• You may have to login or register before you can post and view our exclusive members only forums.
    To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

FSG’s transfer policy.... My take.

Forums Unread posts
Status
Not open for further replies.
Donavan Ried

Donavan Ried

Alive and still kicking, Just
Member
Being self-sufficient is a good thing right, living with in your means?

FSG has a transfer policy where in you buy a player who has resaleable value of more than you have paid for them

That sound great until you look closer at it...

Yes, Coutinho made us some real money which we were able to re-invest in players like Alisson, VVD to name two. It would be great if that was the case ever year or two. But here is the fly in that ointment

Salah (30), Mane (30), Firmino (30), Henderson (32) VVD (32) Thiago (32) Matip (32) These are the ages some of our players will be by the start of next season.

I only see two or three players here that we could possibly sell for Coutinho type money. Salah, VVD and Mane, although in the case of Mane is not the Mane of 2016-2018 and if we could get £70m -90m it would be a coup.

If you sell Mane, Salah or VVD they have to be replaced with quality, which cost money to do so., and we would still need to find replacements for Henderson, Firmino, and Thiago.

Now the crux of the matter...

Next season we will start to see the prices of players like Firmino, Salah and Mane start to fall due to their age. No so much on VVD as defenders tend to have a longer shelf life. So where will the money come from to improve the squad. And by improve, I mean to bring in some real “Quality” players. Players that will cost us upwards of £70m

Besides the players named which players could be sold for that type of money...? We don’t want to sell players like Robertson, TAA, Jota, Jones, Elliot. So where will that type of money come from...?

I will tell you where it will not come from, and that is FSG...

It seems as if everyone around us are investing in new young quality players. They are shopping at Harrods while we shop at Primark

By 2025-26 season If still owned by FSG we will be finishing outside of the top four on a regular basis. As we win less and less and miss out on the CL, Sponsors will look elsewhere, and should FSG finally start to put their hands in their pockets it will be near impossibly to sign quality players for the mid-table team that we will have become
 
Nice take. The reality is they want to sell the club, there is no financial incentive for them to buy assets prior to selling the club when those assets will not increase the valuation. In fact, the added debt would reduce the valuation. They have 2-3 more years they can milk out of our aging squad without investment, which is about how long they will be able to hold on to Klopp, so they'll sell up somewhere in that time. Their super league no-promotion no-relegation plan is a dead giveaway about their attempts to boost the valuation. That's all this is.
 
They’ve invested heavily in big capital assets like the training ground and stadium. These add significant value to the club. This has hampered our spending in the short term.

I think the “new” tv deal has fucked up our spending. Rather than bids being received the league decided to extend the contracts on an as you where basis. I’ll bet the owners had planned on a double digit increase from that revenue source.

From your list, I expect at least 2 of those players to be moved on for reasonable sums. And we will get a few more in once we’ve paid off some of current new signings.
 
dantes said:
Nice take. The reality is they want to sell the club, there is no financial incentive for them to buy assets prior to selling the club when those assets will not increase the valuation. In fact, the added debt would reduce the valuation. They have 2-3 more years they can milk out of our aging squad without investment, which is about how long they will be able to hold on to Klopp, so they'll sell up somewhere in that time. Their super league no-promotion no-relegation plan is a dead giveaway about their attempts to boost the valuation. That's all this is.
Click to expand...
If the club fails to reach top 4, then the value of the club drops. Young players do add value, the likes of Daka, Aouar, Camavinga, and Kudus will increase in value at the end of this season. There was a chance where we could have got Haaland for £17m and we refused. What a mistake that was
 
We found Mane, Firmino and Salah for under £100M. We also signed Jota for £45M, who is scoring at a rate of an £80M/£90M forward currently. We signed Roberson for £8M and made him into the best LB in the world. We developed Trent in a record breaking RB.

I'm not trying to be a blind optimist here. The future is worrying, but much of the doom and gloom I've read online ignores how well we've done in producing this squad to date. There will be a rebuild, and you're right to point out that FSG won't bankroll us, but with decent succession planning and keeping knowledge within the organisation, we can successfully evolve and rebuild this squad. The systems Edwards and Klopp have put in can continue to be replicated, providing we find a manager who is happy to play the same way. It's surely why the boot room was such a success and whilst those days are long gone, the way we scout and evaluate football players should remain the same for the foreseeable future. It's given us advantage and allowed us to punch about our weight in the market. We all know things can go south quick, we've seen it with United and Arsenal. I'm hopeful we won't be as naïve as that.

It's essential we keep hold of Ljinders in some capacity or another. Chelsea will likely have sacked Tuchel in the next two years as well, so he would be a decent candidate to replace Klopp if the timing works.
 
Squiggles said:
We found Mane, Firmino and Salah for under £100M. We also signed Jota for £45M, who is scoring at a rate of an £80M/£90M forward currently. We signed Roberson for £8M and made him into the best LB in the world. We developed Trent in a record breaking RB.

I'm not trying to be a blind optimist here. The future is worrying, but much of the doom and gloom I've read online ignores how well we've done in producing this squad to date. There will be a rebuild, and you're right to point out that FSG won't bankroll us, but with decent succession planning and keeping knowledge within the organisation, we can successfully evolve and rebuild this squad. The systems Edwards and Klopp have put in can continue to be replicated, providing we find a manager who is happy to play the same way. It's surely why the boot room was such a success and whilst those days are long gone, the way we scout and evaluate football players should remain the same for the foreseeable future. It's given us advantage and allowed us to punch about our weight in the market. We all know things can go south quick, we've seen it with United and Arsenal. I'm hopeful we won't be as naïve as that.
Click to expand...
Exactly, with Konate, Elliot, Curtis as well as some of the existing younger already proven players like Trent, Gomez, Jota, i'd argue we're already putting this in place quite well.
 
Squiggles said:
We found Mane, Firmino and Salah for under £100M. We also signed Jota for £45M, who is scoring at a rate of an £80M/£90M forward currently. We signed Roberson for £8M and made him into the best LB in the world. We developed Trent in a record breaking RB.

I'm not trying to be a blind optimist here. The future is worrying, but much of the doom and gloom I've read online ignores how well we've done in producing this squad to date. There will be a rebuild, and you're right to point out that FSG won't bankroll us, but with decent succession planning and keeping knowledge within the organisation, we can successfully evolve and rebuild this squad. The systems Edwards and Klopp have put in can continue to be replicated, providing we find a manager who is happy to play the same way. It's surely why the boot room was such a success and whilst those days are long gone, the way we scout and evaluate football players should remain the same for the foreseeable future. It's given us advantage and allowed us to punch about our weight in the market. We all know things can go south quick, we've seen it with United and Arsenal. I'm hopeful we won't be as naïve as that.

It's essential we keep hold of Ljinders in some capacity or another. Chelsea will likely have sacked Tuchel in the next two years as well, so he would be a decent candidate to replace Klopp if the timing works.
Click to expand...

Thing is more teams can buy players like Jota for the £45m lay out now they have that money they can spend. It more of whether they can attract that kind of player now than so much whether they can afford him...

Yes Robbo was a remarkable signing, but they don't come around that often and are quickly snapped up would they do...

The point made about Edwards. He is leaving and with his replacement will come new ideas, will they be as good, better or worse, only time will tell, but they will still require bank rolling. Something we do no get from FSG.
 
The problem is there are only few clubs that can afford to pay the hundreds of mills and they so just happen to nearly all be our rivals which we’ll never sell to.

Can anyone see us selling Fab or Jota for 100m next season to PSG or Juve or Madrid?

Are clubs in China still able to spend??
 
I think the reality is that we've moved on slightly from the original "Moneyball" style policy and I think where profit on sales is concerned we're now stuck in the middle between the previous policy of cashing in on single players making a big return (Suarez, Coutinho, Sterling) and the Chelsea policy of generating lots of middle-level profits from squad / youth players (some of this summer's disposals (Grujic, Wilson. Awoniyi, Grabara), Brewster last year). Basically selling guys who are good players, but not good enough for us. The reality is that when big money came calling for our best players in the past, we couldn't justify holding on to them, financially speaking. That's no longer the case. The guys who have signed new deals this summer have done so because Klopp wants to keep them, not because we want to protect our entitlement to decent fees next summer. Some of them will retire with us, or at least play until the point where they don't have anything more to give at the very top level.

This brings a new challenge - how long do we hold on to them (and as Momowasboss has said elsewhere, sports science and better professionalism means players don't suddenly fall of a cliff performance-wise when they hit 30) and if we decide to let them go, how do we replace them? I'd like to think that with the investments in infrastructure we'll be in a better place in a couple of years on two counts - firstly, we won't be spending our cash on infrastructure and secondly that investment will be throwing off extra cash to spend.

Where once players would dictate to us about release clauses if bigger clubs came in for them (Madrid and Barcelona in particular for the South Americans), now we're probably in a position where those kinds of players will be looking at us as a destination and not a stopping off point along the way. But in the past we'd be taking a chance on those players when they were on the way up, now we're more likely to let them develop at a slightly lower level before buying them at higher prices, but with less risk attached (and I think this is why we're not in the market for the likes of Daka or Edouard, for example, or even VVD when he left Celtic). Jota is probably somewhere in the middle here - not fully developed when we signed him, but having proven himself at Premiership level and with a higher ceiling. He's the kind of signing I expect us to make more of (and I think Konate fits the formula too) - clearly good enough for a rotation role, with the chance to push on to become a regular starter. Haaland (pre Dortmund) is another such player, and we clearly missed the boat on that one, although he wouldn't fit hand in glove in our current system.

But it is crazy that as a team we had a strong claim to being the best club team in world football two years ago (and we're still in the mix, if not quite at the very top) and yet signing a player like Mbappe seemed like a pipe dream, and still does. And that's largely because of the oil money / sports washing factor affecting a handful of clubs (thanks to UEFA's failure to make FFP stand up), and also because FIFA allows the likes or Raiola to run riot and price their players out of moves to anyone fiscally responsible.
 
binomial said:
The problem is there are only few clubs that can afford to pay the hundreds of mills and they so just happen to nearly all be our rivals which we’ll never sell to.

Can anyone see us selling Fab or Jota for 100m next season to PSG or Juve or Madrid?

Are clubs in China still able to spend??
Click to expand...
The Chinese Super League is dead, the communist party has more or less killed it. The Commie party in China are very much like the Taliban, if they think football can turn into a religion, they'll ban it. They banned a form of meditation as it was spreading too fast, and locked up the creator and founder of that form of meditation.
[article]
Burst bubble: Chinese Super League in financial turmoil


Kendall Baker, Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian


Illustration: Eniola Odetunde/Axios
The Chinese Super League was on the rise and threatening to tilt the balance of global soccer during the last decade. Now, it's in complete disarray.
Why it matters: The CSL helped catalyze China's soccer boom, and its foreign stars brought a global audience to its shores. Now, the league's uncertain future could damage soccer's domestic popularity.
The state of play: Government regulations introduced in the past two years have made Chinese teams less appealing for high-caliber talent, China-based news outlet Sixth Tone reports.
  • New rules have lowered salaries, restricted the number of foreign players a team can have, and required teams to drop the names of corporate sponsors from their team names and logos..
Driving the news: Defending league champion Jiangsu FC shocked fans last month when it announced it would cease operations — the latest in a growing list of CSL clubs to fold or experience financial turmoil.
Catch up quick: The gold rush in Chinese soccer began in earnest in 2012. By the middle of the decade, the CSL had become a major player in the global transfer market.
  • In 2012, a handful of global stars headlined by former Chelsea striker Didier Drogba joined the CSL, hinting at its growing power.
  • By 2016, China had begun raiding the world's top clubs and making offers few players could refuse. "We cannot fight this, as it's economics, not football," said one Brazilian club's sporting director.
  • Those players have come and gone, and the "golden era of cash that marked the peak of the CSL" appears to be over, notes ESPN's Joey Lynch.
What to watch: One silver lining for the future of Chinese soccer is that the new rules encourage clubs to develop more homegrown players, which could ultimately improve the national team talent pipeline.
The bottom line: In early 2016, the Chinese transfer record was broken three times in 10 days. Five years later, all three of those players have left China — and the club that paid hefty sums for two of them no longer exists.
[/article]
 
Last edited:
SummerOnions said:


Good thread that is hard to disagree with for me
Click to expand...


It is true that Klopp is very insistent on waiting for the right player who will work within the system.

I'd be a lot more at peace with this summer transfer shitshow if I knew the funds were being held aside and we really were going to go in big on two or three signings in the next year when they became available. Sadly I don't think that's the case.
 
SummerOnions said:


Good thread that is hard to disagree with for me
Click to expand...
Yeah, no offence but I don't believe that "right player" bullshit. We're just strapped for cash.
When money was available, we bought.
How many "right players" have we missed out on?
How can it be right players when we're low-balling clubs?
The Norwich fullback was right until they asked for a few mill extra.
Werner was right until he for some reason wasn't.
We had zero CB's last December and we waited until the last minute to buy Kabak and Davies who we dumped like chipotle the morning after.
Sure, in Van Dijk's case, yeah I guess he was the right player, but in all honesty I just think we're opportunistic like many other clubs.
You can't fucking convince me that Shaq was the "right player".
 
Last edited:


We had a 20 million bid submitted for Caleta-Car from Marseille at the last minute in January. He was at the airport. Marseille pulled out as they could not find a replacement in time.

There was a time - Kiev and its aftermath where Klopp/Edwards waited for the right player. We waited a year for Keita. We definitely waited for Van Dijk, Allison, all of which paid dividends.

The last few transfer windows have been far away from that strategy. I think we have been buying players who suit us and whose clubs agree to the way we want the payment structured. Which is why I think Jota is here instead of Sarr.
 
I think there's some plausibility to the "waiting" theory, but am not 100% on board with it. On the one hand, I don't think Klopp would spend on players he didn't really want (or at least he wouldn't spend a lot of cash). The only prior buys I can think of that seem to fall into this category are Minamino and Ben Davies (both not a lot of cash in the grand scheme), and Robertson (not a lot of cash net, bearing in mind what we got from Hull for Kevin Stewart) and we did need an alternative to Moreno when we bought Robbo (likewise Tsimikas).
The problem I have with the theory is there's been no hint of a potential first-team player he really wanted this summer that we couldn't get - I can't believe this wouldn't have leaked out.
Unless you genuinely think Mbappe 2021 was ever a thing, in which case, give your head a wobble.
So I don't think we have a huge wad of cash burning a hole in our pockets until the right guy becomes available, sorry.
 
is VvD even that valuable now? I mean in terms of our squad he's an enormous boost but if we were to try and sell him for a rebuilding job, he's 31 next summer and his knees are shattered.

I'm not saying we would struggle to sell him but I don't think he'd bring in the sort of money that would actually make it worthwhile. I'd say he's now in the £50m- £60m bracket, no chance we'd get £100m for him.

Mo and Trent are probably our 2 biggest cash cows in terms of generating funds. Not that I want either to go.
 
This sell big model works when you're on the ascendancy because you could possibly become even better with the money.

Once you're actually on top, it makes no sense to sell your best players because that's just weakening you as a team.

The way to go is the Chelsea model of investing in the academy, using the loan system and regularly generating money from sales of those players. Think we're going to continue to do that. Some excellent talent in the u18s at the moment. Think we'll make some good money on them in a few years.
 
RedStar said:
is VvD even that valuable now? I mean in terms of our squad he's an enormous boost but if we were to try and sell him for a rebuilding job, he's 31 next summer and his knees are shattered.

I'm not saying we would struggle to sell him but I don't think he'd bring in the sort of money that would actually make it worthwhile. I'd say he's now in the £50m- £60m bracket, no chance we'd get £100m for him.

Mo and Trent are probably our 2 biggest cash cows in terms of generating funds. Not that I want either to go.
Click to expand...
How are his knees shattered? I seem to recall Rosco telling us that we were wasting money on a one legged CB a few years back. He’s only ever been out long term due to T-Rex, and he’s the best center back in the world.
It’s not about actual value, it’s about how much we’d say yes to and how badly another club wants him. What would you have valued Ibe at the time? Coutinho? Solanke? Ward? Etc
 
dmishra said:
This sell big model works when you're on the ascendancy because you could possibly become even better with the money.

Once you're actually on top, it makes no sense to sell your best players because that's just weakening you as a team.

The way to go is the Chelsea model of investing in the academy, using the loan system and regularly generating money from sales of those players. Think we're going to continue to do that. Some excellent talent in the u18s at the moment. Think we'll make some good money on them in a few years.
Click to expand...

Hopefully we'll remain strong while waiting to reap the benefits of the City Football Group and Red Bull football groups type of network. Toulouse, who missed out on promotion last season are top of Ligue 2 after a coach in Head Coach. RedBird also has a very small stake in Malaga.
 
dmishra said:
This sell big model works when you're on the ascendancy because you could possibly become even better with the money.

Once you're actually on top, it makes no sense to sell your best players because that's just weakening you as a team.

The way to go is the Chelsea model of investing in the academy, using the loan system and regularly generating money from sales of those players. Think we're going to continue to do that. Some excellent talent in the u18s at the moment. Think we'll make some good money on them in a few years.
Click to expand...
Yeah I think our only problem is that arguably we've been trying to sell players of a much worse standard than they have for even more money
 
We haven't done too badly - Sterling, Ibe, Solanke, Stewart, Brewster, Hoever, Camacho, Ward, Wilson all signed very cheap and sold for big sums.

I expect the likes of Neco Williams, Clarkson, Cain, Woodburn, SVB will also be sold in the next year or two. Don't expect a lot of money from that lot, but the really exciting talent is presently in the u18s - Musialowski, Frauendorf, Kaide Gordon, Pitaluga, Balagizi, Stewart, Cannonier, Stewart and now Bobby Clark.

Expect that we will get 2-3 really good players from that group. Either they make it with us or we sell them for really nice money.
 
Kaide Gordon looks like he can make the step up. At least based on this years pre season.
 
Hansern said:
Kaide Gordon looks like he can make the step up. At least based on this years pre season.
Click to expand...
Super talented, but he's what 16? Still built like a stick figure. Needs to get bigger and stronger before he can make it at the first team level. PL defenders would manhandle him at the moment.
 
dmishra said:
Super talented, but he's what 16? Still built like a stick figure. Needs to get bigger and stronger before he can make it at the first team level. PL defenders would manhandle him at the moment.
Click to expand...

Yeah, definitely needs to bulk up and when he's ready I'd let him follow the path of Elliott with a loan to a Championship side for a season.
But in terms of ability and maturity in his game, he certainly looks like a player that will just take to a new level in his stride.

Very promising so far, and the fact that he plays with the U23s and is involved when the fringe players have played in friendlies speaks volumes of how highly Klopp rates him.
 
I wouldn't be surprised to see Gomez get sold for big money, although I am not sure I support that.

My take on the contract extensions is that it is protecting the value of the asset, and it makes me think we have 12-18 months left of FSG.

Outside of this - i still feel we have a first XI/XV that is title challenging, but it is dicey that with one or two key injuries we are hampered significantly. My only hope would be that Klopp learns from last year and doesn't try to fill injury gaps with the wrong players. We could have challenged City if we'd played Nat & Rhys all season and kept the midfield steady. If we get a bad injury to the strikers, I would hope we'd promote youth attackers (e.g. Gordon, others) rather than try to shoe-horn an Ox or someone in there.
 
Brizzle said:
I wouldn't be surprised to see Gomez get sold for big money, although I am not sure I support that.

My take on the contract extensions is that it is protecting the value of the asset, and it makes me think we have 12-18 months left of FSG.
Click to expand...

Hope your right on both count (Not a big fan of Gomez)

But to the main one FSG, what is your rationale in think that FSG will be gone (And I hope you are right) in 12-18 months?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

moron
    • Like
Finding the Next VVD.....
2
Replies
52
Views
761
Squiggles
Squiggles
rurikbird
    • Like
Quansah
2 3
Replies
67
Views
1K
bluebell
bluebell
localny
    • Like
Pinch Me (5)
Replies
8
Views
393
Modo
Modo
Brizzle
    • Like
Pre Match Pre Match - Everton (A) - Sat 12:30
2 3 4 5 6
Replies
157
Views
4K
Dirty Sanchez
Dirty Sanchez
Squiggles
    • Like
    • Wow
  • Locked
Disaster Planning
2
Replies
31
Views
747
bluebell
bluebell
Back
Top Bottom