You tell me to move on when you keep coming out with porkies. Please inform us that you did not type said quote? Even Ze called you bandwagon but you didn't go after him did you. Just hit the ignore button.
So echo etc reporting that it was FSG that said no to BR over Dempsey. The reasons given were age of player & length of time remaining on his contract. If true this is quite simply a disgrace. I understand their "young player" policy as a general rule; Having older more expensive players dominate your squad makes the budget inflexible. We get it. But this has to be balanced with showing your manager that you trust his judgement. The same manager that despite all that was said to the contrary at the start of the transfer window realized he had to clear out before acquiring new players. Can anyone suggest he could have done a better job of releasing funds and removing the costliest deadwood? In fact some here argue he was too brutal! So he's not going to them asking them to pay for yet another oldie to add to the pile. Dempsey is only 29 for Gods sake! Using last years transfer failings is a cop out. These people brought in so called experts and ended up choosing BR. How can they then second guess him? They've made it quite clear with numerous errors that they don't have the know how in football. BR is that know how; either you trust him & the so called experts(who were they by the way?) that advised you to get him or get out of the sport. I've accepted pretty much everything including the "growing pains" with a smile & only occasional grump but if the system remains as fundamentally flawed as this: that we have owners who don't know enough to be hands on but don't trust the people they employ to BR hands off; any long term plan will be undermined. Yeah, it was only Dempsey this time but what if by a miracle we get into the champions league in the future & BR goes asking for the players to keep us there and these idiots say no again? Take a look Arsenal way for that vision of the future: woohoo! We're participators! They also let BR go around assuming he was getting the players (why not; their earlier statements should have gave him confidence) when there was a Definately boundry. I can't see him talking like that if he had been told not above 4 million. Where is this tosser of a communications director who should be advising what is said (including by the manager) released etc. he appears to be doing nothing different than when he was a hack; tweeting news occasionally. So they saved us. Round of applause. They got us some deals, round of applause. Now step back, shut up and let your team who know football do their bloody jobs or as I said sell to someone who knows the actual game. It's not a disaster, BR has a small but improved squad that should (injuries aside) be successful. But the inflexibility of the owners will bite us again.
Cracking read Frank, will have to read it again in the morning when I'm sober. Can't fully digest it, but the Arsenal part is worrying.
Baz, I get on great with you and think you add a lot to this site to make it interesting & worthwhile. And yes if someone is rude to you, you can call them on it. I would do the same. But this continuous back & forth tit for tat that it descends into is disheartening. And casting doubt on people's loyalty to their team just because they don't agree with you is bad to see. By all means call them a twat but they're still a LFC twat: that's still a superior being to the average twat! You don't have to listen to me mate but I would make the following suggestion: If a LFC fan is rude to you call them on it, have your say then drop it. If they continue to be rude or attack you I have personally witnessed & benefitted from it on here enough times to be confident that the LFC pack in general will deal with such a person. We don't all have to get along. There's a couple of people (LFC fans ) that I'd say I'm not overly fond of on here & I'm sure I provoke the same response in them but I think it's pointless going to war as an Internet war is never won, it's entrenched repetitive mind numbingly boring and ultimately alienates the two people from everybody else. WUMS are different altogether and I have absolutely no problems with your methodology in dealing with them; it's superior to my own! As I said take or leave my advice; it's given without ulterior motive!
Sorry Baz, stupid app not working properly. Had to log in on main site on phone which was showing me already in this thread even though I wasn't anymore: suppose heavy traffic tonight. Have you ever done it to me? You've done that patronizing "leave it to the big boys" crap a couple of times but it doesn't bother me & I'm never sure whether you're being serious or on the wind so I go with the flow. I did see that stuff about duplicate thread but thought you handled it fine. Just said merge & gave your reason for opening yours. You didn't come out of that one looking unreasonable and that's my point. Anyway not here to lecture you on how you should deal with stuff. I sound like a stuffy old git! As I said My aim is to get on with everybody if I can. Except Page. I forgot the full site shows who's in thread!
Sorry Baz, stupid app not working properly. Had to log in on main site on phone which was showing me already in this thread even though I wasn't anymore: suppose heavy traffic tonight. Have you ever done it to me? You've done that patronizing "leave it to the big boys" crap a couple of times but it doesn't bother me & I'm never sure whether you're being serious or on the wind so I go with the flow. I did see that stuff about duplicate thread but thought you handled it fine. Just said merge & gave your reason for opening yours. You didn't come out of that one looking unreasonable and that's my point. Anyway not here to lecture you on how you should deal with stuff. I sound like a stuffy old git! As I said My aim is to get on with everybody if I can. Except Page. I forgot the full site shows who's in thread!
Whatever the reasons we have the squad we have now until the next transfer window. Yes we have shifted a lot of deadwood and associated costs and the squad has been improved overall. We will have to wait and see how we now perform. It would have been good to get a recognized striker in, but remember Spain won the Euros without playing any strikers in some of the games. We will now see how BR can manage as we will be relying on him setting the team up correctly depending on who we are playing in order to get the most out of what we have . This could be a season for blooding youngsters who may surprise us. I am keeping my powder dry until end of November then we can judge how BR is doing. We were never going to have a big spending spree as BR has been brought in to build a team NOT buy one.
I really understand and to an extent agree with some of the questions being asked of FSG, but I can't say I can really criticize them for lack of effort. I know they aren't exactly footballing geniuses but they are sportspeople and they understand the basics of football management. They have shown to be caring owners. They own a number of teams and ventures yet most of their time is spent with us, they have taken a leap of faith in clearing our debt and that is a huge plus. Some people argue that they "didn't clear the debt out of goodwill" but that is irrelevant. We were in a position where Venky's could have bought us. All you had to do was show RBS that you could keep their interest fees going and they would have snapped your hands off. They didn't give a minimum bid to acquire the club at the lowest price possible, they gave a bid that would secure our debts. That is a great sign of their ambition and vision for the future. I'm much happier with our current management than with the previous one for obvious reasons. I'm positive about the future and I don't think we're in any sort of doom and gloom situation. Let's look at their decisions so far. 1. Sacking Hodgson - Good move. No explanation needed. 2. Giving the temp job to Kenny - Good move. 3. Letting Torres go - Debatable, but generally a good move, as it's given us a fresh start. Good riddance to bad rubbish. They also managed to get an insane fee for him, which they immediately reinvested. 4. Buying Suarez - Good move. They bought him cheap for his quality (even if it was already scouted, they gave it the green light. 5. Paying 35m for Carroll: - Bad move. Opinion is divided on Andy's future at the club. There are people who absolutely refuse to give him a chance, believing him to be one of the old school strikers and writing him off though evidence shows he has potential to fit in with the new system. His price tag was in theory -15m, which is how we got 50 for Torres. However people seem to have shifted the blame for his price onto Andy and that is more of Comolli's fault than either Kenny or FSG's. He set prices and managed budgets. 6. Giving Kenny the full time job - Debatable, but a good move at the time. Given the sentiment at the time and the results going our way, it was almost a fairytale matchup, but some argue that he shouldn't have gotten the job. Being 6 months after their purchase, we can attribute this to a beginners mistake and one that the fans pushed their hand on. 7. Buying Hendo, Downing, Adam. - Bad moves but a good indication of their intentions. They splashed the cash (blame Comolli) and got it wrong with the exception of 16m Henderson who still has a lot of potential. 8. Signing tons of sponsorship deals - Good moves. Gave us a financial stability that we couldn't have had under H&G. 9. Sacking Kenny - debatable, lets give it a poor decision. He didn't have the league results. Period. Home form was terrible, and though a lot of it can be blamed on sheer bad luck, the rest has to go onto Kenny unfortunately and he was collateral in the generally good purge of the system. 10. Sacking DC - good move. He got them wrong, mostly. 11. Appointing BR - Good move. He's a young manager with potential, vision and authority. He's a bit of a media darling so he can also deflect some pressure from the squad. 12. Buying Borini, Allen and Sahin - Good moves . While we still have to judge them and Assaidi, they are young players with flair and composure, that will definitely strengthen our squad. 13. Loaning Carroll - Poor move. He had a future in the system, but this was really more of a personal BR thing, as evidenced all summer. 14. Not bringing in anyone on deadline day other than Yesin - Poor move, we needed a striker. Though I believe we dodged a bullet with Dempsey, they should have been working on the striker front. 15. Not financing a stadium yet - Unknown. It's not easy to get a) naming rights, b) permission, c) capital, and d) funds for a massive new stadium. We can't expect one until we get CL, then we can judge their progress. 16. Using Ayre as a scout/negotiator - Poor move, but were forced into it over scouting contracts and holidays. He also got 5 signings in, not bad. As you see, most are good moves, the rest are debatable or unkown, and only a handful of major decisions can really be classed as poor. You can't blame them for not wanting Dempsey, and you can't blame them for a publishing ****up by a site largely independent of upper management in the company. It's early days yet. Not yet 2 years, some owners own clubs for decades. They aren't going to get bored of it soon, wont sell us like a sheik would, and seem to be getting the rough hang of things. Give it time.
Well reasoned argument. It's really hard to encapsulate what has happened to us since the demise of H&G and I think you've covered most of the ground well. Last night, we all hoped for that little ray of light to shine to give us hope. We even settled for Dempsey as the personification of that light - even though he did not fit our age profile and isn't a striker! We now have to re-visit some of the statements that have been made by both the owners and Rodgers regarding our future that have been lost in the froth. We need to take seriously what Rodgers said about his task at Liverpool and what John Henry said about both the stadium and the 'living within our means' strategy. I still don't understand the decision to let Carroll go without having a replacement standing-by. Much has been made about Sturridge but I doubt that this was ever a serious contender.
lets face it most of this is knee jerk bar the OP who i acknowldge has been saying the same thing for a good while like he does say. I think we've royally cocked up this time and can kiss 4th goodbye not that we had a real chance anyway. for me i think 6th is the best we can do for now. one thing though the LOAN window is not closed as far as i know so something may still happen but we are compelte hostages to fortune now.
your owners gave far too much money to "king"kenny and now need to balance the books.My club newcastle had to be relegated before realising how to get good players from abroad and build a side properly whilst being sustainable.We hated the chairman but most can see he has done a lot of things right.Rodgers needs time to build a side and not buy one,both the fans and board need patience and a couple of years where you might struggle but it will come good. dalgleish ruined keegans great side,sold our best players and brought in ****e(thomasson,barnes,rush(too old and too fat)He was past it as a manager as well, you can see(without blinkered vision and past deeds),he ruined you but maybe starting again and building a team, not buying one, might be for the best. have patience
I read something that Daniel Sturridge himself ruled out a loan move and said if he were to go, it was for good. Chelsea insisted on nothing more than a loan move.
Hearing a lot of rumours: - Fulham were reluctant to sell to us so they wanted us to pay £9m (not the same amount as Spurs paid) out of principle. - The owners did not want to buy a 29 year old but allocated only £4m for his signature, and no more. - Sturridge was not keen on a loan move. - We will get Agger's contract sorted out now. - The £20m transfer budget included wages. Rodgers only found this out very late on.
Rumoured that FSG gave Rodgers a £20 million budget at the start of the transfer window plus whatever else he was able to get from player sales. So far the wages part is just paper talk. Surely the owners have a set amount per week or per year that is budgeted for Wages. Obviously if money is saved in this area it could be funnelled to transfers and vice-versa. But setting a transfer budget that includes wages is a little peculiar.
And not telling him until a couple of days before the window shuts would be perculiar still. I suspect its something else we'll never really get the truth about.
A transfer budget INCLUDING wages was something we had to deal with while H&G were here. They'd say "Oohh, we've got a £15m transfer budget, thats plenty" but that would include wages, so you can't really get much for £20m wages and transfer fee. A £10m player on 50k a week on a four year deal is all you could get. Can't really improve your squad with a budget that small.
