I agree - there has to be a good mix. We lost some very experienced players in the summer and we brought in younger players. I'm hoping BR and his team are looking at more experienced players in January - 27 years old +..
The owners like to only invest in young talent under the age of 27. That is why Dempsey wasnt signed.
Which is an admirable policy on paper...but doomed to failure if its as rigid in January as it was 4 weeks ago.
I know but surely Rodgers and the 'Technical Committee' will strive to push for a player who is over 27 if they think he is worth it.
It was pretty obvious to all that he was striving for Dempsey. So do they have a totally rigid policy or just not trust BRs judgement?
I think the owners just gave Kenny and DC a blank chequebook at that time. They had no transfer strategy in place. Now, it appears we have a strategy, one that we followed quite strictly during the summer (our downfall). But as mentioned previously, the owners have a sub committee which will report into Rodgers and will provide the owners with further evidence that the player in question is worth it. e.g. Rodgers went to the owners and asked to buy Dempsey but the owners didn't believe his case. With a sub committee of 'experts', it would make the case stronger. That's what I'm hoping for anyways
So we use Downing as the yard stick? Any player over 27 is as much use as a Downing Maybe BR should send FSG a video of a certain 28 year old RVP from last season.
The owners said the buy young and sell old policy was the way they intended to do business more or less immediate as they arrived. It was certainly in place once Comolli arrived. Hence us signing Henderson, Carroll, Coates, etc. The only players we signed over 27 was Bellamy on a free and Doni who, as a keeper, is slightly different why not...?
I'm assuming it's a combination of both. The owners would prefer Rodgers to focus more attention on younger players but will make certain exceptions. And it's not that the owners didn't want Dempsey - they just didn't think he was worth what Fulham were asking. But it does show that the owners aren't willing to back the manager blindly.
True - what I meant to say was that a broad strategy was in place but there was no plan on how to go about it i.e. the owners didn't have a clue about player valuations and relied heavily on Commolli. And it now seems that they are reluctant to trust the advice of just one man so I'm hoping the Technical Committee would provide Rodgers with more back up for when he wants to sign players.
1. sinclair is the genuine article at his age group. very impressive goal scorer. 2. suso is class and totally different to dempsey... borrell really did a great job putting him striaght for work rate and for me he's great. 3. coady believes his own hype and simply has not developed in 18months. he need to work a lot harder and also move to CB i think. 4. i don't mind one or two guys getting taken along to learn or as a reward for good youth performances.. i think we all agree sterling and suso are stand outs who are first teamers now. we sold player now worth millions to bring them through so they should be (ince, silva etc)
Its a business thing. When Van Persie leaves United they wont get there money back (though merchandising will put them in profit). The owners want resale value incase the signing doesnt work out. Examples of what this policy could avoid are Robbie Keane to us and Shevchenko to Chelsea.
Actually Billy I'd argue that this WAS the plan all along. You can call it a bad plan but even if BR had got his way, he was still only bringing in Dempsey possibly a cheap Sigurdsson & having a fit Lucas to add to this squad. He may have misunderstood exactly how tight the purse strings were but not by much. I'd also point to the fact that the kids are the group both deliberately & due to European/Olympics that BR has worked with the longest albeit a matter of weeks longer. He might see who is ready out of choice, might. I'm now going to do something I find naturally distasteful: put myself in the owners shoes lol: say for a minute we are the owners (knowing their preference for cheap from within sorry self sufficient) if you are told that RB set up this brilliant Academy; KD then tells you it's full of bags of potential that he's had a hand in and BR comes in with his dossier talking about how he needs a young dynamic pliable team to indoctrinate in the finer arts of the game not old dudes set in their ways. What (you're the owner remember) would you do? Go out and buy 5-7 mid twenties players at 7M+ a pop that even if successful will mean none of our youth will get a look in for 5 more years so will leave the club (fairly cheaply too as they are unproven) & we're back to the choice 5 years on of overplaying the now 28-30year olds or the next batch of 16-17 year olds while benching those oldies on 60-100k a week. Again as owner; you're questioned about burning out these young lads: You'd ask why are we paying fortunes for fitness suites, physical & nutritional experts etc as well as once these boys become regulars we'll be paying them thousands a week? Fairly sure that their (FSG)model isn't sympathetic to 30 year old burnouts. Long term? They plan for that to be someone else's problem as the players will be sold replaced by more homegrown youngsters long before that time. (Keep their model in mind at all times) Look at how players are treated in US sports. You're worth a million while you can throw long, run fast & play every game. Once you can't? You're no longer worth investment. Is this a moral approach? No, is it the way a club that can't keep 3 squads at a time are going to have to play it: I'm afraid so. And getting rid of nostalgia; only great players of the past were looked after; for every 3 of our legends we see being paraded in their 60,s 70's name the other hundreds with no knees on disability in some council bungalow up & down the country. Difference with these kids is that their new knees are going to be top of the line & their millions in the bank will pay for top rate private care. Again not saying its a plan that will work but there is a consistency of method in it.
Ok well let's say we agree that this has been plan A all along (I don't but as its you DF I will play along)...why would any owner be so inflexible to stick to the plan to the detriment of the short term part (Carroll left and FSG knew full well who BR wanted to bring in) of said plan. Why also would any manager not know that players development continues even when they are in the first team? Why do we loan a young England international and a young(ish) midfielder and try to offload the England u21 captain and sell a young promising player like Ince? You're argument about modern injury management etc is a fair one. However it could equally be used to say we can use those same facilities to get more longevity out of older players. Aaaah I hear you cry but getting more longevity out of older players could put the development of the youth back 5 years. Well if in 5 years a youth team player had failed to displace a 34/35 year old senior player then why is said youth player going to be in our fiirst team today or tomorrow facing exactly that kind of experienced, battle hardened Prem player week in week out. Then there is the moral argument of "why not just use the young players as a commodity and burn them out then sell them". Well if the argument is that by bringing in younger players you have more resale value than with older players...you won't if they have an injury record as long as my pet chimps arms. This brings me onto the current myth that seems to float around that "every player must have a resale value". I had to laugh at those mocking United fans for signing RVP because "he'll have a low resale value in a few years". If he bangs them 30 goals a season for the next 4 years will there be a single person connected with United who says it wasn't money well spent? As for the argument that because we can't afford to keep 3 squads happy I agree (that would be financial suicide and I would be more worried if we were getting in **** with the banks again than I am now). However I don't neccesarily buy into the notion that the only way to do this is by producing good youth AND buying only younger players. I don't think BR buys it either (hence the Dempsey scramble). As much as I hate to do it I say take a look across The Park or up the East Lancs for examples of how blending youth and experience can work. In a way we are doing the hard part by producing the youth players but missing out with the simpler part. Bring the best youth through into a strong experienced squad is invariably a better policy in my mind rather than throwing them all in at once and "seeing how they do". So anyway...we are where we are. What choice have we got either way? The best bit of business we did in the summer may well prove to be a young lad like Assaidi or Yesil for instance as none of us know as yet whether they will sink or swim. Should we as fans have to pin our hopes on these kids though? Not from where I'm standing no. These lads should be the little bonuses that come through during a season but there we go. The thing I guess BR has to do now is to work out (and quickly) how to keep the senior players confidence up and improve their contributions defensively and in front of goal. If he can get a lot more from Reina, Skrtel, Gerrard, Enrique, Suarez et al (and there's room for improvement as we all know) it will certainly ease the pressure on the youngsters.
Sometimes you have to make decisions which will negatively impact us in the short run but for the good of the team in the long run. Why spend £6-7m for an old striker who is not even a natural striker and probably wouldn't even get a game in a 6-12 months time? And why didn't Rodgers identify other targets? There was a massive miscommunication. Carroll only left because Rodgers believed he would get a replacement. We wanted a player who is more mobile, more technical, and has more to his game than just being able to head the ball. We are trying to play a more techinical, passing, incisive game - this does not suit Carroll. Anyone can see that he is not suited to this style. Yes - we could have kept him, carried on paying him £80k a week for a striker who may have struggled in the new system. Instead, Rodgers tried to get rid of his Plan B to improve his Plan A. The Henderson exchange - that one I cannot justify/explain. Thomas Ince - there were questions over his attitude and he was demanding first team football. Good footballer but poor attitude.
Lol Billy; I did say it might not be a good plan. I personally think it was a risky cost driven plan, made riskier by not getting the 2-3 "experienced" players BR wanted as well. As said above; a long term objective has been forced by short term cost cutting and bad communication exacerbated it from plan to out & out gamble. I hope it works too. And yes, there are various ways to look at youth development vs injury risk vs resale/profit. Yours might be more sensible but I think I described the path our owners have decided to take. Lets hope they have more luck than they have up to now I do think personally its a balancing act player to player. Some can survive early fire, others can't. I hope the supporting team around ours is better than it ever has been. The likes of Owen etc had almost medieval support (not having a dig)in comparison to now, short as time between as that is. I mean with Owen it took them 4 years to realise it wasn't his hamstrings it was his lower back but by that time it was too late.
Robbie Keane is like Sahin, it was nothing more than a £3 million loan deal. We were never going to get the £3 million deficit off Spurs as it was success based. ''Spurs'' and ''success aren't used in the same sentence very often. We should count our lucky stars we got £16 million for Keane. Redknapp made a £14.5 million loss on him.
