It’s a football forum pal
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If he absolutely wants to join us and is prepared to wait 2 years he could leave on a free and as such his relative value next year will not increase. You can’t just force players to move. They have contracts which they are entitled to see out or, for that matter, clubs are entitled to insist are respected. In practice, everyone has their price.
I still think that the message that we had put a bid in and then that we have pulled out are not unrelated. I wouldn’t be at all surprised in Bellingham stays at Dortmund for another year where he will be able to play in the Champions League.
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Hypothetical poll time.
If it came down to one of these two options…
- Bellingham
- Mount and Tchouameni
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This is based on the assumption that the club has been informed it can sign both the latter pair for the same amount it would cost to sign Jude alone.
Remember: it’s hypothetical, before people start going off on one.
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Maybe LFC are hoping Jude tells BD to accept our offer or he will languish in their squad for 2yrs learning his trade - that way they get nothing if he leaves as a free agent. He still only be 21yrs old at that point… Some are raving about Mount only being 24yrs old…!
If Jude ever wanted to play in a Jurgen team… he needs to push for a move now…
If this turns out to be true, what is FSG smoking at Boston???
Has he ever indicated that he wanted to play for LFC or Jurgen, or has this all been social media hysteria? He was probably weighing up his options and now, seeing that we’re not gonna make CL and need a rebuild, has decided to go somewhere else
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Anyone who doesn’t want to be part of that rebuild isn’t worth our time anyway. Klopp has said before that he only wants players who are committed to the project.
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Does anyone really believe that Bellingham only wants Liverpool and nobody else? Ready to do all what it takes to make it happen? Come on, let’s be more realistic.
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That might be true, but Enzo went to Chelsea at the end of the January window. LFC had decided to wait for Bellingham long before this.
We can’t be going round blaming FSG for not forseeing Todd Bohely throwing money around like a drunken sailor in a brothel, and destroying the market for everyone.
Something with players who want to push or jump on the train …
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Fair point, but we can blame them (and/or Klopp) for not signing anyone else in the meantime. Just because the ‘wait for Virgil’ thing worked didn’t mean it would work everytime
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If we were in a ‘wait for Bellingham’ mode (as a lot of us hoped/suspected) then I really would expect us to be willing to fight harder for him. I don’t remember FSG ever being to worried about paying high transfer fees for the main target. Salaries and agent fees would have put us off, but we’ve always seemed willing to pay the going rate for transfer fees. And the going rate for Bellingham was always going to be way north of £100k, £140k seemed to be the agreed number a few months ago. Its all… a bit odd.
I fear it’s negotiating, but I hope we genuinely fuck off this weird parasocial saga and start plotting in earnest.
That said, the reported list of alternatives isn’t particularly inspiring.
Have you ever bought a house?
Do you pay the price quoted? Do you keep agreeing to whatever price as an agent continually jacks it up?
When we bought our house we knew what it was worth. It was on the market for ten grand more than that. We offered twenty grand less (ten less than it was worth). They rejected the offer. We made a big show of it being too much money, and even looked at some other houses with the same agent to make it look like we were no longer interested. We waited a week. They came back offering us the house for five grand less than their price. We offered five grand more than our original offer. We ended up settling for exactly what the house was worth, and we both concluded at what we expected to conclude at.
But if the sellers had not budged from their asking price we would have walked away. You have to be prepared to walk away. First rule of negotiation.
Liverpool were never going to pay Dortmund’s fee, which was always going to be significantly more than his actual value (and Dortmund are quite notorious for demanding ridiculous fees, before eventually compromising - see Jadon Sancho).
So maybe Dortmund are not budging on 135m and we are quite rightly walking away. We should not be paying 135m for a player, and anyone who does is not only fucking stupid, but is actively damaging football generally. I don’t see how anyone who isn’t still living with their parents would be pissed off at that. There are loads of other midfielders our there and it doesn’t mean we’re only signing Conor Gallagher and Mason Mount (like you have suggested).
Or, and this is much more likely, we are still really keen on Bellingham, and this is part of the negotiation with Dortmund. They have quoted a ridiculous price fully aware that it’s going to need to come down. We are making a big public show of walking away, as happens all the time with transfers (Liverpool fans have really short memories if they don’t remember us doing this with Van Dijk and Alisson). The only reason to brief this to journalists and make a massive story out of this is as a message back to Dortmund. If we were just going to walk away, we’d just walk away.
So in conclusion, it’s all a bit silly, but this was always going to happen. Dortmund were always going to demand silly money. There was always going to be a moment where Liverpool ‘dropped their interest’. It’s part of the game.
If Bellingham really wants to come here, a compromise will be reached. The only thing that changes is if Bellingham himself moves in the direction of another club. It will be, as I’ve said all along, entirely up to Jude to decide where he plays. Dortmund and Liverpool don’t have as much power or agency in his destination as it might appear.
We have known for a long time Bellingham would be 100m + and we’ve retained our interest at that level. North of 100m hasn’t scared us off. Somewhere in between 100m and 135m there is a price to which we’d stretch and Dortmund would acquiesce.
So, in short, chill out. You’re presumably a clever lad who has been following football for a while. You know how this works. You’ve seen us publicly drop out of transfer chases before. You saw us sign Alison and Van Dijk after publicly declaring we were not interested. We’ve clearly been willing to pay £100m plus for a while.
Do we sign him? I haven’t got a Crystal Ball. I don’t know. What I do know is that this flurry of press reports changes changes nothing. In fact it might suggest that we’re at the ‘haggling over the fee’ stage of the transfer, rather than the very start of the process.
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Especially when the “wait for Virgil” thing was a unique situation. We had the deal agreed and then ran our mouths off about it early so Southampton pulled the plug.
We waited because we knew we had a deal done and that he wanted to come. At no point have we had a deal in place for Bellingham so the waiting was always going to carry a degree of risk that we’d get priced out or he’d choose to go elsewhere.
As soon as Tchouameni went to Madrid last summer we should have realised that this policy of “this one or no one” was a very risky strategy.
At least now we’ll have to ditch that but we’re now in a position of absolute need rather than looking at strengthening from a position of strength. That should never have happened.
I’m surprised that we are taking media reports as gospal now.
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In which case you’d expect people have a bit of a clue about how football works.
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Same noises came out when we were after Alisson and Thiago.
But we need extensive work in midfield that perhaps has taken management by surprise, so instead of adding a top player like Bellingham for a huge fee, it’s been decided we need 2-3 players that will cost equivalent to Bellingham’s fee. I get that and it’s the smart decision.
Or FSG are going to provide a huge sum of money and we can add Bellingham and one other and rotate the others, whilst allowing at least one to go. Either way we’ll be stronger and competitive again and to me that’s what matters. Spending huge money doesn’t guarantee anything.
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Yet again I find myself in awe of your optimism.