There was a link on here recently showing Henry making a presentation to the Boston Chamber of Commerce. He started the speech with a section talking about the connection (or lack of) between baseball and football, Boston and Liverpool. He said one thing was certain, there was no connection between the fans because when FSG spent $300m on Red Sox players the Liverpool fans were irate (meaning we had no empathy with Red Sox fans and wanted the money spent on LFC). He then said that it should have been the Red Sox fans who were irate (which caused laughter). Then he switched it round and said that when FGS spent "$200m excluding wages" on Liverpool players, the Boston fans were irate but it should have been the Liverpool fans. Whilst the point he then made was about winning the World Series and maybe the fans all started to think they (FSG) knew what they were doing, I immediately felt there was also another message in there; pretty thinly veiled criticism of the quality of the players bought for the money, which is why it was the fans of the club who spent the moneywho should have been irate (with the club scouting and management etc).
I can't speak about Boston, but for LFC, he's absolutely bang on, we've almost entirely wasted more than enough money for two top quality players on pure shite (Carroll, Aspas et al) or hyped-up-but-delivered-very-little (Allen) and the fans should be irate.
If Henry's comment was what I felt it was, public criticism of recent expenditure, then it is logical to assume that Ayre's hands are now very firmly tied when it comes to price negotiations and there is no possibility of doing what a lot of fans love to suggest, "just chuck a few million more on the table and seal the fucking deal, ffs". The fact that the club keep repeating our stance that we won't overpay for players suggests this is the truth of the matter; the owners and the 'transfer committee' have agreed values for players in advance and that's it, Ayre has to get that player within budget (not transfer fee alone as allegedly the owners got a shock in the past when costs quoted to them didn't include wages) or lose out. It would be stupid and also highly unlikely for the owners to then capitulate to higher demands at the last minute if another team comes in and offers more, or the selling club demand more just as we think we are close to sealing the deal.
Assuming this to be the situation, it's reasonable to make a case that the Salah negotiations took so long because Ayre just couldn't get it within budget and had to sit and wait to see if our offer was eventually accepted. In the end we lost out and all manner of self-serving reasons then got flung around t'inter klacker by agents, clubs and professional commentators, when the realities are likely staring us in the face; our committee valued Salah at 'x', it wasn't enough and the owners stuck to a plan instigated and agreed as a result of previous purchase debacles.
And then, from seemingly nowhere, this possible Kono' deal springs up and frustrated people are ranting "we should just pay what it takes because we didn't get Salah". That makes no sense whatsoever; with that approach we'd pretty soon be paying insane money for some over-hyped journeyman just because we hadn't landed a few previous targets. I don't need to say anything more about that approach as the results can be seen plodding around at West Ham.
Something I've seen asked online today is why we were prepared to pay more for "a lower priority target", once again implying our strategy is just one big mess. Is there any indisputable evidence that we wanted Salah more than Kono'. For all anybody knows we rated Kono' higher but he wasn't for sale so we went for Salah. Then Kono' came on the market late on (was he being openly talked about before being linked with us?) but in the end the owner decided not to sell. To me that's the most logical scenario; not for sale, suddenly open to offers, owner got cold feet and took him off the market. All the planning in the world can't overcome that sort of fickleness.
It's clear to me that the club have a very clear plan, which they've expressed publicly a number of times, and they are sticking to it, not least because of the disasters we had when we didn't do it this way. So, far from laying the blame at the feet of the man who is sent out with a maximum budget but it isn't enough, we need to be asking far, far bigger questions of those that choose the players we did buy, because most of them have been a waste of our limited resources. I actually think Rodgers and friends are (mostly) being excused this examination by people outside the club at present because of the huge improvements he's delivered on the pitch. I doubt that's the case within the club though.
