Given the impact of the Covid pandemic on our revenues, the difficulty of finding a centre back of suitable quality, and the problems associated with trading in the January transfer window, under normal circumstances I don’t think anyone would complain if the club kept its powder dry and didn’t buy anyone.
However, these are not normal circumstances. Two of our three senior centre backs are out for pretty much out the whole of the remainder of the season; the third is so injury prone he is unlikely to be available for more than half the remaining matches. And it doesn’t appear as though the boss has much confidence in our youngsters the way he keeps chopping and changing. Consequently whilst January might not be the best time to buy, needs must.
I believe we must bring in a quality centre back (with a view that he should be the long term partner for VVD), or risk losing out on challenging for the Premier League and/or the Champion’s League. In a worst case scenario we might even struggle for a top four finish. What impact might that have on our revenues going forwards?
And given that other clubs are finding themselves in financial difficulties, it might not prove to be as expensive as feared.
As for finding the wherewithal to buy, I have an off the wall suggestion: perhaps the owners could invest some of their own money and increase their equity stake in the club, maybe, a la Oshiri, in the form of an interest free loan with an indeterminate repayment date?
It’s only a short term fix if we buy someone for the short term. And players may be at a slight premium now or clubs may be willing to do a deal as their finances have been hit even harder than our own and they know waiting until the summer could see it be even more of a buyers market so are willing to do a deal now.
I look at it like this and this is purely hypothetical. Let’s say Botman is on our list as is Upamecano. Botman priced at about £25m and Upamecano at say £50m.
We think Upamecano is a better player here and now. But we can’t buy him now because we’re playing Leipzig in the CL and we don’t want to spend £50m in this window although we could be tempted to do that in the summer if the conditions were right (I doubt this is the case but we’re playing hypotheticals here). We could wait until the summer but by then we could well be no better off in terms of revenues and potentially in an even worse position as not signing a CB could have implications for finishing in the top four. And if we aren’t in the CL Upamecano probably won’t be interested in coming anyway.
Botman is not as finished an article as Upamecano but we rate him way ahead of Williams and Phillips. He’s an immediate upgrade here and now but is young enough that he has the potential to develop and may not be too put out not to play every week (although with our injury record for CB’s I suspect he’d get plenty of game time). His arrival in January improves our chances of the title or at least finishing in the top four and therefore guaranteeing much needed CL revenue for next season. We don’t really want to spend £25m but it’s a lot less of a stretch than than the £50m Upamecano would cost now or in the summer.
Is that worth the gamble? We know £25m won’t bankrupt the club if it came as a loan from the owners as other clubs have done. We’ve never bought players like this before but we’ve never lost an entire unit of the team before. It’s exceptional circumstances rather than a habit we want to get into.
I for one would be in favour of the latter route if the recruitment team were convinced on Botman as an immediate upgrade on our kids and his long term prospects. We’re buying a CB at some point before next season starts so I’d hate to see us skip this window and then bring in Botman in the summer anyway if we could have done it now.
I don’t see how it’s a short term fix as we are almost certainly buying in the summer.
There isn’t a VvD on the market right now so waiting till the summer does not make sense to me. If there was a VvD who was only available in the summer and not now it may make sense to wait. But the need is there. The need is at its greatest now. Waiting 6 months won’t guarantee our finances are better. Waiting 6 months may risk our finances being significantly worse.
If they do, and maybe there is a genuine fear of that, then they need to think of where we were under Hodgson etc.
We will not finish outside the top four.
We need to have a bit of faith in the manager.
It’s arrogance to consider we have a right to finish in the top 4. We are putting a LOT of pressure on Fabinho and a LOT of playing time on him. One injury to him right now could turn our title defence into a catastrophe right now. In our last 3 CL games we picked up 4 out of 9 points which is bad enough we could get eliminated at the knock out phase. Even worse we picked up 2 out of 9 points in our last 3 league games. That’s with Fabinho uninjured.
I don’t think is impossible. A team can get into a negative downfall, a few chances missed, a few mistakes in defence, a few more injuries and suddenly you lose, draw, lose…
Is it likely? I don’t think so and hope not but I would not rule it out.
Klopp is the best manager in the game. He wouldn’t win the league with Everton though. He needs at least tools that fit the jobs he needs them to do even if he can then improve them.
Everton who are four points behind with a game in hand?
We end up down to Williams and Phillips for a bit and people think the attack is going to make up for that gaping hole in our side?
The top of the league is as condensed as it’s been in recent seasons. All a team needs is a good run of games or a bad run of games and the picture will look drastically different and we aren’t getting Gomez and Virgil back any time soon to help put a good run together.
One of the things I really like when reading fan forums is that every club in ever sport has fans that utterly believe that their club is biased against.
That’s not excusing mistakes from refs / reviews etc.
Unfortunately everyone sufferers from them, and the approach of letting the game play out then review (instead of stopping a potential goal) means it feels worse this year.