Mane’s camp have reportedly told media that they have turned down offers from PSG and others because they want to go to Bayern. If that is true, the lack of interest is probably due to the player already being committed to moving one club.
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I think it depends on the make up of the deal, who we can bring in and for how much? I’m totally for Mane staying another year - but if he wants to go, and we get £42m (the fee we are supposedly looking for) I don’t see that as automatically making us worse.
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Gotta say, that 5 of Salah, Diaz, Mane, Jota, and Firmino…that’s the stuff that dreams are made of. I would love to see a full season of that and would be gutted if it lasted less than 6 months.
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I reckon if we had Diaz from the start of the season we win the league for sure!
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As much as I love Mane, probably my favourite player of the Klopp era, I’m glad we’re not willing to pay him 400k at 30.
His form in the last few months has been excellent but it hasn’t always been like that over the last two seasons. Earlier on in 21/22 he was playing well from the left but far from being irreplaceable. Diaz’ performances from the left have been better than any of Mane’s for about 18 months.
Great players come and go. They can be replaced. I’m excited to see how Klopp revolutionises this side.
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I agree, not sure if it was coincidence but after he returned from covid he seemed to have lost that yard burst he used to use to great effect to get past players… Diaz clearly has that and it’s no surprise looks more of a threat on the left. When Mane moved centrally he was again great, but the big concern would be was this a purple patch of scoring, and if he dropped to his old levels then we’d need better as our no.9.
Mane also has a lot of attributes which could quickly vanish as he gets older - Pace, stamina, strength (massive for him as he’s a beast to knock off the ball). Does he have enough in his locker to counter the ageing process? Maybe not and that’s why we are happy for him to leave.
Compare that to Bobby for example, who bar his work rate relies on technical skills which rarely drop off as you age.
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Are we though (better off I mean)? It is fine and all to throw out these statements. But in a world where finances are finite, we really have to examine whether that is the case.
What metric are looking at this from? Let’s say we settle on 30M to 40M as you’ve mentioned… Are you saying with good confidence that the transfer team (armed with an extra budget of 30M to 40M on top of what we would have to spend next season to replace Mane) could not find a player who could contribute more over his contract than Mane could over a single, final season?
That really depends on opportunities that the transfer team have identified. I would leave it to them to decide whether an opportunity is in our or not in our favour. If they accept 40M, I will trust them. Same as if they accept 30M. I think they have earned it.
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I don’t agree, we’d then be trying to replace both Mane and Salah in the same window, which would mean the season after we’d probably struggle. If the reports are true that both want wages outside our structure, we have to sell one of them this summer. Sad as that is.
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and most possibly Bobby too.
We shouldn’t have let three contracts expire in the same year. Very stupid of us.
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That’s been my outlook as well, would have been great. But with the premise of extending either Salah or Mane.
Now that seems unlikely to happen, I think selling one this summer makes good sense. For me that’s a better solution than having to replace both next summer.
Then maybe the club can live with a lower transfer fee than they could have gotten for Mane in better circumstances, to avoid too much must-do business later. At the moment I think it seems like a compromise worth making.
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And, of course, it would be having to replace 3 of those 5 next summer. Not just Mane and Salah, Firmino’s out of contract too isn’t he?
Definitely, I just have hope something will get sorted with Firmino. From the outside, it seems less complicated with him.
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Pretty sure we offered Salah a new contract last summer, so it’s not like we’ve sat on our hands.
Personally think we want Salah to stay as 1st priority, then it was Mane, then Bobby. We expected Salah to agree to stay and we could have made decisions on the other two but it’s dragged out another year.
This is what happens with our model, buying players on the cusp of worldclass around 26, turning them world class, giving them the £150k ish level contract (top earner here) which expires around 31… This gives a choice to sell around 30 or retain on potentially huge terms. I doubt it was expected all 3 would become literally some of the best players in the world.
P.s. I bet Bobby signs this summer a 3 year extension once Mane is sorted.
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30/35 is a fair price ,anything below and i dont see a big benefit to us.
The club will only allow it to happen if the numbers make sense. I do wonder if the fee and whether Mane is sold is dependant on securing someone else coming in to replace him - that said, I still want a CM over a CF first, regardless of if we lose Mane.
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That is a perfect example of how football has changed over the last 5 years. I would be happy if someone corrected me but I would guess that high profile players leaving on Bosmans or with one year left has been increasing exponentially in recent years. Transfer fees at a point a few years ago became unsustainable, and players have become a bit smarter about signing contract extensions knowing doing so may price them out of a dream move as selling clubs had a bit more power in negotiations (we can all look at the Coutinho sale as a perfect example of the power of a selling club) plus the realisation of a payday for both player and agent via the Bosman. Contract length as the selling club matters these days. A lot.
I am going to be honest and I prefer the more calmed situation now. Players are more likely to stick around and run down their contract at least until the final 12 months, giving clubs a bit more certainty, and I would rather the situation of selling a top top player on his last 12 months for £20-30m than to be caught out with a transfer request made by a player in the middle of his contract at the start of the summer, getting a huge fee for said player but then having to chase a replacement for a huge fee. I would love it if there were no transfer fees and we gained and lost players on Bosmans only but I know thats never going to happen.
No doubt massive fees are still going to exist. The PSGs, RMs, Uniteds and Citys of this world guarantee it. But to me it just seems to be a bit more settled. And lets face it - the transfer window turning into the Wild West with huge random fees doesn’t advantage clubs like ours but the ones above us like RM. I hope in 10 years time we look at the top 100 transfer fees and its still predominately populated with transfers made between 2015-2019 like the list currently is. Probably shouldn’t hold my breath on that though.
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I think some of it may be due to temporary factors. For starters we have the pandemic’s impact on clubs finances. Clubs like Utd with money to spend may be less interesting to players because of their continuing mess. Madrid and Barca were temporarily limited in the market place because of financial difficulties which are in the process of being cleared up. It will be interesting to see how it continues going forwards.
With more American owners entering the game, I wonder if the free agent model is also less of a worry for them (despite the structure of the game being different to that of baseball or American Football).
I have my doubts about that. Mané at least wouldn’t have any language problems were he to go to Paris which could prove to be a factor.
That fee was considered high at the time and was in large part driven by competition from City. Whatever price inflation there has been since that move 10 years ago, and I’ve seen figures suggesting they are around 150% more so approx 50 million, we might struggle to get close to an inflation matched fee without that sort of fight. The fact that multiple sources seem to be suggesting he’s already picked Bayern and rebuffed interest from PSG suggests we’re effectively dealing with only 1 party, and 1 that will likely feel its got the upper hand and wont need to over commit.
On the flip side, I don’t think the Thiago comparison is a useful one to draw either in terms of setting the low end of what we should expect. For as good as he has been with us, I think his move was a move of convenience for both parties as I don’t know Bayern would have committed much to make him stay so the opportunity to get some money for him to enable them to get a bit younger was something they seemed fine with. I think while we’re pretty realistic and likely pragmatic about this situation, I think we are far more inclined to wanting to keep Sadio for sporting reasons than Bayern were with Thiago.
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It was also a move that was widely questioned, and justified by those in the know as willing, conscious over spending to make what they hoped was the final push towards a CL win. It is a fee so untethered from the rest of the market that it should be ignored, even more so in hindsight given it went badly for Juve from a sporting perspective with them still trying to undo the damage it caused.
I think the other thing we have to appreciate is how top level competitiveness has been increasing squeezed among a smaller and smaller number of club. Players are as aware of this as anyone, and so gone are the days that someone like Maradona could leave Barca and make a go at it at wherever club agrees to pay the fee to land him. If players want to continue being completive they increasingly feel a need to be in control of their own moves, and taking out the requirement of your preferred club to purchase you helps with that significantly.
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