There’s absolutely no way that Alisson will want to stay once his contract ends, I’m sure of it. He was close to joining Juventus, who seem to be planning for his arrival by bringing in a goalkeeper on loan, instead of going for a permanent option.
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But was that because he thought he was being phased out for Mama?
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It didn’t break down on Chelsea’s end though, it was always being reported that they were the closest to landing the player, having made the first moves. We couldn’t outbid them so I don’t see how we could have realistically gone for him this window (and its probably why we were said to be going for Kone)
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I wouldnt have thought so, presumably he is probably aware of the number of games he misses due to injury and how unlikely it is that FSG would offer him a new contract on similar terms to what he can earn elsewhere?
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Sure, but if the plan has changed because our planned replacement isn’t working out and our next in line is still only 18, that can change I’d have thought.
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The way I’m seeing it, it seems that Mamardashvili is the one getting phased out. My money would still be on Alisson joining Juventus - he knows the league, he has a chance to get his final big pay-day at a big club, while they have left a spot open for him. We should enjoy him while we still can, even though he’s on decline.
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I disagree
At the minute we have five centre backs because Gomez can’t really be counted on, and Leoni is coming back off a major injury. If they were reliably fit we wouldn’t have got Araujo.
If Van Dijk and Gomez goes (and I’m not convinced Virg does) and we bring Quansah, that gives us four, with a couple of very promising youngsters (Ndweke seems to be on a fast track pathway). We don’t need anymore.
But my point was more that the biggest issue for Liverpool has been that we’ve made windows very hard for ourselves by trying to chase 10/10 signings, rather than just doing decent, sensible business.
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Also don’t forget Ndukwe and Ndiaye
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If Virg and Gomez go and Quansah came in would that not be three? Quansah, Jacquet and Leoni.
But yes, I agree on the chasing of big name signings. Three £100m plus signings in the space of 12 months is mad behaviour.
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Also, given Isak’s age and injury history, the 100M+ price was way over what he is actually worth.
And for Wirtz…if it takes this much tinkering with the team personnel and tactics to “unlock” him then why the £100M price?
Barcola may be the only one possibly worthy of being near that price, but even he isn’t really worth £100M.
We’ve really been taken for mugs.
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Agree on Isak.
Disagree on Wirtz.
Wait and see on Barcola.
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I don’t think the club really chased those signings though, they were always likely to happen as we were the preferred destination of the player, we just had to wait until the selling club signed it off. That was more problematic with Newcastle who wanted to make a drama out of it.
Furthermore, it didn’t stop us doing other business - Isak wasn’t the only forward we signed that summer (in a market with few options for recognised quality forwards) and Barcola wasn’t our only winger we signed (in a market with again relatively few options for recognised quality wingers).
With the big caveat that there is a very foreseeable season he has this year with fitness and availability that makes going another year with him not viable and we’re then faced with the question of going forward with a keeper we seemingly dont trust, throwing in a 19 year old kid, or getting rid of Mama and Alisson in the same summer and bringing in a safe pair of hands for a couple of season the Belgian kid can eventually take over from.
It’s not great
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I get fans being frustrated that we chose not to strengthen an area they felt we needed to strengthen. I also get a sense of unease about journos having inside info they can report like this (or at least think they do, and that is not always the same thing). But otherwise, isnt this exactly what we say we want out of the process? . The story as told demonstrates the club thinking windows ahead of where they will need to be making moves and doing the work early to start connecting with clubs and players who we think will likely feature highly in our decision making at that time.
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What I find odd is that, ok if this is a player we’ve identified as a key acquisition a year or two from now, why did we let another club have a free run at him and, if not for Monaco pulling the plug minutes from the deadline, he would have joined a direct rival?
Hold on, for what we know, Araujo will be a success, and we’ll then trigger the buying clause next summer?
On the Camara situation, maybe the timing wasn’t right for us to buy now. But if he’s available at a later time, when we think it’s the right time, he could be our guy then.
I’m reading it like he’s a guy we like a lot, but not a must have, because there are other good midfielders out there.
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Because if we’re not ready to make a move then we’re not ready to make a move and we have to accept that someone else may do so in the meantime. That is the tension inherent in trying to plan multiple windows ahead.
So how I would frame it is likely less that he personally is a key acquisition, but that CM is a key area we imagine we’ll be needing to address and right now he looks like a likely candidate for that so we started the flirting.
I have commented before, that I suspect a big part of our willingness to start more regularly shopping at the very top of the market is because we were finding that the more other clubs start getting their shit together, the more difficult it was becoming to identify a target for the move we want to make next year and still have them be available at that time, and by shopping in the higher end of the market you limit the number of clubs who can fuck up your plans. And I suspect a big portion of that is the glut of “smaller clubs” who are now regularly over performing because almost by definition the only way for them to compete is to over perform in this area which means identifying a lot of the same mid tier players we were. By shopping at a higher price tag we take a lot of those smarter clubs out of the equation.
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This was always the frustration I had with Football Manager games. I’d spend forever scouting and making a list of players to buy in future windows only to see some fucker buy them before I got a chance to.
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I’ve seen a lot of commentary in recent days on “what has gone wrong with Liverpool’s recruitment” saying we were the best of the business at the end of the last decade and now are living on reputation. Well, 6 years can be a long time in football and the market has changed a lot. We were excellent because we developed an approach that was great at finding value in the market, but the market as it existed at that time. As the market changes our approach becomes increasingly misaligned with reality. We have seemingly evolved and are seemingly still trying to find the same level of process-market fit we had in the previous generation.
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