I know Aouar is different than Alex oxlade Chamberlain, but I wouldn’t buy another midfielder till we sell Alex and Shaqiri.
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The hope is as I said that we try very hard to get rid of bodies that don’t contribute much… That includes ox and shaq…
But the point is that Gini is all but gone. And Aouar is to replace him… I wouldn’t reject the chance to sign Aouar because of Ox etc still being here ( for now)… Because Ox and shaq cannot replace Gini. Naby may come close if he stays fit…
We have to come back next season stronger than ever. And with better quality depth with potential starting material…
Henderson Thiago and Milner are aging… So a core of Fabinho, Jones, Aouar and maybe Naby in the future looks good. And whoever else we may add at a later date
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You are right. We will miss the industry of Wijnaldum and aside from Henderson there isn’t any other player who can provide the graft.
You can see Jones trying to add more “graft” to his game. Baby is also capable of being a midfield “all-rounder” on the rare occasions that he’s actually fit.
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Who is Baby?
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Naby Keïta; autocorrect always changes his name to Baby Keith, so some of us just call him Baby.
It’s a forum in-joke… of sorts.
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Just joking… I really hope he stays fit… Could be like a new signing next season.
Giving him one more season to make a contribution to our efforts.
If not, then bundle him with Ox in a buy 1 get 1 free sale. 
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You watch the videos of his games in the Bundesliga and you can see just why Jürgen was so keen to sign him- the lad is potentially an outstanding midfielder.
It’s such a pity that he can’t stay fit; Guinea’s insistence on his playing every game, even when not fully fit, clearly doesn’t help.
As you rightly say, a fully fit and rejuvenated Keïta would be like the proverbial new signing.
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Yeah I started watching more of him when we were linked… He has shown some flashes of that ability here.
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Tough decision regarding Guinea I imagine… Their national team is probably garbage without him. So they continue to play him when he is not 100%
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Watching the Stuttgart vs. Hoffenheim game at the moment.
Austrian CF Saša Kalajdžić just scored his 13th goal of the season (7 in his last 6 games).
Commentator said he recently mentioned Liverpool as his favorite club.
2m tall out and of CF. Very lean but not as lean as Crouchie 
Like him but not on our level.
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2 metres tall Austrian… Marc Janko?
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Hirving Lozano was someone I thought would do well and pretty under the radar even when he was in dutch football. Above average pace, strong and likes to run at defenders and good output of goals and assists in both sides of the field. When he shifted to Serie A, he struggled in his initial season. But now he seems to be back to his best. He should be available for the kind of money that Jota came or even less.
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didn’t that Stuttgart lad not get pocketed by Billy Koumentio this pre season. Didn’t seem great.
Also Dortmund asking for 150 million of Haaland. Just can’t see it happening.
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Might be true. Sasa signed for Stuttgart in summer 19 and few weeks after he done his ACL.
So in that preseason game he just returned from the long term injury.
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Warning; Long technical post written by an idiot with shakey knowledge incoming!
I’m going to try and make a little more sense of the complexity of transfer business, particularly the strength and value of our squad, in an attempt to explore our options this Summer.
First of all I’m probably one of the worst to try and do this but it’s annoying me how everything either falls into one of two camps;
Camp 1; Well if we sell players for x that means we can buy players for X plus whatever kitty we have giving us the years net spend.
Camp 2; Its all far more complicated than that so it’s not worth discussing at all.
The main elements that I think need to be taken into account are cashflow, wage bill, squad value (player amortisation) and profit/loss accounts.
On wage bill LFC is (officially) second at £310m a year £5m behind City (as if, but “officially”).
On squad value our player amortisation figure is 4th highest after Chelsea, City and United at £112m a year as of 2018/19 (last published accounts for us), not far behind City and Chelsea at £127m a year to give a rough start to thoughts.
Now looking at player valuation per year I can’t see FSG being able to support us in this being increased much if at all. Same with wage bill. We are also likely to need to raise our own cashflow and operate roughly at a profit meaning our profit/loss might need a boost.
Now to start with cashflow our recent years of limited outlay may be about to help. Our last two big expenditure years were 2017/18 and 2018/19.
I’ve got nowhere near the level of information to try and do anything other than the most basic appraisal of this but generally before covid majority of our deals tended to be paid over 3 years. For simplicity I’m also going to assume the same for outgoings. I’m going to have to assume our clauses on incomings have all been triggered (pretty safe assumption winning CL and PL) and ignore those on sales for now.
That means that 2017/18 was costing us around about £52m a year for 3 years and 2018/19 around £56m a year for 3 years. That means two years ago we had £108m going out and last year £56m going out all of which is settled now. Same with any incomings from those years (minimal last year).
That freed up cashflow, if it isn’t swallowed up by other costs (FSG reclaiming money lost last year and this or loss of Champions League revenue for next season if we don’t make it) means that, without the accounts changing, roughly £55m a year cash can possibly be made towards new transfer business. If fully utilised this year that’d mean up to £156m, but outgoing sales are likely to limit how much of that would be needed and we might well play cautious not committing it all till we know future revenues are back to normal.
On Cashflow though we should have room to maneuver if needed/desired.
On player value when we buy a player we spread the fee equally across the length of their contract. If they then extend their contract what remained gets spread equally over the new length.
So for instance Mane signed in 2016 for around £37m including add ons. Apparently it was a 5 year deal so that’s roughly £7.5m a year. Two years later Mane has cost us £15m and he extends his deal for 5 years dragging his price down to around £4.5m a year.
He’s going to have two years left so his value is around £9m. If we sold him this summer anything over £9m is pure profit on the profit/loss books. If he extends for another 5 years instead his value on the books is dragged down to just over £1.5m a year.
Now where is the bulk of our squad value tied up? Two sections;
1st Essential parts of the squad that haven’t ever extended their first contracts. VvD at about £14m/year, Alisson at about £9.5m a year, Fabinho at around £8m/year and actually Wijnaldum for this last year at £5m a year (automatically going to save us £5m a year from the summer onwards as the last of his full value clears off the books this year). These players extending their deals (5 years for VvD and Fabinho and 6 years for Alisson) drags the annual squad value down by about £18.5m without anyone being sold or leaving, plus Wijnaldum value gone (whether he stays or not) at £5m a year gives us £23.5m a year or the equivalent of £141m worth of fees if the players involved are persuaded to sign 6 year deals.
2nd Players that haven’t yet convinced and earned contract extensions like Keita or only one early on like Ox. Keita costs about £11m a year valuation on the books and Ox not too far behind at around £4m a year. Some tough questions need considering. They could raise £15m between them or £90m on the books if its used on players or a player that can be signed on 6 year deals.
We go for that activity all together and we free up enough room on the books to bring in up to £230m worth of incomings just off extending deals and losing Keita, Ox and possibly Wijnaldum.
We’d almost certainly need to make more cash available to do anywhere near that level of business though but there’s a lot of players on the books as we went with a larger than usual side plus quite a few on loan. Many of them are whittling down their deals and not likely to have those deals extended. We hate to sell at poor value and be seen as chumps but if we did it as a one off this year we could clear the decks and it would be blamed on covid not give us a weak reputation in the selling stakes.
Now a positive of this is the vast majority of these players either cost us nothing originally or were low value and most of that has been taken into account on the prior years books. Anything we get for the likes of these will be almost pure profit (Matip, Karius, Grujic, Shaqiri, Wilson, Awoniyi, Woodburn, Phillips, Minamino, Origi). That profit can help boost the books so we don’t see too much of a loss even if miss out on CL as well as seriously topping up the cashfkow situation (which should already stand at over £50m lower than last year so not like it needs massively topping up).
All this so far would make some significant room on the wage bill but maybe not quite enough especially with the extensions needed to make this all work. Also there may still be a need for yet more profit and/or cashflow depending on how much we are worried about the market and especially if we miss out on CL.
The obvious way of resolving those issues is to back up the room made in the squad value with free wages and incoming cash to match it by sacrificing one or two of the traditional front 3. There’s sporting reasons why letting an evolution in the attack wouldn’t be a bad idea but this becomes much more essential from a business point if we are struggling. The upshot being though that one or two going actually leads to far more freedom on incoming than people maybe expect.
As to who would make the least harmful sacrifice my order would be Firmino, Mane and Salah.
Firmino book value is around £5m, pre covid valuation is around maybe £75m, post covid price maybe around £60m (all just opinion) decrease in value around 20% loss. Reasonably high wages.
Mane book value is around £9m, pre covid valuation is around £110m, post covid price maybe around £80m, decrease in value around 27% loss. Bit higher wages maybe?
Salah book value is around £12m, pre covid valuation around £150m+?, post covid price maybe around £100m (if possible?), decrease in value around 33% at least loss. Highest wages.
Sporting wise form means Firmino is probably the least harmful to lose with Salah the most harmful to lose. Salah would also likely be the worst in terms of recovering value whilst Firmino would be closest to recover his full value. In fact Firmino and Mane together would recover much more in profits and cash than Salah comes close to doing. Just opinion obviously.
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You should consider adding boobs about halfway through, just to keep the attention from wandering.
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We never need excuses.
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I wonder if the wording is important, it says Klopp wants to freshen up… Maybe its the eternal optimist in me which thinks he doesn’t want anyone to leave but bring in someone who brings something different. So maybe that means the front 3 stay, Bobby gets a diminished role etc. (Although I see Bobby have a great time at PSG personally).
If I continue down that train of thought it sounds like we want to bring in a more traditional no.9. Enter stage left Haaland - The only option really.
Firstly we need to clear the decks to allow that to happen, I think Origi/Shaqiri/Minamino will be offered up for this. If we stay conservative it’s probably a kitty of around £40mil, which sadly doesn’t even get close to a Haaland. So if we did want to sign someone like him (and the rumours of a £120mil fee this summer, as his £75mil one doesn’t activate till next) would mean I don’t see it as viable.
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