Jump to content
  • Sign up for free and receive a month's subscription

    You are viewing this page as a guest. That means you are either a member who has not logged in, or you have not yet registered with us. Signing up for an account only takes a minute and it means you will no longer see this annoying box! It will also allow you to get involved with our friendly(ish!) community and take part in the discussions on our forums. And because we're feeling generous, if you sign up for a free account we will give you a month's free trial access to our subscriber only content with no obligation to commit. Register an account and then send a private message to @dave u and he'll hook you up with a subscription.

Philippe Coutinho


Megadrive Man
 Share

Recommended Posts

Just enjoy watching the lad play football for us this season and try and ignore all the rumours. You've got to remember there are people who work for these media outlets who don't support Liverpool, don't like Liverpool and in some circumstances hate us. They'll often be fans of rival football clubs. These people don't like the fact we have top players like Phil playing for us and will be doing all they can to stir things up, to destabilize us by fabricating stories about him being on the verge of leaving. It's going to happen. It's all part of the game. To spread panic and chip away at the feel good factor that is surrounding our club at the moment. Don't rise to it. Until the day comes the player comes out and tells the club he want's to leave, he remains our player. Our player, a very special player who is doing his utmost along with the rest of his teammates to make this a very special season for us. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Surely we take the stance we've taken before if he does want to go.

 

Give us another year, rewarding our commitment to you when you were stagnating at inter and the development you've had with us.

 

New contract, pay rise and get out option, and if in a year we're not where he wants us to be, or his heart is set elsewhere, he goes with a handshake and we get a proper fee.

 

That's it, isn't it?

  • Upvote 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Surely we take the stance we've taken before if he does want to go.

 

Give us another year, rewarding our commitment to you when you were stagnating at inter and the development you've had with us.

 

New contract, pay rise and get out option, and if in a year we're not where he wants us to be, or his heart is set elsewhere, he goes with a handshake and we get a proper fee.

 

That's it, isn't it?

 

That's fair I'd say.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Couts is the absolutely business, we're in the midst of his transition into being an absolutely world class player. I've vehemently defended the lad, as recent as 10 months ago people on here were labelling him a 1 in 10 player, another average attacking midfielder. In reality he was a victim of playing in shite unimaginative sides. The penny has finally dropped with him and he looks like he's going to score every time he steps onto the pitch. Much like the team, the game against burnley has proved to be a excellent lesson for Phil, he now looks to be a lot more relaxed on the pitch and has a lot more faith in his teammates.

Hopefully we can do something special, he doesn't strike me as the type of character who would force a move, particularly with Klopp at the helm who I would not imagine would be an easy man to explain that to.

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Definitely gone in summer. It will have been 2 summers since we sold one of our best players so we'll need to rectify that, and FSG know they can get away with it because the fans will trust Klopp.

 

You genuinely believe the owners deliberately want to sell our best players? Rofl

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Definitely gone in summer. It will have been 2 summers since we sold one of our best players so we'll need to rectify that, and FSG know they can get away with it because the fans will trust Klopp.

 

I really don't think that they want to sell our best players (or most valuable players in the case of Sterling). I think that they recognise a tipping point when players are set on leaving for more money and success and try and get the best price at the time.

 

Barcelona got Suarez for next to nothing in relative terms, but their negotiations were made easier by everybody knowing full well that the player wanted the move more than anybody. They handled Arsenal's approach well the previous season. The following year, should they have waited for him to refuse to play like Mascherano did before offloading at an even lower price?

 

However, I do think that they can be far too smart-arsed and arrogant in their approach to the game, as the whole Moneyball nonsense demonstrated. Their treatment of Kenny was disgraceful too. With any luck, they'll leave any important future footballing decisions to somebody who had actually heard of the sport before they were 40 years of age.

 

They've lucked out with Klopp - he's a world class manager who appears ambivalent about big money acquisitions.

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

No, just checked and it is pure debt. Didn't realise it was a rule from their own bylaws, I was talking about usual bank ratios for lending as they usually aim to be above 2:1 on ebitda to dsc

 

Debt to EBITDA is also a market standard ratio used by banks for measuring 'leverage', anything above 4-5x would be considered highly leveraged.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Obviously if Real and/or Barca come in and Coutinho is desperate for the move then this discussion needs to be had (and for the record, I'm on the side of those who suggesting we could give him a new deal with a get-out clause and say if he wants to leave after one more year then so be it), but I'm not convinced Coutinho would act the same way Suarez and Sterling did here.

 

Remember, this is a player who moved as a young boy to Inter when he was heralded as a future world star.  Then he suffered horribly, being moved all over the place, sent out on loan and relegated to the bench as that atrociously-run club went through manager after manager.

 

He will know that there is every chance, if he went to Real Madrid especially, that the cycle repeats itself there.  Some players are just made to click at some clubs, and I think he knows that.  Would he want to risk a move to somewhere there's at least a 50-50 shot it doesn't work out?  And I say "not work out" for reasons nothing to do with his talent, which is pretty much beyond dispute at this point.  But talented players fail at clubs for a variety of reasons all the time, and his talent is far from a guarantee that he'd go to one of those teams and be perceived as a success.

 

I really think that if we finish in the top 2, as it seems right now is probably likely, that he would tell those teams that he wants to stay.  If we win the league then he might feel he's about to be a cornerstone of a potential dynastic team.  Even if we finish second or a close third, he'd still probably feel like we were on the brink of something really special.

 

Either way, I think if we offered him a contract near what the Spanish giants were offering, that there's a pretty good chance he'd end up staying.  He's already seen the dangers of the "grass is always greener" philosophy and I think he'd be a bit gunshy of seeing it all over again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Couts is the absolutely business, we're in the midst of his transition into being an absolutely world class player. I've vehemently defended the lad, as recent as 10 months ago people on here were labelling him a 1 in 10 player, another average attacking midfielder. In reality he was a victim of playing in shite unimaginative sides. The penny has finally dropped with him and he looks like he's going to score every time he steps onto the pitch. Much like the team, the game against burnley has proved to be a excellent lesson for Phil, he now looks to be a lot more relaxed on the pitch and has a lot more faith in his teammates.

Hopefully we can do something special, he doesn't strike me as the type of character who would force a move, particularly with Klopp at the helm who I would not imagine would be an easy man to explain that to.

 

No, people said he was talented but not consistent enough and had a tendency to go missing. I don't see how that can even be up for debate.

 

So far this season the consistency seems to have arrived and like the rest of the team he's working really hard and reaping the benefits. Long may it continue. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The main reason why Torres, Sterling and Suarez left was because we were shite and miles away from being a consistent team challenging for honours. If we are challenging now and can continue to do so then the only other reason he would want to leave is to change lifestyle or earn more cash.

 

I think he's happy here at the moment. One of the main things about South American players is that they feel isolated when they come to English clubs because they are used to having everything done for them and take longwr to settle. He has two fellow countrymen here and has said that he likes the city, people and the Brazilian restaurants he eats at.

 

He doesn't appear to be solely motivated by money. He hasn't given any indication at all that he wants to go, it's mainly been the press making shite up.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The consistency thing with Coutinho was a fair criticism in previous years, but even then we shouldn't overdo it, for various reasons.

 

These days?

 

He's world class. We've always known he was talented but he's putting it all together now. Some weeks he is head and shoulders above anything else on the pitch, scoring, assisting and generally orchestrating a devastating attacking display.

 

Obviously when that happens you will get the vultures circling. There's no need for us to sell the player from a financial point of view. I can't see Klopp wanting him to go either. So it will boil down to the player's wishes. If his head gets turned and he wants to go, then at that point you do the best deal you can, as you can't keep a player - or at least you can't for very long - who wants to go.

 

Coutinho is loved here. He has it good on that front. He has friends here and is settled, too. We should give him a raise and keep going in the way we have been on the pitch. Hopefully this will all add up to him staying for a long while yet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No, people said he was talented but not consistent enough and had a tendency to go missing. I don't see how that can even be up for debate.

 

So far this season the consistency seems to have arrived and like the rest of the team he's working really hard and reaping the benefits. Long may it continue.

One criticism you could never label at him is that he goes missing. He never hides on the pitch, he always shows, even when he's playing poorly he'll continually look for the ball and try to make things happen.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

He would, we wont.

 

I think people are going to be surprised.

 

Barca/Real for pretty much a generation have had contracts that were at least double anything we could offer, but that's not really the case any more.  Not saying we're going to give him a Rooney-style 300k/week megadeal but I'd be surprised if we didn't offer 200k/week at least.

 

If I'm the owners and I'm looking at it like "well, I can either pay Coutinho 230k/week and get guaranteed quality or I can sell him and pay the replacement 140k/week but a 50-50 chance they end up a flop."  We haven't really spent the new TV money on big fees, but rather we've been handing out new contracts right and left.  I would think for a player like Phil who is now arguably the best in our league they might be ready to splash out a bit.

 

And if Phil is thinking he can get 230k/week here or maybe 280k/week at Real, well, maybe he'd rather stay where he can be a crucial player for a team that looks like going from strength to strength right now.  Much more stable situation for him than getting on the merry-go-round in Madrid.

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think people are going to be surprised.

 

Barca/Real for pretty much a generation have had contracts that were at least double anything we could offer, but that's not really the case any more.  Not saying we're going to give him a Rooney-style 300k/week megadeal but I'd be surprised if we didn't offer 200k/week at least.

 

If I'm the owners and I'm looking at it like "well, I can either pay Coutinho 230k/week and get guaranteed quality or I can sell him and pay the replacement 140k/week but a 50-50 chance they end up a flop."  We haven't really spent the new TV money on big fees, but rather we've been handing out new contracts right and left.  I would think for a player like Phil who is now arguably the best in our league they might be ready to splash out a bit.

 

And if Phil is thinking he can get 230k/week here or maybe 280k/week at Real, well, maybe he'd rather stay where he can be a crucial player for a team that looks like going from strength to strength right now.  Much more stable situation for him than getting on the merry-go-round in Madrid.

 

I agree with what you're saying, though I'd be concerned that Joorabchian will sniff a cut of a big transfer fee and start the normal shite that these guys do. Phil seems a grounded lad, but it's those around him you have to worry about.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share


×
×
  • Create New...