Summer transfer thread

[Steveo]

1 or 2 more trophies and complete the stadium and they’ll look to sell I’d say. We end up a plastic club eventually

Won’t sell until they have raised their profile significantly still and until the £3 billion mark IMO. They want 10 times what they put in - they have the NFL in their sights and those franchises don’t come cheap.

[Insidious]

1. Give over will you?

2. Minamino and Elliot aren't going to help us win the league or champions league, even Jota who I feel was massivley hyped after going on a scoring streak when we needed it the most, then was poor since.
3. Musialowski who? is he going to bring it home? a u18>? it seems we're putting all our hopes on them to come good, when how often do we hype up youngsters for them to end up, playing in scotland.

I struggle to see Minamino even being a good signing for everton, or Southampton, as he couldn't even get starts for them most of the time.

Oh well, you keep dreaming.

4. At least we might be in Europa soon

I for one don't want to see the same pathetic shit we saw up front last season again next season, that's for sure. God help us if salah gets injured.

5. I'm not sure why you left out Shaqiri as he's currently better of all of them, apart from jota and it seems we want to get rid ASAP. and even Shaq had a better euros.

6. Rather have a player that's already at a really good standard and young that can come into the team and make a difference now, on 100k than Shaqiri and Origi on the bench, not to mention the Injury crooks...... same goes for the aging midfield, once again let's hope jones will be good enough at some point otherwise we're in trouble, as they're all getting on, or body of a 60 year old after all the injury's..

I've numbered a few points of yours, just with a view to keeping things tidy - haven't edited things in any other way though. Hope you're okay with this as I know someone (within the past few days) expressed concerns about post edits.

1. I won't I (mostly) have faith in our process. It is not without flaws, nor it is immune from the criticism that people give it - and good luck to them - the forum is a better place for (polite) disagreements.

2. Minamino is indeed unlikely to help us win one of the Major trophies. Same goes for the current version of Elliott - you're not wrong here. But in terms of a "front six" (a front three and their subsequent back-up players) then I feel it's fair to say that Minamino is a "reasonable" Firmino back-up that could be sold for a slight profit (to help our future squad out via reinvestment) and Elliott is fast-approaching a point where he is 5th or 6th choice and it's ultimately a squad game - he has recently signed a 5-year deal for a reason - we see something there. That might result in a key goal in a Champion's League knock-out tie in the next 2-3 seasons en route to a Final, or it might be performances that lead to a sale, the profits of which we invest in a player that goes on to help us. But there's something there, for sure. He just needs nurtured and to develop. Give it time.

3. Musialowski is a big talent. Is he going to become a staple member of our front three imminently? No. Could he be part of the secondary three (players four/five/six of a "front six" in terms of depth) in X years time, saving us valuable money to invest into another part of the team, or being sold so as to reinvest the work we have put into his development? Very possible. The raw talent is there. Developing talent is part of our strategy these days. We are not PSG, we are not Real Madrid.

4. Hey, it's not impossible. But for that to happen we have to fall behind Leicester and Spurs. Thiago settled, a more "normal" fixture schedule, Konate's arrival, fans at Anfield - I don't see it happening. Can't rule it out, but I think we'll see more out of the likes of Mane and Firmino with crowds, plus I would like to think we should have less injuries than what I think was statistically our worst injury-record season in our entire history in terms of minutes missed by players. Also, if/as things settle and (hopefully) the Delta variant situation becomes clear, we might see further investment at the end of the 21/22 season to prevent our team from aging/stagnating too much. We'll see!

5. I left out Shaqiri as he isn't the future of this side, is linked with a move away and has almost no chance of being first-choice in any of our "first" front three. Just the 1 goal in 22 appearances for us in 20/21 can be improved upon as well as his 1 goal in 11 appearance for us in 19/20. His 6 goals in 30 appearances from 18/19 is to be commended, but he can be improved upon for sure - especially at his £80,000 per week wages - this money could be used more efficiently, for sure. I'd back Harvey Elliott to get as many goals in as many minutes as Shaqiri right now - I could turn out utterly wrong of course, but I'll stick my neck out and say that if they get equal minutes, Elliott outperforms him - and Elliott has a lot of room to grow. Shaqiri, talented though he is, won't get much better.

6. You've said yourself that you'd "rather have a player that's already at a really good standard and young that can come into the team and make a difference now, on 100k than Shaqiri and Origi on the bench" - I'm in agreement, which I probably made clear in point 5 - I think Elliott could possibly do that job (at a lot less than £100k-per-week) but would also be very open to a transfer, if we can find the right player. We do need to ship someone out (homegrown rules) first to enable this, but I would have taken someone like Depay as an option, one we sadly can't have now. Plenty of the window left to see where we are and what opportunities might present themselves though!

[Insidious]

I'll reserve judgement on the owners until the start of the season but I would really hope our transfer business isn't fucking about the bargain basement on the last day of the season.

Konate says "hello" though hopefully of course we have room for more business.

We need buyers though for the likes of Origi/Minamino/Shaqiri to free up spaces in terms of our non-homegrown quota. Even if we had a lot of spare cash in the "chest" we can't just buy who we want right now - we have to wait.

[LFC-DPG]

Luis Alberto is trying to force a move out of Lazio. Atletico are loosely linked.

Two things should be noted about Luis Alberto. First, Lazio value him at 50-60m Euros.

Second, we negotiated a 30% sell-on fee when we parted ways with him.

If Atletico do indeed sell Saùl to us and then went on to buy Luis Alberto, we'd be laughing. Further laughter if we were to sell Shaqiri on to Lazio when they inevitably aim to replace Luis Alberto.

Fanciful perhaps, but that would be some fun.

No guarantee any of that will be reinvested in the the team they own this side of the pond.

[Kev0909]

You just want to be in the sid cup, so obviously I don't blame you for being happy with the great money FSG puts into this club.

They're fucking loaded off shit that Ian suggested, even without fans, not to mention our recent trophys.. and always making top 4...

There's that little ambition now some fans seem to find it acceptable, are we everton?

And forgetting last season because we finished top 4.... thanks to phillips and williams a big part of that.....not sure how things will change going with the same players once again, and nothing different or "fresh" up top, and the midfield is shite, not many assists or goals in there, and now the fittest midfielder has left the club, while a few like henderson and fabinho are good, henderson isn't getting younger and for some reason can't even get into that england midfield, (lol).... thiago is decent yes, but him and henderson aren't getting younger, jones isn't good enough to play in the top matches yet..... ox and keita? fucking useless, Wij also was the only midfielder that hardly got injured... even henderson and fabinho had there problems, especially hendo. And a u18 and elliot will solve the problems?? they both can still go eitherway, and I doubt many has heard of that polish lad at all tbh..

We develop are players you say, as that many players actually come through and became a big part of our squad apart from Trent? and to a lesser extent Jones/Phillips lately, nothing on the likes of Foden, arsenals youth... etc etc... we're not doing a very good job at it, most end up in scotland, or championship and lower I suppose you could include Williams as I mentioned him early, but I don't think he'll ever be good enough to play at this level on a regular basis, hopefully i'll be proven wrong but another player I think will end up in Scotland or league one.

If you mean buying players and developing them, that's a different story, which is why we need signings like Konate in midfield and upfront too.


You seem to be happy as long as FSG make money, it's really baffling to me, are you on the board? do you get profits from it too? Red sox fan?

[Insidious]

No guarantee any of that will be reinvested in the the team they own this side of the pond.

I don't think FSG are "skimming off the top" in the way that the Glazers or Kroenke are - the model is very much about the club being able to operate off of the profits generated. As much as people critique the net spend per season not being a bit bigger (perfectly valid argument) we generally see expenditure when profits are generated in a self-sustaining fashion.

When Torres and Babel left, Carroll and Suarez came in. When Coutinho left, Alisson and Van Dijk came in (though not both in the same window) and we'll continue to see that sort of thing play out.

There are a lot of people with a lot more expertise and a lot more time on their hands to delve into these things that have the capacity to hit the big Red button should FSG start stringing us along. If they were (seriously) taking us all for a spin, Spirit of Shankly (and other pockets of influence like Redmen TV and Anfield Wrap) would be mobilising the troops and sharpening swords - which isn't happening, yet. If such things come to pass and it turns out we were being mugged off all along, I'll hold my hands up and say how much I regret having been so wrong, but as I see it, we have a relatively simple strategy that the owners haven't exactly hidden from.

[shminkyred]

There”ll be no Pjanic buying at Anfield.



Pass it over will you mate, brown leather on the end hook…

Would we use him for a Pjanic attack?

[Insidious]

1.
They're fucking loaded off shit that Ian suggested, even without fans, not to mention our recent trophys.. and always making top 4...[/B]

There's that little ambition now some fans seem to find it acceptable, are we everton?

2. And forgetting last season because we finished top 4.... thanks to phillips and williams a big part of that.....not sure how things will change going with the same players once again, and 3. nothing different or "fresh" up top, and the midfield is shite, not many assists or goals in there, and now the fittest midfielder has left the club, while a few like henderson and fabinho are good, henderson isn't getting younger and for some reason can't even get into that england midfield, (lol).... thiago is decent yes, but him and henderson aren't getting younger, jones isn't good enough to play in the top matches yet..... ox and keita? fucking useless, Wij also was the only midfielder that hardly got injured... even henderson and fabinho had there problems, especially hendo. 4. And a u18 and elliot will solve the problems?? they both can still go eitherway, and I doubt many has heard of that polish lad at all tbh..

5. We develop are players you say, as that many players actually come through and became a big part of our squad apart from Trent? and to a lesser extent Jones/Phillips lately, nothing on the likes of Foden, arsenals youth... etc etc... we're not doing a very good job at it, most end up in scotland, or championship and lower I suppose you could include Williams as I mentioned him early, but I don't think he'll ever be good enough to play at this level on a regular basis, hopefully i'll be proven wrong but another player I think will end up in Scotland or league one.

6. If you mean buying players and developing them, that's a different story, which is why we need signings like Konate in midfield and upfront too.


You seem to be happy as long as FSG make money, it's really baffling to me, are you on the board? do you get profits from it too? Red sox fan?

Same format again.

1. Nonsense. I want the Champion's League. I just don't look down my nose at the Europa when we're in it - perfectly good way to practice two-legged ties, builds the co-efficient ranking for Champion's League seasons and is a route into the Champion's League if you win - had we won in 15/16 against Sevilla we would be further along on our Champion's League journey - we've now qualified for Europe's elite competition 5 seasons in a row, long may that last.

2. Remains to be seen. Added Konate for a start, Van Dijk and Gomez will be back from injury, we should have less injuries, slightly bigger gaps between games, fans behind us. These factors should "stack" a bit and help us out.

3. Jota may well have a less severe season injury-wise and the transfer window isn't over yet. We have to make sales due to non-homegrown player quotas to open up spaces for transfers. Grujic looks like he may be leaving imminently which helps a little in this sphere.

4. I'm not saying they will solve our problems. I'm saying they are percentages that shouldn't be overlooked. I think I was pretty clear in my post. Musialowski and Elliott might have parts to play in our future. If they do, it helps us out. It's a process. Only time will tell. I am not suggesting we should neglect transfers.

5. We don't need all of them to come through though. A combination of developing academy talent, combined with purchasing young players and developing them can help in the sales department as well.

Ibe - £15m (4 Liverpool goals scored)
Solanke - £19m (1 Liverpool goal scored)
Brewster - £23.5m (no Premier League appearances)

That's £57.5m accrued from players we had no real use for - that's slightly over half what we paid for our first-choice front three. A front three that, to date, has scored 309 goals for us.

Trent was developed and came through "for free" - a stalwart of our set-up. Gomez, another big part of our defensive set-up, cost £3.5m, which is pocket change in the current market. A combination of development and purchasing youth talent has seen us develop the first-team directly (via using the players) and indirectly (via money made from sales we can then use) and should be commended in my view. That's before we delve into things like purchasing inexpensive players from relegated sides like Robertson and Wijnaldum.

6. I don't disagree with you. We do need players in midfield and up front in terms of quality. In the last 12 months or so we've added Konate (defence) Thiago (midfield) and Jota (attack) so we're doing well on that front as far as I am concerned. Do we (and should we) add more when the opportunity arises? Yes absolutely - we don't want Salah, Mane and Firmino to all hit the 32/33 sort of bracket at the same time without quality coming through. In midfield I believe Jones will be given his fair shot at covering 50% or more of the minutes Wijnaldum was getting (people can debate how smart/stupid that is if they wish) and I think Klopp will have a good look at Elliott in pre-season to see if he can compliment Firmino/Mane/Salah/Jota at the attacking end of things.

Let's see where we are at the end of the window. We have to make sales remember - and not just to help the funding of purchases - our non-homegrown quota needs looking at and we can't force sales. I suspect if we get bids for the appropriate players (Shaqiri, Minamino, Origi for example) then those spaces will get filled via a transfer when we get the chance - whether it's Otavio or someone else.

[Insidious]

Liverpool’s first bid of €40M was rejected by Atletico for Saúl. Negotiations are underway, and the cards are on the table. If Liverpool’s offer reaches €50M, Saúl may be packing his bags.
(@mundodeportivo/@WalterZim )

[miller0863]

If true he’d better be an improvement on what we have for that sort of money.
Can’t say I’ve seen him or certainly ever noticed him.