Ridiculous if that's the case. Plays against Leicester on 30 December where even a medium term injury would still rule him out for the January window but then refuses to play from 1 January onwards. Surely, if he didn't want to risk injury he'd should have stopped playing from November!
BREAKING: Liverpool have made contact with Monaco once again for Thomas Lemar, writes @johncrossmirror
There was probably no deal being discussed at that point. I'm not saying there is or isn't a deal, as I don't know. But if Barcelona contacted Liverpool with a deal on the 31st he could have played on the 30th.
He could play at any time until the deal is complete. There is no way Coutinho or the club didn't know prior to 30 December either. I defended Coutinho in the summer but started to think he needs to go now
It's probably an old story being raked up - written before we signed him. There's a lot of old stories being raked up atm...
It is possible a specific offer was made that made LFC change their mind about selling Coutinho and didn't receive discussion of offer until after Dec 30.
It is possible but it's still BS. Play him, if Barca don't like it they either cough up or do one #****em
We will see.... my view is unchanged. Imo the only logic for Barca is to rotate coutinho with iniesta this year to keep the great man fresh for cl games. My view is players have to move out of Barca. Nobody else agrees yet the evidence is there.
I don't think it's a logical move at this moment in time, for Barca or Coutinho. Barca look like winning the league already. Coutinho getting a winners medal will as honourable as Michael Owen's PL medal! Coutinho is cup tied in the CL too. Makes much more sense all round to make a deal for the summer instead.
I have no view on the matter because I have no interest in Barca's financial status. Or ours, tbh - apart from wanting the club to be run on a sound financial strategy, obviously.
That much we know. The fact is though that Barca ot £200m cash for Neymar, yet they're still trying to do deals on the never-never with farcical add-ons attached. Does that not tell you something?
Yeah, it tells me they don't just throw money away because they got a bag full. It tells me they try to get the best possible deal for Barca.
The best possible deal for Barca would have been Coutinho being a Barca player back in August, which I still maintain would have happened had they come straight in with £100m cash, which they had. Instead, they put his agent and his family on a commission to get the price down under 90m, tried to insert daft clauses and, most curious given their need, wanted to pay in instalments. Ultimately not getting the best deal for Barca at all.
As I said ballauge says Barca want coutinho and Griezmann and Messi and iniesta and Suarez. To play copa and cl and win the treble Barca need to keep it fresh. Right now they've 9 points over atletico with less than half their season gone... 17 league matches played.. so there's 21 to go so nothing won til it's won. So there's every logic to say Barca could do with a top player. But as I said they've 8 players they want gone on large wages and 6 of them don't ever play. 500k plus a week doing nothing. Ballague has hedged bets by saying everything is open, including a deal for the summer done now. Nobody has actually bid and the opening gambit is a Nike shirt "faux pas" when no deal was even remotely close. My view is a large potion of this is to please fans and the winter break is now just about over. We are seeing Spanish outlets tell them coutinho has downed tools, that he has played last game etc. As you point out he played on 30th, 5 days ago... vvd was dropped out for 3 games with real deal on table. None of it really adds up. We know Barca want him but they have to do a deal. What we don't know is if lfc position has actually changed given salah form as we have said nothing yet more hack are piling on saying our position has in fact changed
The real facts are 80mil signing on fee for Messi. Cannot be denied. 500k per week every week. 105mil euros up front for dembele and 250k per week wages. Unknown signing on fee. Paulinho 35mil 130k per week Deulofailure signing 10mil and wage 60k That rb semedo 30mil euros Like hang on.. 200 mil for Neymar and 250k off wages sounds good but...
That's the worrying bit, but to be fair they didn't respond in the summer until Barca put an official bid in, and then just kept repeating 'Not for sale' with no further comment.
