Why is it moot? It said we couldn’t afford anything bar spread payments with a tiny up front cost.
How did we pay for Jota? The downpayment was covered by sending Hoever the other way.
Both points tell you the club is operating at zero money available for transfers (my original point).
Chelsea also offered Werner crazy wages iirc.
But the whole point is we didn’t have the money, what I’m saying is we have the money if we can finance it suitably.
Yeah, that’s fair and in terms of us trying to get creative in bringing in a CB, I’m all for that.
If you look at Thiago and Jota - in the former’s case we paid £5m up front, and in Jota’s case I think it was half paid up front (something like that), with half of that offset by selling them Hoever. Both outstanding pieces of business.
No reason we can’t look to do something similar this month.
For my money, if we don’t buy a CB we don’t win the title, if we do then there’s a very good chance we do.
But surely not any center back? Who would be able to step in immediately and claim a regular first team place? He’d have to be a hell of a player.
The rumours about Botman being available for circa £25m sound pretty good to me, particularly if Edwards is able to structure that deal like some of his others.
I’m 99.9% sure the club will have been doing its homework with a view to bringing one in in the summer before VVD and Gomez got injured, rather than seeing us panic-buy I’m hoping we just bring forward those plans by 6 months or so.
This squad we have right now is peaking, we don’t have infinite opportunities to win the title with this set of players, or Klopp for this matter. It’s within reach for us if we make the right moves this month, I’d hate to see the chance slip through our fingers.
Yup I know the club can’t pay upfront so that will probably remove some options but it’s possible with the right Lee way. If we could shift someone in a permanent deal I think it would help, but that would be structured most probably.
Timely rumour (kind of) - Guardian reports we’ve made moves to bring in Alaba on a free this summer. However, he prefers to go to Real by the sound of it:
There is a limit to what we can put in HP. We’ve already structured the Thiago and Jota deals in that way.
(From memory, Thiago was £25, with a £5m down payment and the rest payable in the future. Jota was about £40m with £10m paid straightaway, the sale of Hoever covering this. Tsimikas was paid for by the Lovren money)
We have to committed about £45m outgoings in coming seasons to fund this summers. signings.
Even if we structure a deal to pay the majority in future years, there is a limit to how much we can take on in this way. If we sign a centre back for £25m and reach an agreement to punt £20m in to the future, that’s suddenly £65m of outgoings they club have got to find in future windows.
Being committed to that kind of liability is inherently risky, especially when we don’t know when football is going to be back to normal. We’re unlikely to see fans back in stadiums this season. There is a good chance football is going to end up cancelled.
My guess is that the club have their target lined up (maybe Botman) and the price to get the deal done. But we need to raise some money first (likely by finding a buyer for Origi)
My concern is what we could lose from not doing this… if we were miles ahead in the top 4 I wouldn’t be that bothered but the experiment didn’t really work last night, so it has to be Fabinho + Phillips or Williams.
Unless we can find a McAllister type signing but some of you are a lot more clued up than me and I don’t particular see anyone.
I found this report pretty strange. I assume that Liverpool’s interest in Alaba would have been made public earlier by Alaba’s representatives in order to force Real Madrid’s hand (or that of any other club that might be negotiating with them). I’d love Alaba at Liverpool for multiple reasons I’ve already stated but if he truly has his heart set on another club, that breaks the deal for me.
Against Henderson? I’d imagine there are 20 CBs in world football for a reasonable fee who could do at least as good a job freeing up the captain to play in his most effective position.
I propose we bring back Lovren on loan for rest of the season.
This transfer window, or next, we will need a 2nd choice CB. Gomez and Matip will never complete an entire season without missing a significant amount of games. Switching out a CB every couple of weeks does not create a healthy partnership.
EURO 2021 will complicate things, so get it done now. It’s likely we will have to pay a premium.
Yep it’s a huge house of cards if you overcommit years worth of debt on an ever moving forecast. The money still needs paying eventually, the wages still need paying.
How can you even do that with the uncertainty of today.
Pretty sure it’s how football clubs go bankrupt.
Yep, spend all your savings in the face of diminishing returns, is what he was trying to argue.
Yep he is far more articulate than I!
I still reckon we bring in a loan player, that gets us over the hump.
The Leeds United school of transfer dealings bet there future on Champions league every year it missed out 2 years and everything went tits up quickly.
We are a very well run club. Run by very careful, inteligent and smart operators. And most of our deals go on payment structures unless we are meeting a clause the selling club are forcing us to honour in full and not negotiate on. It’s not the reckless style business the last few posts have made out.
We literally brag about how low our net spend is under Klopp and every other week we sign a new commercial deal. And our owners are billionaires. If we want to finance a reasonable deal there’s no reason we couldn’t
Yes Covid will have hit finances. Yes we probably aren’t as flush as we would have been. But same goes for other clubs too. So someone like Lille 8s under huge financial pressure, hence there’s a deal there to be done if we are inclined to.