Barco was sold by Brighton to Strasbourg for less than 1m profit.
Honestly I’m kind of confused with what you are saying. As far as I can tell you want us to identify and sign these players earlier. Do you mean before they reach clubs like Brighton? Because what I’m trying to demonstrate is why that is tough.
You’ve brought up Abde, a player I think both of think could be a useful signing, and I’m assuming what you’re saying is we should have signed him last year before he had his breakout season.
My question is, why? What he had he done to show he was worth it? He had two league goals in 2024/2025. What evidence was there that he was worth signing? Why him over any number of other wingers who have similar or better output?
My point is Liverpool are scouting all these players. They have data on just about everyone kicking a ball at the professional level but what they want is to see evidence of elite level ability. They’re happy to pay a premium to sign 1 guy they feel very confident about, having seen them already perform, rather than have a selection of 25 guys all with roughly the same stats and skillset where they just have to play a guessing game. That’s what smaller clubs are for, they filter out the crap and sell the good ones for a premium.
We have the resources to wait and buy the best one.
Correct, they don’t. We signed Salah to a new two year deal last summer. We expected another year from him. Maybe if things had gone differently last season we’d be getting that year and then could be shopping this summer for a player that doesn’t need to go into the first team right away.
But it is also possible for one of the richest teams in the world to go and replace a superstar with another potential superstar for a superstar type fee. The fact there are so few outstanding RW options that are left foot dominant is why they’re expensive and teams don’t have a stack of them.
I didn’t fully agree with the Isak signing because I thought it meant we wouldn’t have money to spend replacing Diaz. But then we went on to try and buy Guehi and spent £50m on Jacquet. They clearly felt between Gakpo, Wirtz, Ekitike and Ngumoha they had enough on that side and Frimpong would be able to cover Salah on the rare occasions he wouldn’t start. In hindsight that didn’t pan out but it doesn’t mean there wasn’t a plan they felt was going to deliver what’s needed.
The fact the manager has been sacked tells you they feel it wasn’t the plan that was the issue, it was the manager not being able to execute the plan on the pitch. Add in pretty much every player underperforming and you can deduce that they think the squad is capable of doing better than they did and it’s pretty hard to argue against that.
My point is that we should have brought players in previously for the wings. Throughout Europe there were a lot of options at various stages of their development that we could have signed. Some ready to get a lot of minutes, some less so, but we have to have known who they are and people are paid a lot of money to identify and sign such players.
Some would have worked, some maybe not, but instead we did nothing and we now we still have to take a massive risk and spend massive money on players who also may not adapt to the league or be as good as we hope.
We are not buying Kvara from Napoli for example. We re buying young fairly untested players for a lot of money still. Yeah boo hoo it´s very difficult buying players. That is the game and market.
You seem to think that spending big money now will guarantee is the best one and that player will come in and do really well. Not at all guaranteed either.
But surely we at least raised the possibility that a man of 33 would decline? Especially in the absence of a backup to cover his minutes.
And we´d still need a good left winger.
You might be right that they felt they had enough. I think that is a worrying level of judgement if they did, but perhaps they did. I think the squad was better than 5th but not 1st level quality. But either way, the plan should be for the next 5 years or whatever, not just this season.
I have explicity said it is not a guarantee, but the risk is greatly reduced and in the long run it is more cost effective.
Also don’t forget we signed Salah to a two-year deal and he was coming off the back of a 29 goal season. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that we expected this summer to be the one where we would identify and transition in a Salah replacement, rather than last summer when we had already dropped 450m.
The fact all that shit blew up between Salah and Slot, ultimately meaning both of them left the club isn’t really something you can blame our transfer department for.
I do think you make a good point about scouts. Most of them are useless at talent ID and I doubt that is what they are used for anymore. Big clubs are data driven and scouts main role is probably not to assess the players’ talent but to go and find out about them as a person. Are they a good teammate, what kind of wages are they looking for, are they secretly a degenerate gambler or an alcoholic etc etc.
Sure, I imagine there was a discussion. But CF was probably viewed as the bigger priority given the loss of Jota and Nunez failing to deliver. You could say we could have kept Nunez for another season and just got one of Ekitike or Isak and then bought a RW instead. But then you have to factor in how much Nunez’s value decreases with another season of underperforming and the fact Ekitike probably moves to Newcastle and so is off the table when we’re looking this summer.
The plan is for the next five years. Those Klopp cornerstones are all coming to the end of their time with us. We already have a potential replacement for Alisson. We tried for Guehi who could have been the heir to Virg. We’ve rebuilt the midfield and the CF positions and this summer it’s going to be wide areas.
The best players we’ve had have largely peaked at the same time. Great for winning trophies but then takes some effort to rebuild. Add in a change of manager and it was never going to be seamless. You can’t always just have the next one in the squad ready to go. We kind of did with Kelleher and he got tired of waiting. Same would be true of anyone sat behind Mo the past couple years watching him deliver a great season and then sign a new two year deal.
I really don’t see the issue with seeing a first team player leave and the club replacing them that same summer with the best option going. I mean, who in the last couple of years would you have had sat behind Salah waiting for his physical drop off to hit?
It is going to be interesting to see how we adapt for sure. I’d bet we will end up using a mix of approaches depending on the urgency and level of the players needed but was the signing of all of those young center backs last season a sign of how part of the new approach might work or just a one off? Unfortunately only time will tell.
Is the risk greatly reduced though? We now have to put all our eggs in one basket and to get these big calls perfectly right rather than a multi-year approach.
Your stance seems to be that there was nothing we could possibly have done better to not be in a situation like we find ourselves and we couldn´t have identified the risk of Salah´s sharp decline, or identified and brought players in to ease him out over time. Surely you can´t really think that?
Well, as anyone who has worked in any company ever knows, a lot of people are crap at their jobs in every industry. And yes, judgement is always a factor and it is tricky. But as I say, it goes way above scouts.
Possibly that was the call the club made, yeah.
Presumablty they rated Gakpo much higher whereas I think he´s pish.
Yes that´s true about peaking but you cannot have all your players drop at the same time and then have to replace them all together. That is what we have done really.
You can go out and replace first teamers immediately as we should have with Diaz, but Salah and Van Dijk and Ali are not just first teamers and they have the secondary effect of when you lose their top talents, you need more from your other players, so you have to be replacing them too or improving them a lot.
I don’t imagine there is a player in professional football that Liverpool don’t have detailed analysis on - its’s not about identifying them. It’s about knowing which one’s will be able to slot into a team that expects to compete for titles.
Brighton have a model that works for them, but it would not work at Liverpool.
Brighton can spend £250m across 15 players, and then sell three or four of them on for £300m and go again, in the meantime retaining PL status and pushing for Europe.
Liverpool need the players we know can perform from day one at the highest level. It is going to be far better for us to let Brighton or Bournemouth take these lads when they are 20m punts, sort out the wheat from the chaff for us and then pay top dollar for the one we know are going to top players.
You just regirgitated what he said. Seems like you´re not listening. In the post you quote I said it´s about identifying ones to step up, as in to play for us.
Of course Liverpool can accomodate some players who are not yet performing at their highest level but can do a decent standard. We accomodated Gakpo, Jones, Gravenberch etc.
We just signed two very expensive strikers who both can´t really play at the same time. Big teams for years have had squad rotation and understudies. That´s how they operate.
Yeah, it is. We’ve been following this strategy for a while now, how many flops have we had? A great deal less than our competitors.
Crazy to say we don’t have a multi-year approach. Its very clearly a multi-year approach. We are monitoring many, many players and waiting for one to hit a performance level we feel comfortable with.
I’m not really sure there is much we could have done about Salah. Being his backup was a job given to Chiesa. Salah just had a 29 goal PL season, won Player of the Year and fired us to the league title. We resigned him on £400k a week. He’s still to this day visibly very fit. To say we should have predicted his sharp decline just feels unfair. Do you think we resign him at that salary if we thought he would decline? We had a backup in place, Chiesa, and we knew Salah would play 95% of minutes.
In the meantime we took the chance to reinforce, or revamp, other areas of the pitch and there really wasn’t a super urgent need to get coverage on the RW.
If all had gone to plan Salah would be preparing for his final season here now and we would likely be signing someone to rotate with him and be set to take over from him after this season. How were the transfer department supposed to know he’d cancel his contract after 1 year of the deal?
Now we’ve reached the summer that we probably originally intended to sign someone for the RW for and we find we don’t need a rotation option who can grow into a starter, we need a starter immediately. So the remit changed and we’re pursuing what we think is the best player on the market.
I’m not sure what else could have been done without a heavy benefit of hindsight.
Have we? We´ve let our superstar players leave and then had to immediately replace them to great success? I don´t think so.
I said we dont have a multi year approach?
Sorry I think it´s bonkers to suggest the only possible eventuality was to enter this window with Rio, Chiesa and Gakpo as our wide players. Hell, add Salah playing well to that. it´s still not good enough.
Every player that has ever lived (and retired) declined at some point. Ronaldo was on fire and suddenly he´s at Utd.
You literally say in that post the plan would have been to get a rotation option for the RW this year, so you concede buying players that rotate until they are ready to start is and was possible (for years now).
Which was already a role in the squad and fulfilled by Chiesa. A fully fit Salah doesn’t rotate, he throws a fucking tantrum everytime he gets substituted even if we are 5-0 up. Maybe you can handle that for one season, or maybe he accepts it more as a 35 year old in his final year. Or maybe we wouldn’t have signed anyone this window because of Salah’s demands and we would have waited another season with Chiesa as the backup. I don’t know its all guesswork since none of us are in the room for these discussions.
Yes we’ve replaced great players - Matip left, Konate came in. Robertson has gone, Kerkez is in. Diaz left, Isak and Ekitike came in - Diaz himself was an example of our proactive squad replenishment as he phased Mane out of the team. Henderson and Fabinho gone, replaced by Mac Allister and Gravenberch who were both key players in winning us the Premier League.Trent was replaced from within our own ranks by Bradley unfortunately he suffered a big injury.
Rio is one of the best young players in the country and we consciously left him a space in the squad to aid his development. Don’t see anything wrong with that.
Gakpo is a far better player than we have seen last season. He’s not a great player but he’s perfectly functional.
Chiesa was a cheap punt on a guy who we knew would only get on the field a few minutes a season because he had an ironman ahead of him at RW.
Criticizing the Gakpo/Rio situation while begging for us to have more rotation options is odd. Isn’t Rio exactly what you are asking for? A player to rotate with a first teamer until he is ready to take over full time? Isn’t that an example of us doing exactly what you’re claiming we don’t do and having long term options in place below the first XI?
So get rid of Chiesa and buy a good player. Chiesa stopped us buying an up and coming player? Come on.
You said successfully. Replacing Matip, Robbo, Diaz, Trent has so far been a catastrophe. Indeed, Diaz is an example of how you can bring somebody in to phase your fading star out (my entire point).
I think Rio is a little overhyped at this stage and Gakpo is really not much better than we see. In my view having them as our two options for last season was poor and I see we immedtaiely have bought a left sided winger so it seems we have realised late. No that´s not what I was asking for. I was asking for better than an understudy to Gakpo. We could have brought in a first teamer for the left, not an understudy.
But here’s the point you aren’t addressing. Yes, we should have bought a Diaz replacement. But you want succession planning and we had Gakpo and Ngumoha there. So, putting aside your feelings on Gakpo what type of player and when should we have bought them to replace Diaz? A lad to go straight into the first team or a risk on a young player that essentially relegates Ngumoha back to the U21s?
Because you want succession planning and you want us to buy young up and coming players but in the one area we’ve done that and then not gone out and bought a ready made replacement for an outgoing first teamer you’re pissed off with our approach despite it being exactly what you’re advocating we should do.
And then in the same argument you’re annoyed we’ve not done that on the other wing despite the fact any other option there barely gets a kick until the day Salah leaves, which they rightly would have expected to be next summer, not this. So who should we have bought to sit on the bench for 2-3 years?
It´s tricky to remove the Gakpo view because him not being good enough in my view then informs the need for somebody who is. So for me it would have been a starting player, with Gakpo as cover for LW, ST and even RW. To be fair, I´d have sold Gakpo and not Diaz.
Similar for Rio really. I don´t think he´s the messiah and we don´t owe him anything.
But these things are not in isolation right? It´s all connected. Maybe we can´t get that RW player so we make sure the LW position is air tight until we can.
Okay Rio gets fewer minutes on the left so then he becomes understudy to Salah on the right if we are convinced we dont need to or cant buy somebody for that side. We ended up playing all manner of players on the right in the end so it could have been Rio. Take out hindsight even, surely he could have had minutes we expected Chiesa to have if he´s that good?
