Les can still recover this. MP can't. Either act now, or slip through the door with him, your choice Les.
Well according to all sources Liverpool never made a bid, and weren't going to unless we invited them to, so we have no idea if the fee would've been low. The only stuff I heard at the time (no idea how true it is) was that City enquired about VVD very early on in the summer and were put off by our asking price. It is just guesswork to say that we would've got a far lower fee in the summer than we ended up getting. I personally feel we still would've been looking at £60m+ which I think would've been worth it. The tapping up thing doesn't bother me as every club does it. We will have done it before. I think we just got offended at how brazenly Liverpool did it, if they hadn't started telling the media about how they had already met with him and Liverpool were his first choice then I think they would've got their man in the summer.
I said at the time we set out a fee: 75m or we wouldn't sell. And look how much we sold him for. We prevented Liverpool from bidding, not buying him. It wasn't liverpool who put that figure on the press, it was us. Honestly I think you are looking at the small picture and we would be in a weaker position with your strategy than we are now.
I have always been a supporter of Ralph, but no more. Telling the world that we are a small club is appalling and, as he says, the buck stops with him - then he should go now.
I'm sorry but I don't understand the bit in bold? Surely if they couldn't bid for him then they couldn't buy him? All my Liverpool mates were adamant in the summer that they would bid when somebody else matched our asking price, nobody did so they couldn't bid unless invited. Anyway this is going slightly off topic and rehashing old ground and the whole VVD saga. Time will tell if your last sentence is correct. I don't see how standing our ground for 6 months changes anything in the grand scheme of things, but it is too early to tell which of us is right on that one.
You don't go into Tesco and spend 20 minutes bidding for a pint of milk. You buy it or you don't. The idea is we make teams more reluctant to do what liverpool and spend the whole window focusing on VvD to get a lower price rather than pay our asking price that they were willing to pay as just proven. It has put them in a far worse position this season not bringing in a CB. You can think of it as mutually assured destruction in a way. Not only that but we also got extra money to spend. As long as we avoid relegation then we will be in a stronger position both in our ability to bring in players and our ability to sell them. I don't think this is off topic because it's long term board strategy.
Not in the slightest, we've been on a downward slope for the last 2-3 years (despite acceptable league finishes) but the board are just incompetent in every respect. They lucked out appointing Koeman while our stock was at it's highest (thanks Cortese/Pochettino), and then comically messed up the Toby transfer, failed to strengthen the squad when we were genuinely challenging the top 4/6, then we lost Koeman because the board weren't ambitious enough to keep him. Les Reed has always got too much credit, the main men behind our success were Cortese, Paul Mitchell, Pochettino & Koeman.
I understand your analogy but it is looking at if far too simply. A pint of milk isn't going to kick off about not being sold to somebody. I (and others) have said before that if we really want to be competing regularly at the top end of the league the best/quickest way to do it is to sell our best players and invest heavily in our recruitment team to find replacements. Stopping a player who has outgrown us as a club hinders this 3 fold as it may put off players signing long term deals ie maximising their sale value, may put off new players signing with us if they have an option of another club our size (where as before we could say about the large amount of players who have made the move onto the big clubs as a selling point) and keeps a disgruntled player at the club which may impact our on pitch performances. As I said earlier it is too early to tell which/any of these things may happen, but I would suggest that they are all real possibilities. What we should've done (which I think we both would agree with, and I'm surprised didn't happen from VVD) is put a release clause in his contract of £75m or whatever so if any club bids it then he goes. Everybody knows where they stand then and it is something I hope the board adopt in the future.
The VD thing is a smoke screen. It’s nothing to do with where we are now. Fans have been telling the Board not to sell our best for years. They held that at bay for a window. Valid arguments either way but a better one is what we do now.
Reed and his chums need sacking. It is way too much of a me and my boys club now. Be a mate of Reed's and you got a job for life... Cortese isn't the answer. Kat doesn't really care
My point was the clubs stance will greatly reduce players kicking off as everyone will know where they stand with a set price... A buyout clause changes nothing. We could have just told him we would have sold him at £75m for the same effect... Which I'm sure we did. I don't think having just sold a player for a world record fee will make our club less attractive to players or agents.
It was Atlanta's first ever season in the MLS this year, under Gerardo Martino. Here's their record. 2017 P 34 W 15 L 9 D 10 Pts 55 Fr 70 Ag 40 Pos 4th (East) 21 games unbeaten at Barcelona. He took over Newell's Old Boys in Argentina when they faced relegation. Kept them up and then won the title the very next year with them. He plays high press, attacking football. It's so obvious, it actually hurts.
