You mean the difference between a club that had pretty much no other standout players, thin finances, and precious little success in recent years compared to us now?
Genuine question. It feels as though it’s easier to dismiss one player now because we’ve had several years of successful recruitment.
There are always two sides (sometimes three!) in these negotiations.
Plus, we also don’t know everything what happened behind the scenes.
Unfortunately also, the club at one period wasn’t in a good situation on and off the pitch. We had a really bad season (plus a few of simply not winning any of the biggest trophies) and just before that, many changes at the director’s level started to happen. Then Jurgen announcing he’s leaving.
All that possibly both put some things into doubt and some things on hold.
We cannot possibly tell when the club started to review and negotiate Trent’s contract/renewal. Like I said in his thread, I already found it a bit concerning that his last extension was “only” 4 years. So back then and when we arrived to the point when he had 2 years left, I was almost sure he’d wait and see before committing his best years on paper to Liverpool.
So yeah… I’m not 100% defending the club here, but it’s also highly likely not 100% the club’s fault either. You need the other sides to agree, too.
It is very tricky to be in a situation with 3 key players expiring so late. Sometimes it happens and perhaps that’s the result of a few years of not great success on the pitch and even more so, a lot of personnel changes, doubts if the club will remain highly competitive.
But it’s easy to say “give them or we should’ve given them x amount of wages and x amount of years”. There needs to be an agreement that is right for all parties.
And to add to that, it would be highly unusual for a club to start trying to extend contracts of players of the age of Mo and Virgil when they still had 2 years left to run on the existing one. Trent does seem like there were maybe missed opportunities to tie him down before last year’s shake up occurred, but for the other two it’s difficult to point to a time where it would have made sense to have been in serious discussions prior to this autumn.
This.
Yeah difficult to pigeon hole exact comparison when timescale and fortunes are completely different.
Being a born, bred and raised Scouser myself, Stevie G being homegrown, and also being, IMO, one of the best footballers to grace the turf at Anfield, immaterial of the state of the club at that time… It was good to connect with the trait that he stayed loyal to his own kind - even though, it is to be remembered, SG was being hounded 24/7 by the sinister side of society, making his life a misery at the time also -
TAA to me, local lad and all that, might be simply playing the media with some of his comments, in order to pad out a new contract, and he remains attached to LFC for the entirety of his playing days… Bottom line though, even with the talent he has, his attributes remain flawed, and miles away from being the complete footballer in the mould of SG.
All in all, I hope he stays so I can monitor his footballing journey to completion… If he goes next summer, I won’t lose sleep about it either
I think the difference is that I just think Gerrard was overrated, and I’m not local.
For all the talk about Gerrard being a complete player, he was an absolute liability at times defensively as well.
Also, may be I’m mis-remembering, but I swear there was a lot of talk in the media about Gerrard wanting to go to Chelsea, whereas Alexander-Arnold has only ever said that he wants to stay, and he doesn’t want the contract talks to play out in the media. That’s all he has ever said in intervies, so that’s what I"m going off.
I don’t think Slot is in that position where he can insist to Edwards that he needs more years from the trio.
Klopp would have been. If he had stayed , we probably would have gotten Matip an extension as well.
It’s way too early in Slot’s tenure for his words to have the same impact. But if Trent for example has a banger of a match anytime soon , I suspect the calls for the club to extend his contract will grow longer.
Also, comparing Stevie and Trent does no help. They are both different players with different attributes who played in different times.
Oooh a controversial opinion. Nothing wrong with that of course. Always good to get a full spectrum of views. 
For a moment I thought it was the ex man utd South African twat that used to fuck up my every Saturday watching football, but that’s Gary.
And BTW, I have it on excellent authority that he cant be the official Liverpool Captain if he leaves. VVD has another 2 years. He will have to make do with those charity Captain instances.
Except for the times he played as right back (and when he was young he was a fearsome defender) Gerrard was primarily an offensive player especially starting from Rafa’s time onwards. Therefore he fulfilled his primary objective, and high is to attack far more than defend. He was the classic no 8, not a no 6. So I firmly disagree that he was overrated.
That’s like saying Messi is overrated because he is lax in his defensive duties.
If anything he was underrated. Look around the world game, there is nobody with his set of attributes. He was a rarity.
Where as with Trent his primary job is as a defender, at least starting at right back. I know I know, the nature of the fullback in the modern game blah blah.
Well, you have to at least be able to defend better than he does.
Looking back at the times he was rumoured to be leaving for Chelsea, so 2005 and 2006, he was supposed to be a box-to-box midfielder, yet contemporaneous accounts seem to cite him always leaving holes in midfield? And I’m referring to these accounts precisely because (a) it’s nearly 20 years ago now, so memories are weak, (b) the hindsight and romanticism would only have strengthened, and (c) I honestly don’t have many personal memories of games from that period.
There’s a reason he was pushed further up the pitch. I’m not disputing that he’s a phenomenal player in many ways, I’m just pointing out that he was not the most tactically disciplined of players, and for all the talk about us rescuing games thanks to him, he was also very often anonymous.
Wouldn’t we be entitled to compensation as an academy product? Is there an age cut off
U24 I think
This is true, that’s why Rafa would have him tuck into right midfield when we didn’t have the ball and up centrally when we did.
Your second point isn’t quite accurate, I remember the Gerrard era quite vividly. Yes defensively he could get the runaround at times and it may eventually lead to goals but he seldom was a primary culprit so to speak. The games he rescued us we needed reaching because we didn’t have proper scoring power.
It feels like there was an oversight in his early positioning coaching or maybe because his physical gifts were so extravagant that he was almost encouraged to “go solo” whether in attack or defence. But you can’t do Roy of the Rovers stuff, especially defensively.
His injuries didn’t help. He had three operations, played with a shoulder injury for years until operation in 2013.
If I remember correctly, Rafa pushed him out to the right wing in 2005/06 and he had his most productive season ever up to that point. Stevie was everything but overrated he was not - he was an all-action midfielder with predilection to attack. Rafa recognised that and pushed him further forward when he got Mascherano.
As for Trent, I’m disappointed about the ambivalence that people feel about his probable departure. An academy kid, a local lad who’s only played for Liverpool so far, extremely talented, fantastic numbers for almost any outfield position, let alone the right back, vice captain who was likely groomed to take over from Van Dijk in the future. There’s not a single rival fan who won’t be happy about his departure. We’re losing an excellent player who will only get better.
Yes, I’m disappointed that his defensive game isn’t better and hasn’t progressed in two years (it more likely regressed if I’m honest) but he’s still one of the best right backs around without any doubt. That this Real Madrid iteration is hell bent on signing him should tell everyone in football world what a player he is (even if I don’t think his overall form of last two years merits a starting role there). I also wonder what kind of message his departure will send to other players - it reeks of Borussia Dortmund’s recent mentality, a feeling that I can’t shake off.
What my second point was about, is that so often we as a team looked to him to rescue games, but he simply didn’t deliver. It’s not that he wasn’t good, it’s just that he’s overhyped, if that makes sense. He wasn’t as perfect as he’s made out to be.
Yeah, but even a broken clock…
I mean it in the sense that he’s often talked about as though he’s one of the greatest players who ever lived. He isn’t that (although that said I think the players cited as such often aren’t that either).
Good thing it won’t happen then.