There's no evidence we were. If we were we severely misjudged things.
Caice-d'oh!
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There's no evidence we were. If we were we severely misjudged things.
They prob said, Chelsea is our preference but if they don’t match we’ll join.
Oh god, this dog has a bone.
Caice-done up like a fucking kipper.
I'm not sure the concerns about the embarrassment are as irrelevant as you imply.
The club's standing matters. It's not nothing to make ourselves look incompetent in the most public way possible.
Yeah, it'll probably be of no great consequence in the long run, but you defo don't want to fix the impression in the public conscience that you haven't got a fucking clue what you're doing.
I don't care about embarrassment either. And we need a DM now that we sold them.
Do you think we should have matched Chelsea's salary and contract length for Caicedo? Does anyone?
I don't see why some are so gleeful that Chelsea have got an agreement to buy Caicedo (and potentially Lavia). What's the up side?
Chelsea's owners are quite clearly, and without shame, breaking the financial rules in place in both the EPL and UEFA. It's the Super League in effect. The biggest wallet wins. By committing to buy Caicedo Chelsea will have spent £300M in this window alone, with potentially more to follow. It's the same thing City did five (six?) years ago. Once you get to the high ground of that sort of expenditure, it impossible for other teams to follow.
So cheering this on as a 'look how inept our club is' makes no sense. Regardless of what money our owners, Arsenal and Spurs can make available it will be completely eclipsed by those that don't need to balance the books and can spend freely for their aims; City, Chelsea and Newcastle spring to mind.
This IS a bleak day but not just because a rival team managed to beat us to a player we needed but because it sets a precedent for the way professional football is going. Super league by another name. Biggest wallet wins
Chelsea's owners are quite clearly, and without shame, breaking the financial rules in place in both the EPL and UEFA. It's the Super League in effect. The biggest wallet wins. By committing to buy Caicedo Chelsea will have spent £300M in this window alone, with potentially more to follow. It's the same thing City did five (six?) years ago. Once you get to the high ground of that sort of expenditure, it impossible for other teams to follow.
So cheering this on as a 'look how inept our club is' makes no sense. Regardless of what money our owners, Arsenal and Spurs can make available it will be completely eclipsed by those that don't need to balance the books and can spend freely for their aims; City, Chelsea and Newcastle spring to mind.
This IS a bleak day but not just because a rival team managed to beat us to a player we needed but because it sets a precedent for the way professional football is going. Super league by another name. Biggest wallet wins
That's certainly true. More alarming is the amount of different midfielders that don't want to run around like a dog for us, partially because the shine has come off our project.
Another big team comes in and we can't compete if it's in the open. Is it perception of likelihood of success, wages, dithering decision making... It doesn't really matter. The top players already at the club were let down by lack of investment. They all leave having given more than the owners ever did. The thought experiment of "what does the best case scenario look like" doesn't really have the same ceiling.
Another big team comes in and we can't compete if it's in the open. Is it perception of likelihood of success, wages, dithering decision making... It doesn't really matter. The top players already at the club were let down by lack of investment. They all leave having given more than the owners ever did. The thought experiment of "what does the best case scenario look like" doesn't really have the same ceiling.
No, no. We needed a dm and to sell at least one of them. It was fine we sold both, we just needed to react properly and decisively.
Wouldn't have been much point as it turned out, seeing as the player was apparently so determined to join them. So what was said or done to make LFC confident that their offer was ever going to succeed? And made so publicly, too. Would anyone get down on their knees in a crowded pub to propose to someone who really had such little interest in them, and who wanted to marry someone else entirely?
Just read the site - look for words like lol and dickheads..
My point is made above, if it is impossible to identify and buy the talent you want because other teams are bankrolled in such a way they can outbid and out pay on any deal they want to get involved in with no concern to turning even a single £ of profit never mind aligning to the financial controls in place then it is not a market you can sensibly compete in.
Key takeaways on this for me:
Of course opposition fans will laugh at us, it's what rival fans do. They will also laugh at Chelsea for playing another British transfer record for a player who most objective followers of the game would not have named in the top 5 in the world in his position before they threw all that cash at him. And opposition fans would be laughing at us for the same reason if we'd won the "race".
The thing some of us are overlooking in all this is how it exposes our lack of proper planning for this window. We've not had an adequate sporting director since Edwards left. Ward was out of his depth (we all know what "leaving to spend more time with the family" really means) - he's been pushed out because he wasn't up to the job.
We appointed Schmadke. I have no idea what his strengths are, but the only thing he was going to be able to bring to the party as an eleventh hour appointment was the ability to execute a deal (and our legal / football secretarial team should be able to do that). He hasn't spent the last 12 months looking into our targets, keeping tabs with agents, exploring all the options, developing a plan A, B and C for every position. Even if he had a great list of contacts, he hasn't been working them on our behalf. Billy Hogan supposedly had a go on this deal - to my knowledge he's had no involvement on player recruitment previously. He's tried to be innovative, fair play, but it didn't work, and his lack of experience in this area has been exposed. So what was Schmadke bringing to the table? Apparently not a great deal.
And when the Saudis came in for Henderson and Fabinho, two players we evidently weren't planning on replacing (and we can debate the merits of that), we made the mistake of accepting what was good money for them with no ready-made, lined-up replacements in mind, and knowing that the combined fees for both players would only just cover the outlay on an inexperienced kid who was hardly pulling up trees last season and whose most notable contribution was an error that set up a goal for us on the last day of the season.
So the real issue for me is that we (still) need to nail down the sporting director position. It's too late for this window, but Schmadke is clearly not cutting the mustard and Hogan doesn't have the experience to deal with recruitment. Whatever the ins and outs of the Caicedo transaction, and however raw it feels right now, it's just one deal, one player.
The positive is the suggestion that the money is there / can be made available, that Klopp can/will be backed, but this window is as good as done as far as transformative signings are concerned. We need someone in to cover the DM position, that's likely to be a stop-gap at this stage, I doubt Valverde is going to give us a pity shag, and we need to put the structure in place to go again in January. Then we need to do the forward planning so that if we lose key players (whether to transfer or injury) we have an option we can dust off and plug the gap. The failure to do that is the real issue here. Caicedo is just one player, and it's all good sticking to your first choice, but he's gone now. It's not like we can have another go in January like we did with VvD, we have to move on to plan B. But we don't seem to have one. Whatever his strengths and weaknesses, you just know that Edwards would be sitting down with Klopp right now running through a list of 5-10 players who could fill the Caicedo gap. Somehow, I don't think that conversation is happening.
- Young player from a poor background chooses to follow the money and play for a team that will pay him shitloads of cash, guaranteed for 8 years.
- Up and coming club, well run, recognises it can't hold on to its best players and uses auction tactics to get the best possible price for them.
- LFC engages in game of high stakes poker, finds that their hand is not as strong as they thought and loses.
Of course opposition fans will laugh at us, it's what rival fans do. They will also laugh at Chelsea for playing another British transfer record for a player who most objective followers of the game would not have named in the top 5 in the world in his position before they threw all that cash at him. And opposition fans would be laughing at us for the same reason if we'd won the "race".
The thing some of us are overlooking in all this is how it exposes our lack of proper planning for this window. We've not had an adequate sporting director since Edwards left. Ward was out of his depth (we all know what "leaving to spend more time with the family" really means) - he's been pushed out because he wasn't up to the job.
We appointed Schmadke. I have no idea what his strengths are, but the only thing he was going to be able to bring to the party as an eleventh hour appointment was the ability to execute a deal (and our legal / football secretarial team should be able to do that). He hasn't spent the last 12 months looking into our targets, keeping tabs with agents, exploring all the options, developing a plan A, B and C for every position. Even if he had a great list of contacts, he hasn't been working them on our behalf. Billy Hogan supposedly had a go on this deal - to my knowledge he's had no involvement on player recruitment previously. He's tried to be innovative, fair play, but it didn't work, and his lack of experience in this area has been exposed. So what was Schmadke bringing to the table? Apparently not a great deal.
And when the Saudis came in for Henderson and Fabinho, two players we evidently weren't planning on replacing (and we can debate the merits of that), we made the mistake of accepting what was good money for them with no ready-made, lined-up replacements in mind, and knowing that the combined fees for both players would only just cover the outlay on an inexperienced kid who was hardly pulling up trees last season and whose most notable contribution was an error that set up a goal for us on the last day of the season.
So the real issue for me is that we (still) need to nail down the sporting director position. It's too late for this window, but Schmadke is clearly not cutting the mustard and Hogan doesn't have the experience to deal with recruitment. Whatever the ins and outs of the Caicedo transaction, and however raw it feels right now, it's just one deal, one player.
The positive is the suggestion that the money is there / can be made available, that Klopp can/will be backed, but this window is as good as done as far as transformative signings are concerned. We need someone in to cover the DM position, that's likely to be a stop-gap at this stage, I doubt Valverde is going to give us a pity shag, and we need to put the structure in place to go again in January. Then we need to do the forward planning so that if we lose key players (whether to transfer or injury) we have an option we can dust off and plug the gap. The failure to do that is the real issue here. Caicedo is just one player, and it's all good sticking to your first choice, but he's gone now. It's not like we can have another go in January like we did with VvD, we have to move on to plan B. But we don't seem to have one. Whatever his strengths and weaknesses, you just know that Edwards would be sitting down with Klopp right now running through a list of 5-10 players who could fill the Caicedo gap. Somehow, I don't think that conversation is happening.
It is not just the signings part. We seem to be lethargic in all aspects. We might be the only sports organization on the planet which spent months last season without an official club doctor. I have no clue why we cant appoint a DOF. And there is the issue of staff continuously leaving and not being replaced. We seem to have a decent amount of money but seem like a organization with no sense of direction or purpose. I blame that stupid book "Intensity".
Yep, obviously I have no idea the market for DoF but we seem to have gone down the wrong road this summer and strategy is everything these days. We have two weeks to come back and sort out two BIG signings (DM + CB obviously). I remain a little optimistic because Chelsea can't buy anyone else now, can they?!
It fucks me off that Chelsea seem to be going down the same road they went before (2003/4) and City more recently without any sort of control in place.
Preaching to the choir on the FFP side of things @Dee and I do wonder whether the PL will go after Everton and try to make an example of them (when we all know City and Chelsea are the real offenders). Reason for saying this is that the charges against Everton were made a few weeks after they were due to file their P&S declaration (which I'm guessing self-assessed they were in breach) whereas City and Chelsea seem to be continuing to profess their innocence despite all the evidence / suspicion to the contrary. So the case against Everton is easier as they've probably already pleaded guilty.
Plus Everton are comparatively small-fry, so easier to have a go at.
Don't get me wrong, they bloody deserve it, but they're not alone on that score.
£116m.
I’d rather re-sign Ox, to think we were a Melo away from signing Lavia…
That’s it.
The key thing now is what we do next.
What it probably does mean is that the road is relatively open for any other players, particularly at DM if we want to go for it - Chelsea won’t be able to chuck another wad about.
We need to - so we head to Portugal for whoever it is, or Crystal Palace for Doucoure - or even for the lols, take Onana off Everton’s hands - tie up Andre for January and bring in a young CB. Maybe even grab Thuram as well for shits and giggles.
The money is clearly there to do, if not all of it, at least the key bits - ie a DM & CB - so there really can be no excuses now - just get it done.
"Just get it done", you say. I've got to admire your optimism.
I don’t think there’s another DM in world football that could improve our squad so that’s it for this transfer window.
Best case scenario now is Chelsea fail to get the money or the deal together and are forced into an embarrassing pull out.
Meanwhile, we match their Lavia bid, Fuckstick Romano has to tweet “Lavia clear from start - he only ever wanted Liverpool. Here we go!!” As he signs with us. Meanwhile we offer Bayern £60m for Gravenberch or Palace for Doucoure which either accept and that gets tied the fuck up in no time.
Then we tell Caicedo he can fuck himself all the way back to Brighton, where they can deal with him & his entourage and he can do whatever the fuck he likes.
Meanwhile someone breaks Enzo in two and Chelsea end up having to field Boehly in midfield.
Meanwhile, we match their Lavia bid, Fuckstick Romano has to tweet “Lavia clear from start - he only ever wanted Liverpool. Here we go!!” As he signs with us. Meanwhile we offer Bayern £60m for Gravenberch or Palace for Doucoure which either accept and that gets tied the fuck up in no time.
Then we tell Caicedo he can fuck himself all the way back to Brighton, where they can deal with him & his entourage and he can do whatever the fuck he likes.
Meanwhile someone breaks Enzo in two and Chelsea end up having to field Boehly in midfield.
Oh well, #2 target gone.
It's definitely not fair. But it wasn't fair before.
But I'm not having that in this instance. Can we get a player in caicedos situation? No, you're right, and that isn't fair. But we could be gleefully anticipating the return of our shit hot loan prospect, or thinking, thank God we've got x, when five players, three of whom we knew without a shadow of a doubt were done, left.
If you want to make money in a market with these gross fees, don't wait till the end of the auction and be seen counting all the cash you dropped on the floor.
This situation didn't happen to us. Then we exacerbated it.
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