Doak is a good player. Lively, goes at the defender, looks to make something happen. He has had a decent pre-season for us.
There is a large gap, as noted above, between being a good player, and being good enough for Liverpool. We are the champions and we are investing in such a way that we fully intend to stay there, for years to come.
Consequently there will be plenty of good players who start to make the breakthrough at Liverpool, get some recognition, but they don’t fully get there in their Liverpool journey.
They should still have good careers in the game, and I expect Doak to be someone in that category. Good luck to him if he signs for Bournemouth. They are a tidy Premier League side and they have a good manager.
On a related note, it also helps the chain of events - Doak-Outtra-Wissa-Isak? - that might help us land Alexander Isak.
That should be Wilson replaced for Newcastle. Now they need to put down the dough for Jackson, or whoever, and move on.
Hope he goes on to have a really good career. For his sake, but also because it’s good to show the rest of football that it is worth spending £20m + on kids from our academy.
As long as his career doesn’t continue to be blighted by injuries as it has thus far then I predict he’ll go on to do goods things, maybe not to the extent where he’s getting 15-20 goals/assists and in team of the season’s or anything but most LB’s will have a night to forget coming up against him.
£25m is a tidy fee but it isn’t a “oh my gosh, who could’ve ever seen this coming” type fee as we did get £20-25m for the likes of Solanke and Brewster too.
The fact that he mainly played off the right as a young, talented right-footer gave some indications. He’s pretty good when taking it wide, around his opponent 1v1 and to the byline, sort of like an old-school type of winger. Something like an Aaron Lennon. Has the acceleration and confidence to take players on, lacks a bit of end product. The club probably doesn’t think his current level or ceiling is that high to reject what would be a relatively important offer and he probably has the hunger to build his path elsewhere. Was unlucky with injuries at times.
Transfermarkt are being a bit naughty with their display of Liverpool’s transfer dealings - they count full fees (i.e. they included bonuses) for incoming transfers but not for the outgoing ones. That said, if Doak leaves for 25 million pounds and we don’t include any bonuses in any of the transfers, Liverpool will have recouped about 195 million pounds.
And there’s a huge difference between paying 25m for Doak with a manageable wage demand and paying 25m for someone else who’s got an inflated wage. United are probably willing to let go of Antony for 25m but his wages ?
Mad to think we could turn the roughly £12m we spent on Doak, Carvalho, van den Berg and Elliott into something in the region of £110-120m when only on of them has really broken into the first team.
Think it’ll be something we’re looking to do more consistently. If young squad players need experience, get them the right loan deals where they perform well, or give them enough exposure with us where they show glimpses of quality, and you can generate a healthy transfer fee if it doesn’t work out. It’s why I’m not concerned about the Leoni deal. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll probably get that fee back,or close to it.
On Doak, I wonder if we’ll have a sell-on clause or maybe even a buy-back clause (I expect the latter will be highly unlikely).
Liverweb have a breakdown of all transfers in and out, don’t know how accurate they are but assuming they are correct if Doak goes for £25 000,000 then we’ll have pocketed £199 000,000 with a further £25,100,000 in potential add-ons.
We’ve shelled out £295,000,000 with a further £29,000,000 in potential add-ons.
Basically if Doak goes we’ll have net spend of about £96,000,000.
I’d agree with this a bit more if he wasn’t Italian. If he ended up not working out and ‘homesick’ I can’t see an Italian club doing anything other than low balling.