Topic: LIVERPOOL TRANSFER THREAD 2023 - archived discussions about what’s offensive

[Hazell]

Some of you must be an absolute fucking nightmare to be around on a daily basis IRL 

Real life? What's that?

[disgraced cake]

2023 was never a summer for Liverpool to spend big money. This was always a summer in which they aimed to further reduce the size of the squad by letting players leave upon the end of their contracts and not adequately replace them, in order to reduce the staggering wage bill, and for the side to look more in place when they take to the field in next season's Europa Conference League. Job done as far as the ownership is concerned. 2024 however will be a Big Summer™ for the club.

Reports of Liverpool ever being interested in Jude Bellingham were always wide of the mark. Liverpool don't even want to find the NEXT Jude Bellingham. They instead will be waiting to find the NEXT NEXT Jude Bellingham, and then will ponder for several years about whether to make a stunning move for him (@JamesPearce)

[Wool]

Next next next summer will be the big one!

[Chris~]

🥇| While Liverpool are viewed as the side who have put in the heaviest work behind the scenes to land Jude Bellingham, the lack of a Top 4 finish and on-pitch identity, combined with the financial outlay required makes any deal problematic. [@MelissaReddy_]

Melissa Reddy jumped on Ornstein’s article.

The only source I can find for this is from December?
https://www.skysports.com/app/transfer/news/12691/12736191/jude-bellingham-will-real-madrid-or-premier-league-club-win-race-for-borussia-dortmund-midfielder

[killer-heels]

I think we could/should have won more. Or at least stayed at the top for longer to challenge.

We competed for around 6 years thats pretty good.

[Stockholm Syndrome]

But, but, but we're the 3rd richest team in the world...

I don't know what we are doing  so that we can have record revenue and absolutely no money, it seems like there's a major mess up in our system or the system doesn't work with football full stop.

Like I will readily say I don't get the finance records, it goes over my head, but honestly how can we make so much compared to every other club in the world, and have so little in terms of cash.

We are probably going to have to make a choice this summer of either a rebuild by selling some of our more sellable players, or don't and buy maybe a player or 2 for real cheap, and try and work with what we have mostly

[Lynndenberries]

Embarrassing and predictable. Wasted a season to be outbid. Laughable.

[Clint Eastwood]

Melissa Reddy pretty much rehashes other people’s news these days.

I’m still finding it hard to believe that we’ve suddenly realised Bellingham is expensive and rich teams want him. I’m taking it all with a pinch of salt.

[Nick110581]

Embarrassing and predictable. Wasted a season to be outbid. Laughable.

We haven’t been outbid.

Maybe it’s his agent leaking it.

[Chris~]

Melissa Reddy pretty much rehashes other people’s news these days.

I’m still finding it hard to believe that we’ve suddenly realised Bellingham is expensive and rich teams want him. I’m taking it all with a pinch of salt.

In her defence it looks like one of those news sites has rehashed her story from December to generate some more activity for themselves

[killer-heels]

I don't know what we are doing  so that we can have record revenue and absolutely no money, it seems like there's a major mess up in our system or the system doesn't work with football full stop.

Like I will readily say I don't get the finance records, it goes over my head, but honestly how can we make so much compared to every other club in the world, and have so little in terms of cash.

We are probably going to have to make a choice this summer of either a rebuild by selling some of our more sellable players, or don't and buy maybe a player or 2 for real cheap, and try and work with what we have mostly

The record revenues have allowed to pay high wages and pay for infrastructure. Its not sitting in a bank anywhere as confirmed by our financial figures.

[Jayo10]

All we need now is Fabrizio Romano to jump in now with a rehash of Ornsteins and Reddy (bullsh*tter) take with his own sprinkling of shite on top- "The player has concerns over how much ketchup is in the canteen".

[Stockholm Syndrome]

We competed for around 6 years thats pretty good.

We didn't really though. We competed properly for 3 years, in the other subsequent years we either grew into top 4, and had a shock cup run in the CL.

We also absolutely could have achieved more if we acted from a position of strength with the players and manager we have. There is 100% a degree of resting on our laurels that has caused this.

So in a sense that this isn't a natural end but rather an end by our own negligence, I don't personally believe it is alright to go "well we had what we had be happy with it". If not for our own arrogance and mistakes we would be better.

[Lynndenberries]

We haven’t been outbid.

Maybe it’s his agent leaking it.

We’re financially unable to compete after wasting a year trying to convince him to come. It’s the kind of saga United gets involved in, yet here we are.

[BER]

But his dad is a Liverpool fan and Gerrard was his favourite player!

[DelTrotter]

Get me a sporting director!! Though would imagine we'll just do a promotion from within, if there's anyone left to promote anyway.

[Avens]

We’re financially unable to compete after wasting a year trying to convince him to come. It’s the kind of saga United gets involved in, yet here we are.

Maybe see where things are at with this in a couple of weeks. Ornstein himself hasn't even said we're definitely not signing him, yet you've immediately reached that conclusion.

[rawcusk8]

🥇| While Liverpool are viewed as the side who have put in the heaviest work behind the scenes to land Jude Bellingham, the lack of a Top 4 finish and on-pitch identity, combined with the financial outlay required makes any deal problematic. [@MelissaReddy_]

Melissa Reddy jumped on Ornstein’s article.

Are people actually believing bollocks like this? Lack of Top-4 for what will likely only be one season and lack of on pitch identity? Reading shit like this wont help the sanity of some of you, it makes no sense, we’re still a great club, talk of our demise is premature so fuck these no mark journos.

[J-Mc-]

Everyone acting like this is all new info.

We’ve always known he won’t be easy to sign and others will be in for him.

Ornstein’s just put a spin on it to get clicks.

See what the summer brings, if he comes, great, if he doesn’t, we should have other targets.


Should.

[Sharado]

We competed for around 6 years thats pretty good.

I think the frustration of many, myself included, is what we could have won and/or how much longer we could have competed if we just spent a little more. None of this 'shiny new toys/oil money' bollocks that people use as some sort of bizarre defensive shield if you suggest investment could have helped the squad.

Another forward in 2019, for example, and could we have gone deeper in europe? [covid permitting]
At least one midfielder to replace Gini in 2021's summer and could we have amassed 2 more points and won the league?

Where would we be now if we'd added - for example - Bruno Gumiraes and Martin Odegaard in the last few seasons [both moved for less than 30m, I appreciate there is more to it than that but just throwing in players for a relatively modest outlay that would vastly improve us].

That'll always be the biggest quesstion mark of the klopp era for me. We aren't talking hundreds of millions on shite wingers like grealish, just a bit more outlay and how many more lines could we have got over?

[Sharado]

Are people actually believing bollocks like this? Lack of Top-4 for what will likely only be one season and lack of on pitch identity? Reading shit like this wont help the sanity of some of you, it makes no sense, we’re still a great club, talk of our demise is premature so fuck these no mark journos.

Have you watched us this season? How do we compare to previous seasons if you have?

[Stockholm Syndrome]

The record revenues have allowed to pay high wages and pay for infrastructure. Its not sitting in a bank anywhere as confirmed by our financial figures.

And there in lies the issue I am talking about - either the system doesn't work with football because costs have skyrocketed above natural revenue streams, or we have over committed to projects which we can't fully fund while maintaining the football club (both in terms of the team and behind the scenes).

If we couldn't build the training facility and new stand without it draining us of all our money, should we have gone ahead with that right now? If our wages are too high, should we have resigned all those players?

Or is it just a case that football costs too much for this model to work, in which case it will never work, we won't have money, and we would have to be monumentally good at our jobs to be close to successful in buying cheap, low wages players, capable of challenging, and keep doing that as they leave for bigger wages.

Either we are fucked in our business model, or football is fucked beyond repair. Either way for us to be successful something fundamental would have to change.

[RedBec1993]

Are people actually believing bollocks like this? Lack of Top-4 for what will likely only be one season and lack of on pitch identity? Reading shit like this wont help the sanity of some of you, it makes no sense, we’re still a great club, talk of our demise is premature so fuck these no mark journos.

Exactly.

Liverpool Football Club… but we’ve lost our on pitch identity because of one bad season.

[Knight]

The record revenues have allowed to pay high wages and pay for infrastructure. Its not sitting in a bank anywhere as confirmed by our financial figures.

This is true but we’ve massively screwed up if we can’t pivot our huge revenues to buy players for big money when we need too. As Jackward said a few pages back, football teams are cyclical. You can give your peak level superstars big money and give them even bigger money for success. That’s fine. But you need to be ready to pivot into moving those players on/ not renewing contracts and buying replacements when a cycle comes to an end. We have seemingly, despite it being the massive threat in any half baked SWOT analysis, done nothing to prepare for the need to invest heavily in the playing squad once we came out the other side of peak performance from very high earning players. The argument for not signing new players that made sense was we were investing elsewhere. That was a good rebuttal to the net spend folk. But that only works when it works on the pitch. You have got to be prepared to spend for succession. And we quite clearly can’t because we need to spend £200 million this summer.

[CraigDS]

yet you've immediately reached that conclusion.

But how else can you bitch and moan on a football forum unless you reach conclusions based on a random tweet?

[CraigDS]

This is true but we’ve massively screwed up if we can’t pivot our huge revenues to buy players for big money when we need too. As Jackward said a few pages back, football teams are cyclical. You can give your peak level superstars big money and give them even bigger money for success. That’s fine. But you need to be ready to pivot into moving those players on/ not renewing contracts and buying replacements when a cycle comes to an end. We have seemingly, despite it being the massive threat in any half baked SWOT analysis, done nothing to prepare for the need to invest heavily in the playing squad once we came out the other side of peak performance from very high earning players.

I mean done nothing is a bit of a stretch. We've signed younger players like Konate, Diaz, Nunez and Gakpo for big money, and we've made sure our wage structure is largely based on gaining success via bonuses and not just huge base wages.

[classycarra]

But how else can you bitch and moan on a football forum unless you reach conclusions based on a random tweet?

Have you been Mac Red/Peter this whole time?! Deeper cover than Donnie Brasco, fair play!

I prefer your 'new toys' bit over the 'bitch and moan' work, but who am I to critique a legend

[Knight]

Exactly.

Liverpool Football Club… but we’ve lost our on pitch identity because of one bad season.

Why is this such a strange idea? Of course we’ve lost our on pitch identity. We no longer do many of the things we used to do so well. What is that if not losing our on pitch identity? We could get it back but we’re not getting it back with this same group of players. The midfield, quite obviously given contracts ending and players ageing, needs a big overhaul. Once we’ve done that overhaul hopefully we get our on pitch identity back, but there’s no inherent reason why ‘one bad season’ stays at ‘one bad season’.

[Aldo1988]

The toys have been proper thrown out of the pram this morning.  Anyway, don't believe a thing until Fabrizio Romano has given it the go ahead with a blue tick or whatever Twitter shite he does.

[CraigDS]

Have you been Mac Red/Peter this whole time?! Deeper cover than Donnie Brasco, fair play!

I prefer your 'new toys' bit over the 'bitch and moan' work, but who am I to critique a legend

This is better than your "I stick to stats" shtick.

[cdav]

This is true but we’ve massively screwed up if we can’t pivot our huge revenues to buy players for big money when we need too. As Jackward said a few pages back, football teams are cyclical. You can give your peak level superstars big money and give them even bigger money for success. That’s fine. But you need to be ready to pivot into moving those players on/ not renewing contracts and buying replacements when a cycle comes to an end. We have seemingly, despite it being the massive threat in any half baked SWOT analysis, done nothing to prepare for the need to invest heavily in the playing squad once we came out the other side of peak performance from very high earning players.

I know some will laugh at this but think Covid really screwed us on this and our long term squad building- we would have probably sold one of Mane or Salah for huge money and driven a next phase of this.

Its all tough isn't it between things that are short term/ medium term and long term? Like what value does a new £50m training facility bring vs a midfielder? A new £60m defender who could help CL qualification vs a new stand that will allow 7k extra fans and bring in money over the next 20+ years

[Knight]

I mean done nothing is a bit of a stretch. We've signed younger players like Konate, Diaz, Nunez and Gakpo for big money, and we've made sure our wage structure is largely based on gaining success via bonuses and not just huge base wages.

Yes that’s fair, good pushback, but the deeper point stands don’t you agree? That is we’ve done too little and too late. And it’s left us in a massive hole.

[Stockholm Syndrome]

I mean done nothing is a bit of a stretch. We've signed younger players like Konate, Diaz, Nunez and Gakpo for big money, and we've made sure our wage structure is largely based on gaining success via bonuses and not just huge base wages.

But we are apparently losing revenue to too high wages or infestructure costs. We bought players without addressing the hole in the middle of our team and seemingly with Nunez and Gakpo, without a solid plan of how they fit (given that Nunez apparently doesn't have the attributes s we want on the left, but has been displaced in the middle by Gakpo, even though Nunez appears to be the better player in the middle)

We haven't really solved our wage issue, nor have we bought smart, and now we have limited funds to solve a big issue in midfield, and growing issues in defence and even attack.

[Sharado]

I mean done nothing is a bit of a stretch. We've signed younger players like Konate, Diaz, Nunez and Gakpo for big money, and we've made sure our wage structure is largely based on gaining success via bonuses and not just huge base wages.

But our model is clearly not sustainable, whatever the fuck it is, otherwise we wouldn't be seeing this massive drop off.

[CraigDS]

Yes that’s fair, good pushback, but the deeper point stands don’t you agree? That is we’ve done too little and too late. And it’s left us in a massive hole.

I do agree somewhat, yeah. However we also had one of our best ever seasons last year by doing it how we did, would that happen if we'd have moved on people earlier? Maybe, maybe not.

Is this season down to not pivoting earlier or a decision to sign a 3 forwards in the last 12 months rather than 2 and 1 midfielder? Is it down to bad luck with injuries? Bit of both?

[Knight]

I know some will laugh at this but think Covid really screwed us on this and our long term squad building- we would have probably sold one of Mane or Salah for huge money and driven a next phase of this.

Its all tough isn't it between things that are short term/ medium term and long term? Like what value does a new £50m training facility bring vs a midfielder? A new £60m defender who could help CL qualification vs a new stand that will allow 7k extra fans and bring in money over the next 20+ years

most of the teams that could have afforded peak Mane or Salah in the summer of 2020 (but as if we were selling either one then) or 2021 (perhaps a little more likely) weren’t efffected by COVID financially like we were.

[Nick110581]

We’re financially unable to compete after wasting a year trying to convince him to come. It’s the kind of saga United gets involved in, yet here we are.

No one knows that.

We will know his asking price and demands.

[CraigDS]

But we are apparently losing revenue to too high wages or infestructure costs. We bought players without addressing the hole in the middle of our team and seemingly with Nunez and Gakpo, without a solid plan of how they fit (given that Nunez apparently doesn't have the attributes s we want on the left, but has been displaced in the middle by Gakpo, even though Nunez appears to be the better player in the middle)

We haven't really solved our wage issue, nor have we bought smart, and now we have limited funds to solve a big issue in midfield, and growing issues in defence and even attack.

or have injuries meant a player we wanted through the middle has had to play out of position?

[RyanBabel19]

I mean done nothing is a bit of a stretch. We've signed younger players like Konate, Diaz, Nunez and Gakpo for big money, and we've made sure our wage structure is largely based on gaining success via bonuses and not just huge base wages.

Done nothing is a stretch but Diaz and Gakpo cant be classed as big money signings can they?

37m, 36m & 37.5m are the fees off memory but correct me if wrong. Not too long ago Bobby, Salah and Mane were not big money signings but fees that are not too dissimilar are big fees years later when the market is MORE inflated?

[Gerry Attrick]

I know some will laugh at this but think Covid really screwed us on this and our long term squad building- we would have probably sold one of Mane or Salah for huge money and driven a next phase of this.

Its all tough isn't it between things that are short term/ medium term and long term? Like what value does a new £50m training facility bring vs a midfielder? A new £60m defender who could help CL qualification vs a new stand that will allow 7k extra fans and bring in money over the next 20+ years

Find that impossible to accept. Look at the mounting evidence behind us refusing to sell players or just being plain shit at it. If we wouldn’t/couldn’t sell Naby Keita before his deal ran out there’s no way we’d have stomached selling Mane or Salah. The truth these days is we only cash in when the player forces it.