we win the club world cup in 4 years time so everything will be fine
Liverpool related transfer speculation
- Thread starter dee
- Start date
- Latest activity Latest activity:
-
- Tags
- liverpool
Look, I’m all for signing Guehi and actually playing him, but Slot isn’t going to play a 4 CB regularly.
It’s pretty clear that the best defensive stats come from defenders who play together consistently.
So what do we want from our 4th CB?
I’m surprised we did sell Quansah, to be honest.
To be available when we need him.
Guehi won't be #4 CB ... he'll be #3 vying with Konate for #2 and subbing in for VvD (since LCB is his primary position) and replacing Konate when he's inevitably injured.
Won’t we be able to continue with meaningful sales in the next few years. For example, I can see Jones for £60 in a couple of years.
I'm not necessarily his biggest fan but I'd want a bit more than 60 quid for him.
There's flexibility in UEFA's rules. They tend to go after clubs who take the piss, and make allowances for those who can demonstrate they failed despite best efforts to the contrary (we were let off on this basis early in FSG's ownership). This summer they came down hard on Chelsea, Villa and Lyon, who had all been reckless. I think our spending this summer, with no plan for four years' time, could fall foul of the rules because it looks reckless and without action throws off huge losses in year four (like, £200m +) so it wouldn't be a minor failure.
As for other clubs, Chelsea are already in the shit (see my post in the Football Finance thread a few weeks back), Spurs are fine (because they can add back the depreciation cost on their stadium (about £70m per annum) and don't have much in the way of losses after that - probably most profitable club in the Premiership after adjustments), plus there are other adjustments that can be made (main one being youth spending), and clubs can also get away with a loss of up to €60m if shareholders put equity in (which is probably why United have got away with it so far, plus they're not going to be in Europe for a bit anyway).
By the same measure, even if Arsenal do breach the rules (I think they might), they'll probably get given a bit of leeway because they haven't taken the piss historically plus a chunk of their losses comes from depreciating the Emirates. They've also brought a lot of their out-sourced functions in-house because it improves their Squad Cost Ratio. And again, taking moves to comply sits well with UEFA.
We normally make £30-40m on sales each summer, I'm talking about making an extra £150-200m ON TOP of that.
Realistically, if we sign Isak as well this summer, we may need to sell him or Wirtz in 3 years' time...
Our attack is now Salah, Wirtz, Gakpo, Ekitike, Nunez, and Chiesa. If Nunez and Chiesa leave, @Beamrider will we have the space to get another two in attack. Isak plus Fofana?
Diaz will be leaving. If Nunez and Chiesa leave, we should have HG spots. We will also gain one from selling one of Robbo or Tsimi. We should be fine from that angle.
I just repeat what the home grown expert, StevieM. Who himself isn’t home grown.
I can see Slot giving Rio the 6th attacker slot.
If we’re signing Isak I’d prefer us to think next of CBs rather than another attacker…For me Fofana might quickly look like he’s blocking a superior youngster in Rio.
From a purely financial perspective, I'd be opposed to signing Isak. It pushes us to the limits over the next 5 years, huge fee, huge wages.
Fofana was linked to Everton overnight, rumoured fee of £30-35m. I'd be OK with paying that kind of money, but not for a player who Everton think is within their reach, because that means he's probably shite.
I'm assuming Nunez and Chiesa will be gone anyway, so it's not like they're raising money / saving wages to pay for Isak, their sales are already needed to pay for the guys we've already signed, Diaz too for that matter.
With hindsight, if we'd binned off Ekitike (I'm very nervous that he's not going to work out) and signed Isak instead, that would have been do'able financially - still a stretch, but less so. I worry that if we sign Isak now then Ekitike doesn't get the time and space to prove himself and ends up being a very expensive bench-warmer, always living in the shadow of a better player.
But I'm also worried that Ekitike just isn't going to be good enough, particularly if we can't coach out of him his tendency to try to score from far out - I'm sure I saw a shot-map showing a huge volume of shots from outside the box last season, with no goals. I'd hope that's a consequence of playing in a lesser team and not having chances created closer to goal, but if he tries that shit too often in a red shirt then his team mates are going to lose patience with him very quickly.
Not bad, not bad at all.
@Beamrider being nervous makes me nervous! Me not likey!
Don’t worry. We’re selling Mo next year.
I’m obviously not making myself clear in these posts.
I don’t see Guehi as 4th CB - I see him as playing significant minutes in rotation with Virgil & Ibou - kind of like, as a example, Jones does with Mac & Dom.
The question is about a 4th choice CB.
Do you have Gomez as the nominal 4th CB, bring in an older player to cover in emergencies or bring in a younger player to develop but is good enough to play if required.
I don’t think you rotate your CB’s much - 3 players covering 2 positions I could see, but 4 is too many to rotate regularly, so the 4th CB is likely to play domestic cup, CL & PL dead rubbers and spend a lot of time either sitting on the bench or watching from the stands and only used as a emergency.
It’s the equivalent position of the 3rd GK for me.
Gomez is ideal because he can cover both FB positions too and even DM in an emergency and is good enough to actually hold down a starting position in the first team - he’s just always injured and therefore an increased risk.
Bringing in an older player is likely to be a compromise on quality or more likely to require a valuable OS slot, which, as I’ve previously mentioned “could” limit us in other areas.
Bringing in a younger player, particularly one that still qualifies as an U21 is likely to be expensive and we might not be able to give the player much in the way of game time to develop.
Slot’s comments seem to suggest more towards leaning to risking Gomez and using the likes of Endo and Gravy as further back up - which I’m ok with IF we sign Guehi or someone at a similar quality level.
I find the older player option less appealing because I’d want the player to be a good fit for what we want at CB - tall, strong, fast and technically competent enough to progress play through passing or carries.
We sort of know if the player isn’t good enough, Slot just won’t play him anyway.
My preference is to sign Guehi and bring in a younger player in the 19-21 range that has a high ceiling and we can spend a season drilling him in our defensive structure with next season being either more game time if Konate goes or a season long loan to a good team for more game time.
The 4th CB doesn’t matter as much as long as we sign someone like Guehi though.
Fofana is U21, so for the EPL he doesn’t need to be registered.
He would for Europe though - so we’d have to sell more than Nunez & Chiesa or technically, not register more than Nunez & Chiesa for Europe.
Selling, for example, Tsimikas solves the problem.
This is my problem with CB though - because we’d have to sell another OS player to then bring in a CB who can be registered for both PL & Europe if he isn’t HG.
Let me put this bluntly, using my numbers as I've previously set them out (adjusted for a lower fee for Lucho as announced today) and I've also done a bit of finessing on wages:
Impact of this summer's dealings on FFP profits (assuming we sell Darwin, Elliot, Doak, Kostas, Chiesa, Morton) and buy Isak and Guehi (or Fofana instead of Guehi, if that's how you roll).
I've also assumed a deduction for full wages of the guys sold (i.e. I assumed that instead of replacing them, we extended their contracts out 5 years on existing terms). In that context, what I'm presenting here is the incremental cost of the new additions over the status quo.
These are individual annual results:
25-26 plus £129m
26-27 minus £84m
27-28 minus £117m
29-29 minus £105m
29-30 minus £94m
Impact on FFP (UEFA target €5m loss over 3 years) - these are the impact on three-year results:
25-26 plus £129m
26-27 plus £45m (£129m - £84m)
27-28 minus £72m (£129m - £84m - £117m)
28-29 minus £306m (-£84m - £117m - £105m)
29-30 minus £316m (-£117m - £105m - £94m)
Seriously, look how fucked that is in 28-29 and 29-30. We could even fail Premier League targets.
Impact of this summer's dealings on FFP profits (assuming we sell Darwin, Elliot, Doak, Kostas, Chiesa, Morton) and buy Isak and Guehi (or Fofana instead of Guehi, if that's how you roll).
I've also assumed a deduction for full wages of the guys sold (i.e. I assumed that instead of replacing them, we extended their contracts out 5 years on existing terms). In that context, what I'm presenting here is the incremental cost of the new additions over the status quo.
These are individual annual results:
25-26 plus £129m
26-27 minus £84m
27-28 minus £117m
29-29 minus £105m
29-30 minus £94m
Impact on FFP (UEFA target €5m loss over 3 years) - these are the impact on three-year results:
25-26 plus £129m
26-27 plus £45m (£129m - £84m)
27-28 minus £72m (£129m - £84m - £117m)
28-29 minus £306m (-£84m - £117m - £105m)
29-30 minus £316m (-£117m - £105m - £94m)
Seriously, look how fucked that is in 28-29 and 29-30. We could even fail Premier League targets.
What about the £125 mill we get for Mo and the £600k/week we aren’t paying him and Virgil?
It's actually going to need something like that to balance it all out.
There's a lot riding on Ekitike being the mutt's nuts and not needing replacing, on Isak not breaking down all the time, on Virgil being a don until he's 40.
Isak contributes £140m and £134m to those losses in 28-29 and 29-30 respectively. He's a no-go for me. Let him run his contract down and buy him on the (relative) cheap when Mo retires and we all give up on Hugo because he turns out to be shit.
Can't we? I mean we've spent a fortune on new stands and training grounds !
am i fuck learning how to pronounce that, he’d better be fourth choice
See bolded bit above.
Is this how FSG roll? They have been exceedingly prudent up until now. I can't believe they would suddenly say 'fuck it' and throw cash around willy nilly UNLESS they knew how they were going to bankroll it (WCC, sponsorship or whatever).
Yes we can and will, but for context, our depreciation in 2023-24 was only £15m. Annie Road will increase that, but not massively. Spurs' new ground was a whole different magnitude - they spent £1.5bn, we probably spent about £250m across the Main Stand, Annie Road and training ground.
Similar threads
- Locked
