Summer 2023 Transfer Thread

[Scott_M]

8 hours ago, No2 said:

Thats a bit dramatic Chris, we're not an absolute state though, we're one player away from being championship contenders (as I'm sure was mentioned in the lost pod), Chelsea are still 4 or 5 players from that point.

I agree. We look great going forwards. Tighten up in midfield and we’ll be up there. 
 

For people complaining about Sunday, I suggest they re-watch the 97 & 99 points games at Chelsea - we were hanging on in those games as well. A draw there is rarely a bad result. 
 

Can’t lie, I am worried about going to Newcastle and playing Gakpo in midfield. 

[Scott_M]

[Dundalis]

20 minutes ago, Scott_M said:

I agree. We look great going forwards. Tighten up in midfield and we’ll be up there. 
 

For people complaining about Sunday, I suggest they re-watch the 97 & 99 points games at Chelsea - we were hanging on in those games as well. A draw there is rarely a bad result. 
 

Can’t lie, I am worried about going to Newcastle and playing Gakpo in midfield. 

Completely disagree. IMO we are an open book defensively, any team with any level of talent and tactical acumen can figure out and expose us. There are gaps that we leave wide as the bloody nile. Chelsea is a team coming off a season where they could not score any goals, that has had almost zero time to gel to a completely new system, with players in attack that aren't even that impressive, and they were able to tear us new ones in spells. I can see this defense getting embarrassed by teams like Villa, Brentford, Brighton etc that have real pace up front much less the top teams that are far more established in their style of play than Chelsea. We will score a boat load of goals this season, but I could 100% see our defense being even worse than last season.

 

Unless the one player we get is a transformative world class defensive type, one more warm body is not fixing this defense. Part of it is on the manager to figure out what the fuck he's doing with the system because it feels like he has no clue what system to use to get this team looking solid on both sides of the pitch. Are we playing a box with Trent or not? Right now it looks like we are half doing it, half not. This two minds bullshit will cost us, as will our terrible summer wasting time on targets for no good reason. If Trent plays in the box, IMO we need a top class CDM and a top class CB who is more defensively and physically dominant than Robbo to play a 3 CB (and also extra cover for Virgil and Ibra) system at an absolute minimum. Ideally we get two CDM's and a CB, but that needed to happen earlier on, it won't now we fucked around and wasted so much time. We'll see what happens.

[Lee909]

1 hour ago, Carvalho Diablo said:

Ezequiel Fernandez looks gritty and sharp into the tackle, reads the game well, has good vision and he's also a Liverpool fan apparently.

 

Lacks that extra yard of pace for me though.

 

 

He's played about 1200 mi uses of professional football so far and is t a starter for Boca. If we signed him he should be left there for the year and a small fee. 

[Pete]

How are Chelsea able to spend close to £200M in a week?  £155m for Caicedo, £53M for Lavia & whatever Palace want for Olise (if that happens)?    

[Scott_M]

7 minutes ago, Dundalis said:

Completely disagree. IMO we are an open book defensively, any team with any level of talent and tactical acumen can figure out and expose us. There are gaps that we leave wide as the bloody nile. Chelsea is a team coming off a season where they could not score any goals, that has had almost zero time to gel to a completely new system, with players in attack that aren't even that impressive, and they were able to tear us new ones in spells. I can see this defense getting embarrassed by teams like Villa, Brentford, Brighton etc that have real pace up front much less the top teams that are far more established in their style of play than Chelsea. We will score a boat load of goals this season, but I could 100% see our defense being even worse than last season.

 

Unless the one player we get is a transformative world class defensive type, one more warm body is not fixing this defense. Part of it is on the manager to figure out what the fuck he's doing with the system because it feels like he has no clue what system to use to get this team looking solid on both sides of the pitch. Are we playing a box with Trent or not? Right now it looks like we are half doing it, half not. This two minds bullshit will cost us, as will our terrible summer wasting time on targets for no good reason. If Trent plays in the box, IMO we need a top class CDM and a top class CB who is more defensively dominant to play a 3 CB system at an absolute minimum. Ideally we get two CDM's and a CB. We'll see what happens.

A large part of that was Gakpo playing in midfield and not doing his defensive duties as much. 
 

The plan was obviously try and blitz them early, which without a marginal offside, we likely would have done. 
 

I’m not denying there was a few ropey moments, there absolutely was. There were ropey moments in the 97 & 99 point games there as well - and Lampard was a in charge in the 99 point games! 
 

 

[Freddo]

12 minutes ago, Pete said:

How are Chelsea able to spend close to £200M in a week?  £155m for Caicedo, £53M for Lavia & whatever Palace want for Olise (if that happens)?    

They’re deliberately failing profit and sustainability rules which the premier league adopts. They’ll probably get a fine, maybe a points deduction. Take it on the chin and move on. They’ve built their squad so won’t care. They fail every metric.

[Street Preacher]

1 hour ago, Carvalho Diablo said:

Frederico Redondo is a tall and elegant footballer, two footed and reads the game incredibly well for such a young player. Great range of passing, good in the tackle, has an incredibly high ceiling and he's already very good.

 

Would be an incredible signing for us. Get him on a long deal and watch his value sky rocket.

 

A chip off the old block.

 

 

Seems a bit of a no-brainer this transfer. Maybe the type of player you would send out on loan, although needs must & it would be interesting to see what he could do this season. He's probably earmarked for Real at some point but we should be taking more educated punts on players like this. 

[Dundalis]

15 minutes ago, Scott_M said:

A large part of that was Gakpo playing in midfield and not doing his defensive duties as much. 
 

The plan was obviously try and blitz them early, which without a marginal offside, we likely would have done. 
 

I’m not denying there was a few ropey moments, there absolutely was. There were ropey moments in the 97 & 99 point games there as well - and Lampard was a in charge in the 99 point games! 
 

 

 

The ability of the entire midfield to win challenges was non existent. Which is reflected in the stats. It's not just on Gakpo. Neither MacAllister or Dom came in with high level numbers with regards to defensive challenges, it's neither of their strengths. Maybe they develop it more over time, but it WILL take time. It's a weak midfield for counter pressing as it is, so an elite CDM is actually even more relevant. The bottom line is no matter whether Trent plays RB or inverted, he's a defensive liability. Which means you need an elite defensive midfield (in entirety) to make up for that weakness which we USED to have, but aren't close to having anymore. Robbo isn't bad defensively, he's quite solid but he's never going to be as good defensively as a top class CB, because he's an attacking full back. All these weaknesses even minor in key defensive positions add up to holes everywhere. From an defensive perspective, we will see mid table teams with much more potent attacks than what Chelsea dished out in this game due to the state Chelsea are currently in with regards to their team and system.

 

This can't be compared to seasons we were competing for titles, as an elite counter press was not only our key form of defense, but also creator of offensive chances. We no longer have the personnel to pull it off like we used to. It's a key reason this trial with Trent pushing into midfield has even happened at all, because this team can no longer frequently turn the ball over high up the pitch, teams can play around us with ease and have much more opportunity to attack someone like Trent in open space on counters, where before we used to limit those opportunities and Trent got to defend more with a set defense and support behind him.

[The Guest]

11 minutes ago, Scott_M said:

A large part of that was Gakpo playing in midfield and not doing his defensive duties as much. 
 

The plan was obviously try and blitz them early, which without a marginal offside, we likely would have done. 
 

I’m not denying there was a few ropey moments, there absolutely was. There were ropey moments in the 97 & 99 point games there as well - and Lampard was a in charge in the 99 point games! 
 

 

I usually agree with you a lot of times but we were absolutely shite.  It wasn’t just a few ropey moments.  We couldn’t keep the ball at all.  I think we went nearly an hour without putting 5 passes together.  The set up in every aspect is absolutely horrific at the moment.  In our big point seasons we won a lot of games by a goal and struggled to create chances because of a lack width.  We were hardly ever hanging on though.  We were in complete control of the ball against every team bar City and didn’t look like conceding unless it was a freak situation.

[Turkish Delight]

2 minutes ago, Freddo said:

They’re deliberately failing profit and sustainability rules which the premier league adopts. They’ll probably get a fine, maybe a points deduction. Take it on the chin and move on. They’ve built their squad so won’t care. They fail every metric.

 

They aren't. They're amortising deals over long terms and have sold players too.

 

They've basically took a 140 odd million a year commitment over the next 7 or 8 years on their balance sheet but have took in transfer fees that appear on there in full right now.

 

On their p+l for this year they'll actually show a positive balance for this year as transfers out will show in full and they'll only take 1/8th of transfer fees out. That will pass Premier League FFP (maybe not UEFA's).

 

It's a gamble on the future. If they all turned out shite they'd be in a hole. If not, then it will sustain.

[Pete]

8 minutes ago, Freddo said:

They’re deliberately failing profit and sustainability rules which the premier league adopts. They’ll probably get a fine, maybe a points deduction. Take it on the chin and move on. They’ve built their squad so won’t care. They fail every metric.

Sounds wonderful. 

Are LFC the only club that actually tries to stick to FFP then? 

[Dundalis]

1 minute ago, Pete said:

Sounds wonderful. 

Are LFC the only club that actually tries to stick to FFP then? 

I don't think they 'try' to, they are simply skint in comparison to the other big clubs, so they have to. If they actually had the money to throw around, they'd be trying to skirt and play the rules as much as they possibly could also.

[Mook]

3 minutes ago, Pete said:

Sounds wonderful. 

Are LFC the only club that actually tries to stick to FFP then? 

 

I can only see two or three clubs in England who don't seem to give a fuck about FFP. As far as I'm aware, the vast majority of clubs do adhere to it.

[Lee909]

4 minutes ago, Turkish Delight said:

 

They aren't. They're amortising deals over long terms and have sold players too.

 

They've basically took a 140 odd million a year commitment over the next 7 or 8 years on their balance sheet but have took in transfer fees that appear on there in full right now.

 

On their p+l for this year they'll actually show a positive balance for this year as transfers out will show in full and they'll only take 1/8th of transfer fees out. That will pass Premier League FFP (maybe not UEFA's).

 

It's a gamble on the future. If they all turned out shite they'd be in a hole. If not, then it will sustain.

 

That's not what I've read. Most of the players off the books like Aubameyang, Mendy and Koulibaly would ha e a negative impact on the books as they are recent arrivals and not just profit like the youth players. They have brought money in but in pure net terms after the recent lot it's over billion spent with around 250 brought back in. The book keeping stuff is deffo one for shitness of modern football and its boring as fuck. But most seem to think they dont care if they fail as a fine and transfer ban means fuck all to them. 

[Pete]

3 minutes ago, Mook said:

 

I can only see two or three clubs in England who don't seem to give a fuck about FFP. As far as I'm aware, the vast majority of clubs do adhere to it.

Fair do's.  Just rather galling watching us fall further and further away having been in such a position of strength and looking like dominating (along with the oil cheats) for years to come.

[Mook]

5 minutes ago, Pete said:

Fair do's.  Just rather galling watching us fall further and further away having been in such a position of strength and looking like dominating (along with the oil cheats) for years to come.

 

I don't think it was sustainable & I'm not sure how arsed I am about the club keeping up with this madness anymore tbh. The whole thing is a fucking circus now.

[Lee909]

6 minutes ago, Pete said:

Fair do's.  Just rather galling watching us fall further and further away having been in such a position of strength and looking like dominating (along with the oil cheats) for years to come.

It's not so much FFP with us it's FSG only seemingly wanting a outlay of 20/30ml over sales most years so they can break even and only seemingly willing to take loans,push the boat out on money if its something that adds value to the club. Mi d you even then they want us paying for it like the stadium and training grounds

[Lee909]

Apparently Sangare has a buy out clause 37ml euro/just under £32ml

[Scott_M]

3 minutes ago, Lee909 said:

Apparently Sangare has a buy out clause 37ml euro/just under £32ml

And likely going to Bayern Munich. 

[Scott_M]

[Anubis]

Bayern were the third bid for Caicedo so he must be there fall back plan.

[Pete]

9 minutes ago, Mook said:

 

I don't think it was sustainable & I'm not sure how arsed I am about the club keeping up with this madness anymore tbh. The whole thing is a fucking circus now.

Aye. It's all pretty fucked up these days.  

[No2]

Arsenal just done a really weird deal with Brentford for David Raya. It has a huge whiff of 2 PL clubs screaming very loudly that FFP rules need to be complied with.

[Babb'sBurstNad]

49 minutes ago, Turkish Delight said:

 

They aren't. They're amortising deals over long terms and have sold players too.

 

They've basically took a 140 odd million a year commitment over the next 7 or 8 years on their balance sheet but have took in transfer fees that appear on there in full right now.

 

On their p+l for this year they'll actually show a positive balance for this year as transfers out will show in full and they'll only take 1/8th of transfer fees out. That will pass Premier League FFP (maybe not UEFA's).

 

It's a gamble on the future. If they all turned out shite they'd be in a hole. If not, then it will sustain.

 

It'll be 1/5 of transfer fees rather than 1/8. The limit is five years now.