I don't know the details of Neymar's past ownership. If he was owned in part by Santos and in part by his father's company, then I guess the deal goes down in the same way as Falcao/Tevez/Masch's, with all parties sitting at the table and dealing transparently, albeit complicatedly, with no underhanded deals. I'm afraid when the lines are blurry, as they actually were, the negotiations would then resume under the table the minute a competing bid comes along.
Just for clarification, I don't agree with these types of deals. People shouldn't be allowed to take such sums out of the game!
Seems goons are set to buy Draxler. 30 mil. We're too poor to compete tbh, The money wasted by KK still makes me cringe, would be so useful now
Yep, we're definitely too poor for these deals. No way could we splash cash on the Ozil, Mata, Draxler types. We really need to be back in CL for a couple of years.
Your all so bloody quick with the admonishments aren't you! KK wasted all that money!!! Well go back and look at how the situation must have looked to him. A team and a squad in total disarray under Hodgson. A last minute ultimatum from his only 'good' striker and a desperate need to replace him. He buys Adam who was well promoted during his time at Blackpool. He buys Downing who was considered a 'safe' purchase by many pundits. He buys Henderson as one for the future. OK so it didn't work and he paid over the odds (but how much of that was down to Camolli?). But he started to turn the ship around both on and off the pitch. Start looking at those decisions in their true context before sounding off like silly Footy Manager computer game experts.
Maybe some of us are using our memories and remember how we felt prior to signing these players? I didn't want Henderson, Downing or Adam. I certainly didn't want us to spend £30m+ on Carroll but would have taken him for around £15m-£20m at the time. However, I did want us to get Suarez, Enrique and Bellers. Didn't know anything about Doni or Coates. Looking at them, I wasn't too far wrong was I? Only Henderson is in the wrong place with Carroll possibly in either court! Edit: just to show I'm not just saying it and to even it up a bit, I didn't want Sturridge or Coutinho either
It matters not who YOU wanted. You were not in KK's position with the pressures upon him. Yet people make stupid comments like he "wasted" money. No he didn't he made the best call that he could at the time. As with all transfers some did not work out and that happens to every manager (except maybe the computer managers).
It's not actually that stupid a comment. KK wasted a hell of lot of money that didn't have to be spent, and certainly not in that quantity. Don't do a MFG
So none of us are capable of having an opinion on various players and how much they are worth or how much we should spend on them? There was no better options available at the time? Better value for money? Of course I wasn't making the decisions, doesn't really seem like anyone was! Nobody can justify spending £35m on Carroll, nobody! Downing had been in the PL all his career and it was clear to see he wasn't good enough, never mind being worth £20m! Charlie Adam I can accept as it was a lower amount and he'd been outstanding for Blackpool the season before. The fact that Suarez has turned out so good and will turn Kenny's spend into a profit should he eventually leave is a bit of a red herring. Especially considering Kenny him self has admitted that Commolli suggested Luis after scouting him for eighteen or so months and he just rolled with it. And no, I'm not a computer manager.
There were very few options open to KK when he returned. He had to throw money at the situation. Add to that the lethal effect of a market that knows you have money to spend and a DF desperate to prove his version of Moneyball worked. Of course we can and will analyse and comment upon decisions that have been made and discuss where the club should go next. I'm not being MFG but it does annoy me that some people who praised what KK was trying to do at the time now disparage his efforts for the club as waste. Now that is wrong. I don't care if it was you or anybody.
I believe (pure guess work here) that both he and Commolli thought they could shrug him off until the window shut. It didn't work. Irrelevant of that, they should have been looking just in case. In that window, they bought Suarez (fantastic) and got £50m for Torres (awesome) as well as £11m (?) for Babel. That on its own is great work. Then comes Carroll! Kenny took over on 9 January. Torres has made it public knowledge that he'd been asking to leave for a while, long before Kenny arrived. So, he had 22 days to look into it. Fair enough, that's not an awful lot of time but still, its some time to find a better option than £35m on Carroll! For the rest, they had from January to the end of August, that's eight months! PS...isn't moneyball suppose to be about achieving things whilst spending less?
Problem seemed to me that he tried to buy British in the hope they would fee more pride and would get a better performance out of them. Was he looking back at his previous spells and when he was playing and the team was dominated by Brits and thought that was the best way to go? Maybe... Or, had he been out of the game for a while that his knowledge of players abroad wasn't too good and decided to stick to players he had seen in the Prem in the last few years? Maybe... Either way, a lot of them didn't work and it's not just that, but the fact we had to pay the "British tax" on top of their true value to get them makes everyone remember it a lot more. I've no doubt that given £100m Rodgers would be able to spend it a lot more wisely than Kenny did now, but then again we are in a better position than we were then, and he's had more time and probably a better longer scouting network set up in order for that to happen.
Buying Brits was a big downfall and the main reason the players cost so much. He had a few foreigners at Blackburn didn't he? He had loads at Newcastle and ****ed up so maybe that put him off?
