Sorry but in what way does this show we would be willing to pay him anything close to what PSG have? It just says Madrid thought they had an agreement with him.
And what is it that Macron said to persuade him to stay that €250m couldn’t do?
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I don’t really get why there’s a bit of argy bargy.
Mbappe. I’m sure we had an outside chance, early on, then it went beyond us, and as Real Madrid thought they had it, it went beyond them too. Don’t know what the beef is about that.
As for Bellingham, a similar thing may happen, or it might not.
Plenty of observers think there’s a decent chance of signing him. I tend to be in that group too, but if it goes beyond us and/or he prefers a move elsewhere, so be it.
I’m confident we will refresh the midfield, with at least two incoming midfielders signed before the end of the summer 2023 window.
I don’t really get what the argy bargy is about.
All the points have been made over last summer. We probably left ourselves short in the middle of the park, given the quantity of injuries in that department. How much it bites us remains to be seen, though we can all see the start has been poor.
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If they believe he is a transformation player who will be a mainstay of our midfield for a decade, they’ll pay it without hesitation.
Liverpool have got the facility to have a big summer whenever they deem it the right time.
They might even claw some cash back by selling some players, which of course is a mortal fucking sin to some of you. I sometimes think fans would be a lot happier if we were absolutely shit at selling players and just gave them away.
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Fans will only be happy if we sign Bellingham next Summer.
Then and only then.
There are no alternatives
There is but one Bellingham…
If he signs for Real or City the floor the nursery will be a sea of dummies and discarded toys.
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You are twisting my original point, but that’s to be expected.
My original point was we had clearly made a financial offer which was appealing to the point Klopp directly spoke to Mbappe. There is no way that was similar to what a state funded club was offering, but on the same point Reals offer wasn’t such stupid levels. So the point remains we had the money available for Mbappe (within reason), the article I posted confirms both of these points.
Another example is Tchouamani, we offered the same deal as Real he just preferred to play for them. Again this is all in the public domain, so money is being made available (to currently reported Bellingham levels) for the right player.
Nowhere am I stating we can financially compete with PSG.
Wow I didn’t know the Mbappé rumours were actually taken seriously on here. I always thought it was a joke.
JWH met him in 2017. When he was still at Monaco. And just before his wages exploded. That was the start and end of it. After his move to PSG he was no longer an economically viable player for us.
Unless you tell me that the club met with him after 2017, I am not sure why people are still going on about this. Move on. It wasn’t happening.
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We offered him a contract when his last one was up, it’s in the article I linked. So yes we did met after 2017, Klopp spoke with him.
Love to jump to wrong conclusions don’t you.
I’m happy enough to sell players, all I said is we’ve not got many to move on given we’ve four out of contract. Of course I’m sure you’d be happy to point to the ones you think might help us raise some funds to offset the record fee it’d take to buy Bellingham.
And if you’re at it and feel like explaining how you know we’ve got the money and are happy to spend all that without batting an eyelid then it might help make your point more effectively than just acting like the big I am.
Paywalled. Can you provide the important quotes?
Every article mentioning Liverpool and Mbappé have the quotes from Kylian himself that he talked to Liverpool in 2017 and that was our chance. I don’t see any reference anywhere that we were a chance any time after that.
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Klopp can talk to him without us offering him anything. Just because they spoke, and in Mbappe’s own words “a little bit, not a lot”, doesn’t mean diddly squat about any financial offer even existing, let alone appealing to him.
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I was always under the impression that we don’t work with a predetermined net spend. FSG set the initial transfer badget, Edwards/Ward and Klopp make the best use of it. Part of the outlay is recuperated by player sales but I don’t think that they are a prerequisite to begin with.
With that in mind, I don’t see why they wouldn’t pony up 90 millions or whatever for Bellingham if Klopp asks them to. Why shouldn’t they? The club’s finances are better than ever, the new stand will soon be generating millions of revenue in addition and their track record at baseball suggests that they aren’t averse to go for the big money signing. Quite the opposite.
The market has recovered from the pandemic as some of this summers done deals suggest.
So maybe Dortmund don’t bluff with the €150m. 
I think first and foremost we have to hope that the player has set his heart on a switch to us.
If that’s the case then there will be no bidding war.
Which brings us right back round to the Mbappe comparison.
Yes we absolutely could have signed him IF his heart was set on us, but it wasn’t, and the suggestions for why it might have been are similar to the suggestions now of why Bellingham’s might be.
It’s irrelevant if Klopp did or didn’t speak to Mbappe.
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Turning this back around to discussion about Bellingham for a second.
I don’t think Dortmund’s asking price necessarily will scare us off, particularly if we think he is the right player. I would be quite shocked if he was more than €100m, and even then I don’t think he’s fulfilled that sort of price bracket, so I would probably expect a Sancho type transfer fee.
The thing that will scare us off is if Jude expects a Haaland or Sancho type wages. That won’t happen under us. Not for a newcomer with still a lot to prove.
Before anyone starts with the ‘shirt sale’ nonsense, please explain how that works. If someone is buying a shirt, they will buy a shirt of their favourite player. If that favourite player is Jude then it will be at the expense of a Salah shirt sale. We are talking about an English player and not a player from an emerging market like China or Japan or USA where we potentially can tap into a new market, so shirt sales would absolutely not go drastically up.
Now in a comparison to Mbappe? Like I said, I don’t even think for a second we could seriously afford his wages post PSG move. Not. One. Second. We can’t work around those sorts of wages and keep our structure in place. So Mbappe does not IMO prove or disprove anything in terms of affording Jude.
We’ll spend big in a transfer fee for the right player. I don’t have any doubt about that. People using net spend as evidence that we need to sell to buy are basing this on the fact we’ve yet to be in the position where we haven’t offloaded players on big money due to the brilliant work our transfer guys do, not to mention a very lucky situation where a club literally threw €150m at us. That shouldn’t be an excuse to slight the owners. This summer will be probably the first time where I don’t think we can afford to offload a top player for big money and the owners will be digging deep. Perhaps I am completely wrong and the owners don’t dig deep enough and you can all say I told you so and that will be it. But with the imminent departures of at least 2, probably 3 midfielders we will be going big here IMO. Two players to come in. One an absolute nailed on first team player like Jude and the other probably a less mature player for a lot less (£20m mark).
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Your point was that we’ll struggle to spend big on any players, because there is no-one to sell.
This idea that we have to sell to buy is horseshit, and borne out of the fact that we are phenomenally good at extracting good fees for players, and usually end up balancing the books. But that doesn’t mean that if don’t sell Coutinho, then Alisson and Van Dijk doesn’t happen.
I can’t be arsed explaining anything when the information is out there. There are plenty of sources detailing the clubs accounts. We have plenty of capacity to throw in a big summer when we want to.
In terms of who we’ll sell, who knows. But I’m sure Milner, Keita and Ox will be coming off the books this year for a start, and that takes nearly 500k a week off the wage bill straight away.
So we signing Jude and Mbappe next summer?
I dont know that is true. Real ended up paying a LOT more for him than anyone expected him to go for. We seemed to pull back before the price spiraled because we knew we werent winning that battle, but there is also no guarantee that we’d have paid the same amount Real eventually agreed to.
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It wasn’t actually. It’s that historically we’ve never made bigger investments unless they are offset by recouping some good fees from sales and this summer we don’t appear to have many options to sell. No one said we “have to sell” it’s just that that’s nearly always what happens.
Can’t be arsed or simply can’t? I’m sensing toys being chucked out of prams here because I’ve simply asked you to explain a definitive statement you’ve made. If you aren’t willing to explain how you know we both can and are willing to drop €100m on a this deal then feel free to not add your opinion to the conversation or don’t get pissy when someone asks you to back that up.
Go and look at some of the analysis of our accounts. Swiss Ramble is a good place to start. If that’s too much effort, then just have a look back on these boards.
I just don’t have the time to go digging stuff out that you are perfectly capable of finding yourself. There are other things I have to do with my life beyond trying to talk somebody round who is seemingly entrenched in their opinions.
The overwhelming impression I’ve had from reading the various pieces on the state of our accounts is that there is the capacity to do a big rebuild summer at some point. The biggest pinch for us is the wage bill, but we should be clearing at least three big earners off that this summer.
If you don’t want to accept that, then that’s fine. I’m not losing any sleep over someone on the internet thinking I’m wrong.
Oh right.
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AnfieldRdDreamer?