Even if the first yteam member is good enough and established but has no cover? I like buying young players who could be mega in a few years but who will make reliable squad players now.
Ideally, we should never have been in this position in the first place. It is crazy to be in a situation where one position only has one player. If we can't get anything else then yeah, £3.5m isn't much so get him in to improve the squad. However, I'd rather spend the rumoured £30m on a CB and DM. I'd also try and sell Skrtel and Coates and use whatever funds we have left for another attacking player.
There's no pleasing some people He could easily compete with Gerrard for a DM position in a 4-2-3-1 against teams with attacking threat.
Bloody FM has a lot to answer for! It bloody angers me that there are dickheads on 2 threads screaming that LFC can't negotiate and should be spending millions when they themselves have no concept of what it's like to negotiate these type of contracts. I've never been involved in fottball negotiations but I have worked on deals for months only to see them fail at the very last moment. It's the name of the game in any negotiation. It can fail between the 2 parties or it can get hijacked by an outside party. As far as Willian is concerned, if he's going to Spurs then I hope our negotiating team can comfort themselves by knowing that their Spurs counterparts are thinking "we got him. But ouch that hurt!!!".
On the subject of FM, I got Liverpool to win the title in my first season then challenging at the least the following season Granted I used dirty tactics to unsettle players, meet release clauses by paying over four years and relying on getting some ridiculous offers for players in order to balance the books
Always two ways of looking at it. Pessimists say we're too slow etc. Optimists say we're trying to negotiate better deals so the club don't overspend on mediocre which sets us back another couple of years. We hear that we are offering players lower basic salarys with more performance based increases, now that will work for driven players who see it as a challenge but some players will say no thanks, when they know they can get guaranteed 80k a week somewhere else. It's easy to just throw money at someone but it's not always the solution.
Dick heads? Do calm down. And yes negotiations break down, but it's clear spurs are by far the slicker negotiators out of the two clubs, they've done good business. Willian will represent our third failed big signing this summer, all of which have wasted time and resources. It's clear the club have identified our areas of weakness (BR has admitted) and if those areas have not been adressed by the 2nd of September (with our net spend nice and negative) then I will be disappointed.
If you want my opinion.... according to the DM, Willian is over here to talk to both clubs, as in we had our offer accepted. If he goes to Spurs, it is nothing to do with the scouts or people who negotiate. It will be down to the lads idea of who he will find more success with, or who will personally give him more money, and maybe the bright lights of the capital for better nights out with the lads. No point slagging the club off at this point. If he comes here for talks, we just need to get Lucas and Coutinho to show him around, and give him a great impression of the club, and then Ayre can haggle with his agent. Either way come the end of the season, I just want to be able to laugh at everyone when we have a better season than arse and spuds.
The problem all northern clubs have is that most foreign players want to live in London as they think it is the best place in the UK. Little do they know that it is a crime ridden, over populated pit of a place with less than 50% of its population being British. Despite this the "bright lights" still attract them.
Again though it was asked before and never answered. What is it Spurs negotiating team did better than us? What exactly is the specific criticism you are leveling at our transfer team? I'm proposing they (spurs) can point to better form recently and offer more chances e.g Europe Higher PL standing etc and a higher profile this season. That's something out of our teams control. So what's slicker about pointing out the obvious?
I guess if we were looking to spend £25 million plus on him then surely we can find maybe a couple of targets who would strengthen us. If spurs want to pay £30 million then let them have him..that's a lot of money. They obviously knew, despite all the denials, that bale was going why else spend this type of money and they are still being linked with several players none of them cheap.
This. If he ends up at Spurs, and I think he will, it will most likely be because he felt they were the better fit for him.
Can't really find fault with the club on this one. Spurs had been linked with him for a long time when he was at Shakhtar, and if it's true that we weren't willing to match Spurs' bid then I've got no problem with that. We don't want another Andy Carroll on our hands. I do hope we bring someone in though....
Yes pal, if you want to include yourself in the dickhead category then you are perfectly free to do so. So Spurs have managed to sign players. Neither you nor I know if LFC were even remotely interested in those players, therefore their relative ability does not come into play. You have absolutely no idea as to how well any of those players will fit into their present squad or how they will perform in the Premiership. You have absolutely no idea how much 'over the top' they may have paid for these transfers. You have absolutely no idea what their true financial situation is and how negatively it will be effected if they don't secure 4th place. So you have absolutely no way of knowing if they have of have not "done good business". All we have to go on so far is 1 match. Both sides managed to get 3 points but LFC got more plaudits for their performance than did Spurs so I believe we already have an edge. Yes we have weaknesses but throwing money around in the hope that you may fix them is an approach that we are still trying to recover from.
The question I keep asking is why are these players not choosing us and going to our (almost) rivals instead? It's a pattern that's now become established. Are we not offering enough of a transfer fee to the club and financial incentive to the player, is the manager not high profile enough, are they being asked to play in a non-preferable position, are we seen as being so far behind Spurs, Dortmund etc in CL ambitions, are we not that bothered and simply have enough other targets? We need another two signings I think if we hope to compete for CL, as is the manager's stated intention, especially now Spurs look set to bring in Lamela and Willian. It'll be diappointing if we don't do that, Aspas, Alberto, Cissokho are all decent / good players but perhaps a step below the likes of Willian and there's a gulf between them and the top top players.
We've not been in or competed to be in the CL for about four years and we're not in Europe at all this season. That is why!
Well we obviously behind Dortmund who nearly won it last season. Spurs I think are on a mission to spend as much as possible and I guess they know bale is going.