Yeah but with the obvious exception of situations like Xavi or Messi coming through, it is very unusual that a club can lose a top quality player and have someone just as good ready to step straight in. Even ‘teenage revelations’ tend to take a season or two before they reach those heights. It certainly is not a model (losing top players on frees) that we can expect to be able to repeatedly fill with players ‘waiting in the wings’ without a significant drop in performances. That may be fine for a midtable team but if we want to be competing to win things every year this won’t work if it becomes a regular thing.
Jones, Bradley, Quansah, etc. Mané being replaced with Díaz, and so on. It’s literally how we would otherwise operate anyway, since it’s not as though we wouldn’t get ample warning if they were going to leave us on a free transfer. I feel as though it’s been deliberate planning by the club to have particular age profiles.
In trents case maybe in a year or so but right now we don’t have a ready made replacement in bradley and as such are looking at somewhere around 30mp for frimpong.
If we/the club/supporters we’re more aware in advance then yes it’s OK to allow some to go on a free but not all. Let’s say we pay 120mp for wirtz and he left for free in 4 years. I don’t think that allowing a top player to leave in his prime for nothing makes good business, especially if we’d payed a fortune for him.
I think the best way forward would be a bit like Mamardashvili taking over from Caoimhin,at least we can offset the cost.
Liverpool can’t approach transfers thinking that Liverpool are just going to be ripped off by Real later. The only thing that can be done is probably add an additional year as a club option. To hopefully make Madrid choose another target allowing us more time to renew the contract.
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I think Arne has made it quite clear that Bradley is the replacement, no? Hence the discussion around Frimpong in that thread and the questioning of why he’s needed. It seems as though the main point would be that the club prefer to have two full-backs on each side with similar traits, hence recruiting a new one, rather than Bradley not being a ready made replacement.
i think the way the club looks at it is that the transfer fee is part of the initial package, i.e. the standard amortisation way. Any transfer fee recouped when the player leaves is a bonus rather than something we expect. So in your example, it would probably be looked at as 30m per year plus whatever his wages are (and this is probably too simplistic a way to look at it even then, since it would make more sense to look at it in terms of what it adds to the squad).
I think if we were that worried about costs and fees, we’d have sold Origi a long time ago, not to mention the likes of Phillips.
He still needs cover. At the moment, that’s Trent. Gomez and possibly Quansah can provide that, but a more dedicated option would be better.
I do like the idea of utility players that can cover multiple positions. It means that they can play in a team alongside the player that they are understudying rather than warming the bench most of the time.
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Frimpong is going to cost nearly £30m and is older than Bradley. Is he really going to be the backup player? 
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Absolutely. But I was replying to the suggestion that Bradley isn’t a “ready made replacement”. Feels very much a case of the grass is greener syndrome.
I agree completely that whatever’s been said about Frimpong in this thread makes him an appealing prospect because of his ability to cover multiple positions for us.
That’s what I’ve been wondering too. I used to think he was the same age as Bradley for some reason, but he’s closer in age to Alexander-Arnold than he is to Bradley. The cost I think is less relevant though, since it’s really the question of who else could we invest into at that cost that plugs a bigger gap?
As things stand, this “early” in Bradley’s time as a first team Liverpool player and Frimpong being a new player with so far more achieved in his career…
I think Slot himself doesn’t know who will start at RB in the first league game.
I expect it will be an open battle from where we speak now. We’ll see who proves himself more in pre-season, how that goes together with the rest of the team, etc.
Bradley hopefully has a successful future here because his contract will also need sorting out soon, but objectivelly it’s not hard from Frimpong’s point of view to see Trent’s departure from Liverpool as an opportunity for himself.
He certainly isn’t coming here being told that “listen, you’ll do a bit of backuping for Bradley and sometimes Salah”. He surely has aspirations to win this battle and become a starter here.
Like always, I don’t care who it turns out to be, I just want the better performer and what’s best for us.
On the other hand, any decent manger isn’t going to come out and say… “Conor Bradley, are you having a laugh mate, not good enough to be a starter around here. I’m off on a shopping spree”.
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Understandable perspective. Yet Bradley has been shown to be valued enough to be rushed back from injury to start games by both Arne and Jürgen now…
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True, same can be said of others such as Elliot, Gomez and Tsimikas, all fantastic footballers… but none of them are “starters”.
I think, presently, Bradley is a level below our starting XI standard, but he’s still developing and could become that level of player in a couple of years.
Maybe Frimpong is seen as someone who could come in and be the starting RB while Conor continues to develop, with a plan to move him (Frimpong) further up the field when Mo leaves.
Guess only Slot and Hughes truly know.
Is he? He dominated Real Madrid’s left side, and he’s been playing pretty much up to the standards we want for the past couple of seasons. It’s mainly been getting that level consistently that’s been the problem, but that would naturally be rather hard when he couldn’t stay fit consistently.
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With TAA leaving, we need a new RB/RWB. That’s not because Bradley isn’t good enough, but because just Brandley isn’t enough.
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I think this is harsh. The only thing stopping Bradley being nailed on for thirty starts is he is still growing and picking up injuries.
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Shades of a certain S.Gerrard
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I’m not arguing against that; I’m arguing against the idea that Bradley isn’t good enough to be a replacement for Alexander-Arnold. My point is that in a sense, it’s Bradley who needs to be replaced, since he’s the one replacing Alexander-Arnold.
@redalways and @Mascot - happy to agree to disagree. I just haven’t seen enough from Bradley to convince me he has the quality (right now) to be the starting RB for a team with expectations to challenge for the PL and CL. I’ll be over the moon to be proved wrong, as he comes across as a great lad.
I guess we can bookmark this and revisit in a couple of years, unless anybody has a time machine to hand?
Summoning @GermanRed
But how much more evidence do you need beyond him actually being a relatively regular starter in a team that has challenged (over two seasons, winning one) for the Premier League?
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I know not to put much stock in what he says, but Romano (Fabrizio not Ray) is pretty ominous on Konate.
https://x.com/lfctransferroom/status/1923432660715606169?s=46
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