There is a tendency among football fans to gaze admiringly at foreign leagues, coveting the talent on display with lustful eyes.
The grass on foreign pitches seems disproportionately greener than our own turf the minute the transfer window opens and does not lose its lustre until the Champions League knock-out stages when The Premier League firmly establishes itself as the continent’s top competition.
The names trip off the tongue and onto the wish-lists of fans, each accompanied by a price-tag that seems to bear no resemblance to its significance outside the world of football and its fantasy economics.
And so it is that the players who light up La Liga or Serie A induce squeals of excitement when they are tenuously linked with moves to The Premier League while effective exponents of the game in the very same league draw groans of disappointment.
Sometimes clubs would do well to ignore the clamours of fans, who dream about signing the next Dennis Bergkamp or Gianfranco Zola, and who stubbornly blank out the legions of talentless imports who have disappeared without trace after failing to light up anything except the wallets of the club owners who signed them.
Scouting a little closer to home for players who have proved they have what it takes to play in England can more often than not reap rewards and every so often a player becomes available at a certain price that is just too good to ignore.
A player like Tuncay Sanli at Middlesbrough, for example, who lit up The Premier League last season, in a side who could barely string two passes together. Full of tricks and flicks to get the fans on their feet, he also brought intelligence and penetration to a Boro side who would struggle to score in the proverbial.
When a player of Tuncay’s ability becomes available, fans should encourage their teams to toss aside those foreign wish-lists, if only temporarily, and bust a gut to get these players on board.
The Turkey international is a prime example of how green the grass is on this side of the channel and has today been linked with a move to Liverpool, a bargain by anyone’s reckoning for a player who can do what he does.
It could be a marriage made in heaven. A primary requirement for many Benitez signings is versatility and a work ethic that would make Hercules shirk.
Tuncay has both of these qualities in spades. The forward-cum-striker-cum-midfielder-cum-wideman grabbed eight goals last season playing in a variety of different positions and displayed an industry and hunger to help his team-mates escape their fate that was absent throughout the rest of the side.
He probed and prodded behind inept strikers, chased down and harried, found space where none existed and chipped in with some spectacular goals.
So why would a player of Tuncay’s talents not capture the imagination of Reds fans like Napoli's Ezequiel Lavezzi, who has undoubtedly whetted the appetite? He plays a similar role to Tuncay but seems to have no more to his game than playing in a foreign league and remains an enigma to most outside of Italy.
Part of the problem for Liverpool last season was what to do when Steven Gerrard was not available.
The Liverpool captain is not only their best player but also completely integral to the way they play. Tuncay would provide an able solution to the dilemma of who to slot in behind Fernando Torres, while also being able to play in midfield and wide right or left.
So the only reason I can think of that Reds fans are not celebrating the possibility of welcoming the Turkey international with 65 caps and 19 international goals to Anfield with a similar fervour that they greet other reports, is he plays in England for relegated Boro.