I keep reading that we got terrible money for Mane __________________________________________ Good post flt, just thought I'd add to one of the points you made as I have been rather vocal about the fees this summer. With Mane I feel we blinked too soon, we know he wanted out & was agitating, but the two years on the contract put us in a very strong position. I feel if we had let it drag on, we could clearly have pushed them higher, he was their top target. I now fear the inconsistency he had last season is drying up, he looks proper good, maybe next level good in 12 months. Maybe Les sneaked a 7.5% sell on in there.......here's hoping!
You could be right about maybe pushing them up a bit more over time, however it wasn't a bad fee as some have said and we got it sorted relatively quickly. Although, for all we know they may have been negotiating with us since January and the alleged United interested. They may have offered us £20m. We don't know. On his proper looking good... he has, in the two games he has played for Liverpool. I think he was, is and will be good, but he has only played two games for them. I also read over the last few days, someone saying we don't sell high... I really had to re-read that a few times to check I hadn't mis-read it.
Yeah, time will tell. When he first left (before Bolasie!!!!) I consoled myself that one week he'd be £100M & the next £10M. So far, well he's carrying them! He may well become to hot for them to hold.
Agree FLT; we not do badly in the transfer window, but feel we needed to get that CB and, as I keep writing, am concerned with the lack of goal scoring options that we have. I do hope to see a change in the formation after this international weekend; the diamond is not working and a 4-2-3-1 does, on paper at least, suit us better. The jury will still be out on CP until December I would suggest - it probably concerns me more at this moment than the actual transfer window; probably because there is no point as we cannot change what has happened, or more perhaps importantly - did not happen.
Is Mane develops to the next level and the likes of Real Mardid/ Barcelona come knocking then Liverpool will always sell.........and as HR has posted I hope we have a nice sell on %.
I too felt we needed the CB, however if you look at numbers, we do have 4. What we don't know is what Gardos will be like in terms of his knee. He could be absolutely fine and the extra CB we wanted. Maya has played in a team as back up that finished 8th, 7th and 6th in the league. he is a good back-up. Gardos may be that too, or even able to develop up a level. On goal scoring, we lost Pelle and Mane for goals. We have Boufal and Charlie Austin. Ignoring all the formation questions, etc. we have two players with the potential to replace those goals. The concern must be how we use them best to get the goals, not if we have the goal options or not. We have them and it is now down to the coach to get that bit right. We also have Jay although like Gardos, we don't know how he will be. I am not for one moment saying that this will happen, however we have two strikers who have in their last full seasons scored 18 and 15 Premier league goals. What I am saying is that you never know.
I read when we signed him that Bayern were tracking him. I believe if he had stayed one more season with us and improved his consistency, then Bayern may have come knocking.
Bolasie .. did he go for £25m or £30m? I have read both figures and everything in between. Did Mane go for £34m or £38M? There could be a £10M difference between the two player fees, or a 33% premium.
Yeah didn't they let us use their facilities for his medical? Wouldn't be surprised to see him at a top, top club in the next 2-3 years.
We have gambled on potential basically. Hopefully it all works out. (I will say though, that no-one can change my opinion that we criminally undersold him. He could be genuinely world class in a year or two. No one had been able to change a game like he could for us since MLT. Whether the rest of our dealings work out or not, we got that one wrong.)
Unfortunately he only had 2 years left on his contract and it appears he wasn't going to sign another one so we probably wouldn't have benefited much from that. He never pretended he wouldn't move on. He was pretty inconsistent with us and you never knew what you were going to get. Remember he had a long spell not scoring but when he's in form he is very good. I would have liked to have kept him another year but I'm not convinced if we had kept him against his wishes that he would have become world class or would just have gone through the motions. Did he become good in the last part of the season because we agreed to release him? Just a thought.
Watching the Liverpool game at game at the weekend the commentator on Bien Sports said he believed the Mane fee was to rise to as much as 45M with add-ons from the 38M. Not sure how true this is, but he sounded knowledgeable.
This is part of the reason that some of us wanted a bit of a clearout this year. Over time, particularly when selling and buying in volume, you'll inevitably end up with a fair number of merely decent options, all of whom are on fairly substantial wages. And if you choose not to bring in starting-calibre options at those positions owing to the already existing player count, you'll have neither a particularly high level of performance nor an easy path for the kids. Would we be better off at CB with the current quartet, or with Van Dijk, Fonte, a good young CB pushing for a starting spot, and Stephens? The net result is that we have a lot of supposed depth at several positions without having any particularly evident quality, which is bad for both results and the wage bill.
Certainly. However, I doubt we'd have much difficulty finding a taker for Yoshida or a permanent basis, or Gardos on loan. And if no one wants our primary CB backups, we have pretty severe problems.
Mané forced his way out of his previous club, arrived late to matches and at least once seemed to buy a red card. He's a great player on his day, but a model professional he ain't. If he didn't go in this window his value would have dropped and his head might have already been in Liverpool, to coin a phrase. How many of our ex- players have really set the world alight? Time will tell, but I don't think we played this too badly with the cards we held.
