Under contract till 2024 I’m thinking that hopefully nobody buys him this coming summer as it’ll take silly money and we have seen how we don’t seem to get involved in that nowadays. Apparently Newcastle and, a bit more of a temptation for him, Chelsea are interested. Then maybe in 2023 we can negotiate a more realistic price for him with 12 months left on his contract. Likely to need at least one forward each of the next two summers I think.
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No matter whether their seasons have been good or bad Leicester have always charged ridiculous fees to the sellable asset they decide to lose each season. They sacrifice one high profile player per year at an inflated cost to fund their transfer business. So even if they choose Barnes as that played this coming summer I just can’t see him being cheap.
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It’s not so much they decide to lose them. The big money departures have gone to United, City and Chelsea. The players wanted to make that step up and the club were in a strong enough position to ask for huge money, over market rate (aside from Kante who Chelsea got a for a steal).
But they aren’t trying to run a sell to buy approach as there’s significant money behind the club and huge long term investment going in.
They also seem to be have a nice stream of homegrown lads coming through. Chilwell, Luke Thomas, James Justin, Barnes. Makes a huge difference when you can sell one and replace internally with someone who could be sold on for a huge fee too.
I personally think the cost of top English talent is going to become prohibitive even for the top clubs. Rice isn’t worth close to £100m. £40-£50m for Bowen. Grealish £100m. I think it’s going to be ever more important for top clubs to develop their own homegrown talent.
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Luckily I think we are well on the way with that. Certainly at full back I’m not sure we’ll ever need to buy one again, by the time Robertson or Tsimikas move on surely Owen Beck or someone else will be ready to be the back up? Neco Williams is looking better than ever and even an option further forward in emergencies and Bradbury too as back up. Trent, Curtis, Kelleher and Harvey are all now firmly in the main group of first team players for me. I’ve still got outside hopes of one of Rhys Williams, Quansah or Billy the Kid becoming a 5th or possibly even 4th choice CB and we have Gomez there who qualifies as club developed even if not really an academy graduate. Tyler Morton looks promising Kaide Gordon too, I think it’s only a matter of time before Balagazi and/or Musialowski and/or Harvey Blair break through. Less sure on CF options. Could get to that fabled level Barca once were at when half their side came from their own development.
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2 goals in 10 games? He’s good but if his name was Jarradinho Bowenetta and he was from Brazil there wouldn’t be a single media article about him. Klopp literally went through the West Ham team saying nice things about something like 9 players. This is a classic case for me of the media not knowing what our plans are and looking for any clue they can, adding that to old links (which may have been bullshit in the first place) and using that as confirmation. If we really are interested I doubt Klopp says much at all (not that what he said about Bowen was any different than what he said about Benrahma [even] for example).
He’s a good player and has a lot of qualities Klopp likes in a player and it wouldn’t be a major surprise to see us buy him. But first I doubt we’d offer what West Ham would accept and second I doubt it’d be for the position he plays for West Ham.
A replacement or back up for Salah needs to be more of a goal threat. Salahs worst season for us in goals and assists was last year at one every 114 minutes in the league. Bowens best season, by far so far, was last year at a goal contribution every 200 minutes (and some of those games and goal contributions were at CF too). He’s still a little below that level this year.
If we sign Bowen it’ll probably be in 2024 when his contract has 12 months left after years of speculation every summer or before every West Ham game and then Klopp will surprise everyone by playing him in false 9 or as a hard working, offensive 8.
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Nkunku is another player posting big numbers at Leipzig because he’s got a free role in a very aggressive side.
Not sure where he’d play in our 433. Not a #8 and don’t see him is a wide player either.
I’m not convinced he’s as versatile as all the positions he’s played would suggest. Lots of the Leipzig players have played all over the place, it’s kind of what they do. It’s a bit different when you’re playing for a top side with more structure.
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False 9?
Play with his back to goal? Not from what I’ve seen no.
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He seems like he has good footwork and able to turn on the ball. Probably won’t happen though so redundant discussion.
Now please don’t take this as “confrontational” but have you read the article because it looks like you’ve looked at his goals and that’s basically all you’ve used to make an opinion.
Here are some of the key points from the article;
“For example, of all Premier League forwards this season, only three have had more touches in the opposition penalty area. Two of them are Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane, and the other is Michail Antonio.”
“Only four forwards – Salah, Antonio, Raphinha and Raul Jimenez – have created more chances, only four have completed more dribbles and only four rank higher for ball recoveries.”
“When it comes to Expected Goals (xG), Bowen ranks seventh in the league, above the likes of Romelu Lukaku, Roberto Firmino, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Son Heung-min, among others”
“and in terms of Expected Assists (xA) he is fourth, behind only Raphinha, Salah and Brentford’s Ivan Toney.”
"Off-the-field, Bowen is known as a workaholic, one who spent his summer break running through potato fields, pushing wheelbarrows filled with bricks and turning over tyres near his family home in Leominster. He returned for pre-season training, in Moyes’ words, “lighter and sharper, in great nick.”
“He has a saying that we have no reverse gear, so we’re always going forward,” Bowen says. “I’ve come over so many obstacles over the years, so now when things get chucked at me, I know that I can get through to the other side with the mindset that I’ve got.”
So for me those statements along with my own eye confirm he is a player I think would really be useful in our squad.
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No, I think it’s a terrible suggestion to be honest. His strengths would be running from deep or passing with the game ahead of him.
#8 is where he’d have to go but he’d need to improve the defensive stuff a lot. And as we’ve already got a number of similar players, it seems rather pointless to me. Chelsea would be a better fit for him.
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Maybe because my point was the link to him. He’s been linked before and Klopp said nice words about him so now there’s articles everywhere bigging up the link.
As I said if there was real interest then in my opinion Klopp says very little or nothing.
But just to clarify I did say;
It was the very next paragraph.
But again, this is fundementally wrong. Read the article.
“It’s fair to say that one or two eyebrows were raised when Liverpool were linked with Jarrod Bowen a few months back.”
“Liverpool’s interest, though, was genuine. Bowen, 24, is seen as a player of considerable potential, and one capable of making the step up to a ‘big four’ club in the future”
“It was a deal which would have made sense on a number of levels,” says one Reds source, although there was to be no official bid despite this”
That is clearly much more than being linked, I’m sure the comments have enabled reporters to write articles but again the statistical analysis (which would match what our own data analytics probably saw) is pretty clear at how good his underlying numbers are.
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Neil Jones has no source at the club. He got famous for writing the bad news and controversial takes James Pearce was too scared to put his name to when they worked together. How does he know the links are genuine? I’ll repeat one of my first points in my original post;
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Ok? Again are you stating your opinion as fact?
It’s widely accepted as fact that he isn’t a reliable journalist with contacts at the club but sure, if you want to make an issue out of it in your campaign to follow me round the boards taking issue with every post I make then yeah, it’s only my opinion. There you go, you win, I lose. Congratulations.
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That’s the level we buy at from like… forever.
We rarely bought a finished player in his peak or arriving in his peak from another top side.
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I’m worried about what will happen over the next couple of seasons.
Klopp is only under contract till 2024 and this squad is aging. There will be some significant weak areas by then in this squad.
Klopp doesn’t like to make too many changes per year but if he’s not going to leave an over the hill dysfunctional squad for the next manager a lot is going to have to be changed.
Our current squad ages in summer 2024 with * for those that will be out of contract before then;
Alisson 31, Kelleher 25, Adrian 37*
VvD 33, Konate 25, Gomez 27*, Matip 33*
Robertson 30, Tsimikas 28, Alexander-Arnold 25, Williams 23
Fabinho 30, Keita 29*, Jones 23, Thiago 33*, Henderson 34, Oxlade-Chamberlain 31*, Milner N/A(ageless)*, Elliott 21
Salah 32*, Mane 32*, Firmino 32*, Minamino 29*, Origi 29*, Jota 27
A large chunk of our midfield and practically our whole attack needs looking at. We’ve got 4 winter windows (that Klopp is reluctant to use) and 2 summer windows before Klopps time is due to end.
I think we (as a club) now really need to have hyper focus on recruiting young so we have a squad with a solid foundation with experience but not too old for that Summer 2024 window and the new boss (whoever he is) to tinker with but not have an emergency rebuild.
Realistically I’d be surprised at any more than one signing per winter window. So most work has to be done over the simmers.
We’ve got to try and get at least one or two extensions sorted within the Salah, Mane and Firmino group. We can’t be faced with a task of replacing all three within two summer windows. One per window? That’s best but have a horrible feeling we are going to have to try and replace two in one summer window.
Can’t stress how important getting the attack rebuild right is, I’ve seen that something like 87% of our goals are by out attack and its the highest of any team or something.
I’m also worried about how we might lose a lot of players due to contracts running down. We really need to sell some of these to get some money to recruit. We’ve been great at uncovering diamonds in the rough but we are going to have to be on overdrive with so much recruitment needed, even more so if we lose players for free that then need replacing. And Edwards is going which might impact our recruitment.
In reality we can’t rely on money being made available for transfer fees;
I think we might need to start paying attention to some expiring contracts across Europe to replace some of these. Hopefully some academy kids can give us some squad options for free so we can focus what spending we do on a small number of elite talents instead of having to spreading it out.
I’d say youth wide we have currently the following I’d hope to step up;
Gordon, Beck, Clarkson, Morton, Frauendorf, Bradley. Good mix of players with Gordon the most likely to make the step up.
I had high hopes for Glatzel and Stewart but I think injuries may have stopped them making it here.
Forwards - I think next summer Mane or Bobby is sold and we bring in another forward around the 23/24 age mark.
Midfielders - Again next summer Oxlade will be sold and we’ll bring in a midfielder.
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