Dear John W Henry

[StevieM]

Yer talking daft Stevie if we hadn't speculated a few years ago we wouldn't have Sterling or Henderson and if we hadn't splashed the cash we wouldn't have Suarez or Sturridge but we could have kept the likes of Darren Potter, El Zahr, John Welsh and Adam Hammill who were all out on loan.

Because our squad has improved a lot over the last couple of years the standard of the players we're able to loan out has improved but this doesn't mean they should be kept. Most of them won't make the grade and if this squad is to make the next step up we're gonna have speculate and invest further whilst trimming "the fat".

I'd love to see Borini, Wisdom, Assaidi, Aspas, Alberto, Kelly, Robinson etc make the grade at LFC but realistically only one of them at most will play 10+ games for the first team from this point.

You're misunderstanding me - I'm not saying "don't splash cash".

I'm saying - let's spend whatever we have on 2 quality young players.

Let's not :-

1. Spend it all on 1 or 2 over-priced English player
2. Sell "x" amount of players that will cost "x+?" To replace without necessarily being any better but take away from our key transfer budget.

Right now... We have people talking about how we need more players to compete in the CL while talking about getting rid of 4 or 5 first ten players.

You know that part where we talked about how Utd had shit players, yet they still consistently won the league?

They did it by keeping a core team together that could and where comfortable playing together, despite being individually shite, & added outstanding talent at top dollar to augment the shite.

 

[SummerOnions]

Yeah as long as we don't replace Alberto with a more expensive Alberto like we did with Shelvey ad infinitum we should do ok

 

[Pesam]

You're misunderstanding me - I'm not saying "don't splash cash".

I'm saying - let's spend whatever we have on 2 quality young players.

Let's not :-

1. Spend it all on 1 or 2 over-priced English player
2. Sell "x" amount of players that will cost "x+?" To replace without necessarily being any better but take away from our key transfer budget.

Right now... We have people talking about how we need more players to compete in the CL while talking about getting rid of 4 or 5 first ten players.

You know that part where we talked about how Utd had shit players, yet they still consistently won the league?

They did it by keeping a core team together that could and where comfortable playing together, despite being individually shite, & added outstanding talent at top dollar to augment the shite.

And there's the crux of the problem with these type of debates, who decides what is an "overpriced English player" (I thought Sturridge was overpriced at £12m!), we could sign Lallana for £20m and 18 months later it could prove to be as much a bargain as Sturridge, Suarez, Skrtel, etc were. 26 is still young(ish) and I'd be very happy if the 2 young players we invested in this summer were lallana and Ings.

I think the reason United won the league last season with "shit" players is more to do with Ferguson being an alchemist and turning shit into shinola rather than keeping a settled squad. I see no harm in keeping the players deemed good enough and selling those deemed surplus to requirements even if that means shipping out 7 or 8 players.

 

[peterhague]

Exactly. If Utd's success had been down to a consistent squad then they'd be top of the league now instead of 7th.

And tbh I don't know what's so bad about my idea of mixing and matching the transfer approach, with a few cheap veterans to give the embryonic young players a chance to develop together with a few more expensive younger signings.

Best of both worlds.

 

[mom]

It makes perfect sense to have some experience in the squad alongside the raw up and coming talent. The raw ability of the youngsters breaking through will be nurtured and refined by those more capable and experienced around them, at the same time having that experience there as a fail safe for when things go a little wrong. You can have all the talent in the world, but sometimes in the crunch games that really matter, and few calm heads can make all the difference.

 

[Dirkus_Circus]

Three years ago everyone on SCM bitching, moaning, and complaining because we overspent on overpriced English players.

2014, several on SCM advocating we spend heavily on overpriced English player.

Granted Llalana is much better than Carroll and Downing but he will still be massively overpriced because he is English.

 

[Woland]

I saw some crap a while back. It's not an English tax. It's a proven in the premier league tax. It applies to anyone any good playing for any current prem side. And that's fair enough.

 

[juniormember]

Nedved, Del Piero, Van Persie, Pires, Zola, Zico, Jouninho, C. Ronaldo all seemed to peak at around 28. I'm against overpaying for Lallana though.