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Oh Jota night

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From what I've read on other forums people are a bit "meh" about the transfer. Personally, I really don't know if I should be excited about it or not.
Not sure which forums you're reading but it's virtually unanimous on Red Cafe (from supporters of all teams and across 5-6 pages) that it's a very good buy indeed. They are upset how we keep deferring payment though!
 
Fucking 45M ? Fucking hell that really is mad. Anyway, just hope he aint no sick-note like Lallana, and the other guy we signed today. Also glad we did not sign that guy from Watford, if he really was our first choice, I dont rate him at all.
Jota does not have record of injuries. He only scored 7 goals with 1 assist in the league, his other 9 came from domestic and European competitions. I doubt he was on anyone's radar other than management's and one or two Twitter posters. Not awed by the signings but comfortable knowing the coaching staff wanted him even at £45m, so they see something in him
 
Signed
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[article]Jürgen Klopp has identified Diogo Jota as a natural fit for his Liverpool squad and a player who provides 'real options' across the midfield and forward line.

Jota completed a permanent transfer to the Reds on a long-term deal on Saturday, following three seasons with Wolverhampton Wanderers – two in the Premier League and one in the Championship.

The 23-year-old is the third new recruit for 2020-21, after swoops for Thiago Alcantara and Kostas Tsimikas, and arrives having struck 44 goals in the past three campaigns.

Klopp is delighted to have secured the versatile forward and he explained what he expects from the new No.20 during an exclusive interview with Liverpoolfc.com…

Can you tell us why Diogo was someone you wanted to bring to Liverpool?

Oh my god, plenty of reasons! He’s a player who gives us so many options to use him. He’s 23 years old, still far away from being kind of a finished article, so much potential. He has the speed, he can combine, can defend, can press. It makes it just more unpredictable and gives us real options for different systems because he can play pretty much all three positions up front in a 4-3-3, if we play with four midfielders he can play both wings. So, these kinds of things. It’s just nice. And he has some natural things which we have in our game, like this desire and the greed and the direction. He is part of this unbelievable Portuguese generation in the moment, where they have really a lot of obviously quite skilled players. We saw the Portuguese team last time, it’s quite impressive. So, I’m really happy to have him here. And on top of that, a really good guy and really happy to be here.

Have you had a chance to speak to him yet? How did that conversation go?

Yes, very good – I met him and his girlfriend. Very nice, both speak very good English. I knew it before, obviously we spoke before, and he is a really nice and smart person. He will fit really well in this squad.

You’re a big admirer of Wolves and what Nuno Espirito Santo does there. Is that something that will help his transition into what you do here?

Yeah, I like what Wolves are doing. They obviously play a completely different system but what they do is ask pretty much all offensive players for proper defensive work – and the whole team there is doing that, and Diogo as well. Of course, that’s one of the things. Of course he has to adapt to a few things and has to learn a few things – what we do differently because there are, of course, differences – but a lot of things are already there. And so I’m really excited.

Is it the room for potential that excites you the most and do you sense that he’s relishing that challenge here as well?

He knows it’s a step for him, he knows that. Of course it is. We always talk about these kinds of things; who can improve our team, the team who won pretty much everything last year? A lot of things can improve us, just if you want to come and play 500 games in a row then it could be slightly difficult. He knows it’s a step for him and he can give us things we don’t have – that’s why it’s cool. The space for improvement is not what I like most, but it’s there. He is now already ready to play for us but yes, I’m pretty sure there’s something to come. And the way we play, the way we train and the way we treat people, I think will help him as well. And, of course, being in a team like this is good because [there are] good players around you, make yourself better. That’s how it will be with him as well and what he will do with us.

He takes Adam Lallana’s number, 20. A big shirt to fill…

It’s a nice number, No.20. Confident as well, did I mention that? All good. I’m pretty sure Adam is completely fine with that. Both obviously really good footballers – different players, but really good footballers. Both run a lot, so at least the shirt is used to that! There will be a lot of sweat after the game![/article]
 
[article]Wolves chief Nuno Espirito Santo – after being coy about Jota's omission as Wolves lost to Stoke in the Carabao Cup on Thursday – wished him well on Merseyside, as he said: "First of all I want to apologise for Thursday – I hope you understand my answers. Sometimes you have to be private.

"Regarding Diogo, he is amazing. Everyone knows the relationship we have built over the last three years, particularly at Wolves.


“What Diogo has done for us is amazing. I think Diogo is going to the right place, and we wish him all the best, knowing that he will never be forgotten, especially by our fans for all the memorable things that Diogo provided in the three seasons here at Wolves."

Jota was an unused substitute as Wolves beat Sheffield United in their first game of the new Premier League season and was then absent against the Potters.

He scored 44 goals in 131 appearances for Wolves after joining from Atletico Madrid, initially on loan before completing a permanent move in the summer of 2018 for £13m.

"Things happen naturally. Diogo had three fantastic seasons so it’s normal that other clubs look at our squad and see the quality and the talent we have and try to bring them to our clubs," said Nuno, who has signed defender Ki-Jana Hoever from Liverpool in deal worth up to £13.5m.

“In this case it’s good for Liverpool, because Jurgen (Klopp) is going to have a very good player and a fantastic boy.

“At the same time, we’ve done the business and have the money that we hope can provide us with new things and better players for us."

He added: "We still have to adjust the squad – we need to balance our squad better.

“We have already identified the targets, we know the player we want to bring and now we hope our plan continues as it did previously.

“So Jeff (Shi) knows our target, where we need to work on the squad."[/article]
 
[article]Jürgen Klopp has identified Diogo Jota as a natural fit for his Liverpool squad and a player who provides 'real options' across the midfield and forward line.

Jota completed a permanent transfer to the Reds on a long-term deal on Saturday, following three seasons with Wolverhampton Wanderers – two in the Premier League and one in the Championship.

The 23-year-old is the third new recruit for 2020-21, after swoops for Thiago Alcantara and Kostas Tsimikas, and arrives having struck 44 goals in the past three campaigns.

Klopp is delighted to have secured the versatile forward and he explained what he expects from the new No.20 during an exclusive interview with Liverpoolfc.com…

Can you tell us why Diogo was someone you wanted to bring to Liverpool?

Oh my god, plenty of reasons! He’s a player who gives us so many options to use him. He’s 23 years old, still far away from being kind of a finished article, so much potential. He has the speed, he can combine, can defend, can press. It makes it just more unpredictable and gives us real options for different systems because he can play pretty much all three positions up front in a 4-3-3, if we play with four midfielders he can play both wings. So, these kinds of things. It’s just nice. And he has some natural things which we have in our game, like this desire and the greed and the direction. He is part of this unbelievable Portuguese generation in the moment, where they have really a lot of obviously quite skilled players. We saw the Portuguese team last time, it’s quite impressive. So, I’m really happy to have him here. And on top of that, a really good guy and really happy to be here.

Have you had a chance to speak to him yet? How did that conversation go?

Yes, very good – I met him and his girlfriend. Very nice, both speak very good English. I knew it before, obviously we spoke before, and he is a really nice and smart person. He will fit really well in this squad.

You’re a big admirer of Wolves and what Nuno Espirito Santo does there. Is that something that will help his transition into what you do here?

Yeah, I like what Wolves are doing. They obviously play a completely different system but what they do is ask pretty much all offensive players for proper defensive work – and the whole team there is doing that, and Diogo as well. Of course, that’s one of the things. Of course he has to adapt to a few things and has to learn a few things – what we do differently because there are, of course, differences – but a lot of things are already there. And so I’m really excited.

Is it the room for potential that excites you the most and do you sense that he’s relishing that challenge here as well?

He knows it’s a step for him, he knows that. Of course it is. We always talk about these kinds of things; who can improve our team, the team who won pretty much everything last year? A lot of things can improve us, just if you want to come and play 500 games in a row then it could be slightly difficult. He knows it’s a step for him and he can give us things we don’t have – that’s why it’s cool. The space for improvement is not what I like most, but it’s there. He is now already ready to play for us but yes, I’m pretty sure there’s something to come. And the way we play, the way we train and the way we treat people, I think will help him as well. And, of course, being in a team like this is good because [there are] good players around you, make yourself better. That’s how it will be with him as well and what he will do with us.

He takes Adam Lallana’s number, 20. A big shirt to fill…

It’s a nice number, No.20. Confident as well, did I mention that? All good. I’m pretty sure Adam is completely fine with that. Both obviously really good footballers – different players, but really good footballers. Both run a lot, so at least the shirt is used to that! There will be a lot of sweat after the game![/article]
Jurgen pretty much saying and confirming what I said. It just makes so much more sense than Sarr. Although I still wouldn't be shocked if we got a player like Sarr in future to just give us raw physicality and a different option to Bobby; to give us a completely different option up top (CF) to replace Origi.
 
Good read from the Wolves reporter at The Athletic:

Jota’s genius will be missed but Wolves couldn’t be sentimental about £45m
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By Tim Spiers
On the opening day of their 2020-21 Premier League campaign, Wolves swatted aside Sheffield United 2-0. At times they played with freedom and flair, their forwards fluidly interchanged… Raul Jimenez scored, Daniel Podence and Pedro Neto provided an assist apiece, it was Wolves 4.0.

Unused substitute Diogo Jota didn’t play a single minute. And no one really batted an eyelid.

Jota tailed off towards the end of last season and endured a frustrating couple of months, missing good chances and looking desperately short of confidence, to the extent that he only started three of Wolves’ final eight games. When Nuno Espirito Santo’s team lined up for one of the club’s biggest matches in 50 years, a Europa League quarter-final against Sevilla, Jota wasn’t in the XI. He wasn’t even the first attacking substitute Nuno sent on that night. It was arguably the lowest point of Jota’s three-year Wolves career.
It’s in this context that a transfer fee of up to £45 million from Liverpool represents outstanding business for Wolves.


Not even six weeks after that loss to Sevilla, he’s moving from the Molineux bench to the champions of England. Liverpool supporters may wonder why exactly that is.

Well, for a start, Jota is Wolves’ best forward on his day. Better even than Adama Traore. His skill set, work rate, unstinting tenacity, strength, dribbling ability and his goals and assists output place him above Traore, Neto and Podence.

He’s taken to English football like bread to butter since arriving in summer 2017, formed at-times telepathic understandings with Jimenez and Jonny Castro Otto, been fearless in attack, performed an outstanding job for the team on endless occasions and been kicked to kingdom come and dusted himself down and got on with it. Qualities that Jurgen Klopp clearly admires.
He’s provided memories that will last for decades and he’s only 23. His best is yet to come.

It’s in this context that a transfer fee of up to £45 million from Liverpool could represent outstanding business… for Liverpool.
Nuno decided at the start of the summer that Jota, who only moved house in Wolverhampton a couple of months ago and recently announced he’s expecting his first child with his partner Rute, could move on for the right price, hence his unused substitute appearance on Monday at Bramall Lane and a hasty exit from Molineux on Thursday night before the Carabao Cup defeat to Stoke.
It’s felt, primarily, that while he may go on and do great things at Liverpool, he’s peaked at Wolves.

More importantly, Wolves’ style is evolving. Their swashbuckling counter-attacks will always be there, but Nuno doesn’t want those counter-attacks to define how his team score goals. He wants more possession, he wants to dominate opponents from back to front, from minute one to minute 90. Wolves are changing.

Jota is perhaps the ultimate counter-attacking player and Wolves believe that different players (Podence and Neto for a start, but in time Fabio Silva and future signings) will be better suited to the new style.

Just when Wolves looked to have, by normal standards, strength in depth in the forward areas, Jota’s exit leaves a vacancy to fill on the face of it, but The Athletic understands he won’t be directly replaced during this window.

Nuno reiterated last week his unstinting desire for a small senior squad. Jota being on the bench didn’t fit that philosophy.
Wolves do hope to strengthen elsewhere in the coming weeks, but in Jimenez, Neto, Podence, Traore and Silva they feel they have enough competition in the attacking positions, particularly in a new-look 3-5-2 formation which looks set to stay for the time being.
It should also be stated that the Fosun business model doesn’t align with Wolves rushing out and spending £45 million on a proven replacement. They’ll buy young, they’ll look for bargains, they’ll sell for a big profit before the player’s value depreciates. Silva, fellow 18-year-old Ki-Jana Hoever and Vitinha, 20, all fit the textbook recruitment model, not a £45 million ready-made forward.
The primary concern with Jota’s departure and that of Matt Doherty to Tottenham Hotspur is the goals and assists they take with them… a combined 34 in all competitions last season.

Traore, who scored four times in the Premier League last season, has been identified as a source of extra goals, and he was notably handed a shoot-on-sight licence against Sheffield United. Elsewhere, the mantle will pass to Podence and Neto to make up the shortfall.

From a small sample size of 550 minutes in a Wolves shirt, Podence (one goal, four assists) has provided either a goal or an assist every 110 minutes. Neto (six goals, five assists) is up at one goal involvement every 160 minutes. Jota’s 26 goals and 13 assists during his two top-flight seasons with Wolves see his figure at a goal or assist every 146 minutes.

While the fee is a maximum of £45 million with add-ons, Wolves will initially receive less than £4.5 million of that in the next 12 months. That’s a common way that they do business for their incoming transfers and indeed some outgoing, such as Helder Costa to Leeds United. Wolves will receive £5 million a year for the next four years from Elland Road.

Their flexibility was said to be key to the Jota deal, but while Wolves’ first-year income is meagre, Liverpool will ultimately pay more over time than they’d likely have been willing to shell out in one lump sum. For example, Wolves would have accepted a straight £35 million offer, but the champions wanted to spread the cost long-term and therefore paid extra because of that.

In Jota, Costa (£20 million) and Doherty (£15 million, paid up front by Spurs), Wolves have negotiated three deals that will eventually see them receive £80 million. Costa was surplus to requirements, Jota had dipped out of the first team and Doherty would have little resale in two years’ time given he turns 29 in January.

That long-term business logic, as you’d expect from an investment firm like Fosun, is sound, but ultimately fans care little for profit, loss and bank balances; they want Wolves to kick on this season and challenge for the top six and they want to see their favourite players stay at the club. Fosun is a business, Fosun isn’t sentimental, Fosun wants a return on its investment.

Jota will be missed. He wasn’t perfect his scoring record was streakier than a pound of smoked bacon, he could easily go two months without contributing anything in front of goal and at that age he wasn’t the finished article.

But at his best he was unstoppable. An electric whippet of skill, trickery and fearlessness.

Via the Jorge Mendes carousel, he sacrificed Champions League football with Porto for the Championship, as did Nuno, Ruben Neves and Willy Boly.

There was his double salvo to beat Nottingham Forest early in that Championship season. A few weeks later he left Aston Villa duo James Chester and Robert Snodgrass doing a Laurel & Hardy impression when they tripped over each other trying to block a stunning drive into the corner which sent Molineux berserk.

Add to those his goal against Chelsea which ended a 13-game scoreless streak at the start of the first Premier League campaign; a breathtaking hat-trick against Leicester City including a last-minute 4-3 winner which led Nuno to take leave of his senses and run onto the pitch; a last-gasp equaliser against Crystal Palace early last season which got Wolves out of a massive bottom-three-shaped hole; a breathtaking 11-minute hat-trick against Besiktas; another treble against Espanyol; a goal at Spurs in March before he set up Jimenez for the winner.
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And then the small matter of an era-defining strike, a seminal moment in Nuno’s reign, that heart-stopping, lung-bursting, emotion-inducing winner against Manchester United in a 2018-19 FA Cup quarter-final (above). He ran from halfway, left Luke Shaw eating grass and kerplunked his shot past Sergio Romero. Molineux shook to its core. Time stopped. People cried. It was the goal that defined a generation. Not bad, Diogo.

His ability to gain 40 yards in the blink of eye was exceptional. At first in England, he would feign injury and bleat to the referee — he soon cut that out and used his deceptive strength to shrug off defenders who hopelessly clawed at him like deranged zombies trying to catch the last surviving human.

It always felt like Jota would be one who went to the very top with Wolves, should they get there, from the Championship to the Champions League. That’s what he does on Football Manager, taking charge of small teams and guiding them to glory. It’s how he saw his Wolves career, too.

But this is a different Wolves era, one where sentimentality carries absolutely no weight whatsoever.
Jota joins an increasing list of fan favourites who’ve departed either before or at their peak; Doherty, Ivan Cavaleiro, Barry Douglas.
It’s worked for Wolves so far.
 
Jota does not have record of injuries. He only scored 7 goals with 1 assist in the league, his other 9 came from domestic and European competitions. I doubt he was on anyone's radar other than management's and one or two Twitter posters. Not awed by the signings but comfortable knowing the coaching staff wanted him even at £45m, so they see something in him
I think we signed him because of the payment terms we could struck and he is willing to play second fiddle for our current front 3 for now. Or else I cannot wrap my head around why at £50m we cannot put out for Werner that scores so many more goals and £45m for someone who had only scored slightly more than a handful. All the plaudits given to that fella Edwards, not sure what he's doing here.
 
I think we signed him because of the payment terms we could struck and he is willing to play second fiddle for our current front 3 for now. Or else I cannot wrap my head around why at £50m we cannot put out for Werner that scores so many more goals and £45m for someone who had only scored slightly more than a handful. All the plaudits given to that fella Edwards, not sure what he's doing here.
44 goals in 121 games for Wolves is a lot more than a handful!
 
I think we signed him because of the payment terms we could struck and he is willing to play second fiddle for our current front 3 for now. Or else I cannot wrap my head around why at £50m we cannot put out for Werner that scores so many more goals and £45m for someone who had only scored slightly more than a handful. All the plaudits given to that fella Edwards, not sure what he's doing here.

Guessing the ability the spread the payments over time and maybe Leipzig were not willing to do the same? Plus some of the 45 million is bonuses I would guess. Additionally Wolves paid 13 million for a player who wasn't going to break in our first team.
 
1 in 3, for a player who is signicantly younger than our front three and who can play a number of positions. Wolves also play differently to us, in a more creative frontline and pressing higher he'll likely progress and improve further on that.
 
Pretty much everything to like about this signing. But the work behind the scenes has been absolutely immense.
 
44 goals in 121 games for Wolves is a lot more than a handful!
I am actually going by the post I quoted, and I have to admit that I don't particularly paying much attention on players at Wolves either. So my mistake for not checking his stats.
 
I am actually going by the post I quoted, and I have to admit that I don't particularly paying much attention on players at Wolves either. So my mistake for not checking his stats.
He only scored 7 in the league season and had 1 assist, his domestic and Europa stats were far better but that could be down to the poor opposition.
If Klopp wants him and the club has paid £40m ish then they must see something, probably the same thing they saw in Salah and Mane?
 
Just look how often he gets on the box and scores. That's what we're missing at times.

I feel we'll start to see 4231 more this season, especially with Thiago here and a general need to innovate.

Bobby's finishing just isn't cutting it lately.

Trent and Robertson will absolutely love having Jota on the pitch.
 
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