It’s time he has his own thread.
Can’t believe he spent £100m on Darwin New-knees…
The fact that Edwards has essentially coached Ward to this position gives me comfort. Keeping things in-house and appointing from within is important when things are going in the right direction. Big shoes to fill, but the club clearly has structures in place and work in a very particular way. I’m confident his appointment will be a success.
The comparisons that will naturally end up being made between Ward and his predecessor will come up time and time again going forward, especially when silly seasons come to a close and we’ve not signed enough new shiny things. I think that when Edwards took his position on the club was very different to what it is today. Today it’s a different ship to steer, meaning the job of Sporting Director won’t be the same as it was then.
If Ward sorts Jude I’ll be pleased!
This is it, if we continue doing decent deals in a well prepared rather sharpish manner without fuss then that’s fine. People banged on about Darwin but all in all it was a week, other clubs spend months trying to drain the other clubs due to leak after leak and then end up paying the fee demanded anyhow.
I’d rather we be so far down the road when we find out that it’s almost a given that the player comes in, this will he won’t he used to drain me in the summer and when you miss out you feel like you’ve lost a game, it hasn’t happened under Edwards and doesn’t seem to be the case with Ward both on Diaz and Nunez. We knew about Ramsey for a fair bit but I assumed Aberdeen wanted to see what interest they could garner.
Carvalho was evidently done the week or so after the window, I think that gets done if we hadn’t moved on Diaz.
He got markovic. Must be shit. Fire him asap
Who was signing off on all those deals? I know we had a one for Rodgers, one for the committee approach.
We are now far higher up the food chain. If you look at the order of deals this summer in Europe, it started with Real Madrid beating us to Tchouaméni. They are the nr. 1 in Europe, which is quite logical given their general status, their wealth and having just won the CL.
Just after that, Abu Dhabi moved for Haaland, the most sought-after striker in Europe currently. They are nr. 2 in the chain, due to their sheer economic power.
Then we made our move for Darwin Nuñez, one of the biggest potential stars in Europe, and have also secured a couple of moves for highly talented youngsters. No other club could compete with us for them. We are nr. 3 in the food chain, very clearly.
All other clubs are behind that trio and have hardly secured their top targets yet.
Considering the point from which we started after Rodgers’ sacking, it’s just absolutely phenomenal. The likes of Barca, Juve, Chelsea, Man Utd and Bayern have been left behind (note how Bayern moved for Mané after we had already signed Darwin, it’s no haphazard and a few years ago, it would have been different).
Fingers crossed that our club can secure this new high standing within the football hierarchy by avoiding big mistakes. Barca and Man Utd for instance have been digging their own grave lately with their erratic moves. As long as our ways keep that balance between being prudent and levelheaded as they have been since Klopp came in, while managing to act decisively when a top target becomes available for us, we’ll be fine.
Tell that to Kylian.
Yeah, as @El-Cuchillero notes, PSG secured Kylian before Real Madrid did anything. We’re clearly now no.4 but that’s no disgrace.
Markovic was a committee buy. Rodgers only had a small insight from his Chelsea connections.
I forgot about Qatar. How much will Mbappé earn? Insane money anyway. Yeah, they too have immeasurable economic power and are thus off the charts, just like Abu Dhabi.
Well then, you can say that we are nr. 2 among the ‘normal’ top clubs, while these two oil sheikh clubs broke the usual economic environment in order to create their own (likely to be joined by Saudi Arabia in a few years).
I surely can’t be the only one who doesn’t care so much about a supposed pecking order, but more whether the players who do want to come to us come to us for the right reasons?
Pecking order plays it’s part in giving us a wider pool of talent to work with. I don’t think anyone is expecting the club to change its view on the importance of the players having the right reasons to join us.
I think the opposite is true.
The problem with being at the very top of the tree is that there are very few players out there who would genuinely fit our team.
That’s only if you’re buying for today though…buying youth is a different, and its about picking the right ones at the right time, that we seem to be good at.
Yes, but the higher up you are the fewer teams can outcompete you for them without a specifically niche offer.
Not sure what your point is, but it was evidently one each. One for the TC, one for Rodgers.
It was a terrible set up that required overhauling, blaming Ward for the decision a committee took seems to be the usual from some of this clubs fans, it’s always shit, second place (shit), losing a final (shit), Elliott plays a misplaced pass (sell).
Tiresome
Securing the deal in Gucci trainers. What a man
FIFY.
I bet he has a man bag too!
Who is who?