Summer 2013 Transfer Thread

[JoeyJones65]

From TIA : Have to stay I agree with it.

 

"Know we don't want to overpay etc etc etc. fine. The last guy we have just been after felt also that he might just have been a bit dear. Ok. But nonetheless...

 

They do have to realise that in a summer when most clubs around, below and above have been spending the 30m plus TV revenue to obviously improve their squads, if our net spend remains at -4m and Cissokho on loan is our last man, that's just not good enough all round from everyone. What we basically have done is mostly squad tidying, not upgrading the first team and make no mistake, after 4 years of mediocrity, it bloody still needs it

 

We still need players, our first team is still weak in several places. Less than two weeks. Supermarket sweep time I suppose...but there must be at least one player out there of the right level that must be interested. After last summer, they and us needed a good one this year, not a half arsed disappointing one as the latest if not quite as weakening in a long line of pathetic transfer summers since 2007. After all,it's up to us to make the ground up

 

We can't do it then they will have to look again at the set up and where necessary upgrade it. Be interested to see if we do any post summer reports or we will spout more flannel. But am hoping they won't be led up the garden path again in the next week or so. No excuses, we need to do what we need to do. There is still time but starting to feel the usual excuses may not be washing with an increasing number of people and many are starting to grow a bit annoyed, maybe not over individual signings failing, but at seeing another opportunity in a reducing number to creep back in to contention being passed over. Lot of other clubs are doing quite a bit of work and have obviously strengthened their first teams, we can't do that then it's just a bit of a shit performance really. So you have just over a week to do something about it...

 

Come January otherwise, while we have done better then with less competition, we may well find out its not going to get any easier getting quality in with Suarez starting up again and perhaps going than it was this summer when he's still here where we simply haven't taken the plunge and looked to improve the quality around him. It will be another quality player subtracted not added if we aren't careful

 

Some are starting to think we are the new arsenal or Everton, pretending we have money and deliberately half arsing it with anyone valued at over 10m with crowd pleasing semi bids. But for me at the moment still thinking its more a case of tactical fuck ups, suspect planning, over confidence/complacency perhaps in the wrong places, lack of experience and naivety in dealing with unscrupulous agents, being exposed as a bit out of our depth with more seasoned competitors etc rather than a case of Kenwrightitis, even if some situations make you wonder sometimes. In which case, they need to sort that out, not just accept it as the best they can do. How they do it, well they have people paid lots of money to do these things, they as a big business have access to the best industry headhunters, or you would think they do...as the Nike advert says, Just Do It :)

 

Frustrating thing on a personal level is that I sort of suspected this was more or less how it was going to go even before it began. Some early squad buys which get everyone excited plus selling a couple of duds for actual money for a change, getting many hopefully wondering how much we could get done with a net budget of around 20-30m on top of what we get for Carroll, Shelvey, later downing etc then it all goes flat as a pancake when we start realizing our negotiators at a higher level can't for whatever reason obtain the quality we really needed and Suarez started getting menstrual to boot. Did have doubts as many probably knew but doesnt feel great to have some of them look like they are being realised. I hope the next week or so proves me oh so wrong but...

 

Personally am still giving them the benefit of the doubt in some instances I.e. is the intent genuine or not even though we seem to be following a one bid only policy at the moment which makes me a bit uneasy, as generally with players sought after, you do mostly have to be prepared to bid several times. Could be a lot more critical though if I felt like it. Others reading around the forums where people aren't restraining opinions or mods backs are temporarily turned (and to be fair self restraint is much better self imposed generally here than mod level crackdowns elsewhere) are not holding back. Not at that point personally. But not too impressed at the moment. That could still change. I hope it does...it's one of those funny windows where one or two quality first teamers can be the difference between deflating deja vu disappointment and a genuinely effective window. It doesn't seem massive really. It can still be done. But is it going to be? As I said, surely there has to be at least one person we can get who may be interested who can improve our first team/be indisputably better than downing etc. surely?"

 

Increased TV revenue....wage bill slashed...shite players moved on...£5 million profit this transfer window, but we still need to sell in order to buy? (From Brendon Rodgers's mouth, not mine)...and are scratching around the bargain bins with a loan signing and a free transfer making up 2 of our 5 incomings this summer...What the fuck is going on?

[SCOUSE TAPAS]

I think our plan is to move for Papa in Jan. Obviously if 'somehow' we get Sakho than forget about Papa.

He might be a great player but to pay that sort of money for someone so young who has a bad injury is madness. It s Aquaman in defence.

[2pak]

From TIA : Have to stay I agree with it.

 

"Know we don't want to overpay etc etc etc. fine. The last guy we have just been after felt also that he might just have been a bit dear. Ok. But nonetheless...

 

They do have to realise that in a summer when most clubs around, below and above have been spending the 30m plus TV revenue to obviously improve their squads, if our net spend remains at -4m and Cissokho on loan is our last man, that's just not good enough all round from everyone. What we basically have done is mostly squad tidying, not upgrading the first team and make no mistake, after 4 years of mediocrity, it bloody still needs it

 

We still need players, our first team is still weak in several places. Less than two weeks......

 

Hard to disagree with this piece. One week (and a bit)...

[fowler9]

Hard to disagree with this piece. One week (and a bit)...

 

straw clutching but at this point in January I don't think we had any inkling about Coutinho!

[2pak]

straw clutching but at this point in January I don't think we had any inkling about Coutinho!

 

I'm with you. Unfortunately the horrors of "Summer of 2012" left a deep wound!

[dennis tooth]

Great post.

 

I'm a huge fan of Lamela, and if Spurs manage to get him I think they would be out of reach for us for at least a season or two (in fact, if they end up with a forward line of Soldado, Lamela, and Willian in front of that midfield I would back them to easily end up above United and possibly pushing City and Chelsea for the title). However, the Willian deal was getting out of hand price-wise and I'm glad we walked away.

 

I think we had our targets, he plopped into our laps as an unexpected option and we took a punt. Then the price got inflated, all of a sudden it didn't look like nearly as much of a windfall as it had at first and we simply went back to our list.

 

Now, granted, we're now on option C from the list, but still, I'm more than happy to see us avoid paying 33 million for Willian. Lamela at that price - I'd be happy to see us overpay a bit, as I really like him. A player who has a long history of a goal every 7 or 8 games? Nah.

 

I know it sounds crazy but hear me out, why not work on more than one deal at once??

[Ne Moe Imya]

I know it sounds crazy but hear me out, why not work on more than one deal at once??

 

I'm sure that we have been, but obviously you can't commit to a secondary option if you still think you have a chance at your top choice.

 

In other words, while I'm sure we were already working on opening up channels of communication with the clubs for our next two or three options, discussing potential prices and logistics, we can't really commit to any of them while we're obviously still hoping Willian works out.

 

If you think that we haven't already felt out the clubs on at least 4-5 options behind Willian then I don't know what to say. I'm certain we have, but we probably put the negotiations on the back burner while we pursued him. It's obvious the club is capable of more than one negotiation at a time; just look at how we went after Cissokho and Siqueira at the same time. In the end you have to pull the trigger on one of them and that requires focusing on that deal.

[Nightcat]

30m should be buying you the finished article.

 

50m should be buying you one of the top 10 footballers in world football.

 

That's what I think anyway.

 

But it's not as simple as that.

 

When was the last time we targeted a "finished article" at the top end of the market? FSG don't want to target a finished article, even on a Bosman. They want world class potential with resale value as cheap as possible and not a couple of players but an entire team of this kind of players.

 

We could have targeted Soldado, but we refuse to approach expensive 27 yr and older players.

 

Next summer we'll be left with a departing Suarez, a departing Reina and a soon to retire Gerrard, plus the World Cup which is guaranteed to increase all top players' value.

 

If there was an appropriate time to invest in the team, it was this summer.

[setreal]

£5 million profit this transfer window, but we still need to sell in order to buy? (From Brendon Rodgers's mouth, not mine).

 

Why people put so much faith into what managers say about budgets and transfers during the transfer windows I will never understand. I was a bit surprised about Dave - who is always really shrewd and clever in his analyses of what is happening - in that latest podcast going on about what Rodgers said about Downing (Rodgers saying Downing is essential part of the team and then we sell him etc). Does anybody think we would have got 5-6 mil for him if Rodgers had said Downings not needed and we are looking to get rid? No, you lie about it to the press and in interviews and get results - that's just rule number one. ANd instead of saying "Yeah, we got money to spend", you say "We gotta sell to buy". I expect a good manager to lie to the press as often as possible in that regard - Ferguson did it all the time.

 

If we really do have to sell to buy I don't know - I hope not obviously.

 

With regards to FSG one thing has been sticking in my mind since last summer, that came out during that Dempsey-Debacle: Something like "the Liverpool extra-fee", meaning that because we have been such mugs in the last few years in the transfermarket, other clubs added a few million to the fee whenever we were interested. And I think FSG are desperately trying to get away from that image. That was the reason not to buy Dempsey (which was a short-term mistake, but mid- to long-term a good decision IMHO)

I think you could already see the results of this in the signings we did early on this summer which are all good value for money (I'll put a questionmark behind Alberto). But now we face the problem of the infamous "marquee-signing" - without European footie and with the added hurdle of trying to "normalize" our wage-structure. I'm cleary not happy with the lack of result so far, but I'm not so sure how much of that really comes down to lack of ambition or lack of a plan.

[Babb'sBurstNad]

I'd always assume we'd be shopping in the £15-20m range at best for a few years anyway. Talent that's faltered a bit but with the potential to resurface, or young potential on the cusp.

 

In any other window that'd have been possible, but similar to when Madrid wanted ladyboy, the market inflates value ridiculously. As soon as he went, Ribery became a £60m player and so on.

 

Two choices: sit it out and stick to your game plan and risk getting left behind, or join the madhouse and risk looking back in the future thinking "i can't believe we spent that much, if only we had that money now".

 

As ever hindsight is the only sure way to tell which was the best course.

[Innova]

 

Market value is what a club is prepared to pay' date=' not what we think they're worth. Willian's market value is £30m, 2 clubs have paid that for him in the last 6 months and there were reportedly others willing to do the same. To say his value is £20m is meaningless, especially when we were willing to go way above that ourselves. Clearly if we thought there were players of equivalent quality available at £20m we wouldn't have been offering £28m for him at all.

 

Also, who are all of these established world class players, in their mid-20's, available for £30m? In today's market that sort of money gets you a very good but not great player like Willian, Fernandinho, Illamarendi (a whopping 7 international caps between them, at a combined cost of over £90m) or an extremely talented youngster like Hazard or Marquinhos, it doesn't get you a ready made, completely proven, undisputed world class player at the peak of his career and if it did we'd be at the back of a long queue to sign them.

 

I'll say again, the problem with Andy Carroll wasn't the fee, it's that he was shit. If you could have advised the board with the benefit of hindsight you wouldn't have told them to try and get Carroll for less, you'd have begged them not to sign him at all. By the same token, you'd be telling them to get Coutinho whatever the cost, when the likelihood is that if another club had come in and offered £2m more than us we'd have pulled out of the running and missed out on a fantastic player.

 

It's just disappointing that we obviously identified Willian as that quality first team addition in attack that Rodgers has been asking for all summer but then lost out because of financial reasons to a team we're hoping to rival for 4th. The scale of that disappointment will only become clear in 2 weeks time but if the window closes without us making a quality signing in attack (clearly the manager's priority), it won't be because we couldn't find players we felt would strengthen us, it'll be because we weren't prepared to pay the going rate for them when we did.[/quote']

 

Van persie was 30m after all the add ons and that's a world class finished product. Higuain wasn't far off, ibrahimovic has always been a finished product switching hands at over 20m, Rooney would be good too.

 

Just that we are unable to attract them now.

[JermainePennant]

I fully support our strategy, we have an amount we are willing to pay and if clubs don't accept we move on.

 

It will be painful in some instances this summer but will work out well for us in the long run with clubs knowing we are not lieing when we say we won't go above a certain amount.

 

Just look at llori and papa, we went in earlier in summer with bids and there teams tried to get more from us, we told them no and made no further bids.Now we are hearing encouraging noises that they want to negotiate for lower fees then earlier stated.

 

AVB has been after William for a while and has good relationship with him, we were unlucky with that deal but at least the club tried to get in early and sign a top player.

 

I assume we have other targets seeing as Willian only became available recently so I'm not panicking yet.

[WhiskeyJar]

I fully support our strategy, we have an amount we are willing to pay and if clubs don't accept we move on.

 

It will be painful in some instances this summer but will work out well for us in the long run with clubs knowing we are not lieing when we say we won't go above a certain amount.

 

Just look at llori and papa, we went in earlier in summer with bids and there teams tried to get more from us, we told them no and made no further bids.Now we are hearing encouraging noises that they want to negotiate for lower fees then earlier stated.

 

AVB has been after William for a while and has good relationship with him, we were unlucky with that deal but at least the club tried to get in early and sign a top player.

 

I assume we have other targets seeing as Willian only became available recently so I'm not panicking yet.

 

What is worrying everyone is Mr. Ian Ayre might be scratching his head right now, looking for more targets.

[Bobby Hundreds]

What strategy. We rip the piss out of arsene Wenger saying he'd of won the league by now again if he'd of been willing to improve his side by buying but for us its a strategy. Like we can dictate to the market as the one shining beacon of light. I don't know how they have managed to do it but they have managed to convince us to convince ourselves not buying players that will improve the team as smart, wink wink, were clever. Rodgers made statements at the begining of the window about what he wanted we've gone for 3 expensive players ( is this the strategy ) and we've failed. Now if we get another fucking John Henry letter when the window shuts he can go fuck himself. Improve the first 11 its that simple if it costs it costs that's the game, if we get someone whose cheap that improves the first 11 even better but this team need improving because its only going to get weaker.

[Batigol]

I fully support our strategy, we have an amount we are willing to pay and if clubs don't accept we move on.

 

It will be painful in some instances this summer but will work out well for us in the long run with clubs knowing we are not lieing when we say we won't go above a certain amount.

 

Just look at llori and papa, we went in earlier in summer with bids and there teams tried to get more from us, we told them no and made no further bids.Now we are hearing encouraging noises that they want to negotiate for lower fees then earlier stated.

 

AVB has been after William for a while and has good relationship with him, we were unlucky with that deal but at least the club tried to get in early and sign a top player.

 

I assume we have other targets seeing as Willian only became available recently so I'm not panicking yet.

 

We won't sign anyone that other clubs are interested in with this strategy .

[El Dangerous]

If we end up with Turan then missing out on Willian could be a blessing. Everyone knows Brazillians are shit in the latter half of their twenty's. Makes me glad that Lucas is 90% Swiss or something.

[stringvest]

This summer should/could be the summer when we should/could invest some serious money in the team and challenge for the Top 4, the FA Cup and the league cup.

 

This was the last summer we could force Suarez to stay with us without the risk of losing him for less the following transfer window, when Coutinho and Sturridge have not yet been unsettled. This is probably the last big season for Steven Gerrard. This was the summer when the TV rights income doubled, the summer when United, Everton, City, Chelsea changed their managers. This summer we received nearly £30m from selling players without weakening too much.

 

I really believe that by adding Turan, Papadopooulos and a strong DM even on loan(i.e. Diarra), to the team we have right now we could really have challenged for the Top 4and a domestic cup.

 

Yet this summer we decided to save money and play it safe, making some profit. As much as you like to abuse me, or to get angry with Dennis, Code, Coro and anybody else who questions the owners, FSG lack vision and they are not nearly as smart as they think they are.

 

Good post that, as it is put in a way that people are prepared to read. But the 'profit' that you think they are seeking this year is a drop in the ocean compared to their investment in the club.

 

We all question the owners Nightcat. We just don't all call them 'disgusting' all the time. There are plenty of people who can see what FSG's end game is. dennis has only just got there, he's just being all Dennis about it.

[JermainePennant]

What is worrying everyone is Mr. Ian Ayre might scratching his head right now, looking for more targets.

 

Yeah it is worrying but it shouldn't be the case as they say they have been planning since Jan and William only became available a couple of weeks ago.

 

As someone said worst case get eriksen and play coutinho wide, if eriksen don't work out we should get back close to what we payed due to his age.

 

We are not desperate in any one area anyway and the club seem to be looking at top quality which is going to improve the first 11 which is not easy, just look at arsenal champs league team with money.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Ian Ayre doesn't chose the targets.

[cuppatea]

Van persie was 30m after all the add ons and that's a world class finished product. Higuain wasn't far off, ibrahimovic has always been a finished product switching hands at over 20m, Rooney would be good too.

 

Just that we are unable to attract them now.

 

Van Persie had a year left on his contract and was 29, otherwise you'd have been looking at twice the fee. Higuain was surplus to requirements at Real Madrid (for genuine world class you're usually looking to relieve a team of their best players, which obviously ramps the price up) and Ibrahimovic moved for a world record fee a few years ago. A player of Willian's standing is what £30m generally gets you in today's market.

[LFC64]

Why people put so much faith into what managers say about budgets and transfers during the transfer windows I will never understand. I was a bit surprised about Dave - who is always really shrewd and clever in his analyses of what is happening - in that latest podcast going on about what Rodgers said about Downing (Rodgers saying Downing is essential part of the team and then we sell him etc). Does anybody think we would have got 5-6 mil for him if Rodgers had said Downings not needed and we are looking to get rid? No, you lie about it to the press and in interviews and get results - that's just rule number one. ANd instead of saying "Yeah, we got money to spend", you say "We gotta sell to buy". I expect a good manager to lie to the press as often as possible in that regard - Ferguson did it all the time.

 

If we really do have to sell to buy I don't know - I hope not obviously.

 

With regards to FSG one thing has been sticking in my mind since last summer, that came out during that Dempsey-Debacle: Something like "the Liverpool extra-fee", meaning that because we have been such mugs in the last few years in the transfermarket, other clubs added a few million to the fee whenever we were interested. And I think FSG are desperately trying to get away from that image. That was the reason not to buy Dempsey (which was a short-term mistake, but mid- to long-term a good decision IMHO)

I think you could already see the results of this in the signings we did early on this summer which are all good value for money (I'll put a questionmark behind Alberto). But now we face the problem of the infamous "marquee-signing" - without European footie and with the added hurdle of trying to "normalize" our wage-structure. I'm cleary not happy with the lack of result so far, but I'm not so sure how much of that really comes down to lack of ambition or lack of a plan.

 

Good balanced post. Adding Siggurdson to Dempsey!

[WhiskeyJar]

Ian Ayre doesn't chose the targets.

 

I thought Brendan and Ayre come up with a potential transfer targets and then Ayre handles the negotiation for the specific player within a financial limit.

[Anubis]

Ian Ayre doesn't chose the targets.

 

There are small blessings in every situation.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

I thought Brendan and Ayre come up with a potential transfer targets and then Ayre handles the negotiation for the specific player within a financial limit.

 

Nope, Rodgers and his transfer committee come up with targets, then Ayre or Hogan, or somebody on that side, tries to make the deal happen. I'm not saying Ayre will be totally cut out, but he won't be saying 'nah, fuck signing Willian we should go for Sinclair'. Well, that's what Rodgers intimated when talking about it.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

There are small blessings in every situation.

 

Ooh, you naysayer. We could end up with the next Joe Cole if we're lucky.