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Summer 2021 transfer thread.


manwiththestick
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Just now, Barrington Womble said:

Plenty of things to get excited in life than wanking yourself silly over random millionaire footballers because they're linked to us. I would question anyone who's excited by signing Depay! My suggestion would be the quality of your life needs improving if that's a high point! 

The point wasn't about Depay (decent player to have in reserve of mane/salah)...just your posting in general, whether its signings, the owners, the tea ladies everything about LFC has a negative connotation it seems and the club doesn't ever do anything right. Fine to criticise but if the only thing you get out of following the club is negativity, is there any point?

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2 minutes ago, Salou said:

The point wasn't about Depay (decent player to have in reserve of mane/salah)...just your posting in general, whether its signings, the owners, the tea ladies everything about LFC has a negative connotation it seems and the club doesn't ever do anything right. Fine to criticise but if the only thing you get out of following the club is negativity, is there any point?

I like the manager and the team normally. So that's the point. If you want to be emotionally attached to a bunch of hedgefunders, fill your boots. I'll leave that for when I'm working. In the mean time all I care about is the team on the pitch, I couldn't give 2 fucks about the boardroom melts. 

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20 minutes ago, Barrington Womble said:

Plenty of things to get excited in life than wanking yourself silly over random millionaire footballers because they're linked to us. I would question anyone who's excited by signing Depay! My suggestion would be the quality of your life needs improving if that's a high point! 

I do prefer my porn with women in it.

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1 hour ago, Barrington Womble said:

It might be good business. But then minamino and shaq looked good business if you look at their fee and they didn't contribute much. I think depay got more of a crack of the whip than Salah did at Chelsea, so I don't think it's fair to drop his stats there. 

 

 

I'm not convinced by Depay at all, but I could see the logic in us signing him. He'd probably fancy himself to take Firmino's place at the moment. 

 

Anyways, like your posts on "we're too lazy to negotiate", the bit in bold, I don't understand. 

 

Even though it's not clear, are you suggesting we've taken a bit of a punt on these players because they are cheap, and it's not worked out? And if we'd have spent more money on these squad players, we'd have a better squad?

 

With Shaq, we signed a player with International, CL & Premiership experience for way lower than his actual value. He contributed quite a bit in his first season, but yes, he's been anonymous the last 2 season.

 

Again, Minamino was signed with  International & CL experience. I think we were all impressed with him during the CL games that season.

 

But hindsight is a wonderful thing and it's easy to go afterwards "He's shit and he only cost £12m or whatever". No transfer is a guarantee.

 

Salah and Mane, although costly enough, neither were anything like the player or value they'd command now.

 

Benteke and Firmino cost similar amounts, one's career has completely nose dived and the other has scored the winner in the Club World Cup Final. 

 

And then we have Keita. Somebody we put all our eggs in for and he's not worked out anywhere near as well as the significantly cheaper Wijnladum. 

 

What about the amount the mancs spent on Di Maria for minimal return? Or what Chelsea spent on Arrizabalaga? Or what City spent on Mangala?

 

I could go on. You can't have a squad of Galactico's, it doesn't work that way. Could we have done better than Shaq or Minamino? Most likely yeah. But could we have done better than Mane or Salah? Likely not.

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28 minutes ago, Scott_M said:

 

I'm not convinced by Depay at all, but I could see the logic in us signing him. He'd probably fancy himself to take Firmino's place at the moment. 

 

Anyways, like your posts on "we're too lazy to negotiate", the bit in bold, I don't understand. 

 

Even though it's not clear, are you suggesting we've taken a bit of a punt on these players because they are cheap, and it's not worked out? And if we'd have spent more money on these squad players, we'd have a better squad?

 

Shaq was always coming in as 4th choice. We signed a player with International, CL & Premiership experience for way lower than his actual value. He contributed quite a bit in his first season, but yes, he's been anonymous the last 2 season.

 

Again, I don't think Minamino was signed to replace the front 3 and he again was a player with  International & CL experience. I think we were all impressed with him during the CL games that season. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked out for him at all.

 

But hindsight is a wonderful thing and it's easy to go afterwards "He's shit and he only cost £12m or whatever". No transfer is a guarantee.

 

Salah and Mane, although costly enough, neither were anything like the player or value they'd command now.

 

Benteke and Firmino cost similar amounts, one's career has completely nose dived and the other has scored the winner in the Club World Cup Final. 

 

And then we have Keita. Somebody we put all our eggs in for and he's not worked out anywhere near as well as the significantly cheaper Wijnladum. 

 

What about the amount the mancs spent on Di Maria for minimal return? Or what Chelsea spent on Arrizabalaga? Or what City spent on Mangala?

 

I could go on. You can't have a squad of Galactico's, it doesn't work that way. Could we have done better than Shaq or Minamino? Most likely yeah. But could we have done better than Mane or Salah? Likely not.

If you limit your search to players to bargains, you narrow your opportunity. You do also decrease your risk, because economically you are less exposed. It's a choice and just not one I agree with because I think if a player contributes as you want, cost doesn't normally matter too much. Nobody cares VVD cost 75m for example. So I think the way to manage your risk is to give yourself the broadest possible talent pool and then identify the ones you believe can deliver for you. I'm not saying everyone needs to be 75m. I'm not saying we should never take a bosman or a low release clause. I just don't think we should start our search in the bargain bucket. 

 

In your examples, the thing with Shaq and minamino for example, is I honestly don't see what the idea was in using them. I liked minamino when he played against us, so i was quite positive when we signed him as I thought he was very good against us. But they were the only times I'd seen him play, so I had no ideas of his true capabilities. Now I've seen him, I don't get the signing, I don't get what we thought he was going to bring. Shaq to me at the time seemed we signed him because he was cheap, because it was hard to see what his role would be and I think that's proved to be the case. Even when we've been on our knees this year, klopp has been reluctant to turn to him. Do you think we'd have gone after either at full market value?

 

That method of squad management is also the same on the other end. We get these fellas like origi, Wilson, Grujic who just need moving on. They provide nothing to the team, but we're so desperate to be seen not to be had off, we just hold on and on, wasting assets. The players with poor injury records (lallana, clynne, sturridge, matip, Chamberlain) we just let them hang around for too long, burning wages, taking up a place in the squad. 

 

Across the management of 1. incoming players (especially shall we say "squad players"), 2. our determination to extract the maximum value on every unwanted player and 3. Our relentless belief there's more value in a player in the treatment room than getting him out of the squad I think combines to creating the problems we've faced this season. I think most of us would agree even through these good seasons we've been a couple of key injuries away from disaster. This year we got them and we couldn't salvage it because players like origi, chamberlain, Shaq and minamino offered us zero. The midfield has been fucking awful, yet klopp doesn't want to put chamberlain or Shaq near it. We've barely had a shot on goal at anfield since spurs at  home 4 months ago, yet none of that 4 I mention can make the manager give them a proper go. We need to do something about that squad management. I'm not saying it all needs throwing out, but it needs tweaking - perhaps getting more pragmatic about sales, perhaps opening our vision of the market beyond bargains. What we can't have is another season where we go into the season with around 27/28 players, we can't sell fringe players but we have to loan even though we don't want to and then only about 15 of the 25 man squad are capable of contributing. We need to change that ratio. We need more players we can rely on. This season has brought some bad luck, but there's no doubt to me poor squad management has played a part. 

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8 minutes ago, Barrington Womble said:

In your examples, the thing with Shaq and minamino for example, is I honestly don't see what the idea was in using them. I liked minamino when he played against us, so i was quite positive when we signed him as I thought he was very good against us. But they were the only times I'd seen him play, so I had no ideas of his true capabilities. Now I've seen him, I don't get the signing, I don't get what we thought he was going to bring. Shaq to me at the time seemed we signed him because he was cheap, because it was hard to see what his role would be and I think that's proved to be the case. Even when we've been on our knees this year, klopp has been reluctant to turn to him. Do you think we'd have gone after either at full market value?

 

Agree with most of what you've written.

 

With Minamino it was a pure moneyball signing. We paid 7.5 million knowing even if he struggled we still probably convince somebody to take him off our hands for double the price further down the line. 

 

I also remember reading somewhere (probably the Echo) a while ago that the the challenge for FSG was to sign players before they became too expensive, but it doesn't really work like that! Mo Salah is a good example. When he joined Chelsea he'd played 40 odd games in Egypt and 80 games in the Swiss league. He was nowhere near ready for a team challenging at the top of the Premier League/Champions League when he went to Chelsea. By the time he came to us though he had proven himself in a better quality league for a decent team. 

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4 hours ago, Barrington Womble said:

If you limit your search to players to bargains, you narrow your opportunity. You do also decrease your risk, because economically you are less exposed.

I think you’re being too simplistic here. We broke the transfer record for a centre half and and then for a goalkeeper the season after. Our back-up forward Jota will end up costing us £45m. Keita and Fabinho cost us >£90m. We paid £35m for Ox where we could’ve got him for free if we waited 6 months, so I don’t know that could be seen as a bargain. 

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Hearing that Haaland's agent is in Liverpool today after being in Barcelona and Madrid. Will be interesting to see how talks go with Everton as well.

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4 hours ago, Shooter in the Motor said:

Hearing that Haaland's agent is in Liverpool today after being in Barcelona and Madrid. Will be interesting to see how talks go with Everton as well.


I can only assume we’ll say “There is fuck all chance of us spending £130m on you this summer, but we’ll certainly take you next summer for £65m.... you and Mbappe will make an amazing front line”.

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11 hours ago, aRdja said:

I think you’re being too simplistic here. We broke the transfer record for a centre half and and then for a goalkeeper the season after. Our back-up forward Jota will end up costing us £45m. Keita and Fabinho cost us >£90m. We paid £35m for Ox where we could’ve got him for free if we waited 6 months, so I don’t know that could be seen as a bargain. 

i think you missed Baz's point, yes we paid money for those players but since the CL win we have been reluctant to put our hands in our pockets for signings, do you think we would have signed Jota if wolves had even asked for half the fee upfront. 

 

We need to start looking for the best players to fit our team and system first, as Barry states the first category we look at in searches are "Free agent" , "1 year remaining on contract" or "low release clause" then it seems this year we added "club will accept 10% deposit".

 

There is a massive pool of talent that we miss out on because of these restrictions.

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