Good Maxi Rodriguez: 2006 World Cup. About 05-08 Atletico.
Bad Maxi : 29 year old winger who was allowed to leave Atletico without any fuss.
If you think that top quality players that help win leagues come for £1.5 million then you sir are a fool.
Think of it this way: buying any player is a gamble. If you buy an expensive player, the chances that he is successful is high. If you buy on the cheap, the chances that he is successful are low. Maxi may NOT be a flop but the chances are high and if we had something even close to a respectable budget in line with what a club like Liverpool should be getting, I doubt Rafa would have sought the likes of Maxi or Kyrgiakos.
Kyrgiakos: we bought him to be 4th pick. Basically to play the same role Sami had last year, the odd game. Meaning we wanted an experienced player who can step in, make a decent to good performance when needed and that's it. It was a choice between that and relying on for instance Ayala for the 4th pick role. We chose to go with Kyrgiakos. You can say we should have gone with Ayala, but it was a choice of two ways and we went with Kyrgiakos. No big deal.
Maxi was brought in for many reasons and it was a very needed signing. He can play LM and RM. With Torres out, we are likely to field Kuyt up front more often. This means we are short of options for RM. Maxi can fill that role. With a very likely departure of Babel, the LM role also opens up, which Maxi could fill. When everyone is fit, the signing of Maxi means that we can afford to rest Kuyt and therefore create a more healthy, decreased dependence on Kuyt.
Naturally we would have preferred to sign for instance David Silva (younger and better than Maxi), but from a squad perspective and from a management perspective, this was a very good piece of business. Remains to be seen if he can do the job for us, but the line of thought is spot on.