We’ve brought in two people who seem awesome, have great players here already and have a few kids ready to get some serious game time .
And we are still looking to recruit players that the manager wants, and the owners are willing to spend on .
I’m beginning to suspect that you just want to lead an FSG out tirade.
thanks for confirming my point. you feel free to speak out of your ass without actually knowing what you’re talking about. you’re consuming and processing information from social-fucking-media and getting your panties in a knot without any first-hand knowledge about what’s actually happening at Anfield. What those discussions are, how the approaches on Fab and Hendo affected our transfer window. WHY the dual bids on Lavia and Caicedo.
take a breath and see how this plays out before throwing the toys out of the pram.
LMFAO. hahaha this is awesome.
Well run club.
Maybe not.
Are you seriously slagging off Hogan and Schmadtke for being a “real shambles” negotiators and then insinuate that because the negotiations didn’t come to fruition, you are now somehow vindicated because your counter still shows two players sold and two players bought? You do realise that if Lavia and Caicedo had an ounce of brain between them, one of them would be a Liverpool player and your narrative would have gone down in smoke.
For the record, as it turned out, money which you’ve been moaning about for months now, is not the issue but rather worryingly, the total breakdown which ensued once the Saudi bids for Henderson and Fabinho came in. It seems like they completely derailed the thought process and caused confusion and hesitance, which is completely uncharacteristic of the way Liverpool have been operating. And it’s not that suprising either considering the upheaval behind the scenes.
In any case, what matters now, is that Klopp, Schmadtke, Hogan move quickly and fill the gaps in the squad before the end of the window. And after that, put a structure in place that assures that this doesn’t happen again.
Lastly, I am not entirely sure what you are saying about Tchouameni but if you truly believe that R. Madrid are actively shopping him and Ornstein’s article is a FSG spin, you are living in a paraller universe.
Just to add , @Klopptimist will be along shortly I’m sure to provide his answer like @RedArmada did…
@Mascot has about 6 weeks of threads to catch up , including the transfer ones which I’m sure he will be looking forward too, so he may have to reply in June if that’s ok?
WTF.
The piece expressly says Real have no interest in selling him. It is a nothing piece saying a player we retain interest is in not available so we should mentally rule it out.
Your take - “this is spin. this player (the piece confirms is not going anywhere) wont be coming.”
Yes, that is exactly what the piece says.
I agree, but Klopp must prepare his squad for the upcoming matches, while Schmadtke and Hogan haven’t exactly covered themselves with glory during that latest double episode. I wouldn’t bet on us suddenly becoming smart and fast, and feel that we’ll go into the season with what we have, while hopefully refining our global strategy for the new transfer windows. But it’s difficult to do that when you have an interim sporting director in place. We need a permanent one asap, and a quality one as well!
Poker night here, will come back later.
You trying to win us some players ?
It’s probably the reason Henry is here.
Im struggling to see what they could have done any better with the Caicedo deal other than it going through but they had the bid accepted.
I’m not throwing any stones at them, but with hindsight, they’d have been better inspired to go hunting elsewhere. The Caicedo deal was a bit of a flash act and was bound to fail (fortunately so imo), but putting much work and time into the Lavia deal, only for the lad to chose the place with the most money in the end isn’t a great testament for their work on selling the club to the player and his agents, and doesn’t show great judgment about the player’s character too.
But hey, hopefully they have some alternative solutions lined up and will move swiftly now, we can always hope.
I think there is an element of relationship building in transfers that when done right should give you the info you need to know if a bid like ours was even worth making . The nature of Jorg’s employment, the loss of continuity with Ward who might have maintained that connection from last summer, and then Hogan coming in to participate…I think these are all areas where you can point to our structure and say that has maybe contributed to a bad outcome.
But its one deal. Good sides lose out on a player they want all the time. It will be because of our failure to respond rather than this miss per se if this moment comes to define our season.
Hogan and Schmadtke
I think sometimes we forget players are people and this is their job. If you’ve ever been fortunate to have multiple job offers on the table you’ll know that those decisions can be hard to make. You think you’ve settled on an outcome only for a counter or improved offer to come your way.
And these are extremely young lads making decisions that involve astronomical sums of money. No doubt the agent will have an opinion, so too will family members and friends. They’ll have different motivations, different ideas about how much they’ll play or where it could take their very short career. And like it or not location will be a factor.
We like to think we’d be the best destination for every player but that’s because we’re fans. We’d be signing in a heartbeat and not even ask the terms. But players, it’s a job. He thinks more money and a longer deal is what’s best for him and who knows, maybe we never had a deal in place with Southampton anyway and so he didn’t have the choice to come here in the end.
But not everything needs a scapegoat or someone dragging across hot coals for. We’ve yet to see whether £55m is even a good deal. He could just as easily be being touted for loan come next summer so they can make room for their next toy.
It’s enough blame game. Time to focus on getting things back to the way that’s delivered us success in the past. Good scouting, decisive action, business done on the quiet.
So my reading on the situation about the midfield is this…
Firstly, I don’t think we are desperate for a “6” as assumed. We just want players of a particular profile - energetic, technically excellent, capable of playing the high press and ideally tactically flexible.
Start of the window we were looking for two midfielders to start and one backup/rotational player to rotate with Fabinho. We sign Mac Allister and looked at Khephren Thuram, Mathias Nunes and a host of other attack minded CMs for the other CM but eventually reached for the more talented Szoboszlai when his move Newcastle stalled and we were made aware of his release clause - probably by his agent.
We start looking for younger players to sit behind the experienced midfielders - Lavia the top choice and also checked on Andre Trindade.
Suddenly Fabinho and Henderson want out. I’m guessing the money was a big factor but also that neither of them wanted to play in a rotation/back up role having previously been key players. We were ok with letting Fabinho go but tried to keep Henderson until he made it clear he didn’t want to stay. Lots of rumours of Saudi clubs not paying bills and a transfer suspension for at least one of them so we negotiated hard to get as much money as we could upfront.
So we then have to pivot - we have continued negotiations with Southampton for Lavia and would still proceed with that deal even if it meant him starting a little more than we initally wanted. However, Southampton’s negotiating position started at £50m and did not budge.
Liverpool liked Lavia but that kind of money was starting to feel awfully high for a player we initially viewed as a prospect/rotation player and now that we have an extra £50m to play with we start to investigate our top rated players that we were not previously moving on because we didn’t have the cash - namely Caicedo but I’m sure we checked on Tchouameni too.
So we maintained our interest in Lavia, edging some bets in at prices we were increasingly uncomfortable with while waiting to get the green light from Caicedo if we could make that deal (whether that was wise or not is up to individuals to judge). Caicedo’s agent gives the green light and we move quickly, bidding £115m. Unfortunately for us we were being played - Caicedo’s camp had no intention of moving him to us they just wanted to speed up the £250k, 8 year deal from Chelsea.
Then we come back to Lavia but we have the same problem as before, he’s expensive for the squad role we see him taking up. Chelsea move for him too and we don’t follow it up (according to some we did but club denied it).
So long story short I think we got played like a violin by Caicedo’s agent then decided the price for Lavia is too high.
From this point on we have to choose if we are looking for a starter or a backup/young prospect. However there are no guarantees we like any of the options and its not our style to sign stop-gaps.
Another possible option could be to permanently move Trent into midfield and use him as a deep midfielder, signing a RB to take his place. Finally we could sign a left sided CB and go all in on the Trent free-role (yes we do the same formation at youth level, suggesting we like it long term).
I’m not going to praise or criticise Schmadtke/Hogan for these events - we don’t and won’t know what happened in reality but I think the above is a realistic situation and probably not a million miles off the truth.
https://twitter.com/FelixJohnston_/status/1691031102213795840?s=20
Posted this in the PL thread, but if true(?), its also relevant here.
I hope its true.
Though what evidence is required?
Wouldn’t the owners’ blame lie with appointing Billy Hogan? I would have thought the CEO and any underlings involved in the application process had full control of who he recruited (Schmadtke)?