Can’t play more than two to three games back to back
certainly can’t play twice a week
is on big wages until 2024
…is on lots of teams wish lists?
In a summer in which not many teams have any money, and there are about to be a glut of very cheap, if not free, players available from the collapsed french league.
I know you want to do the fantasy football thing, but it’s better to set the barometer more towards ‘football’ than ‘fantasy’
I’ve been listening to a lot of the footy podcasts lately about what Covid has due to football. The market has been shocked. That’s just a fact. Teams are skint. In these circumstances clubs are being ultra-cautious about what they do. Just because Liverpool are great in the market, it doesn’t mean everyone else are fucking chumps. And nobody is going to commit money, fees or wages, for a player they will struggle to get on the pitch.
Ledley King was a while ago now, as was a time when clubs were flush enough to take speculative punts on players who were injury prone.
The world has changed. Bigger concerns than football clubs have been smashed by covid, and it’s foolish to think football is going to plough on unchanged.
It weakens our midfield if we don’t have anyone to bring in.
I still see no problem in a handful of games sticking Fabinho next to Van Dijk and sitting Hendo behind one of Thiago, Keita, Jones or Milner, if it helps us to break down a stubborn defence.
Clubs which can afford his wage comes knocking, and
We agree on a decent fee (e.g. 5mil plus addons)
He can be a great and affordable backup for clubs like Inter, Juventus, Bayern, PSG, Barcelona, Real. He may be available for just 15-20 games, but there will not be any drop in quality in those games.
Sounds like you might have heard the Rory Smith one on The Anfield Wrap where he was saying almost exactly this. Clubs like us are going to struggle to move on the likes of Shaqiri and Origi. Clubs that would normally be looking at these players are going to see a market flooded with players that previously would have been out of reach as clubs are going to need to sell to survive and so prices will drop. They’ll likely be younger and command less in wages too.
No take a look at Matip. We’re going to want a reasonable fee, probably at least £15-20m at a conservative estimate. He’s 29, has a history of injuries and takes home £100k a week. Why would you buy him and not Kabak, Botman, Caleta-Carr or any number of the other options out there.
He isn’t going this summer so we need to plan based on him being here and hope that a decent lay off and the new medical team can get him properly right.
Because we can’t rely on him and have as good or better. If he was our best CB by far you keep him, and do your best to get the quality of the others as close as possible. To put it another way if it was VvD with Matips injury issues and Matip with VvDs dependability you wouldn’t change anything. Gomez and Matip would be real good options to play most of the time but whenever VvD was available you’d stick him straight back in the starting 11 due to how much better he is. Matip could be for a Roma, Valencia, Dortmund style club what VvD would be for us in that situation or King was at Spurs. We see far worse players moving around big and top clubs around England and Europe. It’s unrealistically pessimistic to say a player good enough to have a debate over whether or not he should be a starter for us would not be wanted at a decent club fighting for CL football in Italy, Germany or Spain or even in the PL.
The problem though, is that you have an overly optimistic view of things like this, get completely carried away with what we can expect in the market, and then get pissed off when it doesn’t come pass and reality didn’t conform to your fantasy.
No-one is buying Matip, mate. Going on about Ledley King is a hell of a stretch.
Football has changed. Clubs might have at one time been happy to have a punt on an injury prone player because, what the hell, it’s only £5m and it might work out. They won’t be now, and probably not for a while.
But if we can’t rely on him then nor can anyone else so why would they spend the money it would take to sign him in the hope they could drop him in for a few games here and there. And also there’s a very good chance he isn’t going to be fit before the end of the window anyway.
If he’s that appealing as an option for Dortmund or Roma then surely he’s worth keeping, no?
As for Leadly King, the reason he stayed at Spurs for so long was likely because of his injuries, not in spite of them. The same probably happens with Matip and us for the the foreseeable.
I think Origi is probably the only one of that first team squad who has some kind of value and you’ve probably go the likes of Wilson who you could probably get a protracted amount from, the rest your not looking at much to be fair in this market.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating i guess we will have to see.
Your memory is different than mine. For years on TIA you’ve been posting how we’ll be lucky to get £5m for the likes of Ibe and Solanke and how some players would need to be released etc.! Whereas what deals have gone through have always gone through for more than I predicted we would get. Not all the deals I’ve thought we would get have happened but that’s because the club have been charging more. Like predicting we’d get £15m for Wilson. Technically I was wrong because we didn’t. But in reality there was a club willing to pay that but the club wanted £20m.
The only ones of those clubs you mentioned that aren’t currently in quite a difficult financial position are Bayern and PSG. Why would either of them pay £5m and £100k a week for him to play a role we don’t think he’s physically reliable enough to play for us?
£100k a week off the wage bill would be great but £5m is nothing. I’d be disappointed if that’s all we got that for Phillips to be honest. And who does the club get of an equal quality for that kind of money?
He’s a good player suffering with some pretty chronic injury issues. For the fee he’d cost, given what we value the likes of Wilson and Grujic at, and the wages he’s on, I highly doubt there’s a market for him this summer.
I think clubs would take a risk with Joel if we were to sell. When fit easily one of the best centre half’s in Europe. Has outshined Virgil in games before, for a club that had great faith in their medical department and had Joel on a less intense training program more specific to his needs, he would be worth the 10-20 million. If they could keep him fit for a season would be massive for said club
I don’t like Mings. Plus, he’s already of certain age compared to only his recent increase in form. Plus, I don’t think we’d buy a clear LCB and move Virgil to RCB.
If he carries on this rate of improvement, £18m is going to look an absolute steal. Granted, Arsenal barely tested him today but he was excellent when he was called upon.