that fair enough.... so... what happens if your manager goes? I take it you think there is no way in hell the press are anywhere close to right regarding any business before world cup and if anything we could even guess this could rumble on in the rumour mill until next august 31? You clearly feel lallana will not hand in a transfer request and push anything right? The one point i'd consider is at his age if he leaves it a year there will be less interest and he might never get CL football. I think the baines line as a reasonable one and as a result baines will be no 1 left back for england this summer and this will be the highlight of his career unless a cup final comes round now. another comparison for you is gareth barry who forced his way out of villa but he was older than lallana and he got his medals, in short when a big club really comes round then a players got to go or accept it may never come again. I would say form my side that I don't know but what i am confident of is that you are not going to see LFC offer 20mil to southampton. If this is REAL then you'll get an offer of 10 mil or something really low and no doubt some will go mad. It might end up "undisclosed" meaning 20mil but LFC will not pay that much so if you turn down that... fair enough in my mind. However.... i fully expect spurs and levy who is a brown bagger just like redknapp to turn up and bid purely thinking they can snatch him late on if LFC never actually bid. it is highly possible we will never actually bid, this occurs for us regularly. A player is talked for for ages but no bid goes in and LFC fans go mad when spurs buy him! I think a lot of this is going to be the press and you highlighted why as in your board and uncertainty. it is certainly a shark pool in the press.
Ok, so the owner Katharina Liebherr is the daughter of the man who bought the club and saved it from administration. He was obviously excited to be involved, invested a load of his own money into rebuilding the club, buying players capable of taking us back to the top flight, and improving the training ground, and then unfortunately died, leaving his advisor Cortese in charge. He has basically run the club as he pleased since (and quite well, you'd have to say), but there have been stories about his autocratic style upsetting certain people, and Ms Liebherr, having inherited ownership of the club, apparently grew tired of him spending her money, decided enough was enough and he had to go. It was thought, due to her not really having any known interest in football, that she would be keen to quickly sell the club, however it has turned out that she seems happy to continue her father's legacy and all the public messages from her have been positive. To her credit, she attends all home games and actually seems to take an active interest. Her financial commitment is less clear, but we don't actually need her to put any more money in - we are self-sustaining now we are back to the premier league. We just need her not to take much out, and so far it seems she is happy to let the club operate independently. There certainly won't be a fire sale. The manager Pochettino is indeed being linked to Spurs, and he's been evasive when asked about his own future. He's due to have discussions about the future of the club with the board and it's expected he will sign a new contract soon. Shaw is indeed a Chelsea fan, but I don't think Chelsea need him really. They would probably like to have him, but they're not willing to pay top dollar like United are.
I would be very surprised if we were to entertain offers before the world cup, unless the board turn out to be surprisingly well-organised, have a load of new players lined up and we need an extra £20m to sign them. That's the only scenario I can see where selling one of these players makes sense. I would also be surprised if Lallana put in a transfer request, yes. Even if he does, as in the Baines example, we may still keep him. He might be annoyed at first but if he finds himself here at the start of the next season, I think he will come to terms with it. I don't really agree that in a year's time, at 27, he will be significantly less attractive than now, especially if he has a good world cup and another good season in the premier league. If Liverpool really only offer £10m they will be laughed out of the office. There is absolutely no chance he will be sold for that amount.
I doubt he will be sold for that amount either... however... that appears to be the Liverpool way at the moment. Offer an offensively low amount for a player- and slowly bump it up over the course of several months to find the lowest selling price possible... and once you've found that price- watch Spurs or Chelsea offer twice it- and buy the player from under our noses! ... and then our club complain that it takes too long to sign anyone.
Caulker... we keep getting linked with him, but is he good enough? He's played for Rodgers before... as good a manager as Rodgers is- he keeps going for players he has managed elsewhere... Allen, Borini are two he succeeded in signing... his "old-player" transfers aren't usually of a high enough quality... I think he is a little too sentimental and gets too attached to people and wants to sign his old buds. Fantastic manager- but I wouldn't trust him with sole power to sign players. Too sentimental.
it worked nicely with coutinho apparently. peanuts. (the caroll deal must have taken years or was that a different regime)
PTF and I have our disagreements, but in his summation here he's pretty much hit the nail on the head with regards to the current situation. Let's see what happens eh? As you've rightly suggested, the key to much of this is what Pochettino decides he's going to do, and that will be dictated by what our board allow him in terms of investment and plans moving forward.
Yes! That was a real rabbit out of the hat. It works when no-one else is sniffing after the same player, or the press doesn't get wind. However, it failed with Eriksen, Salah, Willian, Konoplyanka, and others.
I think he's worth more than £20m personally. But maybe that's my bias kicking in as I believe he's the perfect fit for a Rodgers style of play team. I rather pay over £20mil than gamble on someone that may not fit the system and is just a well known 'name'.
Was it? I know we were after Erikson and then he went to Spurs instead in the end. Kono we tried to sign for cheap until the last day when we upped to the "Buy-out" clause. We wasted so much time in the run up that we ended up running out of time when we finally upped to the buy out and the owner played hard-ball. We can do better than Salah- however, we didn't really have anyone to come off the bench to play an attacking role. Aspas and Moses have been our only options. I can't help but believe even Salah would have been better than either of them. We will probably (hopefully) end up with someone better than Salah in the summer; however, could having an option other than the dire combination of Aspas/Moses have made a difference? Against Chelsea? We were all over Chelsea at the end there trying to get an equalizer... one more quality player instead of Aspas... could it have made the difference? We'll never know. The loss against Chelsea knocked the wind out of our sails- and we never recovered.
i agree but we will still bid really low it is our consistent tactic to start the ball rolling and see what occurs... then protracted negotiations occur and spurs and cheslea step in. Lallana has only turn 26 right? may 10th? he might not be less attractive then.. i thought he was goign to be closer to 28 than just turned 27. bale went to city at 28 so there's a year difference. we went in for barry when he was 27. we bought downing at age 27, just about.... who konws, i think there'll be a few stories anyway.. whether we actually bid is impossible to know. At least in this case as its in england we shoudl knwo for sure if there is a bid. Salah stuff and konoplyanka stuff was impossible to know if we REALLY bid or no. I think we'll bid low like milk says and then we'll see.
I really don't see that we can afford to use this low bid tactic. We need to get the players BR wants and if it costs a few bob more then pay it otherwise we will really be caught out. Of course there will be negotiations but they should be handled quickly so other teams don't nip in. No matter what you say having no European football was an advantage for us but now we have we desperately need to strengthen with first team signings and do it with the minimum of fuss.
Are you sure you arent getting mixed up with Dempsey? I dont hink I read anywhere we were interested in Erikkson
no we wasn't interested in Eriksen even though we ruddy should have been. only players we seem to be after was Willian,Salah and Plank, that was it.
in short spending 30 days arguing over 2 mil is one thing.... it depends on how you view salah. i HEARD that in decemebr he was already linked with chelsea but we spent all january negotiating for 13mil not 15mil and then cheslea turned in finally. if we bid 15mil i am SURE cheslea would have just bid the same and got him anyway... in other word we woz wasting our time. willian was a cheeky bid and we then wouldn't pay then spurs stepped in with 31mil then chelsea took him off them!
Caulker looked like a good prospect when he played at Swansea. And he's had a mostly decent individual season at Cardiff despite them being one of the worst sides defensively in the league. He is only 22, scores quite a lot for a centre back and has all the physical attributes to be a top centre back for years to come.
Lallana is not worth £20m, maybe to Soton but not to a big club. He's had one good season at a small club - whilst he's better than Downing, Carroll, Adam, there are parallels. Sterling has more goals + assists in less games than Lallana to put it into perspective. I do think Lallana is a good player to have in the squad but to pay £20m for a player who will struggle to displace any of our attackers is far too much. Latest rumblings are that Lallana won't be the marquee signings and the names in the hat of Moreno, Martinez and Muller. Apparently we have scouted Ricardo Rodriguez and I'm praying that we were just waiting to confirm Wolfsburg's failure of getting into the CL next season before making a move.
