Ayoni Santos from Sparta Rotterdam to PSV for €5m.
Thilo Kehrer from Monaco to Ajax on loan, €2m fee.
Julian Pauli from Koln to Odense on loan.
I wonder where the found the agreement. Was it behind the fridge?
And did they have a brief dilemma over whether they should lose it again after they’d found it?
Yeah a terrible record for dangerous fouls and red cards but he is at the right club to get away with murder.
I noticed this summary from the Guardian:
#Liverpool
The final window of Richard Hughes’s spell as sporting director raised more questions over Liverpool’s direction under Fenway Sports Group, owners soon to be enriched by a £2bn investment from 1892 Holdings. The shift towards paying big money for big names continued with Bradley Barcola’s arrival from Paris Saint-Germain while Jérémy Jacquet and Victor Muñoz followed the older policy of developing young potential. Yet weaknesses remain at right back, defensive midfield and on the right wing, where Mohamed Salah’s exit was foreseen from December. Squad depth is lacking and a lot rests on the return to full fitness of Hugo Ekitiké, Conor Bradley and Giovanni Leoni. AHKey ins: Bradley Barcola (PSG, £123m), Jérémy Jacquet (Rennes, £55m), Víctor Muñoz (Osasuna, £34.5m), Ronald Araújo (Barcelona, loan)
Key outs: Curtis Jones (Inter, £25.7m), Harvey Elliott (Valencia, loan), Mohamed Salah (Trabzonspor, free), Ibrahima Konaté (Real Madrid, free), Andy Robertson (Tottenham, free)
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Pretty much echoes what we’ve all been saying.
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TBH, I’m just happy it’s over. If Iraola can actually work with settled squad we can see where the real issues are.
Next thing is to settle the sporting director and executive positions.
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Let’s hope so. It has not been the case in the past few years since Michael Edwards left the first time, it’s like churning butter since then.
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Very POOR analysis.
Its incorrect to say we’ve “shifted to paying big money for big names”. Its an inflated market, which everyone is responding to.
And I’m not sure its correct to say waknesses remain at right back. Is it defensive weakness or offensive weakness, or both?
As for depth in the position, isn’t that precisely why we signed Araujo?
A proper analysis would’ve recognized that a DM in the role of a destroyer is not one currently being used by any of the top teams in the game…A point Iraola has already addressed in his pressers…
An intellectually lazy analysis…
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I generally agree with everything you’ve said, but I want to pick up the point about pivoting to paying big money for big names.
That point is obviously nonsense, but I think there has been a shift, and I think that shift has been towards Liverpool deciding only the very best will do, and being increasingly willing to get drawn into summer long sagas trying to get these signings over the line.
I think Barcola will be a really good player for us, but there is an argument that it was overcomplicating the business we needed to do in attack, where we had two players on the left and zero on the right.
Obviously Liverpool looked at the market (post Diomande’s rejection of us) and decided the best winger we could sign was a left sided player. This means we’re now trying to patch up RW with the predominantly left sided players we have on the books, and we’ve also unsettled Gakpo, who will obviously feel affronted that we’ve dropped £100m on a player in his position.
I’d quite like Liverpool to get back to doing its work with quiet efficiency, filling square holes with square pegs, and a sense that the spadework has been done before we hear anything about it.
Two examples of this.
Right wing
We need to address the lopsided nature of the attack, and we can solve that next summer with little fuss by activating Rayan’s release clause of £80m, and moving on Gakpo (who probably won’t fetch the £90m we could have got this summer, but could offset a huge chunk of that)
Centre Back
We know that we have a centre back issue coming with Van Dijk and Gomez both out of contract next summer. Liverpool can move to trigger either of the pre-agreed fees we have on Araujo or Quansah. Again, there is absolutely no need to complicate this for ourselves.
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Not disagreeing with your general point, but I would argue that what is being seen as a shift by the club, is, at least in part, a market wide shift.
The Salah and Mane of Roma and Soton, respectively, are the Diomandes of today, all 100m+ transfers.
But you are right that we are investing more in our first team and are more willing to respond to the market demands of the players at such levels.
The summer market revealed a paucity of left-footed, wide right players. In this window, there effectively was only one top level talent available. Once he declined to sign with us, we moved to shift the strong side of the attack to the left, re Barcola.
I suspect that we are looking down the road to address this; even if we had signed an immediate fix in Minteh…
I think it was Tomkins who categorized transfers into the pre-window deals, the window deals and the deadline day deals. And we have been active in all three phases…
We’ve also done the big money transfers; the stealth value deals, and the long term investment in top young talent…
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Regardless of where the market is we are right at the top of it for the second summer running. That is undoubtedly a change in approach. You can argue about what Mo’s 35m buys you today, but the relevant piece to Whipper’s piece is that whatever to that is, back in 2017 City were paying 40% on a full back, twice.
Like I said above, we’ve have done the big money transfer- Barcola; the stealth value deals- Munoz, Araujo, and the long term investment in top young talent- Brughman, N’Guessan…
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I didn’t write it, I just copied the relevant bit from the Guardian article as a talking point (which seems to have worked.)
Actually reading the list of business at the bottom, it doesn’t look too bad (although sad to see Jones go).
It’s probably worth separating the actual business from the speculation, which was frankly giving me nightmares by last weekend.
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Of course not. Dogs cannot write.
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The argument was not that we only now sign expensive players though.
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But we can speak:
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Femi Azeez from Millwall to Brighton for €14.6m.
Keito Nakamura from Reims to Lyon for €1m.
Kingstone Mutandwa from Cagliari to Servette on loan.
Yvan Neyou from Getafe to Volos on loan.
Sam Johnstone from Wolves to Celtic on loan.
Romeo Amane from Rapid Vienna to Anderlecht for €6.5m.
Patricio Salas from America to Famalicao on loan.
Shumaira Mheuka from Chelsea to Celtic on loan.
Serginho from Karagumruk to Atromitos on a free.
Hyun-seok Hong from Mainz to Midtjylland on loan.
Sam Lammens from Twente to PSV for €2m.
Daniel Elfadli from HSV to LASK on loan.
Riquelme Filipi from Palmeiras to Inter Miami for €3.6m.
Taylor Booth from Twente to Salt Lake on loan.
Simon Adingra from Sunderland to Ajax on loan.
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Victor Nelsson from Galatasaray to Nordsjaelland on a free.
Rodinei from Olympiacos to Santos on a free.
Isaac Babadi from PSV to Sparta Rotterdam on loan.
Arnel Jakupovic from Osijek to Vitoria Guimaraes for €600k.
Azzedine Ounahi from Girona to Panathinaikos for €14m.
Oumar Diakite from Reims to Sturm Graz on loan.
Andrew Omobamidele from Strasbourg to Anderlecht on loan.
Joao Mario from Besiktas to AEK on a free.
David Dodera from Slavia Prague to Cincinnati for €2.6m.
Giovani Versini from Pau to Brest for €2m.
Reiss Nelson from Arsenal to Feyenoord on a free.
Santiago Rodriguez from Botafogo to Columbus for €5.2m.
Jason Ceka from Elvesberg to Cambuur on loan.
Franculino from Midtjylland to Trabzonspor for €17m.
Carlos Alvarez from Levante to America for €6m.
Thelo Asgaard from Rangers to Anderlecht on loan, €1.5m fee, option to buy.
Leon Bailey from Villa to Olympiacos for €5m.
Joel van den Berg from PSV to Celtic for €3.5m.
Chido Obi from United to Willem II on loan.
Mileta Rajovic from Legia Warsaw to Midtjylland on loan.
Gabriel Mec from Gremio to Porto for €11m.
Richard Rios from Benfica to Al-Ittihad on loan, €4m fee.
Lewis Morgan from San Diego to Toronto on a free.
Claudio Echeverri from City to Benfica on loan.
Carlos Martin from Atletico Madrid to Hajduk Split on loan.
Giuliano Galoppo from River Plate to Atlanta on loan.
Anass Zaroury from Panathinaikos to Columbus on loan.
Iker Almena from Al-Qadsiah to Dinamo Zagreb on loan.
Roberts Uldrikis from Arminia to Heerenveen on loan.
Lasso Coulibaly from Auxerre to Viborg on loan.
Mikkel Bro Hansen from Bodo/Glimt to PSV for €3m.
Bartlomiej Wdowik from Braga to Jagiellonia on loan.
Saba Kharebashvili from Dinamo Tbilisi to Basaksehir for €2.5m.
Nathanael Mbuku from Augsburg to Sint-Truiden on loan.
Milan Roganovic from Partizan Belgrade to Genk for €3.5m.
Leander Dendoncker from Oviedo to Hajduk Split on loan.