He only turned 23 last month - I'd say he still has development time left in him yet (especially if coached by Klopp) but there are plenty of players out there in the World to have a nosey at should he not be deemed the appropriate fit for us.
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"If Everton were playing at the bottom of my garden, i'd close the curtains”
He only turned 23 last month - I'd say he still has development time left in him yet (especially if coached by Klopp) but there are plenty of players out there in the World to have a nosey at should he not be deemed the appropriate fit for us.
I think FSG lack ambition, well ,apart from their personal ambition of owning sports clubs to line their own pockets, seems very much as though they're looking at going the Arsenal route, simply spending as little as possible and hoping to finish top four each season and at least make it out of the Champions League group stages and that's their new moneyball model
We have the world's best manager, we have him for the next 3 seasons, they won't get another Jurgen with their policies, so top four is the limit to their ambition and then when Jurgen leaves, well, that's when dropping into a current Arsenal cycle will begin
"If Everton were playing at the bottom of my garden, i'd close the curtains”
Yep. Klopp will most likely leave at the end of his contract in 3 years and by that time Mo and Mane will be 32 and Van Dijk will be 33 and mediocrity awaits. I was hopeful that a trophy laden spell would occur before all that happens but FSG are making that task extremely difficult for Klopp
Funny thing is arsenal probably spend more than us 19x
But I fully agree.. it's pretty obvious sadly
It's a common criticism of them and I think the largest percentage of it comes from our conservative, risk-averse net spend in the transfer market. As fans, there's a desire in a lot of corners to "spend big" or "show ambition" when it comes to transfer fees.
I often wonder, would the noise associated with this criticism be quieter if (as examples) -
- Salah had cost over £50m
- Mané had cost over £40m
- We had gotten a lot less for Coutinho
- We had sold Dominic Solanke for £5m instead of the £19m or so we got (same with selling Ibe, Brewster etc)
....as all of these would make our net spend total higher and thus we would have "spent more" in the eyes of fans.
I look at wages and infrastructure more than transfer fees. We've had a stand redeveloped, another one is coming and we've got a state-of-the-art training facility now, to get the infrastructure out of the way.
But let's look at wages here. There's a few words I see around a lot to bash our financial model with, where, to paraphrase, people will say "revenue has grown with wages, so we're actually not spending" - since 2015, revenues have gone up approximately 69% - but our wages have gone up closer to 95%, so whilst revenues certainly help, the idea that they are "covering" our wages in totality is nonsense.
It's also worth adding that our wages are only going to go up - Salah will get a new deal, as will Alisson, Mane, Fabinho, Robertson, Trent, likely Henderson, likely Gomez - with some of those deals taking 3 or 4 of our star players over the £200,000 per week threshold, whilst others will have enormous increases - Robertson and Trent have been "under payed" for a while now and their wages could basically double. Also worth factoring in agent fees, plus the bonus structure payments we give out based on appearances, goals scored, trophies won and so on - bonuses that don't come cheap. It's been said before, but the "paying the bills" is part of it - there's a reason that (unlike the Benitez years) we don't collectively shit our proverbial pants that Barcelona/Real Madrid/Chelsea/PSG/Bayern/Juventus are going to swoop in and buy all our key players - we're spending the appropriate money to keep a hold of them, whilst developing the stadium, whilst developing the academy.
They're certainly not perfect. The ticketing issue and the Super League thing in particular really boiled my piss. But we have negotiated the rocky waters of the Pandemic better than most and it will be interesting to assess the picture for some of the clubs surrounding us (and the loans they have to take out) over the coming 12-36 months, versus how we'll cope.
A new name linked Jarrod Bowen its that out of the blue its possible !
We're not the only club with wages..... I bet everton have some on very high ones just for a example and they still spend more.....
west ham, some others.. that are "smaller clubs"
Stop making excuses for them.
Odd one that. The sort of stats we as fans would have access to show him as being distinctly average at Premier League level. Perhaps the data analysts at the club can see good things in the underlying and more technical data? Not someone many of us would have remotely considered.
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