We kept Salah for far longer than anyone expected. Weâve kept Allison and VVD.
At the moment itâs Trent and Konate. At the moment this hasnât particularly hurt anyone.
We do need to do deals to protect however when itâs our wage bill thatâs the biggest thing then itâs probably not the worst thing.
I hold this kid in higher esteem than Konate for what he did for LFCâŠ
JĂŒrgen Klopp once summed up Rhys Williams perfectly when Liverpoolâs season was hanging by a thread.
While everyone focused on the injury crisis, Klopp saw something else.
He saw a young lad who had gone from non-league football to the Premier League and Champions League without fear.
And in Liverpoolâs darkest moment of the 2020/21 season, that mattered more than anything.
Because when Virgil van Dijk, Joe Gomez and JoĂ«l Matip were all ruled out, Liverpoolâs defence wasnât supposed to survive.
Many believed the season was finished.
Top four looked unlikely.
The champions looked broken.
Then came Rhys Williams.
Just months earlier, he had been on loan at Kidderminster Harriers, playing non-league football in front of a few hundred supporters.
Suddenly he was walking out at Anfield.
Suddenly he was facing elite Premier League forwards.
Suddenly he was carrying responsibility far beyond his years.
Most young defenders would have been overwhelmed.
Rhys wasnât.
He simply got on with the job.
No excuses.
No complaints.
No drama.
Just commitment.
Every header contested.
Every clearance attacked.
Every challenge treated like it was the last action of the match.
And alongside Nat Phillips, another player few expected to become a key figure, Liverpool somehow found a way through the chaos.
Their partnership wasnât built on reputation.
It wasnât built on world-class recovery pace.
It wasnât built on transfer fees.
It was built on courage.
The pair threw themselves into battles every single week and gradually helped steady a side that had spent months fighting injuries.
One performance that perfectly captured Williamsâ character came at Old Trafford in May 2021.
Liverpool arrived knowing Champions League qualification was on the line.
The pressure was enormous.
Manchester United had attacking threats everywhere.
Yet Williams stood his ground.
Crosses came into the box.
He attacked them.
United looked to test him.
He responded.
Liverpool won 4-2 in one of the biggest victories of their season.
For a player who had been playing non-league football the previous year, it was another remarkable step in an unbelievable journey.
Of course, football moves quickly.
Many people remember his later loan spells and struggles more than his contribution during that crisis.
Thatâs often the reality for young players.
But those who watched every minute of that season remember exactly what happened.
Liverpool needed bodies.
Liverpool needed character.
Liverpool needed players willing to sacrifice themselves for the badge.
Rhys Williams answered the call.
And when the season ended with Liverpool securing a third-place finish and Champions League football against all odds, his contribution could not be ignored.
He may never become one of the clubâs greatest defenders.
He may never receive the same recognition as some of the bigger names from the Klopp era.
But when Liverpoolâs season was on the verge of collapse, he stepped up.
And nobody can ever take that away from him.
From Kidderminster Harriers to Champions League knockout football.
From non-league grounds to Old Trafford.
From emergency backup to an important part of Liverpoolâs recovery.
That story alone deserves respect.
More like their bargain bin, feeder clubs usually manage to sell their players.
Yeah. We donât like it, but Madrid are above us in the food chain. Thatâs how it is.
With Barca at least we got okay money for Suarez and excellent money for Coutinho.
Honestly Suarez should have gotten us even more than Coutinho money. That boy was top three in the world level talent.
Yep, the Coutinho money an obvious example.
You can sell for good money and reinvest, but you canât keep losing starters for free while having to spend hundreds of millions to replace them. At some point itâs going to catch up.
Yet we have agency and we allow ourselves to get into these situations because transfer fees are not the only consideration. There is âvalueâ to be obtained from allowing a player to play out another couple of years on a lower salary and giving you a return on your initial investment through his performances
There are always way more genuinely top players than there are teams who can use them and it isnât the worst thing in the world to refresh your side periodically by allowing established players to move on and be replaced by someone who still thinks they have something to prove.
Unfortunately, also a complete bampot.
I am disgusted at his behaviour he clearly followed the Trent blueprint of how to sneak out of Liverpool trying not to look too unpopular and just like Trent I hope he bombs.
Duolingo outed him on twitter as being diamond level Spanish about 6 months ago 
(I assume it was a joke because there surely has to be privacy laws against that sort of disclosure)
Another one who is going to follow the same path is Macallister and we should start with him and sell him now to anybody who will pay our valuation of him.
But they seem to apply a different tack with Italian teams, they have agreed to pay for Dumphries release clause of âŹ20M and at the same time gazumping us for his signature very neat.
I saw a comment from a Bournemouth fan wishing Iraola all the best and said he could fully understand him going to Liverpool but felt it would be a stepping stone on the way to managing one of the big clubs âŠouch.
Yeah but if our players had low buyout clauses like that it would give us less control to hold onto players or cap the upside for how much we could sell them for, should we want to move them on.
The issue for us is less the losing of a player on a free transfer, but the failure to have established a proper pipeline of talent into the first team squad consistently.
The thing about RM at the moment⊠now that Maureen is back in charge, they donât seem to be going anywhere fast. This is park the bus Maureen is it not⊠Does anyone think he would send his players out onto the pitch in the QF of a CL match and go toe to toe with PSG⊠No, neither do I.
This guy, especially as he is running out of road in the big club âmusical chairsâ managerial circuit, will be making everything about himself at every opportunityâŠ
The football he will play is likely to be shit, and that is most definitely not the way to keep the RM fans on boardâŠ
Bringing Maureen in to sort out their over inflated dressing room ego/s, when he has the biggest of the lot, might be the worst thing they have ever done..
Now where is that popcorn
I mean, itâs not like weâre far when weâre in a (relatively) successful era. In general terms, we are in the same bracket, but then there are also smaller levels that can separate it.
But if sometimes some players decide to go for a new challenge and one of them is called Real Madrid (in this era especially), we shouldnât be shocked really.
Didnât Maureen managed Benfica and did not lose a match this year, but drew too many, ended up in 3rd and did not qualify for CL next year?
Yeah, nah. Iâm sorry but thatâs waffle given whatâs been said before about the squad. Not least by you. Youâre creating an unreasonable expectation for the new manager that is all but impossible to live up to. Even Guardiola and Klopp couldnât manage that.
I donât think the squad is as bad as whatâs been shown this season but winning the title isnât, and shouldnât be an âexpectationâ for next season; we just lost our leading goal scorer and one of the Clubâs all time greats, one of our all time greats in Robertson and now our starting CB. There is loads to do and the squad is coming off a massive low as well.
See, I donât think itâs outrageous shout. But I didnât spent all year saying the players were shit and that the manager was being let down by their performances being a disgrace. My view was and still is that the players who will remain are far better than they were allowed to show because they were not being put in a position to succeed by management that had lost its way.
We do have some gaps, and so we will need to do some work in the window, but I put it more in the normal range of work not in a âwe need to rebuild the squadâ level of work. With some savvy choices there and a bit of good luck regarding the health of players, I think a target in the 80s should be very much on the cards which will put us in a title race unless someone else kicks into a gear that no one looks capable of finding at the moment.