People will flat out deny it, but the times under these owners when we have gone big large sections of the fan base has still reacted negatively criticizing them for not doing it right
Mo - We have the best front 3 in the world already. That is way too much money to spend on a 4th choice when we need a DM
Virgil - this is an embarrassing show of desperation to go that high on him after fucking it up first time
Dom - As above, but this time after missing out on Jude.
Popular TV shows often generate a level of toxicty among its original fan base because they invest so much in it that when the writers go in a different direction than they had imagined they lash out. So much about our transfer activity is like that.
There’s certainly the tactical aspect involved in Slot’s decision not to use Chiesa more often - no pre-season, general lack of fitness, injuries… All of that probably restricted his participation in trainings and forming understanding with his teammates.
However, I’m slowly getting to the point where I start asking if he’s simply good enough. He used to be a wonderful player but he’s never reached the same heights since injuring his ACL.
We as a fan base sometimes like to make excuses when we’re justifying certain decisions made by our club, which is understandable, but I was quite concerned last summer that Juventus were willing to let go of a player on a cheap, and that it seemed like our transfer gurus were trying to play smart by thinking they would “fix” a player who had suffered of the most serious injuries and had never played outside of Italy, where football is slower and less aggressive than in England.
Fast forward six months and he’s looking like one of the worst transfers the club has ever made. Has any player come back after such a horrible start, especially at his age and in his circumstances? Hopefully his Liverpool future will be incomparably kinder than his present but I wouldn’t be banking on him playing a significant part of this season.
That said, I think there are more pressing concerns with regards to strengthening the squad, starting with a centre forward and a left back, which are certainties at this point.
Boehly has got all the media attention but it has really been Eghbali who has driven most of the manic insanity since they bought it, sometimes, reportedly, while at odds with Boehly.
But that raises an even more impressive part of the stewardship these Owners have brought - they are an Ownership Group not a single person with individual ideas yet they have worked together to speak as one with no infighting on direction ever being even sniffed at by those outside the club.
Something possibly exacerbated by his individualized plan of development has taken him out of the group sessions a fair amount.
Jesus fucking christ. I don’t think the club could have been any clearer that given how well everything is going they are perfectly happy to rebuild him slowly in preparation for when he is more needed.
He isnt even a bust yet. Nothing even of the sort.
And Marko represented money we desperately needed to spend on players who would contribute meaningfully right away at the time we spent it on him. Chiesa simply didn’t.
Chiesa was signed as an emergency backup in case Salah got injured. Even if he was fully fit his whole time here he is unlikely to have gotten any more game time than he has had so far.
That’s not worrying to you? Signing an unfit player to cover for anyone, let alone Salah?
I realise I sound like I’m criticising Chiesa but I’m actually criticising the decision to sign him and the thinking behind it, especially at the time when there were more pressing needs throughout the squad.
We have new people in place to make these decisions and there should be stability and togetherness unlike during the majority of 2022-2024 but Chiesa’s signing doesn’t dispel my worries about the “transfer department.”
Stability like when next season we find ourselves needing to find a right sided forward we can turn to someone who has already been at the club for a year getting physically and tactically up to speed rather than turning to a known unknown?
I know the game has changed a lot, but when I was a kid this always used to be the Liverpool way - bringing a new player into an already successful team and giving them a full season to get up to speed on the “liverpool way” before they started contributing. It is one of those things that is a bit over mythologized because lots of our stars came into the side from day 1. But the idea exists because it did happen with LOTS of our players.
Given the story of the 87-88 season I think a lot of people would remember Aldo being bought as part of the summer rebuilding of the post-Rush attack along with Barnes and Beardsley. But he wasnt. He was bought in the Autumn of the previous season and spent most of that season as someone who looked like he was surplus. And then the following season when he was really needed he stepped in and exploded into historical goal scoring form.
We already had 5 options for forward roles but we obviously felt we wanted 6 for 3 roles. We chose to take a cheap stop-gap to fill a squad role rather than go big on someone to compete with the world’s best player. That seems fine to me.
The pressing needs of the squad obviously aren’t that pressing when we are 13 clear in the PL and qualified as the best CL team. This coming summer there is a little bit of work to do but last summer we had a new DoF bedding in who needed to hire an entire management team and his staff while already having a world class squad. We didn’t have pressing needs in the player department.
I think it will be a busy summer. My prediction is we spend over 200M and recoup over 100M through sales.
A huge variable is obviously what happens to Mo, Virg and Trent, but I think there will be plenty of business beyond those three as well.
Slot knows the core he wants, and I fully expect to see him start to shape it to his requirement via the transfer market.
We’ve heard soundbites about setting up the team to challenge at the top for years to come. It sounds very promising to me.
My best guess is 2-3 signings who will go straight into the first team, and another 2-3 who will be squad men, but they will be Slot’s squad men, so he will use them more than some are being used now.
I’m not sure that analogy applies here, as much as I respect it. The four players brought in to “rearrange” the team after Rush’s departure were proven in English football and about to enter or already in their prime, with no significant injury issues (at least none that I know of). All of them were about to hit the next level with Liverpool.
Chiesa, on the other hand… I want him to succeed at Liverpool as much as I want any player to succeed at Liverpool because of his nature and overall behaviour but I struggle to see the reasoning behind his transfer. If he had no fitness issues, I would completely understand it but the club signed an unfit player on significant wages in the season when they returned to Champions League that saw the extended format kicking in.
I really hope they make me look a right fool but I’m not getting any positive vibes from that transfer so far. Again, I hope it’s a leftover from disjointed strategy, rather than “we tried to be too clever and Juventus took us to the cleaners again”.
