There was no need to do anything of the sort to keep Diaz. From a financial perspective, if we accepted he was not going to sign a new contract then the incentive was to sell him that summer at the peak of his valuation. But the consideration then is maximizing return at the expense of losing an important cog in last year’s success whose continued presence would help the transition into a new side. That is the sporting consideration that needed to be balanced - maximize return now vs take a bit of a financial hit at the benefit of getting more value from the player on the pitch for one more year. Yes I get your argument that “we dont keep players who want to leave” except you have massively idolized that. I mean, we did with Diaz himself last year. Either way you slice it we made a decision to let him go, and it was taken in the context of there already being considerable turnover in the squad to manage.
For me to make sense of the decision to let him leave when we did, especially in the context of us still being interested in Isak even after Hugo had arrived and uncertainty over what Wirtz’s role in this side would be, seemed to indicate he had has been signed to play on the LW. Obviously that isnt happening so brings the Diaz decision back into focus. Unfortunately, it does raise another question about just how buttoned up and aligned our strategy and planning was this summer. Slot is certainly approaching matches like he’s inherited a team he had no say in putting together.
Slot just went on holiday during the international break. I’ve no problem with that, at all. His life is busy and he saw an opportunity for a break with his family. Good for him.
Now, if there were no staff left at the AXA to run training sessions and keep the remaining players going, Slot going on holiday is a problem. But he’s the head coach, not the only coach. So others in his team could have easily handled it. I would imagine there would have been fitness work and limited training sessions for the remaining players - limited because so many first team squad players were away on international duty.
The break towards the end of last season was a bit different, and I see both sides of it. The players won the title, with a few weeks to spare, and it was a reward for them. Ideally we would have kept on winning so there was no complaint, but we lost a few - we had it to spare - and so the seeds for future complaint were sown.
This season, the way we are playing is giving some cause for concern. We probably didn’t deserve 5 wins on the spin at the start, given the performance level, and we probably didn’t deserve three league losses on the bounce as we haven’t been quite that bad either.
So all in all we are about where we should be, but there is plenty of work to do.
I do not advocate a back three, but I do think we should go for a midfield diamond with two up top. It’s the best way to utilize the attacking talent we have brought in. In particular I want to see a little triangle come to the fore, with Wirtz behind Isak and Ekitike. When that starts to click, we won’t look back.
And Slot doesnt even lead the training. I think people have ideas of the manager getting Chiesa into shape by spending hours doing shooting drills with him, which just obviously wasnt going to happen even had he not gone on holiday.
These guys are working 12 hours a day 6 to 7 days a week. If there is an opportunity to get away and recharge with your family everyone is benefited from the manager taking that.
Which neglects the agency that Diaz had in the matter. From Diaz’s point of view he was at the age where he needed to get himself on a new long term deal to last him into his thirties. He considered himself to have been underpaid at Liverpool and in the run up to the transfer to Munich, there were already noises starting to land in the press from his camp pushing for the move. There was a risk of it developing into something more toxic.
I am sure Liverpool’s preference would have been to keep him, maybe losing him from a smaller fee next year, or just letting him go on a free (given his flirtations with Barca, that seemed to obvious route to me). But that would have involved ruling out his move, the bump in his wages, and the security of having a contract into his thirties - essentially telling him to shut up and play, and crossing our fingers and hoping it didn’t turn into a Isak style situation.
When have Liverpool ever been a club that, within reason, tells players they can’t leave?
The other option on the table for Liverpool would have been to offer him a new deal close to the terms he’d been offered from Bayern, but again, I don’t think there was anyway the club were going to sanction a 200+ contract for an explosive forward player well into his thirties.
We can see the team are missing Diaz right now, but that doesn’t mean it was a mistake to move him on. The choice you say the club had, would have been to act entirely out of character, and risk a toxic situation developing.
It one thing to accept that we seem to have a player-centric attitude where we don’t fight to keep players who want to move. But it unrealistically flattens all the complexity of any issue to treat this like we are helpless and have no agency of our own.
And as we think about how this applies to Diaz it surely needs to be acknowledged that we did this very thing to him the summer before. Maybe that was indeed part of our thinking, that it wouldnt be fair to do it to him two summers in a row if there were other clubs willing to pay him more than we would. But that is what the contract is for and the move still has to make sense for us.
What I said at the time when it was being floated was it looked like a move that was being made out of hubris and trying to be too clever, thinking that because we’re good at this buying and selling lark we’ll obviously get it right. In the long run it may work out for us. But however it ultimately plays out doesnt change that it was a decision we took, not a situation forced upon us the way it was with Trent and Jota, or to a lesser degree something had not worked out like Darwin.
I’m not saying we were helpless, and had Bayern offered £20m for him, we would be saying to the players camp that the offer isn’t acceptable - in fact didn’t we knock back a couple of bids earlier in the summer?
But when Bayern are offering £70m, the player wants the move, and we’ve already told him he isn’t going anywhere the summer before, then I think we are running out of road a bit to be able to wave the contract in his face and tell him to do one.
Based on the noises in the media from the players camp, I think it had every chance of turning a bit nasty.
When the Isak thing was playing out, we all had a good laugh and Newcastle digging their heels in and refusing to let Isak go. Amateurs - you can’t keep hold of a player once they want to go! The best thing you can do is get the best price you can and move on.
Regarding these four players, we won’t agree. No problem.
On the above: looking at the way how transfer deals were done last summer, I’m indeed not inclined to be overly respectful towards them at this point. The club spent its money like a freaking drunken sailor, to the point that I was a bit ashamed to be honest. How much, half a billion or something? Some of it was recouped through sales, but still.
Especially the move for Isak was strange, while neglecting at the same time a far more important move (finding a good CB, and actually signing him). It reeked of arrogance. The kind of arrogance which usually precedes downfall.
I hope of course that the situation will change in due time, but in the meantime, I’ll just watch things unfolding. Time will tell if they were right or not.
Newcastle got themselves into a bad situation with Isak because of a series of rapid changes behind the scenes that left a mess of confusion on who was actually running the project. By the time the end of the season came Isak had already lost two different people who had already started the conversation with him over his future. Generalizing that and the reasonable mockery of the way Newcastle handled it is not generalizable to any other case of a player wanting an improved contract.
The squad on paper is very good, high quality. A bit thin at CB even when Leoni was fit, but still. Good enough to compete on all fronts.
The starting team though, part of it needs to be figured out, who and how. Some moves we made this summer left and still leave question marks about what’s the right balance.
Not helped by the fact that some key individuals didn’t get up to speed in summer (for different reasons) and are now trying to catch up.
Turning nasty which noises suggest this. It was reported that he was putting in the effort when they went away on tour and when training. Even after his departure Pearce tweeted the club had been impressed with his attitude up to leaving.
