Ward negotiated Liverpool’s £44m signing of Cody Gakpo from PSV Eindhoven in January and is continuing to work on potential deals for the summer window before he steps down at the end of May.
Liverpool’s search for a new sporting director is ongoing as they continue to consider the merits of a number of external candidates.
Klopp on if international break was used to plan for new sporting director/new signings
I couldn’t plan training sessions as we didn’t know who was here, so yes. Player side, positive. There are talks, but no decisions. We are busy as you can imagine."
Or we just wait and see what happens this summer. Look I’m not the biggest fan of them but going after Bellingham for crazy money is not the smart play IMHO.
Maybe not, but the smart play would have been realising that at some point over the past 3 years, rather than waiting until the arse fell out of our team
Sometimes you need to take the good along with the bad. The owners are not football people and up until the last moments of the summer window it seemed like Klopp wanted his 1st choice or to stick with what he had. It’s not the owners job to interfere with this.
This rebuild is going to take time. Quick fixes more often then not don’t work (see Chelsea this season and ManU over the years). If we are going to trust Klopp then we have to accept there are going to be mistakes and periods where even he gets things wrong and then afford him the time to get it wrong.
I’m confident Klopp will have a budget to improve things. Will it be the highest budget… I’m doubtful, but it should be enough for us to compete smartly like we did before - if we get our transfers right.
This is the part I’m most worried about… I’m really not sure about Ward (and his replacement). Not saying Nunez and Gakpo are not going to make it but if either of them had hit the ground running we would be many places above where we are now.
This summer we need to get our transfers right. But critical to that is getting the right person in charge of those transfers and I don’t know who is the best man for the job (besides a return of Edwards).
I don’t really think it’s a matter of Budget, it’s a matter of what makes sense from an investment POV.
It’s why I’ve never doubted that if the club really want Bellingham they would stretch to a circa 120m fee. The lad is 19 years old and you are potentially looking at eight years of service before recouping a lot of that investment if needed.
The problem here is that it’s not just Cheaty now. It’s also Sandcastle and the London plastics while United may up it a notch under Gutterari slavers and Arsenal are getting their shit together.
If I hazard a guess, our starting midfield next season will be Mount, Tielemans and Fabinho with Cameos from Thiago ,Kante and Hendo.
With that huge backing from FSG in terms of quantity, spending just 70 million odd pounds , FSG should think that LFC could stand a high chance to do the domestic treble next season! Failure to challenge that, I would expect Klopp to be sacked by FSG.
This is the amount of faith I have in FSG now as I think FSG themselves can direct the sporting affairs with their baseball moneyball man given how there is absolutely no movements for a “soccer” sporting director. #InFSGWeTrust!