Jude Bellingham (Real Madrid)

Rumour Mill
895

Birmingham were/are skint, they have sold off their training ground and stadium. I would like to place the blame on their previous owner Hong Kong hair dresser Carson Yeung, who got jailed for fraud. Or the transfer of ownership to the preferred Chinese party who are now looking to sell - however all blame lies with the football league and their ownership test. Thank god St. Andrews is situated in an industrial area otherwise it would be apartments now.
Anyhow, I digress/rant :rofl:.

Where is the speculation that we were satisfied with Elliott/sepp for us to not get involved with Bellingham? They are completely different players.
In the end Dortmund, who are definitely a buy to sell club risked paying £25m up front for a 17 year old. My point is, that if a club so structured on ‘buying to sell’ were so confident/willing to gamble on a 17 year old - a player we had identified from the age of 9 - then why werent we involved. We could have signed him for £25m, loaned him to Dortmund and if it didn’t work out let him leave on a free at worst - Naby/Ox. Yet it looks like we are going to end up paying £100m more. We were never in for Bellingham in the first place!

896

I haven’t got a clue why we didn’t sign Bellingham when Dortmund did, but they have a good track record of growing players of that sort of profile. We aren’t too shabby ourselves, but Bellingham likely saw more action at Dortmund than we could have given him, and given where he is now, it was a good move for him.

We sign young players too. Not all of them, but a fair amount.

The price point for Bellingham, when he went to Dortmund, looked a bit more like it was getting into the range of a more proven player. Maybe we decided to swerve it and preferred to continue to keep tabs.

If he comes it will of course be at a high price. But I am thankful we are also signing good young players for low prices - Elliott, Carvalho, Doak, Trent (Irish kid) Ramsay and several others too.

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897

But how many times would this happen? We may buy 100 players at the age of 17 for £25m each and only 2 of them go on to be worth the £25m we paid for each of them (and only one of those to become a star like Jude). Are you suggesting we pay that money for every player at age 17 we think MAY become a future £100m player? Never watched him at Birmingham but i doubt many people would have said he’d be worth £100m at age 19, they may have said there’s a chance of that but for £25m you’d have to be certain.

Put another (simpler) way. He’s worth 4 times what Dortmund paid. We’d need one of these to happen in every 4 players we risked that money on to break even.

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898

The reason why we didn’t sign Bellingham when Dortmund did, is because we were either not interested or not willing to speculate/gamble.

Forum members have suggested that we were willing to pay the money but lost out because we couldn’t guarantee game time. I get that but no one has provided evidence that we were in for him or additionally explained why a player identified as a special talent wasn’t given the assurances for us to sign him at a fifth of what we are most likely going to pay.

899

Didn’t Bellingham/ his family prefer a move to Dortmund over one of a premier league club

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900

Maybe, and if so which premier league club? Utd.?

901

No one has provided evidence thus far that we weren’t in for him either.

The problem is taking all these transfer gossip as gospel truth. If there’s gossip then it’s happening, or if there isn’t, then it’s not happening. Like it or not, there is very little information that leaks out from our club’s side of things about transfers. Surprisingly, some of us prefer it this way.

903

Really…how can someone provide evidence that we were not in for him? Okay, my evidence is that I can not provide you evidence that we were in for him, not even from a rag paper.
We are not discussing rumours or leaks, well i am definitely not. I am discussing the fact we didn’t identify this player 2yrs ago and for £100m less.

904

Really….

906

I would imagine we were interested, but obviously not interested enough to pay the money, as we didn’t, but instead kept tabs on his progress. We operate at the top level, and that is not an unreasonable approach.

Bellingham went to Dortmund for a sum that at the time would have bought a sure thing first team midfielder for us, or near enough. There was a chance that as a 16 year old he would go on to become world class, but it is a very long list of players who look great at sixteen but don’t go on to be world class at 20.

If we sign him for £100M or so, I won’t spend too much time being sad about not signing him for £30M a few years earlier. The game is littered with examples of players being bought cheaply, either by us or other teams, who then go on to be very expensive players.

The overall financial cost of signing Bellingham, if he comes, will be eye watering, but it will be offset by the young players we either promote from the academy or sign for low fees and develop into very good good players.

Maybe our future midfield options will be Caicedo, Bellingham, Elliott, Jones, Carvalho, Bacjetic and Morton. Good business to have seven options like that for around £200M!

Bellingham made a good choice for his career. He experienced another culture, matured even further, saw lots of action, and grew into a world class midfielder. (Or is well on the way, depending on the precise definition of the term).

I hope we sign him and keep him for a long time.

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907

That the links you provided are supporting evidence that we were in for him. Try sourcing BBC or Sky Sports. Im surprised you didn’t link me to a Koptalk forum.

908

My point is that in the absence of any evidence one way or another, jumping to a conclusion is quite odd.

But just to answer your question, if e.g. the club chairman or agent came out to say that we weren’t in for a player, then it’s quite plausible that we weren’t.

Also, I highly doubt that “we didn’t identify this player 2yrs ago”, when scouting is so comprehensive nowadays that you can have players being snapped up from lower South American leagues.

910

I agree with that. I think we were interested, but the price went up to the point that we decided the opportunity/cost equation was not for us, at the time, and we decided to continue to keep tabs instead.

I have no proof of that, but that’s my read.

911

Good post. I do not disagree with much you say.
As you say, he was potentially on a list of players who looked great at 16 but we had by all accounts recognised his talents when he was 9. For a team like Dortmund, who sell to survive, to pay £25m upfront for a 17yr old says it all. For a club who can not afford to make mistakes financially to spend £25m, they were obviously very sure in Bellingham’s ability. So why weren’t we? Now we are, but at a £100m hit.

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912

As a little bit of support for your point, the context of that summer was one where we brought in Kostas Tsimikas, Thiago Alcantara, and Diogo Jota. If transfermarkt is to be believed, Thiago’s fee was €22m, while Bellingham’s was €25m.

Given that Thiago was a 29 year old player that most on this forums were hankering after as a world-class player, it’s not hard to see why Bellingham wasn’t exactly a cheap gamble then either.

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913

Thats fine :+1:t2:. But your ‘talk at the time’ is in my opinion speculative.

Look, no one knows whether we were interested or not, what we do know is that we didn’t sign him for £25m and are now expected to sign him for £125m. This is a player we apparently highlighted as being special at the age of 9.
Please tell me where I am wrong.

914

Birmingham FC are skint, Dortmund are not rich either. Their exposure to the Bellingham transfer was more of a risk than ours.

915

Not sure what the relevance of how skint Birmingham are is?

That was the first post-COVID transfer window, so at that point in time, it’s not like many clubs were splashing out large amounts. Dortmund paid €25m for a player they were going to slot into their first team, we paid €22m for a player we were going to slot into our first team.

It’s an opportunity cost question. Each additional bit of money spent increases the risk of an already uncertain time.

916

I think we’ve covered most of the main points, and the discussion has been good.

Why we did or didn’t act in a certain way at a given time leaves us guessing. Without the club making a statement at the time on why we didn’t sign Bellingham and instead allowed him to go to Dortmund, well, we’re filling in the blanks. I think we are being reasonable about it, but there’s no proof of what the club was thinking, as such.

I’m sure we knew that Bellingham was a good player. Excellent for a 16 year old.

Good enough to play in the Liverpool first team? Maybe we weren’t quite sure about that, so we were happy to let him continue to grow at another club, while keeping a watching brief.

Also, maybe at the time we were perhaps thinking £60-70M would be more than enough to sign him, after a few years, so we were quite fine with forking out double the price quoted for a 16 year old Bellingham, once the player grew into a sure thing.

Obviously in the intervening years Bellingham grabbed his Dortmund opportunity with both hands, and the transfer market has gone mad, where even relatively unproven players like Caicedo are being touted at £80M.

This sort of thing might be why Klopp made his statement about us being willing to take a few more risks?

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917

Precisely for the reasons you said, Dortmund spends 25m and will definitely play him as a first teamer. They will promise him that. They will try to work with him on that and coach him as such immediately. Not many PL clubs at a high level will do that with a 16 year old. Certainly not us. I can imagine for us that if we were to go for Jude back then, the conversation will be us telling him that he will spend sometime with the U21s for a season or two and bring him into for cup games. The comparison of why Dortmund plays him in the first team is as much as a need for them to do so, the level of the German League in terms of competitiveness which is alot more forgiving for young players compared to the PL. So yes with hindsight, would it have been great to pay 9K when he was 8, to pay 25mil when he was 17, of course it would have been. But we cannot be acting on every single high potential and pay what other clubs were willing to play and offer in terms of playing statuses and use that to infer that the club failed in that aspect by focusing on that one player who is playing well now.

PS: If we do not sign Jude in the end, I will only say, this would have been one of the many that has gotten away. Not the first and will not be the last. The club can do alot better at identifying players surely and will always have room to do better. And not specifically towards you, all of us would have to understand that Jude is not the only player that will represent a big future for us, there will be always be players out there that can be big for us.

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