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Sal-ittihad

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Not quite - I was ok with Slobbers & Big Mac plus the youngsters if we kept Fabs & Hendo - but once we sold those two, we needed at least one more incoming.

I wasn’t particularly in favour of selling either Fabs or Hendo, but replacing those two with Endo & Gravy is probably decent business.m - considering it cost about the same and Gravy is at least young and highly developable.

Whatever we mean by “transition season”, I don’t know, but that doesn’t mean giving up - the front line with Salah means we should have enough firepower to get back to where we want to be.

Sell Salah now - you run the risk of rooting not only this season, but next one as well.

There are more important things needing fixed - get a Sporting Director - get a coherent transfer strategy in place, fix the back room team and do that before we start waving around £200m to try and convince someone to come join a team that just shot itself in the foot.

What if they offered £1bn for him?

I suspect you'd agree that we should take that.

Therefore I suspect that what it really comes down to is exactly how much money you think would be adequate compensation. Or is there literally no amount you'd consider enough?
 
You're not really struggling to get your head around them at all. You had two of the three reasons in your post already. You're just missing the third, that some people are retards.

I’m trying to see the good in people.
 
What if they offered £1bn for him?

I suspect you'd agree that we should take that.

Therefore I suspect that what it really comes down to is exactly how much money you think would be adequate compensation. Or is there literally no amount you'd consider enough?

I think the sale price should be something like 700M GBP and state that it will include a 25pc ownership of our club, that way we also get a bit of PIF cashflow, and then we can compete with those little boy traders like Chelsea.
 
It won’t be - if the Saudi plan is develop that League to be one of the top leagues in the world - then this is just the start.

They’ll start targeting younger players and then they’ll start targeting top end Managers next.

They’ll be chucking money at Pep soon.

Well if they're doing it in steps like you just mentioned, then this is the phase when they're signing established star players.
So they've now got star attraction legitimising the league.
Will they be spending as much money in the next phase is the question?
 
It won’t be - if the Saudi plan is develop that League to be one of the top leagues in the world - then this is just the start.

They’ll start targeting younger players and then they’ll start targeting top end Managers next.

They’ll be chucking money at Pep soon.

They could chuck a trillion quid at the problem and barely make a dent imo.

Nobody gives a fuck about watching glorified testimonials between a couple of Saudi non-entities. It's doomed.
 
They could chuck a trillion quid at the problem and barely make a dent imo.

Nobody gives a fuck about watching glorified testimonials between a couple of Saudi non-entities. It's doomed.
People watch the NBA, NHL etc.
Get the star players and the people will turn their heads.
Maybe not Europeans, but the Asian market definitely.
A league of all-star players will eventually be successful, I think.
 
What if they offered £1bn for him?

I suspect you'd agree that we should take that.

Therefore I suspect that what it really comes down to is exactly how much money you think would be adequate compensation. Or is there literally no amount you'd consider enough?

Well - I’d say it wouldn’t be hard to make a convincing argument that £1bn would mitigate all likely negative outcomes - like not qualifying for CL, etc and allow us to do whatever we wanted.

I did state in an earlier post that £750m would be my starting point for negotiation.

So yes, of course there is a point where you’d potentially chuck this season’s down the pan and cause all sorts of problems, because you’re getting enough resources to fix the problem.

Like you, I suspect, £200m is going in the right direction - but I’d want more, because he’s worth more to us and more importantly he’s worth more to them.
 
People watch the NBA, NHL etc.
Get the star players and the people will turn their heads.
Maybe not Europeans, but the Asian market definitely.
A league of all-star players will eventually be successful, I think.
ESP when they get CL spots which they will.
 
People watch the NBA, NHL etc.
Get the star players and the people will turn their heads.
Maybe not Europeans, but the Asian market definitely.
A league of all-star players will eventually be successful, I think.

Not sure how the NBA/NHL are equivalent? They mostly consist of storied, authentic, franchises, don't they?

Genuine question, btw. I never watch either, personally.
 
Well if they're doing it in steps like you just mentioned, then this is the phase when they're signing established star players.
So they've now got star attraction legitimising the league.
Will they be spending as much money in the next phase is the question?

Yes - they’ll keep spending - why would they stop.
 
They could chuck a trillion quid at the problem and barely make a dent imo.

Nobody gives a fuck about watching glorified testimonials between a couple of Saudi non-entities. It's doomed.

Respectfully - I’d imagine you and I don’t give a fuck - and I’d imagine you, like me, haven’t signed up to watch MLS & Messi’s glorified testimonials.

We’re not the target market - in fact there’s a very good argument that football is irrelevant - it’s just something more popular than golf and likely fit into whatever other master plan they have.

It all leads to the World Cup going there - at sone point there’ll be money chucked at UEFA and the Champions League (or Champions League teams) to include Saudi Teams (or join a new league).

Isn’t that kind of what they did with golf?
 
Respectfully - I’d imagine you and I don’t give a fuck - and I’d imagine you, like me, haven’t signed up to watch MLS & Messi’s glorified testimonials.

We’re not the target market - in fact there’s a very good argument that football is irrelevant - it’s just something more popular than golf and likely fit into whatever other master plan they have.

It all leads to the World Cup going there - at sone point there’ll be money chucked at UEFA and the Champions League (or Champions League teams) to include Saudi Teams (or join a new league).

Isn’t that kind of what they did with golf?

Football seems totally different from golf to me.

People engage with football tribally. Even indirectly, because the passion of the crowds are a big part of the spectacle.

The idea that you can just transplant that feeling to some Saudi teams playing in a Saudi league is borderline laughable imo.
 
Are they also 31 and each going for £150 million, too?

The managers of old— Shankly, Paisley and Fagan— were successful in part because they knew when to move a player on before most had realised his legs had gone. We currently seem unable to see or unwilling to believe this has happened with Salah. For £150 million, I’d let go and use the proceeds to rebuild. We did that, albeit by having our had forced when we sold Coutinho.

Undoubtedly we should find a way to think about succession. If we doing that, we should have done it two months ago, obviously there's a price that we should take at this point, but it'd be far higher than it would have been two months ago, given that he'd leave a massive gap in the squad.
 
Not sure how the NBA/NHL are equivalent? They mostly consist of storied, authentic, franchises, don't they?

Genuine question, btw. I never watch either, personally.
Vegas Knight just won the Stanley Cup ( NHL champs). Based in Vegas, created like 5 years ago. They have teams in cities that don't have a hockey culture and have never produced a single hockey player.
Sure many teams have history and maybe it's not a like for like with the Saudi league, but it's still a league of all stars. The best of the best.
 
Football seems totally different from golf to me.

People engage with football tribally. Even indirectly, because the passion of the crowds are a big part of the spectacle.

The idea that you can just transplant that feeling to some Saudi teams playing in a Saudi league is borderline laughable imo.

Some people do engage with football tribally - but not all.

Again - that’s the point - it’s not attractive to a classic football fan - but increasingly the world is full of people who want to watch Ronaldo, Messi, Salah.. whoever… and they don’t care who they play for.

It’s nothing more than an evolution of the “sign an Asian player to sell more shirts in Asia” mentality.

It feels silly and pointless to you and me because it is pointless to you and me - but in the same way people aren’t going mental for Messi in the states because they’re attracted to Miami.

The people not eat this works - is for the Saudi’s to chuck more money at it than anyone ever has and keep doing it.

I won’t be watching the Saudi League - but people will - and if they start signing talent in their prime years - people will watch it and you’d be beyond foolish to think they wouldn’t.
 
People watch the NBA, NHL etc.
Get the star players and the people will turn their heads.
Maybe not Europeans, but the Asian market definitely.
A league of all-star players will eventually be successful, I think.

I thought the same originally, In Asia at the moment and no one is watching this. There’s more watching crappy Neverton against Sheff United right now. Agreed this may change but they are going to keep funding the league a while at huge cost to get any traction at rate they want, it defo won’t happen over night. It’s definitely not going to be like the IPL where they captured the moment and market. It doesn’t grab me to go and grab tourist ticket to watch a game to sit in the stands to experience yet unlike IPL where it would be nice to watch a game at Mumbai Indians or CSK but that’s just me…
 
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Vegas Knight just won the Stanley Cup ( NHL champs). Based in Vegas, created like 5 years ago. They have teams in cities that don't have a hockey culture and have never produced a single hockey player.
Sure many teams have history and maybe it's not a like for like with the Saudi league, but it's still a league of all stars. The best of the best.

And there are hockey cultures emerging in these markets. Texas has as many pro hockey teams as all of Canada. One of the best players in the world was born in Arizona. California loves hockey.

No, these places will never be Minnesota or Saskatchewan or Sweden, but they absolutely have footholds of hockey culture.
 
They're in the same league, everybody gets wasted, it's a total fun thing to go to and it's a cultural fit immediately.

There's zero of that taking football to a despotic regime where you can't even have a quiet drink, never mind have a party in the town square when your team plays on Saturday. They want to have what they can't have. It can't work there no matter how much money they throw at it because the whole thing from Moscow to Buenos Aires was born of billions of poor kids playing footy in the street, some going on to play for a living, most going to a bar to watch the game, and get mega happy or mega mad. You can go to any football city in the world and you'll have something to talk about on common ground with mutual understanding because of that shared experience. It's not and never will be shared with Saudi Arabia.
 
I don't know, it's just a guess. Why weren't they spending this much last year?

Feels like signing Ronaldo was the spark, but I don’t know either.

I can’t see why they’d stop - it leads to hosting a World Cup which would likely be 2034 - so surely they’ll be pumping funds into the game in Saudi until then.

I mean, they can’t own other leagues or competitions like golf and there’s limits to what teams they can own - what they can buy is players and managers and bring them to their league.
 
@Holle
You know anything bout Yusuf Demir?

20 year old, left-footed RW, currently playing for Basel.

Does he have potential?

He was highly regarded as a talent but he and his entourage including his agent had their heads turned by Barcelona where he didn't stand a chance. He then went to Turkey what young players from the Turkish diaspora always do when things go tits up. He didn't play there either. So he went to Basel. Where he has yet to get a game.

Potential yes. Brains and healthy environment absolutely no.
 
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List of Salah replacement the press will link us too
The Georgian (very unlikely, its not a league we look at)
Pedro Gonclaves (Very possible, Portuguese)
Ivan Toney (suspension ends 14th of Jan, I think he is on the list)
Gift Orban (Very unlikely, Belgium league)
Marcos Leonardo (20 year old Brazilian)
Leroy Sane (possible, German)
Bowen (depends on the price)
Felix (very unlikely, no end product)
Chiesa (Hope not, injury prone)
Florian Wirtz (???)
 
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