Football: The odds are not even

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Southampton will lose Prowse-Ward, who will be a good signing for a lot of clubs, Walker-Peters will find a new club, and they will lose the young talents with potential (Bella-Kotchap, Diallo, Alcaraz). Che Adams should also be able to find a new club.

Leeds squad will get picked apart, they have a bunch of good players, who are still relatively young. Meslier, Firpo, Koch,  Summerville, Aaronson, Adams, and Bamford. All of them should find a new club without too many difficulties.

Tielemans is leaving on a free, as he was quite while. Maddison will be in demand, Daka will have a market, so should Barnes. But then? Vardy is 36, that limits his options significantly, so he will probably stay. Söyüncü's value has plummeted. There's still a good player in there somewhere, and he is at a very good footballing age. So there'll be a club willing to take a gamble on him.

Leicester's squad has become old and stale.

[Raja]

 

[Raja]

3 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

o there'll be a club willing to take a gamble on him.

 

he's going to atletico

[A Horse Named Stranger]

3 minutes ago, Raja said:

 

Translation: Liverpool need/want to raise funds this summer, and they figured that Cavalho hits that sweet spot, between having value (a market) and not being part of the the team's short term future. I read a few weeks ago, that he was candidate to be loaned out, due to the lack of opportunities. Going for the sale instead makes perfect sense for them.

[polishgenius]

Villa will be taking a look at all three relegated clubs with interest, I'm sure. Given the money they displayed in January, maybe Bournemouth too. 

 

Bamford has had a horrendous season, he might leave but I can see him being left to see if he can prove, in the championship, that the injury hasn't wrecked him. 

[polishgenius]

The Haaland effect

[A Horse Named Stranger]

21 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

Bamford has had a horrendous season, he might leave but I can see him being left to see if he can prove, in the championship, that the injury hasn't wrecked him. 

I think there'll be a club to take that chance. Not a top six club, maybe not even a top 10 finisher, but a club like Everton in the market for a forward.

[ljkeane]

25 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

I think there'll be a club to take that chance. Not a top six club, maybe not even a top 10 finisher, but a club like Everton in the market for a forward.

Nah, Everton’s problem is DCL is never fit, Bamford’s not an improvement on that front on this season’s evidence.

[Consigliere]

Bamford was fit this season. It's the series of serious injuries he suffered last season that looks to have affected him. Everton might look to raid Leicester instead for Iheanacho or Daka.

[Rorshach]

I reckon our first question will be "is he expensive?". Second "is he injury-prone?". And third "is he tall?".

Check all three, and there's a Dyche for you.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

1 hour ago, Consigliere said:

Bamford was fit this season. It's the series of serious injuries he suffered last season that looks to have affected him. Everton might look to raid Leicester instead for Iheanacho or Daka.

Daka will probably have options. If not in the EPL, he might look outside England for clubs conceivably competing for european football instead of relegation battle.

[Iskaral Pust]

I think Carvalho was treated poorly by Klopp this year.  After a long pursuit to sign him, there was no idea how to use him (or patience with a young player) even when our midfield and attack had so many missing players.  That interruption will have hampered the player’s development.

[AncalagonTheBlack]

3 hours ago, Raja said:

 

 

Liverpool have rejected a permanent offer for Fabio Carvalho from abroad. Understand club who sent the bid are not based in his native Portugal.

#LFC open to loaning Carvalho out amid plenty of interest but not currently considering anything permanent.

From Caoimhe O’Neill one of the LFC writers at The Athletic (@CaoimheSport)

[polishgenius]

Fuck

this

shit

[Consigliere]

United rejecting several loan offers from Turkish clubs in January was a red flag to me. That screamed that the higher ups have little to no intention of giving Greenwood the boot. If United's brass give Greenwood the all clear then I can see Ten Hag being quite happy to make use of him. Given his stance when it came to Promes and his defence of Overmars, I don't see Ten Hag taking the high road here. If he believes that Greenwood will be useful to him, I expect he’d have no issues integrating him into the squad.

 

[AncalagonTheBlack]

German fans do not have a good opinion of our new sporting director Jorg 

A few gems:

https://old.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/13vl1kb/official_jorg_schmadtke_appointed_new_liverpool/

Once they sold Modeste he burned all their money on talents that did not workout and an overpriced striker that simply did not fit their team. Mainz sold Cordoba in a heartbeat when that 17m€ offer from Schmadtke came in. Sent them straight down into 2.BL again and basically had everyone in the club turn on each other.

And straight to 2. Bundesliga the next season. I don't want to delve so much into squad planning (which he fucked up) but like to say that he created a very toxic atmosphere within the club that could not be resolved.

 

The club was in shambles, not gonna lie. Our board appointed Peter Stöger as coach prior to Schmadtke. Stöger's role in our rebuild is as big as Schmadtke's. The latter build a formidable squad with not-so-formidable contracts. His transfers were hit and miss. He installed his son in our scouting system even though he wasn't good at his job. He did that in Wolfsburg as well. Eventually it all came crashing down on him. He sold Modeste to China even though he was our lifeline with 25 goals and replaced him with Cordoba for a whopping 17 million. The squad was not balanced at all and definitely not fit for Europe League competition. He fell out with our coach and they refused to talk to each other. Rumor has it that Schmadtke fucked Stöger's wife. All in all he created such a bad atmosphere within the club that it was only solvable by firing both Schmadtke and later on Stöger.

He led us from 2. Bundesliga to Europe League, yes, but his hubris led us straight back to where we came and he left us worse off.

I think he is a douchebag with a giant ego. He tends to not get along with other staff, for example he kicked out Oliver Glasner in Wolfsburg despite him doing well, just to hire van Bommel and Frontzek who failed big time (to nobodys surprise) His last few years in Wolfsburg have been really bad in my opinion.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

I am also not exactly sure how he landed the Liverpool gig. (check one of the previous threads).

As for Köln and Stöger. Stöger was very popular at the club and among the fans. Not that dissimilar to what Liverpool fans feel towards Klopp. Him banging Stöger's wife is new to me. But not my club, not my town. Anyway, the rift between Stöger and Schmadtke is true, and eventually Stöger lost out and got the sack. 

Selling Modeste to China was really Modeste pushing hard for the transfer. It was the time, when you could earn crazy money in China. And Modeste has a mercenary mentality. 

Wolfsburg had been one of those clubs, where it looked like they had a decent squad, which should finish top half, but several managers failed to get a tone out of it post Hecking (who was sacked in October '16). Only exception was Glasner ('19-'21), who then left for Frankfurt. Glasner wasn't sacked, he wanted to leave, because he fell out with Schmadtke.  Should be noted Schmadtke joined Wolfburg in 2018, so Glasner was also his appointment. They wanted to take a chance on the inexperienced van Bommel as a successor to Glasner. It didn't work out. The elders will remember their cup exit due to a sub error during covid (much older thread). In the league they started red hot with four wins, but then they went on an 8 game drought. They then appointed Kohfeldt, who enjoyed an excellent rep. Frankly, that would've also been my pick, altho it was kinda surprising he jumped at that job offer at the time.  Schmadtke said he step down in a years time to retire. Higher ups (VW essentially) wanted him to fire Kohfeldt, which Schmadtke really didn't want to and which probably was a contrbuting factor to announce his decission, as he felt the amount of stick Kohfeldt was getting was unfair. Kohfeldt was dismissed at the end of that season and Kovac came in. Schmadtke true to his word stepped down in January. The squad really isn't horrible, Kovac messed up the start of the season, and they only missed out on the EL at the final day of the season.

Yes, Schmadtke is Major Grumpy. And he hasn't really excelled at his previous stops, but I wouldn't blame all the woes at his clubs on him either. 

Would I've signed him in Liverpool's place? No. But he is not absurdly unqualified either.

Edited May 30, 2023 by A Horse Named Stranger

[ljkeane]

It's a bit hard to tell with behind the scenes stuff but by the sound of it Liverpool weren't expecting to lose Ward and have been caught out a bit. Schmadtke does seem like a bit of a stopgap measure from the way it's been repeatedly pointed out it's not a long term appointment at this stage. He's reasonably qualified, available and seems happy to sign up to a temporary role.

I can't say I'm particularly delighted that our recruitment team seems to be in a bit of disarray just as we're going into a fairly big transfer window for rebuilding the side but it does seem like the targets have already been identified and the plan is for Schmadtke to come in and manage the transfer negotiations. I'd guess the club hierarchy will want to recruit someone who fits in a bit more with their data driven recruitment model for the longer term after that but we'll see.

[The Sunland Lord]

 

[Iskaral Pust]

Post-mortem on Liverpool’s season:

EL is more than we deserve for ten months of shit football, and MUFC and NUFC should be ashamed that we even threatened their CL spots by the end.

Allisson was great all season (only a couple of dodgy games, I think).  The defense was poor.  The one positive is that Konate continued to develop but just needs to learn some more positional anticipation.  VVD continued to be too nonchalant and gave attackers too much space.  Matip and Gomez regressed badly.  TAA’s defensive play became a serious liability.  The new formation helps TAA a lot but hurts all the other defenders, especially Robertson.

TAA has a future as a deep play-maker.  Hendo (terrible contract extension), Fabinho (surely must be older than the claimed 29) and Thiago have questionable futures as age has hit them hard, while Ox, Keita and Milner all depart.  Elliott started the season well but faded badly, while Jones was the opposite.  Midfield was the biggest problem.

Diaz started the season great but lost out to a bad injury, and hasn’t regained his prior form yet — but high hopes for next year.  Gakpo was a great signing for a false 9 as Firmino departs.  Salah had a bad season with 30 goals + 16 assists.  Jota finished the season in rich form but a long injury and a slow recovery of form dominated his season; still too awkward on the ball too often.  Darwin scored 15 goals but doesn’t look ready to play as a starter, which is not great for his price tag — I have a feeling he’ll be developed as an alternate style #9 or else a left winger for when Diaz eventually replaces Salah on the right. Carvalho was largely ignored.