Page 346 of 659 FirstFirst ... 246296336339340341342343344345346347348349350351352353356396446 ... LastLast
Results 3,451 to 3,460 of 6589

Thread: Summer transfer thread

  1. #3451
    Join Date
    Oct 2011
    Posts
    23,098
    From the Telegraph
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football...lubs-progress/



    Liverpool owners are to blame for the culture of complacency crippling the club's progress

    Successful football clubs strengthen when they are on top, a lesson FSG has failed to learn since winning the Champions League in 2019

    The last person Liverpool and, perhaps more pertinently the club’s owners, Fenway Sports Group, want to be reminded of right now is Sir Alex Ferguson. But the former Manchester United manager was spot on when he famously said: “I tell the players that the bus is moving. This club has to progress. And the bus wouldn’t wait for them. I tell them to get on board.”

    No Liverpool fan needs to be told of the old adage that you strengthen while ahead. It is what the club did for years; years before Ferguson pitched up at Old Trafford and started talking about perches. But Liverpool – or rather FSG - have been guilty of putting the brakes on since Jürgen Klopp brought back not just the European Cup but the Premier League title.

    That manifested itself most clearly in the January transfer window. Virgil van Dijk suffered his knee injury in October; Joe Gomez suffered his in November and yet it was not until the final day of the January transfer window that Liverpool scrambled around in the bargain basement to finally bring in Ozan Kabak on loan from Schalke for £1 million, plus up to £500,000 in add-ons, and signed Preston’s Ben Davies for an initial £500,000, potentially rising to £2m. Fans talked up the cleverness of the signings. But that was wishful thinking.

    Instead they seemed like a public admission of a private fear: that a culture of complacency has seeped into Liverpool. That senior figures at the club, and the owners FSG, had pretty much written off this strange season, almost treating it as a free hit, with the built-in assumption that so skilled was Klopp that a top-four finish would be assured come what may and with it Champions League qualification. Klopp, it was presumed, would find a way.

    But success is not a tap. It cannot be turned on and off. Not by any player, not by any team and not by any club. The bus does not stop and to slow it down is perilous. The sport is too volatile, too competitive and things can – as Liverpool have shown with six successive home defeats – rapidly spiral out of control. Suddenly some fans have not just written off Champions League qualification but are hoping Liverpool even miss out on a Europa League place. The problem with talking about putting an asterisk next to the season, as some have done, is that people start to believe it. They start to search out excuses.

    Whatever the mitigation it has now turned into an embarrassing title defence from Liverpool. It is becoming increasingly difficult to defend them against Roy Keane’s allegation of being “bad champions”. Not that they ever got the opportunity to truly celebrate being champions and maybe there is a psychological hangover in that, also.

    Advertisement

    There is the pandemic: no club owner – just like every other business – has dealt with this kind of nightmare scenario before and there is sympathy because revenues are plunging, But Premier League clubs of the stature of Liverpool do have a certain built-in robustness with the insulation of their broadcast contracts plus, hopefully, a long-term plan that the economy will recover and they will be well-placed to take advantage. Football has continued. Football is valued. FSG knows it remains a solid long-term investment especially at a blue-chip franchise such as Liverpool.

    Instead of considering furlough schemes last summer maybe it would have been wiser for Liverpool to have considered further investment because – despite the Covid crisis – they were coming off the back of two years of outstanding success and growth. Maybe, having tried to furlough staff before being forced by a fans' backlash to reverse it, the ‘optics’ were not right in FSG’s eyes. But that has proved short-sighted.

    In fact it is since winning the Champions League in 2019 that major incomings have slowed down with around £84m spent - £40m on Diogo Jota, £20m on Thiago Alcantara, £11.7m Kostas Tsimikas last summer and, before that, £7.65m on Takumi Minamino and £1.7m on Sepp van den Berg.

    At the same time Manchester City have spent £300m, Manchester United £280m, Chelsea – despite their one window transfer ban – £263m, Tottenham Hotspur more than £230m and Arsenal around £220m.

    FSG has hardly been a bad owner even if it proposed a £77 ticket before apologising to the fans who staged a walkout in protest in 2016; even if it apparently co-authored ‘Project Big Picture’ and appears to want a European Super League and even if – at heart – Liverpool is a strategic business investment. There is, though, nothing wrong in that and self-sufficiency should be encouraged.

    FSG also cleaned up the balance sheet, broke transfer records to sign Van Dijk and Alisson and hired Klopp, for goodness sake. It has spent heavily on upgrading player contracts with a highly-competitive wage bill, it lent £110m for the building of the magnificent new stand, which the club is paying back, and £50m on a new training ground.

    But there also comes a time to react to circumstances and to protect the asset. There has to be an element of catastrophe planning. Of course Liverpool should not overstretch themselves but the perfect storm of this season changed things and FSG needed to respond. The January window showed that especially after the missed opportunity of the past two summers when the squad was left lacking depth. Maybe a good enough target could not be landed. But did FSG really try?

    Advertisement

    Now it has been proven that Klopp – just like every other manager – is not impervious to outside influences and events. He has also made mistakes, not least tactically, and the players are also at fault. Liverpool cannot dismiss this season as a freak, to award it that asterisk and assume it will be better come August.

    The lifeboat of still being in the Champions League remains and, who knows, Liverpool may just cussedly reach another final. But a huge transfer window looms in what will be a difficult market but maybe one where opportunities will present themselves to the boldest and most forward-thinking clubs. And, for Liverpool, this might have to be negotiated without Champions League money. The next move belongs to FSG.

    Rationally no one should have expected last season’s title triumph to usher in a period of dominance – not in the modern era with the strength and spending power of rivals – but the drop-off is not just about bad luck and unique circumstances. There has also been bad planning. That is a corporate failing for which the owners cannot escape their share of the blame. The bus has stalled.

  2. #3452
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    offaly
    Posts
    16,957
    Quote Originally Posted by Steveo View Post
    From the Telegraph
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football...lubs-progress/



    Liverpool owners are to blame for the culture of complacency crippling the club's progress

    Successful football clubs strengthen when they are on top, a lesson FSG has failed to learn since winning the Champions League in 2019

    The last person Liverpool and, perhaps more pertinently the club’s owners, Fenway Sports Group, want to be reminded of right now is Sir Alex Ferguson. But the former Manchester United manager was spot on when he famously said: “I tell the players that the bus is moving. This club has to progress. And the bus wouldn’t wait for them. I tell them to get on board.”

    No Liverpool fan needs to be told of the old adage that you strengthen while ahead. It is what the club did for years; years before Ferguson pitched up at Old Trafford and started talking about perches. But Liverpool – or rather FSG - have been guilty of putting the brakes on since Jürgen Klopp brought back not just the European Cup but the Premier League title.

    That manifested itself most clearly in the January transfer window. Virgil van Dijk suffered his knee injury in October; Joe Gomez suffered his in November and yet it was not until the final day of the January transfer window that Liverpool scrambled around in the bargain basement to finally bring in Ozan Kabak on loan from Schalke for £1 million, plus up to £500,000 in add-ons, and signed Preston’s Ben Davies for an initial £500,000, potentially rising to £2m. Fans talked up the cleverness of the signings. But that was wishful thinking.

    Instead they seemed like a public admission of a private fear: that a culture of complacency has seeped into Liverpool. That senior figures at the club, and the owners FSG, had pretty much written off this strange season, almost treating it as a free hit, with the built-in assumption that so skilled was Klopp that a top-four finish would be assured come what may and with it Champions League qualification. Klopp, it was presumed, would find a way.

    But success is not a tap. It cannot be turned on and off. Not by any player, not by any team and not by any club. The bus does not stop and to slow it down is perilous. The sport is too volatile, too competitive and things can – as Liverpool have shown with six successive home defeats – rapidly spiral out of control. Suddenly some fans have not just written off Champions League qualification but are hoping Liverpool even miss out on a Europa League place. The problem with talking about putting an asterisk next to the season, as some have done, is that people start to believe it. They start to search out excuses.

    Whatever the mitigation it has now turned into an embarrassing title defence from Liverpool. It is becoming increasingly difficult to defend them against Roy Keane’s allegation of being “bad champions”. Not that they ever got the opportunity to truly celebrate being champions and maybe there is a psychological hangover in that, also.

    Advertisement

    There is the pandemic: no club owner – just like every other business – has dealt with this kind of nightmare scenario before and there is sympathy because revenues are plunging, But Premier League clubs of the stature of Liverpool do have a certain built-in robustness with the insulation of their broadcast contracts plus, hopefully, a long-term plan that the economy will recover and they will be well-placed to take advantage. Football has continued. Football is valued. FSG knows it remains a solid long-term investment especially at a blue-chip franchise such as Liverpool.

    Instead of considering furlough schemes last summer maybe it would have been wiser for Liverpool to have considered further investment because – despite the Covid crisis – they were coming off the back of two years of outstanding success and growth. Maybe, having tried to furlough staff before being forced by a fans' backlash to reverse it, the ‘optics’ were not right in FSG’s eyes. But that has proved short-sighted.

    In fact it is since winning the Champions League in 2019 that major incomings have slowed down with around £84m spent - £40m on Diogo Jota, £20m on Thiago Alcantara, £11.7m Kostas Tsimikas last summer and, before that, £7.65m on Takumi Minamino and £1.7m on Sepp van den Berg.

    At the same time Manchester City have spent £300m, Manchester United £280m, Chelsea – despite their one window transfer ban – £263m, Tottenham Hotspur more than £230m and Arsenal around £220m.

    FSG has hardly been a bad owner even if it proposed a £77 ticket before apologising to the fans who staged a walkout in protest in 2016; even if it apparently co-authored ‘Project Big Picture’ and appears to want a European Super League and even if – at heart – Liverpool is a strategic business investment. There is, though, nothing wrong in that and self-sufficiency should be encouraged.

    FSG also cleaned up the balance sheet, broke transfer records to sign Van Dijk and Alisson and hired Klopp, for goodness sake. It has spent heavily on upgrading player contracts with a highly-competitive wage bill, it lent £110m for the building of the magnificent new stand, which the club is paying back, and £50m on a new training ground.

    But there also comes a time to react to circumstances and to protect the asset. There has to be an element of catastrophe planning. Of course Liverpool should not overstretch themselves but the perfect storm of this season changed things and FSG needed to respond. The January window showed that especially after the missed opportunity of the past two summers when the squad was left lacking depth. Maybe a good enough target could not be landed. But did FSG really try?

    Advertisement

    Now it has been proven that Klopp – just like every other manager – is not impervious to outside influences and events. He has also made mistakes, not least tactically, and the players are also at fault. Liverpool cannot dismiss this season as a freak, to award it that asterisk and assume it will be better come August.

    The lifeboat of still being in the Champions League remains and, who knows, Liverpool may just cussedly reach another final. But a huge transfer window looms in what will be a difficult market but maybe one where opportunities will present themselves to the boldest and most forward-thinking clubs. And, for Liverpool, this might have to be negotiated without Champions League money. The next move belongs to FSG.

    Rationally no one should have expected last season’s title triumph to usher in a period of dominance – not in the modern era with the strength and spending power of rivals – but the drop-off is not just about bad luck and unique circumstances. There has also been bad planning. That is a corporate failing for which the owners cannot escape their share of the blame. The bus has stalled.
    I think most of that is bang on.

  3. #3453
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Posts
    49,570
    Quote Originally Posted by Steveo View Post
    From the Telegraph
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football...lubs-progress/



    Liverpool owners are to blame for the culture of complacency crippling the club's progress

    Successful football clubs strengthen when they are on top, a lesson FSG has failed to learn since winning the Champions League in 2019

    The last person Liverpool and, perhaps more pertinently the club’s owners, Fenway Sports Group, want to be reminded of right now is Sir Alex Ferguson. But the former Manchester United manager was spot on when he famously said: “I tell the players that the bus is moving. This club has to progress. And the bus wouldn’t wait for them. I tell them to get on board.”

    No Liverpool fan needs to be told of the old adage that you strengthen while ahead. It is what the club did for years; years before Ferguson pitched up at Old Trafford and started talking about perches. But Liverpool – or rather FSG - have been guilty of putting the brakes on since Jürgen Klopp brought back not just the European Cup but the Premier League title.

    That manifested itself most clearly in the January transfer window. Virgil van Dijk suffered his knee injury in October; Joe Gomez suffered his in November and yet it was not until the final day of the January transfer window that Liverpool scrambled around in the bargain basement to finally bring in Ozan Kabak on loan from Schalke for £1 million, plus up to £500,000 in add-ons, and signed Preston’s Ben Davies for an initial £500,000, potentially rising to £2m. Fans talked up the cleverness of the signings. But that was wishful thinking.

    Instead they seemed like a public admission of a private fear: that a culture of complacency has seeped into Liverpool. That senior figures at the club, and the owners FSG, had pretty much written off this strange season, almost treating it as a free hit, with the built-in assumption that so skilled was Klopp that a top-four finish would be assured come what may and with it Champions League qualification. Klopp, it was presumed, would find a way.

    But success is not a tap. It cannot be turned on and off. Not by any player, not by any team and not by any club. The bus does not stop and to slow it down is perilous. The sport is too volatile, too competitive and things can – as Liverpool have shown with six successive home defeats – rapidly spiral out of control. Suddenly some fans have not just written off Champions League qualification but are hoping Liverpool even miss out on a Europa League place. The problem with talking about putting an asterisk next to the season, as some have done, is that people start to believe it. They start to search out excuses.

    Whatever the mitigation it has now turned into an embarrassing title defence from Liverpool. It is becoming increasingly difficult to defend them against Roy Keane’s allegation of being “bad champions”. Not that they ever got the opportunity to truly celebrate being champions and maybe there is a psychological hangover in that, also.

    Advertisement

    There is the pandemic: no club owner – just like every other business – has dealt with this kind of nightmare scenario before and there is sympathy because revenues are plunging, But Premier League clubs of the stature of Liverpool do have a certain built-in robustness with the insulation of their broadcast contracts plus, hopefully, a long-term plan that the economy will recover and they will be well-placed to take advantage. Football has continued. Football is valued. FSG knows it remains a solid long-term investment especially at a blue-chip franchise such as Liverpool.

    Instead of considering furlough schemes last summer maybe it would have been wiser for Liverpool to have considered further investment because – despite the Covid crisis – they were coming off the back of two years of outstanding success and growth. Maybe, having tried to furlough staff before being forced by a fans' backlash to reverse it, the ‘optics’ were not right in FSG’s eyes. But that has proved short-sighted.

    In fact it is since winning the Champions League in 2019 that major incomings have slowed down with around £84m spent - £40m on Diogo Jota, £20m on Thiago Alcantara, £11.7m Kostas Tsimikas last summer and, before that, £7.65m on Takumi Minamino and £1.7m on Sepp van den Berg.

    At the same time Manchester City have spent £300m, Manchester United £280m, Chelsea – despite their one window transfer ban – £263m, Tottenham Hotspur more than £230m and Arsenal around £220m.

    FSG has hardly been a bad owner even if it proposed a £77 ticket before apologising to the fans who staged a walkout in protest in 2016; even if it apparently co-authored ‘Project Big Picture’ and appears to want a European Super League and even if – at heart – Liverpool is a strategic business investment. There is, though, nothing wrong in that and self-sufficiency should be encouraged.

    FSG also cleaned up the balance sheet, broke transfer records to sign Van Dijk and Alisson and hired Klopp, for goodness sake. It has spent heavily on upgrading player contracts with a highly-competitive wage bill, it lent £110m for the building of the magnificent new stand, which the club is paying back, and £50m on a new training ground.

    But there also comes a time to react to circumstances and to protect the asset. There has to be an element of catastrophe planning. Of course Liverpool should not overstretch themselves but the perfect storm of this season changed things and FSG needed to respond. The January window showed that especially after the missed opportunity of the past two summers when the squad was left lacking depth. Maybe a good enough target could not be landed. But did FSG really try?

    Advertisement

    Now it has been proven that Klopp – just like every other manager – is not impervious to outside influences and events. He has also made mistakes, not least tactically, and the players are also at fault. Liverpool cannot dismiss this season as a freak, to award it that asterisk and assume it will be better come August.

    The lifeboat of still being in the Champions League remains and, who knows, Liverpool may just cussedly reach another final. But a huge transfer window looms in what will be a difficult market but maybe one where opportunities will present themselves to the boldest and most forward-thinking clubs. And, for Liverpool, this might have to be negotiated without Champions League money. The next move belongs to FSG.

    Rationally no one should have expected last season’s title triumph to usher in a period of dominance – not in the modern era with the strength and spending power of rivals – but the drop-off is not just about bad luck and unique circumstances. There has also been bad planning. That is a corporate failing for which the owners cannot escape their share of the blame. The bus has stalled.
    Bloody hell, a brilliant and entirely accurate article in one of the UKs rags, I can't fault any of that
    "If Everton were playing at the bottom of my garden, i'd close the curtains”

  4. #3454
    Join Date
    Oct 2011
    Posts
    23,098
    Quote Originally Posted by Nineteenx View Post
    Bloody hell, a brilliant and entirely accurate article in one of the UKs rags, I can't fault any of that
    I know - I was shocked too - from the Telegraph of all places.. Editor is probably too busy worrying about the Royal family just now and this nugget slipped through.

  5. #3455
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Posts
    49,570
    Neto, Ruiz and Schuurs or other commanding CB who can do the things Virgil and Matip do both defensively and offensively

    Just think Neto would be perfect, he has a great eye for goal, he's very 2 footed and can go either way, he can pick the sort of quality balls we are crying out for a midfielder with the ability to pick in the final third, he can get by a man and put in absolute quality crosses with either foot from either flank - He'll also give us the option to play 433 or 4231 with the players with the skill sets to do it

    Ruiz is just quality, he can play those passes in the final third, he can also play those passes through the lines we bought Thiago to play, and he can play the witches, he has fantastic shooting, crossing and set piece abilty, the latter being something this team is absolutely crying out for and he has vast experience for a relatively young age of playing in numerous midfield and forward positions

    CB - Need to be quick, absolutely no question about that, doesn't have to be lightning quick, Matip quick will do. Needs to be dominant in the air in both boxes to give us incredible potency at set pieces, needs to be great one v one, highly competent at driving the ball forward into midfield and at stepping into midfield to dispossess any opposition player between our midfield and defence on potential transitions and really good with the ball, long diagonals, attempted balls over the top from deep, balls through crowded midfields to find one of our forwards, the lot
    "If Everton were playing at the bottom of my garden, i'd close the curtains”

  6. #3456
    Join Date
    May 2005
    Location
    Teesside
    Posts
    14,901
    Quote Originally Posted by Steveo View Post
    I know - I was shocked too - from the Telegraph of all places.. Editor is probably too busy worrying about the Royal family just now and this nugget slipped through.
    Lolzegraph. I'm hoping Leipzig are going to distracted by the Meghan and Harry scandal too. Surely they'll be as outraged as the good old British public are.

  7. #3457
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Posts
    49,570
    Quote Originally Posted by Steveo View Post
    I know - I was shocked too - from the Telegraph of all places.. Editor is probably too busy worrying about the Royal family just now and this nugget slipped through.
    He/She will be sure to catch anyone doing a detailed analysis of our officiating and VAR decisions with numerous comparisons of them all having gone the opposite way from what they were given to detrimental effect against us in so many other games though, don't you worry about that
    "If Everton were playing at the bottom of my garden, i'd close the curtains”

  8. #3458
    Join Date
    Nov 2009
    Posts
    24,836
    Would we miss them particularly?

    Ox*
    Shaq
    Wilson
    Grujic
    Awoniyi
    Ojo
    Williams
    Woodburn
    Origi

    Contracts expire

    Wijnaldum
    Adrian
    Philipps

    *Some would say Keita. Some would say both. We'll keep one you would feel. Personally like both players, marginally prefer Keita, can't have two players of their ilk as prone to injury - though to be fair the silver lining is that their absence in large chunks has helped Jones develop.
    Your hobbies are rollerblading and you're also a bit of a rat-hound? Steel Wool
    Sid knows he's crazy and he likes it. Balinkay

  9. #3459
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    The Fax
    Posts
    2,631
    It’s exactly what a lot of fans have been saying since the summer window ended.

    F$G have got this very wrong.

  10. #3460
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Posts
    49,570
    Quote Originally Posted by Insidious View Post
    Would we miss them particularly?

    Ox*
    Shaq
    Wilson
    Grujic
    Awoniyi
    Ojo
    Williams
    Woodburn
    Origi

    Contracts expire

    Wijnaldum
    Adrian
    Philipps

    *Some would say Keita. Some would say both. We'll keep one you would feel. Personally like both players, marginally prefer Keita, can't have two players of their ilk as prone to injury - though to be fair the silver lining is that their absence in large chunks has helped Jones develop.
    Think Ox will stay because we need our homegrown numbers

    One thing that would really help us prior to the summer is Mo and Mane stop missing fucking glorious early chances to put us in front, i think they've missed 7 between them in games we've lost by the odd goal or drawn
    "If Everton were playing at the bottom of my garden, i'd close the curtains”

Similar Threads

  1. January transfer window/End of summer
    By Kev0909 in forum Football Forum
    Replies: 988
    Last Post: 17th October 2021, 08:23 AM

Bookmarks

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •