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Top quality (expensive) signings are great IF they work, absolutely. We can point at Alisson and Van Dijk and say we did well. They're arguably the best two transfers we have ever made.Originally Posted by jr81
However, a club with our structure/budget (we operate a certain way whether people like it or not) has a finite amount of funds, so we HAVE to nail our targets. One of the reasons I love it when we target younger players in the "middle" price range (£20m-£45m let's say) is that it reduces risk a little if we make a mistake - and football is absolutely riddled with them for the buying club. These figures will be approximations/from memory so apologies for any errors and I am happy to edit them if people correct me -
- Griezmann from Atletico to Barcelona for £120m or so.
- Kaka from AC Milan to Real Madrid didn't work out as they would have hoped or anything like it.
- Dembele from Dortmund to Barca, fee rising to around £145m.
- Lukaku from Inter to Chelsea for £97m.
- Pogba from Juventus to Man United for £89m or so.
- Man United who love a mistake also had Di Maria from Real Madrid for £60m and Harry Maguire from Leicester for £80m.
- Anyone remember the Panic/Arthur swap deal between Barcelona and Juventus? I think both clubs failed to benefit from that move.
- Mangala from Valencia to Man City for £42m - how many of us even remember Mangala playing for them? We couldn't absorb a mistake like that.
- Haller from Frankfurt to West Ham for £45m is the type of error we couldn't make either.
- Luka Jovic from Frankfurt to Real Madrid was a £60m move and most people can't even picture Jovic's face.
- Kepa from Atletico to Chelsea was £72m down the drain.
- Pepe from Lille to Arsenal was also £72m I think and they'll have regretted that.
- Drinkwater moving from Leicester to Chelsea wasn't as "costly" a mistake at £35m, but we know what £35m can do for a side when used properly given the sort of fees we got Firmino, Mane and Salah for.
- Costa back to Atletico from Chelsea was £45m and he was busted.
- Morata from Real Madrid for £60m and Shevchenko for £30m didn't work either for Chelsea. Tempting to include Torres but they probably feel the goal against Barca was worth it.
- Ndombele at Spurs cost just £2m less than Alisson at £63m and what a mistake.
Further back there's the likes of Veron from Lazio to Man United for £28m or something which was huge for the time and Mendieta from Valencia to Lazio was an astronomical fee in its day (£40m or so) and didn't work.
I'm not against big fees, truly. But we simply cannot afford to "get it wrong" once we get to those sorts of figures - the £90m approx lost on Keita and Ox was bad enough and they weren't even "truly awful" signings or anything like that - Keita being relatively fit and available for rotation actually was useful in our Quad attempt even if he wasn't tearing up trees every week and I'll never forget Ox's goals against Man City - robbed by injuries that lad. Ignoring fees for a moment, a lot of the names on the list were lads who felt they had "made it" or had peaked already.
So for me I like the £20m-£45m sort of bracket and age 22-25 where they are "about to blow up" - somewhat less risk and if they do work out their value goes up, which, much as I wouldn't want us to sell our best players on the regular, is a handy thing to have once in a while. If a £25m player doesn't work out you can still likely sell them for £12.5m or so and slightly soften the loss.
Boring Sidconomics are boring.
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Nunez to liverpool 85m including addons+ never worth that.
we have made some terrible signings and FSG dont have the money to put it right hence midfield was in a mess and hopefully sorted after summer
Keita.... Ox ox less so, both waste of time, not worth the money paid at all
the spanish clubs seem to fuck up a lot with transfers..
Last edited by Kev0909; 17th June 2023 at 11:50 AM.
#FSGOUT
we are liverpool football club, not fucking norwich.
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Not sure if you have seen it. But the "new investment" rumours have resurfaced again just in time for another transfer window.
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That's all well and good. But then if those cheaper options don't work out (Arthur, Carvalho to an extent, elliot to an extent so far, Ben davies, karius ) we slip further and further back.
I just believe without an investment of top quality players a team will never remain challenging at the top. We are a prime example of that. We were at the summit and then failed to invest in quality. Look at our squad now.
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I should also add that I hate the mlamount of in football. I think it's disgusting the fees and wages that are being paid out.
Unfortunatly that's the nature of the sport and it's being proven that those that spend, win consistently. There are teams that get it wrong, just have to look at United and Chelsea in recent times but before that, Chelsea were challenging consistently while spending.
I said it before, I don't expect us to challenge consistently under these owners as we won't invest enough compared to others. I still stand by that.
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Yet we were the best we've ever been in the 15 games without him in 19-20
He isn't a DM, he doesn't have any of the qualities of a DM, when we attempted to play him as an actual DM, alone in midfield with LCM and RCM ahead of him last season, it was an absolute fucking disaster for precisely that reason
Why it worked so well in his absence in 19-20 was that we then had 3 midfielders playing in midfield, I appreciate for a destroyer like Fab, without a midfielders sensibilities, playing a pressing and counter pressing system must be very difficult, his main and most problematic flaw is he doesn't have a midfielders understanding of when he HAS to stay with his man and not rush to the ball to try and get so many bodies around it and also having a player at No6 with the passing to release our forwards and full backs at will and make the play to our strengths expertly was a massive difference to what Fab has ever offered
That's the main part of it, the midfielders understand the concept of always trying to win the ball back as quickly as possible, but because they're midfielders and read and anticipate it as such, they know that isn't always possible and when they have to stay with their man and slow the opposition break down, not give them an easy ball to progress it further (Carvajal to Casemiro) and give team mates the chance to get back so we then have the numbers to try and win it back without leaving ourselves wide open and easy to play through, Fab has no fucking clue when he has to do this and has demonstrated in over and over and over, he still does it 3 or 4 times every game
Fab had a very good first half of his first season, through which he earned huge plaudits that he has continued thieving a living off the back of, even though we had to stop using him as he played in that first half season because teams quickly worked out how to counter on us
He was an automatic cult hero for far too many here and in our fanbase overall for having taken Henderson's place in their eyes, despite never being anywhere near the level of player Henderson was, that didn't matter, he'd come in for the player who dared to take on the captaincy after Gerrard and dared to do a damned site better job of it
In that first half season he was employed as a very high destroyer, Gini and other mids who played supported him playing that high destroyer role in a way in which he could just charge to wherever the ball was and they picked up the pieces for his lack of reading of the game and midfielders sensibilities, but it got rumbled soon enough and teams started to release players for transition in the space in the centre behind Fab for them to then release a player wide in behind Trent - That shit happened, it's why we had to bring Hendo back in at RCM as an additional controller to steer the club to Champions League and Premier League glory
Alisson and Virgil were essential signings, but the turning point that drove the side to Champions League and Premier League wins happened on April 5th 2019 in an away game at Southampton, introducing Henderson at RCM on 60 minutes with the scores at 1-1 for him to get a goal and assist to rescue us from looked like being yet another disappointing draw through a goal scored on the counter down our right and that turn around after too many disappointing draws through letting goals in like that, proved to be the catalyst for everything that followed until Fab came back in for the last third of the 19-20 season, laying waste to the incredible evolution that had happened in his absence
"If Everton were playing at the bottom of my garden, i'd close the curtains”
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Wonder if he'll take over from hendo hopefully
Bump trying to keep new player threads going until the new season so we can call them all shit.
#FSGOUT
we are liverpool football club, not fucking norwich.
Public Enemy #666
@OfficialWonder if he'll take over from hendo hopefully
Bump trying to keep new player threads going until the new season so we can call them all shit.
Give him the captain's armband already....
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