£40m for Bissouma is a risk but i can’t see how its different to almost all the +£30m signings in our current squad.
A risk because of the financial report that was just released? I’m sure the club is in a healthier situation than when we payed huge money to sign Sadio Mané.
Interesting thing to me is Watkins cost Villa £28m coming out of the Championship. He’s got twice the number of goals as Abraham but in two to three times the amount of minutes including three in that disaster class of a game against us and another Alisson shoveled in just recently.
Watkins would certainly cost a lot more than £40m now and I think he’d make Abraham look a pretty reasonable deal by comparison.
I like Abraham. He’s not like anyone we have at the moment. Closest is Origi who has some of the same kind of attributes but lacking in all the application and effort.
He plays mainly within the width of the penalty box and likes to hang on defenders shoulders. I like his confidence and the range of goals he scores. Decent on the end of crosses, with his back to goal and can go past a player. His hat trick against Wolves a couple years back was three very different goals which is a good demonstration of his range.
He’d be a good central focal point for the attack. I think sometimes with Bobby, all the dropping deep and floating about is great but then players are looking forward or into the box and we’ve a hole where a striker should be. That hole is where Tammy likes to play. He also seems supremely confident in his ability and I doubt he’d be phased by the weight of the shirt.
If he’d been given half the chances Werner has had this season he’d have far more goals and I think we’d be saying £40m was a bargain. If we’d paid that for him last summer after he’d got 15 goals and six assists in the league, we’d all be proclaiming Edwards had been up to his jedi mind tricks again.
Nothing like a forward with a chip on his shoulder wanting to show people they were wrong about him to inject so fire into proceedings.
And if that isn’t enough I just saw that his first name is actually Kevin which is hilarious.
Bissouma is a quality player. 40 million isn’t cheap but I don’t think there’s much risk of him bombing if he came here. Ticks all the boxes for a replacement for Gini.
Abraham is a decent player and would certainly give us a different style. Again, 40 million isn’t cheap but I’d say it’s probable he’d do reasonably well.
Oliie Watkins shouldn’t be in the discussion. 1 dimensional player who wouldn’t be able to use his speed playing for us.
Compared to paying £40m for Bissouma…
signing Ox looked like a huge gamble because of his injury record at Arsenal and look what happened.
Keita looked like a steal. ‘the african Iniesta’ they said and look what happened.
Wijnaldum was a ‘risky’ deal. A player who was a bit better than ‘avarage’ coming from a relegated club. Think that signing paid off over the course of the 5 year stay.
£40m for Bissouma isn’t low-risk. But Bissouma for £40m is an enticing prospect. So, where’s the confusion/contradiction? £40m. It isn’t low and hence can’t be low-risk. Takumi or Robertson for around £10m was low-risk.
We were talking Haaland, Mbappe even whispering Aguero and Suarez. Football pornography.
Now we are talking Watkins vs Abraham…
You have shattered my dreams!
It’s Liverpool in any age basically. Wake up.
"The other day, Kylian comes in beaming. He shows everyone this photo of him and LeBron laughing away. We were all so jealous. Then he takes off his jacket and he’s wearing a Liverpool shirt, signed by LeBron James and Jordan Henderson! He was absolutely made up.
"He just loves football so much. Can’t stop talking to me in English about the Premier League and Liverpool Football Club. Even says he’s practising Scouse! His enthusiasm for all things football is just so infectious. Some of the other players keep wanting to know more about stuff. He even had the team singing You’ll Never Walk Alone on the coach the other day! It was so funny.
“What a guy. It’s great to see such passion for football. What’s that? No. No he still hasn’t signed a new deal. We’re not concerned. No, sirreee.”
Mauricio Pochettino.
That’s it. I’m ordering my Mbappé 7 home shirt right now.
Wait a minute, Milly got the #7. So Mbappe is coming next summer 
I’ll be a year ahead of everyone else. Real trendsetter, me.
#ITK
Gini paid off in one night.
You could equally argue the other side for all of those three.
This isn’t to make a dig at you but to highlight however we try and frame these things, because of the complete uncertainty around every transfer you can almost always find an argument for the opposite stance.
A lot of time passed between Gini leaving Newcastle/joining Liverpool/becoming a hard worker for Liverpool and this Football Manager and real life fame at 17 and ending up at bloody Newcastle (McClaren probably in love with everything Dutch) of all places. A lot of time. I knew the name, but always wondered if he’s another slightly overrated Dutch talent/player (regardless of his numbers over there, we had some positive examples and some negative ones). What’s his position? What’s he best at? A lot of years passed. There were probably some good reasons why. And why he also wasn’t really an established or important international player. I think the real change with him came in the summer of 2018, when we bought 2 central midfielders and almost brought Fekir, too. He came back from that pre-season with a fantastic reaction, accepted that he’s not this technically classy and creative player and the best way would be to become a real hard worker. Klopp finally found him a sense of belonging at the top level, but in a different way than it was probably predicted all the way back when he was 17.
Well if we’re just going to dismiss 200 odd league appearances, 40 odd European games, nearly 20 international caps and a move to an even bigger Dutch side and a league title. 24 is a reasonable age to see a player taking that step up and moving to a bigger league. Seems quite dismissive of what was a very promising career from a young age.
As I said, I was only pointing out that you can probably argue both sides of any argument when it comes to transfer risk. By doing so you’ve sort of just proved my point.
Yeah, but in which league? And what did that league provide a lot of the time? Some big flops or players who failed to impress (Bergwijn at Spurs could be just another one in the line of many, maybe even vdBeek, too). I think when you’re that much talked about at the age of 17, leaving at 24 to join Newcastle is a bit… meh. You ask yourself why. Sure, he won bronze at WC14, scoring in the match for 3rd place. I think he’s somewhat a failed creator/offensive force at the top level, but found a new way to be relevant/important by becoming a hard worker. Which is fine, I admire players converting themselves.
And van Dijk played in Holland and Scotland until he was 23/24. He worked out alright. Van Nistlerooy didn’t move to United until he was 24/25.
Dutch talent often gets hyped at a younger age as they get more game time at a younger age. I get where you’re coming from and it’s easy to say with hindsight that Gini wasn’t all that risky a deal. Equally, had Ox stayed fit I don’t think we’d be looking back and saying it was risky due to his injuries.
Gini was clearly identified as being a talented player early on. No one took the plunge on him perhaps because he hadn’t really nailed a position down. Wouldn’t be the first, won’t be the last to fall into that trap. But he showed he could cut it in the Premier League and was the standout performer in a team that ultimately went down.
Anyway, it was just an example to say you could argue both sides and I’d have fallen into the “not so risky” group at the time (I remember suggesting him when there were a few talking about Sissoko). The whole point is that there is a degree of uncertainty no matter what and you can always argue both sides.
Ox was not really bought as a starter, he only really truly entered the starting 11 after Coutinho left.
Had Ox not been injured in the AS Roma CL semifinal, we might not buy Keita at all.
Yeah, I was not referring to the risky or not risky signing. It’s just that his career went from an apparently highly promising one to a ‘meh’ one for a good few years to a hard worker at the top level one.