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Monday Aug 26: The deal for the keeper is virtually done now and he’ll stay at Valencia for this year. As I wrote last week, this deal doesn’t sit too well with me just because Alisson is not looking for a way out, so it feels unnecessary. He has two years left, wants to stay beyond that so why are “succession planning” on the best in the world who doesn’t need a successor for a while? Smacks of them not wanting to pay Alisson, which also tells me they won’t be extending Virgil or Mo either. “Smartest guys in the room” thinking they can just replace these all time greats on the cheap. Maybe they can and I’ll look like a knobhead for doubting them? We’ll see, I hope so. Anyway, in terms of Mamardashvili himself, he’s supposed to be the next big thing and he clearly really wanted to come here as let’s face it, this isn’t the greatest of situations for him at the moment, but he’s gone along with it so welcome aboard big fella. If he’s anywhere near as good as Alisson then we’re all set for the next ten years. I’m struggling to figure out just what our strategy is though, as tonight it’s been reported that we’re trying to get Chiesa from Juve. I’m not sure how you go from bidding £70m for Anthony Gordon to ending up with a £12m bid for Chiesa just before the window shuts, but then this is exactly what we did last summer with Caicedo/Endo so we have form for it, even if it was different people making the deal then than it is now. A few years ago Chiesa was one of the hottest attacking talents in Europe and was rated at £100m. We were linked with a few times and I always laughed it off because we were never going to pay what it would take to get him. Klopp apparently loved him though, so getting him for this price seems like exactly the kind of “opportunistic” deal Hughes was talking about in his press conference. In isolation, this is sound. Smart move, low risk, getting him for peanuts. He’s a player who could potentially turn out to be really impactful for us. Bit of a Shaqiri type signing maybe, only better. When you zoom out though, it’s not a great look. We’ve been selling players all summer, we’re still trying to sell more of them, we’ve lowered the wage bill massively and we’ve spent fuck all to bring in the players we need or on keeping the world class players we have by extending their contracts. We have spent a bit on a player we don’t need and won’t even see for at least a year, and now we’ve spent buttons to get another forward when most people are screaming for a centre back and a midfielder. Not me, given a choice between a number six or another forward to compete with/fill in for/succeed Mo, I’d take the forward. I’ll be honest though, my first reaction when I saw this news was to roll my eyes and say “Oh fuck off”. Not because of Chiesa himself (I’m sure he’ll be a good addition) but because of the price. Richard Hughes is clearly the type of guy who goes into the supermarket in the morning needing a loaf, sees one he likes but doesn’t want to pay full price. So he goes hungry all day, pops back in 10 minutes before closing time and gets a different loaf that’s at the last day of its sell by date and is now down to 30p. Look, in all seriousness this would be a great bit off business if we pull it off and I know that deep down. But the thing that gets me is if Chiesa’s asking price was £30m we wouldn’t be interested. That speaks volumes about how we operate. We’re one of the world’s richest clubs but we act like Scrooge McDuck most of the time.