ON the surface they don’t appear like signings to appease every supporters’ concerns.

Then again, you would probably need Lionel Messi for that.

January is tough time for good business and rarely a month when the most shrewd deals are achieved.

Nevertheless, Liverpool look set to make moves and are understood to be closing in on Thomas Ince from Blackpool and Chelsea’s Daniel Sturridge, at a combined total of £16m.

It will be money spent on players to bolster a threadbare forward line being held together Luis Suarez and a teenage talent in need of a rest.

Whether Theo Walcott remains a realistic – and attainable – target is yet to be seen but Ince and Sturridge are being lined up, with fees said to have been agreed with their clubs.

The transfers could even be sealed and announced in the first few days of the New Year, we are told.

So, what to make of a striker Chelsea are willing to lose and a youngster sold by Liverpool 16 months ago?

Some have already met the news with a lukewarm response and have asked whether Liverpool have cast their net as wide as possible in order to unearth value for money?

And what does it say about a side who are re-signing a player they sold to a Championship club in August last year? Some think it smacks of desperation.

But scratch beneath the doubts and scepticism and therein lies clear and obvious reasons why Liverpool would want to capture the pair.

It was not in Rodgers’s reign that Ince left the club nor, does it seem, was it for the club’s want of trying to keep him.

Since the split, Ince has developed at Blackpool, scored 19 goals in 41 appearances and will return to Liverpool a better player.

Yes, the fact that the club will have to dish out £4m (it would be £6m but for a 35% sell-on clause written into the deal which saw him leave Anfield) on a player they owned less than two years ago will grate, but Rodgers deserves no criticism for that, only faith and backing in his decision.

And Sturridge, looked at in the summer, has scored goals when handed a run in the team.

On loan at a struggling Bolton Wanderers, Sturridge scored eight league goals in 11 games. Not exactly bad going.

And on the sidelines at Stamford Bridge, how much of that is to do with Chelsea persevering with a £50m investment rather than rewarding form?

Given that Rodgers and Liverpool are clued up on Ince and Sturridge – and with time not on their side – these surely represent solid signings.

Had Liverpool been ready to spend the same amount on players from the continent, where not as much was known about them, been more pleasing?

Highly unlikely.