Why is leaving party an issue? In the grand scheme of mad shit footballers do, I don’t think it really moves the needle.
People leaving jobs having leaving do’s. It’s just a matter of scale.
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I’m tired of pointing out how that particular opinion requires a lot of assumptions that don’t seem particularly likely, so I’m not interested in that bit.
I’m more interested in this question, hence my own question posed. I’m wondering if a market for him existed in the first place, i.e. would there be a transfer fee for which we’d be willing to sell him, versus a transfer fee for which a club, like Real Madrid, might be willing to buy him. I suspect that there’s no overlap in the ranges, hence the wondering of how often it’s happened historically, especially recently.
That was 25 years ago now, and it was also the first thing that came to my mind but I’m thinking it’s less relevant since it was 25 years ago, and according to Luis Figo to Real Madrid: The Transfer That Launched the Galacticos Era it was more a Perez thing than anything else?
I just looked it up, and curiously enough in his three seasons at Napoli, they were nowhere close in the first two, and ironically closer in the two seasons after he left, but I guess that counts regardless.
I know people keep suggesting that he could have signed a contract with a reasonable release clause for Real Madrid, but I’m sceptical that he would be offered such a contract. Firstly, it would set an unwelcome precedent for the club. Secondly, right now all the anger is focused at him. Can you imagine what would have happened if the club had given him such a contract? I would guess that there would still be anger, but a lot of it would now be directed at the club. Lastly, although it’s often suggested that the club doesn’t keep players who want to leave, I think the evidence shows that unless a player actively forces their way out, e.g. Mignolet, we tend to keep them as long as it suits us, e.g. Kelleher, Gomez.
Because we dump them, not the other way around! They don’t get to be happier they’re out of the relationship!
Oh wait sorry wrong topic. Or is it?
I think simply signing an extension of one or two years to take him past the first year of Slot would have been sufficient. There didn’t need to be a release clause or anything specific to RM. Come the end of this year he wants to move on, Real want him but have to pay a fee of some sort. The fee would be limited by the shorter length of contract left, the willingness of the player and that he doesn’t want to join any other team. It wouldn’t matter if, for example, Bayern or Chelsea came in with bigger bids if TAA has no desire to join them.
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I like to think that this club is run by reasonable people, so if a player responds by being reasonable, together they will come to a solution that will suit all parties involved. I feel that there was a lot of anger behind Coutinho’s exit that led to his transfer fee being as high as it was.
Contrarily, I can’t imagine TAA coming into director’s office a year in advance, telling him that he wanted to play for Real Madrid in a year’s time but that he didn’t want to run down his contract in order to honour his childhood club - and said director telling him to do one, even in case TAA had a long-term contract.
I’m against setting such a precendent but, to continue from my previous paragraph, this should end up in the territory of gentleman’s agreement instead - a simple, verbal deal between reasonable people acting in common interest. No formal clause to set any negative precedent, and if TAA’s arbitrary market value had been, say, 100 million pounds, Liverpool accepting half of that would have been reasonable in my opinion, and everyone would have been a winner.
Been reading a couple of articles where they think Bellingham is beginning to struggle for form and good, reliable performance, compared to his first season there.
The common denominator they deduced, was the arrival of Mbappe on the scene. This season, apparently, he is either really struggling for form, or alternatively, he has reached his plateau, because he was never that good to consistently live up to the surrounding hype… The reason I mention this, TAA will certainly be playing in a minefield set by Spanish media, who, if they are already becoming disillusioned with JB… will take no mercy on TAA if he too, doesn’t live up to the hype surrounding him.
Safest place for TAA to have become a legend across Europe, to be remembered for decades to come, was to remain at Anfield… Intriguing how this drama plays out in the next few seasons
But that goes back to my point about how there isn’t such a market. I’m not sure there is a fee that Real Madrid would pay for Alexander-Arnold with one year left on his contract where we wouldn’t just keep him because of how much he’s worth to the team.
To flip it around, how much do you think the club should have sold him for last summer, bearing in mind that there were a lot more doubts around Bradley then than there are now, considering we’ve won the title?
It’s also why I raised the question of top clubs, because the income inequality of football means each penny is worth a lot more to a club that’s fighting its way up, rather than one trying to stay there. I’m guessing in this case, that if both clubs are rational actors, then there isn’t really a price that would make sense to Real Madrid to pay, that it wouldn’t make sense to us to turn down to keep him.
What do you mean by anger? I presume you’re referring to the issues around the hurt egos at Barcelona from the Neymar transfer?
“telling him to do one” is not likely, but neither is it particularly likely that we’d just offer him a contract that enables a quick exit for him.
How well did that end up for Suarez?
And let’s say £50m is the price that Real Madrid would have been willing to pay. We’re willing to pay £30+m or however much it is for Frimpong, who’s (a) not proven in our system, needs time to adapt, etc. Why wouldn’t we just decide to forgo the £50m and keep Alexander-Arnold?
Not too intrigued, to be honest. The moment his contract ends here I couldn’t really care less.
He’ll probably never be as loved anywhere else as he was here, no matter whatever he might win or not win. In terms of career, I think it was only ever going to be a step down from us.
In terms of personal life however, he might not regret it. Again to reiterate, he’s literally a kid in his mid-20s who’s never lived anywhere else but the same few places in his life. it’s not unreasonable to believe that he might want to try living somewhere else if he can, while he’s still young.
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I’m curious how Trent’s England career pans out once he is out of the Premier League spotlight. The media agenda alway seems to be that he can’t defend (which isn’t borne out by the stats) but I alway got the impression that he wasn’t a media darling.
It will be interesting to see what their take on him is with the next international games.
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Well, England aren’t going to win anything anyway so he’ll probably just be a convenient scapegoat until they find a new scapegoat.
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Is he now thinking…OMG what have I done…
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Possibly.
Unless of course he hasn’t signed with Real Madrid yet…
Almost feel sorry for the silly bugger. He knows it won’t be like that at Real and even worse he’s not able to fully enjoy the moment now. I hope for his sake that he really enjoys the ‘culture’ in Madrid because on a footballing level he’s made the wrong chose and the money won’t ultimately make a difference to how he lives. Fucking white meringue shites. Hate them more and more.
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Most people leaving jobs don’t have their leaving do on the premises of the company they’ve just screwed out of tens of millions of pounds, in the presence of fucking parasites who helped enable it.
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Setting aside whether the description you’ve written fits Alexander-Arnold, isn’t this what happens with many company CEOs?
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Many do.
Admittedly a much more niche group. 
See the point @Nikola made. It would be a discussion in advance with TAA and LFC to agree that instead of running his contract down a new contract would be signed that allows LFC to make some money from the deal and TAA to leave when he intended to leave. The club won’t stand in the way of a player who wants to move for good reason, but they would be amenable to managing it in a way that allows for everyone to get something from the deal.
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That is nice in theory, but the problem arrises when you get parasites like Real Madrid telling a player we are going to sign you when your contract expires so that we can do it for free. If said player then signs a new contract and Madrid are having to pay a fee they walk away and move onto the next player on their list
Of course, this was more a discussion of what TAA could have done differently if he wanted a different reaction from the fans. There will always be an unrealistic section who expect him to stay no matter what, but most would respect that he gets to a point where a club like RM can offer a different experience and challenge. There are options as to how you can go about making that change happen though.
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I addressed that in that same post you’re replying to.