Incredible. All these offers that we had accepted and yet none happened. Caleta-Car and Botman both down to there being too little time to finalise them - implying that they would both otherwise have gone through. Caleta-Car and Botman? And Kabak too? Davies as well? Blimey.
This seems like a couple of ITKs placed their hats on one player or another and then have come out with similar bullshit stories about how everything was agreed BUT…and you’ve bought it. Amazing how many CBs we would have bought if only there had been a bit more time, huh? Whilst also getting in Davies and Kabak. It’s like Edwards was doing a supermarket sweep, eh?
Fees are always structured…well, nearly always, but the same considerations have shifted. If the financial picture is rosy, teams are going to be much more relaxed about extended payment terms with a smaller initial fee. You cannot apply the same financial approach to the last two windows as you can normally.
“If they had pursued Marseille’s Duje Caleta-Car earlier, for example, the Ligue 1 club would have sanctioned a £20m deal as the only barrier was a lack of time to source a replacement.”
The Sven Botman stuff had less this side of the channel with most of it talk on twitter from France based journalists in French then translated. But no I don’t rely on ITKs.
Edit; David Maddock take on the window;
What did Jurgen Klopp miss out on?
For Liverpool, the list was apparently endless - Upamecano and Konate from RB Leipzig were sounded out at various points before the window closed, Lille’s Sven Botman was considered in a complicated deal involved Divock Origi.
Then there were aborted attempts to sign Marseille defender Duje Caleta-Car, who even got to the airport, and also Lyon defender Marcelo, who was reported to have turned down an offer of a six month contract. Only Upamencano though, would have been a shoo-in to go straight into the team (though Marcelo would have done a job), and he remains a long term target.
What i’ve been saying has nothng to do with what i think,the fact Klopp doesn’t like to do business in january because of over paying,is one of the reasons.
The hindsight part comes from us not buying anyone at the start of january but needing to by the end of it,which you keep going on about,Klopp was never forcing the issue a the start of january,he was quite calm and understanding about the money problems and the issues with buying in january,when i watched his interviews,it wasn’t till losing Matip he recommended buying a CB.
I’m sorry, but none of those stories comes particularly close to your interpretation. None of them reference what payment terms the club was proposing and, most importantly, none of them happened.
And Marseille’s reluctance to sanction a deal because they couldn’t secure a replacement does not mean they would have been able to secure a replacement if they’d moved a few weeks earlier.
All Caleta-Car comments say is that Marseille wouldn’t allow the deal. Everything else is conjecture.
So you disagree that money was made available at the end of the window that was not made available earlier on? That we could have recruited better if we’d had that money made available earlier in the window? Even though two journalists who have spoken directly with Klopp say exactly that?
What money? Approximately £3m? Isn’t that roughly what we’ve paid to bring in Davies and Kabak? I expect that sort of money has always been available. Not sure it would be enough to get the job done for Caleta-Car, Konate, Upamecano, Marcelo, Botman or whoever else though…something that seems to be reinforced by the fact those deals not materialising.
You seem to be saying that if it were only for more time, these deals would have got completed. The criticism being that we should have initiated these discussions earlier. My view is that if it were only for more money, these deals may have got completed. The only reason it looks like time was a factor, it seems to me, is that we were perhaps trying to use the deadline as leverage to counter-balance our limited ability to seriously improve the money offering.
And are they all, seemingly, identifying a lack of time? That is in no way inconsistent with the club engaging in brinkmanship in an attempt to make the most of a small kitty and those attempts leaving it with Davies and Kabak.
It doesn’t, however, contradict my view that we did not have significantly more money than we ended up spending.
Except Klopp literally answered a question the week before about “is the reason you won’t bring a CB in the money?” “Yes”! Then Matip got injured and we made bids on CBs and brought one in on loan. Yet again journalists have confirmed we were not going to bring one in, as Klopp said, before the Matip injury then, as Klopp said that weekend, we then tried to bring one in.
The way LFC go about recruitment at the moment, reminds me of a story a while back…
I remember talking to a guy about 20yrs ago who had been retired about 5yrs or so.
He was telling me how concerned he was for his young son and daughter in law (both early twenties) had taken out a £325k mortgage on a big house.
He was worried because the 25yr monthly repayment terms the pair had committed to, would financially cripple them for such a long period.
Told him they wouldn’t be paying for 25yrs, but paying for the length of time it took for the guy to pop his cloggs…! (When the boy would obviously inherit the dads house and then pay his own mortgage off on the strength of this)
The guy laughed, had a look of pride on his face when he realised how astute his boy had been… and said he hadn’t thought of it like that…
When LFC get around to selling one of their main assets, maybe in 6months, 12months or whenever… Say one of the front 3…
The money/profit they receive… could then pay off the likes of Jota, Thiago and any other debts on newly acquired players (if they so choose)… and at the end of the day, they haven’t used a penny of their own money to make new signings…!
If there remains a grey area as to whether money was available or not to Jurgen… I am sure there was… The only unknown factor in the equation, is how long LFC need to hold onto their main assets until selling prices matched expectation…!
It all boils down to team evolution and timeline Jurgen undertakes these changes
Is this a case of crossed wires between us because you’re presenting quotes from Klopp that entirely support my view on this? Do you, in fact, accept that money was limited?
1 VvD gets injured.
2 Gomez gets injured.
3 January window, Klopp is recommending we bring in a CB.
4 Someone makes a decision not to bring in a CB.
5 Klopp gets angry after a game, says what can he do its not his decision.
6 Klopp gets a bit more diplomatic in subsequent press conferences but confirms the finances are the reason we can’t bring someone in.
7 Matip gets injured the evening of Thursday 28th Jan.
8 Klopp reveals we will be trying to bring a CB in when asked over that weekend.
9 We go round like crazy, strongest links to me appear to be Botman (involving Origi in part exchange), Caleta-Car and Carmo.
10 At least one of those proposals was accepted by the other club in a deal totalling over £20m for Caleta-Car but they pulled the plug on it whilst he was at the airport because their attempts to bring in a replacement failed and they had no more time as it was right at the end of the season.
11 We brought in Kabak and Davies for minimal cost with no long term commitment as emergency options, if they don’t work out Davies can be flipped for an instant profit and Kabak returned. Shows how uncertain we are of them.
12 LFC reveal Matip is out for the season (probably known since Friday, Saturday).
Well, duh. Our CB situation was dire, of course the club were looking at bringing in reinforcements. Is Edwards the sort of guy that gives you the impression he leaves things to the last minute if he can help it? Does Klopp? No. Guaranteed those players we were linked with late in the window, if we held any genuine interest in them, we will already have been in discussions for months.
No. There is nothing to support that. Someone has made a decision about how much money is available to bring in a CB, which is not the same as saying “you can’t have a CB”.
Entirely consistent with being told that nobody is going for our lowball offers and we can’t afford to spend what a selling club is demanding.
Consistent with the above position.
Meaning we might now need two, rather than 1 addition at CB.
Well, of course, he’s been saying pretty much that the entire window. We’re trying but funds are tight.
Are we going around like crazy or is this simply the culmination of playing the only card we have - letting the clock run down and trying to get selling clubs into a race as to who’s most desperate for our cash that they will suddenly drop their demands that we can’t afford? It seems to me like such a strategy (out of necessity due to lack of funds) would almost certainly arrive at this point when our only hand is to push sellers up against a deadline to the extent that they now know we weren’t bluffing about not going any higher than any offer we’ve been able to make to date.
Again, there’s no information about the detail. Kabak could equally be described as a deal “totalling over £18m” or whatever it was until you know more of the details.
If people still want to believe that the deals we tried to make at the end of the window are ones we were trying to make all along go ahead. Its against what evidence there is, it ignores the chain of events and is in direct conflict with the journalists who spoke to LFC staff after to find out what happened. But I’m fed up of arguing and basically going over the same ground over and over.
I’ll repeat one more time for the record though. FSG are not bad owners, most of what they do and have done has been great, particularly putting together a wonderful recruitment team with an exceptional manager. But they’re far too reactive (in my opinion) when it comes to the “gamble” of reinforcing the playing squad. We’ve hung on to finances and settled for less than ideal squad cover several years on a trot that eventually turned out to be profitable years we had room to fix issues in. We got to a real position of strength with a fantastic team that won the CL and went on to win the PL. At that stage proactive squad management should have been the focus. Committ now to make sure things aren’t problems later. We ended up adding Van Der Berg and Adrian. There were deficiencies in the squad, we ran at a profit, but we didn’t strengthen. We saved our powder for a future big bang. Now not only can’t we do that because we’ve hit a bad financial period we can’t do what necessary strengthening there is. We are reactive only not proactive. If we were proactive we could have had a dynasty and the revenues would be flooding in to reward that. Now we might miss CL which could cost over £100m.
There’s nothing to support me saying we could have spent more than we wanted except that the cash in hand increased by £20m and the intercompany debt decreased by £20m? That could have paid for our business from this last summer to happen the summer before and this summer, limited as it was, could have paid for our long overdue addressing at CB due to the injury records of Matip, Lovren and Gomez, the ages of Matip and Lovren and the inconsistency of Lovren.
