning he wasn't genuine competition to the established Agger/Skrtel partnership. When Skrtel's form dipped it was Carragher who was brought in, not the young Uruguayan. 

 This is where my doubts over Kolo Toure come in. He hasn't played much football for Man City over the last couple of seasons and at this stage of his career he has two choices - go somewhere and play every week for the love of the game, or move somewhere else as a squad player and take the nice salary on offer. A player happy to take his money without contributing can be disruptive so there is an element of a gamble in signing him. I'm not saying Toure is definitely like that, but it's a possibility and one hopefully Rodgers is fully aware of.

 It remains to be seen who else we bring in this summer but it's good to see us acting swiftly, having a settled squad enjoying a full pre-season together can only help come the start of the next campaign. Let's hope for a few more new faces at Anfield over the coming weeks, there are still a few positions on the squad that need sorting (left back) and getting the players in early can give the manager a more relaxed summer and more time to prepare for next season.