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Football: Calling Dr. Rashford. European Cup, transfer shenanigans


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The transfer shenanigans.

Sebastian Hoeneß has taken over at Hoffenheim.

Liverpool rumoredly interested in Kabak (Schalke) to replace the departing Lovren.

Leeds and Leipzig are still arguing whether the former are obliged to buy Augustin. Looks like Leeds will lose this one and end up with the player neither club wants.

And Dortmund would presumably be interested in signing Ikone, if Sancho buggers off.

PSG are interested in Cunha (Hertha Berlin)

Hertha and Southampton are interested in McKennie (Schalke) - so if you want to know, who will move to Liverpool in 2-3 years.

 

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8 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Liverpool rumoredly interested in Kabak (Schalke) to replace the departing Lovren.

How good is he? Potential world class/playing from the back defender type or just solid/reliable? Is he prone to the occasional brain farts like Lovren? :P

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Lovren to Zenit is confirmed.  Best of luck to him there.  Lallana should be signing for Brighton shortly. 

Origi scored a good goal yesterday but confirmed once again that he does not fit in this team.  His general game is far too limited.  Missing out on Werner really concerns me.  Neither Ox nor Minamino look able to replace what Mane and Salah offer either.  They’re both good as CAMs but not as wide forwards running behind defenders.

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1 hour ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

How good is he? Potential world class/playing from the back defender type or just solid/reliable? Is he prone to the occasional brain farts like Lovren? :P

Tough to say how good he actually is right now. Talentwise he is widely rated as one of the brightest defense talents in Europe, also by folks who know more about football than this horse. Footballing wise young, modern defender, who likes to push forward. He is just 20 y.o. so he has certainly not reached his full potential. He'd be coming off Schalke, who had played the second half of the season in such a fashion, that Leicester fans and players would be entitled to laugh at them. It was just omnishambles. However Kabak, was one of those players, that still managed to put in solid/good performances, despite the entire team around him imploding, that at age 20 is quite an achievement. That's why I said, tough to say how good he actually is right now. Usually Schalke would want to hang onto him, and only grudgingly sell him next year when a release clause (50m €) kicks in. But as mentioned in the previous thread (or the one before?), they are in a difficult position financially, so they might be open to sell this year for 30m € (at least that's the Kicker assumption).

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1 hour ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Lovren to Zenit is confirmed.  Best of luck to him there.  Lallana should be signing for Brighton shortly. 

Origi scored a good goal yesterday but confirmed once again that he does not fit in this team.  His general game is far too limited.  Missing out on Werner really concerns me.  Neither Ox nor Minamino look able to replace what Mane and Salah offer either.  They’re both good as CAMs but not as wide forwards running behind defenders.

Minamino seems to be better suited to playing Firmino's role rather then on either of the wings.

If Shaqiri leaves too, as has been rumoured, then we're going to be seriously light up front.

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18 minutes ago, Soylent Brown said:

If Shaqiri leaves too, as has been rumoured, then we're going to be seriously light up front.

I think they pretty clearly meant to sign Werner. All the talk about his conversations with Klopp is right out of Liverpool's 'make a big signing' playbook, I expect they probably went to Blackpool together. Having decided they didn't have enough money anymore to meet his buyout clause there probably won't be enough to make any real marquee signings so Edwards is going to have to do something clever if we're going to get any significant improvements to the squad. 

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Werner had a low release clause for the quality of player that he is. If Liverpool were unwilling or unable to meet such a low release clause then that should be quite a concern. James Pearce has also reported that there is currently a lot of uncertainty over Wijnaldum as well.

 

Vertonghen has confirmed that he will be leaving Spurs.

Official confirmation from Everton that the club will not be taking up the buy option on Sidibe.

Romano reporting that the chances of Chelsea giving Willian the 3 year contract that he wants looks slim and there is a growing expectation that he's going to sign for Arsenal.

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57 minutes ago, Consigliere said:

Werner had a low release clause for the quality of player that he is. If Liverpool were unwilling or unable to meet such a low release clause then that should be quite a concern.

Liverpool operate within the constraints of the revenue they generate. £50 odd million might be a relatively low release clause for a player of his quality but it's still a significant proportion of what you'd expect to be Liverpool's transfer budget in a normal year. With losing, as a minimum, a significant chunk of the match day revenues they expected to earn in 2020 and maybe 2021 that's going to have a knock on effect on the funds available for transfers. :dunno:

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8 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

Liverpool operate within the constraints of the revenue they generate. £50 odd million might be a relatively low release clause for a player of his quality but it's still a significant proportion of what you'd expect to be Liverpool's transfer budget in a normal year


But that's exactly the concern, ain't it. For where Liverpool are, 50mil would seem like the absolute minimun you'd expect for a player who is as close as possible to guaranteed to improve their squad. They can of course buy young players or players from less-fancied leagues and improve them and Klopp excells at that, but they're not getting any finished or fully proven products if that's the restraint they're operating under.

Probably end up with Todd Cantwell, who to be fair would not be bad at all as a Lallana replacement.

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Didn't United take out a £140 million loan in May to finance this summer window? I'm glad we are not doing that and running up debts.We had that problem in the past, don't want to see a return to bad habits.

I'm confident that whoever we sign, Klopp will get 200% out of them, which going by the past few seasons should stand us in good stead.

eta - congrats to Jurgen :bowdown:

 

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22 minutes ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

Didn't United take out a £140 million loan in May to finance this summer window?


We drew money out from a backup credit fund we had or something (I don't understand finance at all but explanations I read for what it was suggest we essentially had a credit fund set up to draw on just in case things became really unexpectedly dire financially- so getting through coronavirus seems to be in line what the loan was set up for). Whether it's being used to fund the window was just speculation.

Obviously the continuing Glazer debts will forever look bad and corona has set us back, but we're in no way in bad shape financially really compared to, well, anyone. We make the most money and spend the least percentage of revenue on wages. We really did need to get into the CL though- reports were that not doing so would have been a 70mil gap, 50mil CL money and 20mil due to a clause in the Adidas deal.

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1 hour ago, polishgenius said:


But that's exactly the concern, ain't it. For where Liverpool are, 50mil would seem like the absolute minimun you'd expect for a player who is as close as possible to guaranteed to improve their squad. They can of course buy young players or players from less-fancied leagues and improve them and Klopp excells at that, but they're not getting any finished or fully proven products if that's the restraint they're operating under.

Probably end up with Todd Cantwell, who to be fair would not be bad at all as a Lallana replacement.

It is a concern.  If we cannot afford 50m for Werner when his market value would be 80m or more, for the position where we have least depth, then we have significant limitations.  I definitely don’t see us paying 30m for a 20yr old CB in that case.  More likely we’ll try to find another Matip or Klavan.

Thoses financial limitations are real.  We’ve invested everything in player contracts, taking a bet that it’s better to retain our stars than gamble on replacing them.  We don’t seem to have the resources to retain our stars and add to them.

We’re a big club but we don’t get capital injections from our owners (unlike City, Chelsea, PSG, etc) and we’re still not in the top tier of revenue generating.  Our stadium isn’t yet big enough and our commercial sponsorship and merchandising just doesn’t have the same cachet as clubs like United, RM, and Barcelona who amassed more trophies during the great commercialization of football.  We may catch up if we continue to win big trophies but probably we’ll always be a tier below. 

BTW, Woodward is still United’s most valuable employee.  He may know nothing about football but there’s no way United would have signed Fernandes (or Maguire or AWB) without his lines of revenue.  And that 140m debt they tapped is a bloody big number for any other club.  Reaching the CL just saved them a lot of money, but considering there may not be stadium revenue, and they may not go far in the competition, the only sure saving so far was from Adidas.

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1 hour ago, ljkeane said:

Liverpool operate within the constraints of the revenue they generate. £50 odd million might be a relatively low release clause for a player of his quality but it's still a significant proportion of what you'd expect to be Liverpool's transfer budget in a normal year. With losing, as a minimum, a significant chunk of the match day revenues they expected to earn in 2020 and maybe 2021 that's going to have a knock on effect on the funds available for transfers. :dunno:

 

Liverpool are among the top 10 richest clubs in the world. They've also made big profits in the last two years thanks to two CL finals. They've financed much of their spending through player sales and so have a low net spend. £50m for Werner isn't that much and should have been within Liverpool's ability to pay. Looking at the revenue generated over the last two years + net spend + a reasonable wage bill, I just find it really hard to believe that Liverpool would not be capable of paying that. I think that Liverpool's board simply didn't think Werner was worth it rather than not having the funds. 

 

1 hour ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

Didn't United take out a £140 million loan in May to finance this summer window?

No. 

eta. we used part of our cash reserves to finance transfers. United had approx. £300m in cash reserves.

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13 minutes ago, Consigliere said:

Liverpool are among the top 10 richest clubs in the world. They've also made big profits in the last two years thanks to two CL finals. They've financed much of their spending through player sales and so have a low net spend. £50m for Werner isn't that much and should have been within Liverpool's ability to pay. Looking at the revenue generated over the last two years + net spend + a reasonable wage bill, I just find it really hard to believe that Liverpool would not be capable of paying that. I think that Liverpool's board simply didn't think Werner was worth it rather than not having the funds.

Most of the richest football clubs in the world are run in a pretty financially irresponsible manner. Barcelona are apparently in a fairly big mess.

Liverpool made a pre tax profit of £42 million in their last published accounts apparently. Which is, you know, less than £50 million. They've also recently expanded the main stand, are building a new training facility and are at least considering expanding the Anfield Road end. But, yeah, I'm sure if they really wanted to they could have gotten the money to pay the fee. The point is that they've decided that's no longer an appropriate amount to spend in the current environment. 

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Just now, ljkeane said:

Most of the richest football clubs in the world are run in a pretty financially irresponsible manner. Barcelona are apparently in a fairly big mess.

Liverpool made a pre tax profit of £42 million in their last published accounts apparently. Which is, you know, less than £50 million. They've also recently expanded the main stand, are building a new training facility and are at least considering expanding the Anfield Road end. But, yeah, I'm sure if they really wanted to they could have gotten the money to pay the fee. The point is that they've decided that's no longer an appropriate amount to spend in the current environment. 

That's all I'm saying is that Liverpool could pay that easily if they wanted to. If Napoli can afford to sign a player for €50m + bonuses then Liverpool would have no problem paying a similar sum either. Also, pre tax profit is never one of the rich clubs transfer budget. I don't buy this whole 'Liverpool can't afford it' bullshit narrative. Liverpool can afford it but their board for whatever reason decided not to pay it - maybe they are just continuing a policy of buy cheap(er) and let Klopp improve the player. 

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Any infrastructure work won't be eating into the transfer budget. It's not included in FFP calculations, and anyway, it would be idiotic to expand the stadium a little but send the team down to mid-table in the process.

Our owners just don't really want to spend too much money. Hopefully we beat the odds and keep finding useful bargains, but more likely once Klopp finishes his contract we'll be battling with the also-rans for top 4 with City off in the distance.

Hopefully we can get the most out of the squad we have right now.

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16 hours ago, Consigliere said:

Romano reporting that the chances of Chelsea giving Willian the 3 year contract that he wants looks slim and there is a growing expectation that he's going to sign for Arsenal.

Wouldn't mind Liverpool going for Willian as backup for Mane and Salah. Got the speed, physicality and work rate to fit the team.

I think backup for Mane and Salah on the wing is a higher priority than Bobby/Central replacement. Mane and Salah can play central (Mane looked a lot better through the middle than Salah the few times they played central) and Minamino is probably the real central backup anyway. Mane's absence on the wing hurts the defensive play a lot which is why I suspect Salah plays central a lot more. But I think Klopp will trust those two through the centre before a new guy, but it does mean we need a backup for those two on the wing.

We don't have many pacey wingers coming through the academy so I think they have to buy some, whether it be someone experienced like Willian or someone younger like Traore. Sancho/Dembele/Asensio were linked ages ago but seems less and less likely these days.

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