The Reus delusion
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Updated that for you.
The "The Rolls Reus Ruse"
£25m isn't elite money anymore though, perhaps it was five or so years ago.
£25m now buys you very good/great players or young players with big potential (as perceived by buyer and seller of course).
Who has gone for £25m in the last two or three windows, that has had a decent amount of time left on their contract and no other devaluing circumstances, that you would consider elite?
Two players that Liverpool missed out on - Mikhtarian and Willian - went for £25-30m. Both good players but I wouldn't consider either elite.
I just don't think that that is elite money anymore - Liverpool weren't far off that with the Torres and Suarez deals - I'm more than willing to be proved wrong on it though.
Iturbe was technically bought by the club that he was playing for already, he could still go.
lallana's fee would have made more sense if he was 21/22 years old.
no shit
Lallana's fee made perfect sense.
How much would you expect to pay for a player who:
1) was club captain;
2) had four years left on his current contract;
3) was his club's player of the season;
4) his current club did not want to sell;
5) had just had a second very good year in the top tier of English football;
6) is capped by his country.
?
The only thing Adam Lallana is missing is experience in European football.
Southampton set the fee, the buying club pays it. In the current market, £25m was the going rate and Liverpool chose to pay it. It's not the fee that's skewed; it is the perception of what that kind of money buys now.
I see no reason why a player at Dortmund who has already shown willing to leave may well consider Liverpool... firstly if you ask me talented though he is he is hardly a household name and secondly because Dortmund are hardly the mega giant are they...
it most likely is total BS but that doesnt mean we cant buy him.
it most likely is total BS but that doesnt mean we cant buy him.
Yes add that in too and the sell on fee - that also drove the price up. It's starting to look like we should have paid a bit more ha.
But yes, some conflicting reports on the fee but if it is £16m rising to £25m (or thereabouts) based on performances then surely we'll be happy to pay out given that £25m means that he and we have been a success.
£16m rising to £25m with bonuses I think it was.
In fact there's no doubt in my mind, that given what Shaw went for and what Southampton are asking for Lovren, that Liverpool and Southampton met in the middle on Lallana's transfer fee.
But this is a Reus thread, so to bring it back on point:
It is speculated that Reus has a buyout clause of €35million active as of 2015 (when he would also enter the final year of his current deal). Would you pay what it would take (easily upwards of €45m) to prise Reus away now or wait and pay the buyout clause? I'd imagine he's not going to be allowed to run his contract down.
But this is a Reus thread, so to bring it back on point:
It is speculated that Reus has a buyout clause of €35million active as of 2015 (when he would also enter the final year of his current deal). Would you pay what it would take (easily upwards of €45m) to prise Reus away now or wait and pay the buyout clause? I'd imagine he's not going to be allowed to run his contract down.
Now or never for Reus.
That's my thought as well. Chelsea/Arsenal have done most of their spending, United are focused on other targets, Bayern don't care, Barca splurged on Suarez, Real on Rodriguez, and PSG seemingly on Di Maria.
Thirded. I don't think money is the concern here -- we'll happily splash the cash -- it's convincing him to join us.
Yep we'll have even less chance of signing him when/if the alleged clause comes to effect as he will have a dozen suitors then. No idea if it's even remotely possible now either though.
This one you mean? This list includes four players in the ballpark of Lallana's fee. What relevance do the rest of the players in that list have? The other players went for huge sums to the richest clubs in the world and were/are paid very high wages.
But to address the three players that I believe are semi-relevant (although none of them actually play across that attacking line in the positions that Lallana does, they are all very central so aren't even comparable players...)
Fabregas - unwanted by Barcelona hence the low fee. I shudder to think what wages Chelsea are paying him, out of the question for a club like ours who have been actively trimming the wage bill for the last few seasons.
Van Persie - in the final year of his contract, desperate to leave and 29.
Yaya Toure - £26m four years ago (see my post about when £25m last bought you an elite player...). If you believe the BBC report from the time he too was told that he was surplus to requirements by Barcelona.
Luka Modric - agitated for a move all summer, Tottenham resisted. His move went through in last few days of the window. Tottenham got a good fee for a very good player who wanted out.
So I've gone back and read the list but I still have a question.
Who do you think we could have signed/is available for £16m/£25m that is an elite player and isn't in the last year of their contract or being forced out by their club/third party ownership?
Lallana isn't an elite player by any means, lets get that sorted first. He's tiers below options like Fabregas, and is heavily overrated because of the premiership proven myth. But that's all arguing semantics
Some options I personally liked.
Fabregas 29M would have been a good option, but his wages could be prohibitive.
Dusan Tadic 12M was who Southampton replaced him with. Great player for half(!) the cost.
Roberto Firmino 15M, coming off a breakout season, destined for big things.
Shaqiri 18M, Strong WC and has been known as a great talent not getting the minutes for years.
We've proven that third party ownership doesn't matter by signing Markovic and paying the other 50% owners off for their share. But the fact of the matter is that we overpayed almost twofold for a player who was linked only to us seriously, and very clearly wanted the transfer to happen. I'm convinced that we are just terrible negotiators when it comes to players without release clauses.
He is boss to be fair. I would have been happy with him and did suggest him in the Lallana alternatives thread.
Nobody wants Eredivisie players though.
Erm Luis?
I don't disagree with any of that and at no point have I said that Lallana is an elite player, in fact my point all along has been that £25m doesn't buy you an elite player anymore (your original post I first responded to about it being "elite money").
Any of those would be great options, but you've discounted Fabregas yourself and he is the only "elite" player on your list.
So do you still contend that £25m is elite player money in 2014? I'm talking under normal circumstances obviously, there will always be the odd occasions when top class talent goes for under market value.
Aside from Fabregas, who was forced out at Barca, I cannot think of any elite player who went for a fee in the region of £25m in the last two or so years. I can think of great players that went for that money and went on to be elite players mind.
By the way, I do agree that fee-for-fee, player-for-player we probably could have got better value for money than Lallana - Reus would represent that for me, he may cost more but he has a higher ceiling in my opinion - but Rodgers believes that he is what we need for the way he wants us to play so it's not necessarily cast in stone that we could have got better at this price for the team.
What in fucks name has Dusan Tadic done to be considered "great".
I'd never heard of him till 3 weeks ago - and I fully expect him to be as shite as Victor Wanyama - the only Southampton player no-one has tried to buy this summer.
I'd never heard of him till 3 weeks ago - and I fully expect him to be as shite as Victor Wanyama - the only Southampton player no-one has tried to buy this summer.
He is pretty damn good. Can play a load of positions. Scores loads and assists even more. He had something like the 3rd most assists in Europe a few years ago. 16 goals and 14 assists last season in 33 games.
Unless you are talking about the war criminal of course. He is a cunt.
Calling 25M elite money for a CM/CAM was probably hyperbolic on my part in hindsight. But that doesn't mean 25M is just the cost to do business either, that's a lazy settlement by a lot of people trying to justify the transfer. There's an argument to be made though that it's quite a bit closer to being the price of top tier players than we'd like to admit.
Fabregas for 30M, Modric for 26M, Lavezzi 26M, and Nasri 24M are good benchmarks for that, wages and draw be damned. As far as younger players go, Isco for 26M, or even Markovic for 20M quid seems like the price to pay for an elite youngster. If Sterling was some Polish speedster, he would be worth 25-30M as well.
If you look at transfers by other big clubs, specifically Bayern and Juve, you see that they don't splash cash on every transfer. Granted they have massive pull, but they pick and choose the targets to spend big money on, and make do with cheap deals elsewhere. We seem to be of the mindset where we need to show everybody how big our dick is, so we splash 25M on Lallana just to show we can, which has gotten us in trouble in the past.
I guess 25M is around the point where you can get those "second tier" players who are not quite elite, but could ascend or are descending. Pretty much everybody we've discussed ends up somewhere in that bracket. It feels like we paid that sort of cash for a "third tier" player, a guy who isn't quite on par with the rest, and shouldn't command such a huge fee. If we were aiming for that sort of a player, seemingly in an effort to save some cash instead of splurging in the scenario we keep Suarez, we failed miserably by overpaying and losing our best player in one fell swoop.
Appreciate you taking the time to respond Whirly and I can certainly see and appreciate your point of view.
I'm on the fence with regards to this transfer, we paid the asking price or thereabouts for a player we really wanted; now we see how it goes. It was clear that he was pursued from the off and was obviously a top target or else perhaps the club would have waited to see who became available.
The only thing I would say is that of the transfer examples you've just listed only Fabregas moved this summer, with Lavezzi being the next most current (2012?). I think price comparisons to previous years become a bit skewed now with the influx of extra TV money this season on a domestic scale and the influence of the Bale transfer on an international scale. We are also in a World Cup year so you can add £10m to anyone's value who had a decent tournament.
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