Football fans are fickle, I’m no different.
you’re posting something out of context of conversation at the time.
I’d have signed him on same wages, not at 150% of what he was already making for top wage in the club. Not once did I endorse breaking the wage structure for a single player, and as of now he’s proven that it was a failed move.
1 Like
Then maybe cool it with trotting out screenshots from months ago to point-score in arguments?
At the very least it makes reading these threads fucking tedious.
3 Likes
One screenshot. It’s not point scoring, or even an argument.
Purely proving someone wrong…if he was against us giving him a new contract all along he wouldn’t have said “I still hope he re-signs”
Mo sort of had us over a barrel. Either he leaves on a free, or we extend ourselves on the salary, probably more than we’d have preferred, but it was seen as a better option than losing him on a free.
I agree that so far he hasn’t delivered on his new deal, and while he is definitely our most potent striker, to my eyes he is not as fast as he was, and seems to be getting brushed off the ball too easily.
If the right offer came in, he would not be untouchable, for me.
Again, my preference would be new owners, who keep him and also refresh the team where we all know it needs some help.
Semmy…it was very very obvious what wages he would be on long before you posted that.
He was never ever going to sign a new 3+ year deal for what he was already on.
hence why I would rather he fucked off and kept Mane at a cost of £250/week.
knowing that Mane’s salary is benefitting an entire village, that pill is much easier to swallow.
2 Likes
So you don’t think at the time Salah was well worth us giving him a new contract 350k a week and wouldv’e been happy losing him on a free this summer? Personally find that hard to believe…you must’ve been in the 1% minority of fans.
Regardless of all this, fans wouldn’t be piping up now about moving Salah on for whatever we could get for him if we had owners who backed the club.
correct. I’m sure you can screenshot that conversation as well and post it.
Don’t blame the owners because the lad has downed tools. we missed out on a midfield transfer target who chose Real, and the loanee we picked up was shite.
9 midfielders on the books. 4-5 of them will be gone in the summer.
Moving on.
I really don’t understand what “downed tools” means, you saying he’s not trying or something? He’s said many times he wanted to stay, he’s been given a brilliant deal, whats the reason for down tooling? So it’s just coincidence Fab Hendo Robbo Virgil Mo have all decided to “down tools” at the same time? Nothing to do with them maybe not being able to be the robots everyone wants them to be and perform at their peak until we say stop?
“Downed tools” really can’t behind this footballing terminology.
you look at his performances. How he’s operating on the wing, in 1v1 situations and when cycling the ball of the channels. pretty easy to see he’s making the easy passes, not trying to beat the man or get into a better position. a lot of walking like you see Messi doing at PSG these days. Problem is, he’s not Messi when it comes to vision or passing.
Much like Trent, with nobody challenging for his position he’s just coasting through games at times.
1 Like
Interesting take, so in essence Salah should still be doing what he used to do so well despite the rest of the team playing like jabronies?
I see a very frustrated Salah, frustrated with the lack of support from his team…we can’t rely on Salah to produce magic every time, dribble past 3/4 and curl one in.
The guy is still doing his job, 17 goals in all comps midway through the season…how does one do that if they’re allegedly “downing tools”
Let’s deal with the owners thing first.
The idea of owners ‘putting their money in’ is a total fallacy. No owners do this. It’s absolutely nonsense. Outside the oil state club, nobody is sinking money into a club for free. It’s all loaded on to the club in the form of loans.
The calls for FSG to put their hands in their pocket is asking them to be unique in world football. Billionaires do not become billionaires by literally giving away their money.
I’ve said before that FSG have been rightly wary of increasing the clubs borrowing, with the stadium and Kirkby loans hanging over the club. Those debts are clear now, I think, and that gives FSG the scope to ‘fund’ a splurge on players, which I think they’ll do.
It’s just my speculation, but I think having built a side that won the CL and Premier League, FSG AND Klopp ‘gambled’ that this team would need minimum investment while the clubs finances were focussed on extending Anfield and redeveloping Kirkby. By god, they were nearly right as well.
Now on Salah, granted not many people were moaning about the new contract, but we’re fans for gods sake. We’re not businessmen running the club. We’re allowed, and expected, to get things wrong - while the professionals, paid a lot of money to make these decisions, get them right.
What I do know is this season, a theme has emerged across fan chatter around allowing players to age out and become ineffective. The club has been criticised for allowing a whole bunch of midfielders to wane in effectiveness and not replacing them with younger players. That’s sound, but let’s at least be consistent. Either we want the club to sell just before the decline or we don’t.
Which brings us to Virgil and Mo.
Van Dijk is still a brilliant defender, on his day the best around. But while a few years ago Virgil was clearly number one, and there was a fucking chasm to number two, it’s now more of a debate. There are a handful of players who could claim, on their day, to be his equal. He is 31, starting to pick up injuries, and has clearly lost a yard of pace.
Mo Salah is a still a class finisher, but like Van Dijk, is obviously past his peak. He looks to have lost pace, and since the AFCON and World Cup disappointments, looks to be finding everything more difficult. Including the finishing. Focus has been on the chances Nunez has missed, but look who is second in that chart. I had previously thought Mo plays on at the very highest level til his late thirties, like Ronaldo. But I’m looking at him now and thinking he looks a shadow of his ‘best player in the world’ form.
In both those cases, if we’re serious about rejuvenating the team, and believe in the concept of ‘letting their legs go on someone else’s pitch’ they have to be in the conversation while we can still get good money. Would I sell them? Probably not. But I’m a gobshite on the internet and not a serious football profession sitting behind a database of cutting edge football analytics information.
Put it this way, if the club sold Van Dijk and recycled the money into Gvardiol, and sold Salah, doubled down on Harvey and Ben Doak for the right of a 4231, and put the money on Bellingham, I would be intrigued at the plan.
Because that’s ultimately all I need. I just want to be able to see what the plan is. I can take the ups and downs, I can take selling players and periods of transition, as long as I can see a direction of travel.
6 Likes
Thing about Torres today is we wouldn’t have signed Carroll.
We would have pushed through the Suarez deal and left it I feel.
We don’t know that yet one way or another…
oh i think that writing is on the wall…
The irony is that @Sportbilly1966 has just been in his thread saying the exact opposite, that he’s not making any passes and keeps losing the ball trying to beat the man.
This whole idea needs to die an overdue death. The idea that they’re just coasting because they have no competition doesn’t make any sense with all that we know about them.
Is it more likely that they’re complacent, or that they’re mentally and physically fatigued after a rather long season? Consider how many people were saying the same things in 2020-21, it wouldn’t make sense that they would have good seasons in 2021-22, would they, since we had no competition for them either?
Is it? We might not be able to extract much value from his loan, but to say that he’s shite is a little premature, don’t you think?
Guess who the sixth most expensive midfielder of all time is? Clue: rhymes with Marthur Elo.
1 Like
To be fair, that doesn’t say a lot. The second most expensive midfielder of all time is a professional… Influencer?