Yep, @Mascot keeps making the point that many fans would seemingly be happier at spending more to land the players we’ve brought in, as that net spend would show our intent.
I gave up that game after the Clough transfer. I remember spending a significant portion of that summer in manchester playing football and reveling in the angst of the Utd fans concerning themselves that this was the signing that would see us “end our drought”. Those few weeks were fun, but the season was shit.
I love that Edwards told Barca to fuck off after the Coutinho deal - Barca haven’t cropped up in terms of links to our players since - and today I’ve seen that Xavi’s been chatting about Bernardo Silva - go on Barca, stir the shit over that way for a while.
He’s been heading to Spain for about three years now, apparently doesn’t want to stay in England. And yet he keeps ending up being one of the players of the season in the PL.
Great if he could just go away, but I don’t believe it until I see it.
We already know Man City are a scummy club but just noticed that a player of theirs, Iker Pozo, suffered a ruptured knee ligament while playing for HNK Rijeka on loan. It ended his season and he won’t be able to play until midway through next year.
Man City have gone ahead and released him from the club. While he is carrying a serious injury. It’s true that he was expecting to leave the club but he obviously wasn’t expecting to leave while heavily injured and unable to sign for a new team.
In similar situations Liverpool have extended contracts of injured players purely to help them recover while still earning a wage - Marc Pelosi, Liam Coyle and Abdi Sharif for example.
To a degree it’s a business and the players know that. But This sort of thing coming so soon on the back of the Wisten case is just so tone deaf. This is a kid who has been there for ten years, since before he was even a teenager.
This is business, but it’s a people business. You can make a really great case that if we’re not going to compete financially with clubs like City, it is in our best interest to maintain the reputation of going the extra mile for the young men in our orbit. Whether that’s looking after them despite an injury, or making sure they’ve got somewhere to fall back to if they dont make it here, it creates a vibe that makes a kid take the risk to jump in with us despite the risk of not making it here. But beyond it, it’s jus the fucking right thing to do and costs us a trivial amount of money in our operational costs. If City leave him to his own devices with his rehab after 10 years of service it will be gross on a human level.