People will say that’s because he was targeted more. Probably true.
Anyway, will not get tired to say that Matip has been the leagues second best CB whenever he was available.
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Agree. Rate Laporte highly but even at his peak , he wasn’t as good as Matip.
Who else is in that conversation?
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Therein lies the rub.
Came in on a free. Not too much high maintenance too in terms of salaries.
We built the best back 4 in the league with a youth project in RB , a left back we paid 8 million for , a goat CB at 80m and then someone arriving on a free.
That’s 88m spent for the one of the best back 4 of all times.
In comparison the manures spent 80m for slabby.
Arsenal spent 50 odd million for mustafi
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Klopp’s first transfers for Liverpool upto the arrival of Virgil Van Dijk.
The first three were Grujic , the emergency signing in Caulker and Matip.
The success rate from Matip onwards in terms of transfers is both a credit to the transfer /scouting team as well as the ability of Klopp. Doesn’t mean they haven’t been average transfers or failed ones. But still.
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Solanke signed before Robbo. Who’d have thought that?
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Mané came in surprisingly early, didn’t he?
There can be a big line between someone being generally underrated (I agree with that on Matip, but careful not to overrate him then) and 2nd best CB in the league.
I do remember some here calling Sakho the league’s best CB at one point when he was here.
So… yeah. Football is a game of wild conflicting opinions at times.
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Nah. He always was rhe 2nd best CB in the league. Even including the likes of rudiger etc etc
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If Van Dyke stays he would be even smarter to come to Liverpool to be schooled by the master.
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Watching the FA cup match and I would love it if we signed Eze he is very good and would be as effective for us as Firmino was.
I cannot believe that Clyne is still playing when did he leave Liverpool was it about 8 years ago?
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Frimpong £35m
Kerkez £45m
Huijsen £50m
= £130m
Let’s say that our transfer budget for the summer.
How much could we receive from selling Kelleher, Tsimikas, Endo and Nunez?
Guess that will be what we will spend on a new attacker (and CM).
Probably can add Morton to that short list, as I think these are the players most likely to be sold as a minimum this summer (assuming there is proper interest in them).
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70M maybe??
My guess would be more like 100M.
Kelleher - 20M
Tsimikas - 10M
Endo - 10M
Nunez - 60M
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And to return to @GermanRed’s original point - if we could spend our (imaginary 150m) budget sorting our defence with LB Kerkez, CB Huijsen, RB Frimpong - then the money we raise (90m in your estimation if we kept Endo) could fund/get close to funding the likes of Isak up front. If Arne was prepared to use Endo more then perhaps we could hold off purchasing in midfield for another season. Getting those four players would really round out our squad and help manage the loss of TAA and likely loss/succession planning around Mo and Virg.
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Do we need Huijsen if no CB is leaving or is this based on Virg not signing a new deal?
I’d love another CB, and him in particular, but £50m on a fifth option (not saying 5th choice) at CB would be quite the extravagance given the business to do elsewhere.
£130m would be a very big net spend for us too.
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Sounds like Gomez will be looking to leave, and Konate is about to enter the last year of his deal. If someone we like is available (and it sounds like he will leave Bournemouth this summer) then makes sense to bring in now imo.
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This is exactly where I’m at.
I’d absolutely love to sign the player, personally, but I don’t think we’ll go for someone as established as him. I think whoever we bring in will have to settle for getting about the same amount of minutes Gomez and Quansah combined have racked up this season at centre half. Can’t see that being someone the profile of Huijsen. Would absolutely love to be wrong though and see proper succession planning for the when Virg goes.
£130m net spend doesn’t sound unrealistic at all this summer, if we have more to do and can attain our targets.
Our net spend in (the summer of) 2023 was €110m, while also being prepared to match Chelsea’s bid for Caicedo (which would’ve doubled that amount). And without CL football.
It was said recently though that Mamardashvili’s fee will go into this summer’s account or starting from this summer (and not last). But that’s less important.
I think our aim might be to raise around £100m, possibly more, through sales. And then I’d expect us to be able to go higher than that amount in terms of net spend.
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