The Liverpool Club Thread. **No Spoilers**

New contract for Hendo:

https://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/first-team/314962-jordan-henderson-new-liverpool-contract

He's quickly becoming one of the most underrated players around. 4-5 years ago I never believed I'd see Henderson playing as a deep lying playmaker in a side that's looking to challenge for titles and champions leagues. He's outstanding attribute has always been his energy and running power and looked like he could only ever be a box to box midfielder but over the past couple of seasons he's really developed into an excellent all round central midfielder.
 
Gomez has sustained a fracture to the lower leg and is going to be out for up to 6 weeks:

https://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/first-team/328824-joe-gomez-injury-latest-liverpool

Klopp wasn't happy with Burnley's tactics last night and you can't blame him. From the first whistle they were needlessly flying into tackles, in some cases they won the ball but were still wiping out our players. These dinosaur tactics aren't helped by moron's on MOTD highligthing a red card challenge from Bardsley and praising his fighting spirit.
 
Tombstone said:
Thats a big big loss, he has been outstanding, losing him for the next 2 months is pretty major. Got to hope that Lovren steps up.
Click to expand...
Got to hope Lovren's fit. He's not been in the last 2 squads and no sign of him at training today either. According to James Pearce yesterday he suffered a clash of heads in training.
 
Assuming it's just a clash of heads then Lovren shouldn't be out for long but it looks like it'll be Matip this weekend. Lovren and VVD had built up a decent partnership towards the end of last season so if we can keep them together for the most part it shouldn't be a massive problem but it's far from ideal.
 
Another one bites the dust. Trent's out for upto 4 weeks with a knee injury - some people are saying it's the injury he picked up in the warm-up on Saturday but others are saying it's a different injury. To make things worse, Wijnaldum is supposed to be a doubt for this weekend too leaving us incredibly stretched at CB, RB and CM.

Milner would have probably started at RB ahead of him anyway but it would have been lovely to have Clyne around now just to give us some cover on the bench because as things stand, assuming Wijnaldum is out this weekend, we're threadbare. I'd imagine Fabinho will start in midfield but he's also going to be cover if we have to make changes at both RB and CB and the only that can then come in for him in midfield being Keita.
 
Unless somebody the club have identified as a long term target comes available then we're not signing anybody. Klopp will argue that we have enough for Palace and after Palace Wijnaldum and Lovren will be back and hopefully Gomez after the Leicester game. The issue is, as you say, that Matip and Lovren pick up far too many niggly injuries. Signing any old CB though won't help though because Klopp's not picking them unless all of Matip, Lovren and Fabinho are out and by the weekend they're all going to be back, for the time being at least.
 
The situation we're in now is clearly not ideal and the mistake was going into the season with 4 CB's when 2 have regular injury problems but just making any old signing isn't going to change a thing. No new signing will be ready to play this weekend and by our next game both Lovren and Wijnaldum (the latter might be fit this weekend anyway) will be back. For any new signing to feature we're going to need to pick up either an injury to both Milner and Fabinho or 2 CB's + Fabinho in the next 2 weeks because after that Gomez is back anyway.

Unless you're signing somebody that Klopp sees as an upgrade on Matip/Lovren or a long term cover/competition for Trent at RB then any new signing will offer us next to nothing.
 
Tombstone said:
I hope you're right because if Klopp signs nobody and then we go on a run of dropped points that ultimately causes us to fall behind City and lose the shot at the title, I can only foresee one person of blame by the masses for that.

For me, its a simple case of risk v reward. Signing someone to aid the defence, preferably an older player with premier league experience, can have no negative effects and only the possibility of a positive effect, whereas not signing anyone to aid the defence can have no positive effect and only the possibility of a negative effect. So in terms of risk v reward, I see no risk in buying someone but the possibility of reward, and of not buying someone, the risk of losing the reward. I certainly wont grumble if we sign someone but to be honest, I may well grumble if we don't and suddenly end up 4 points behind City instead of in front.
Click to expand...
So dropping points will directly be down to not signing Steven Caulker? Your argument seems to be it's best too have too many than not enough and within reason that's fine but where do you draw a line? Why not sign 3 CB's just in case. From what you've said there's no risk in that and only a possibility of a reward.

Had Matip not already been back and Lovren not fit again by our next game and Gomez not fit by the game after then fair enough, sign somebody just in case but I honestly don't see how signing somebody like Steven Caulker will benefit us in any way shape or form. We've already been incredibly unlucky and still he wouldn't feature - it would take at least 2 more injuries in the next week before he would. You can't sign somebody on that basis or you may as well have a 40 man squad. Now if we do end up getting 2 injuries in the next few days and we end up dropping points directly as a result of playing a 16 year old at CB then you can maybe blame the manager.

And while you say there's no risk in signing somebody, I'm sure you did or would have said the same last summer. What if signing a CB last summer meant we couldn't then sign VVD in January? Spending money on players the club do not want is a risk, if not the sort of risk you think about.
 
Tombstone said:
Well to be fair, I would never have opted to sign Caulkner anyway as bandaging a wound with a crappy piece of dirty denim isn't as much use as bandaging it with a clean piece of cloth. At his best he was never good enough.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that we should rush out and buy half a dozen defenders, its not about having too many, its about having enough. We don't need loads of defenders but imo , we absolutely do need more cover. Like I say, I hope you are right. I equally hope that nobody who thinks we should not sign anyone then later blames Klopp for not signing anyone IF we end up dropping points. I understand the risks of spending money but if we aren't able to take a £20m risk (arbitrary figure) to help with a title push then we need to stop considering ourselves to be a big club right now. As I say though, I am very much a risk v reward person, which is probably one of the very many reasons that I sit on a PC forum talking about football management rather than actually doing it :D
Click to expand...

If we're not talking about another Caulker then there quite clearly is a risk. Signing somebody that would have any use to us is likely to cost a fair bit of money - using your £20m example, throw in a 4 year contract and all other fees around a transfer and you're committing £40m. Unless there's a very obvious need then do you really want to committ that money? As I said, had we done that last summer that may have meant not VVD now.

We're clearly not in an ideal situation but we've got enough options and players due to return very soon that we're not massively desperate. Certainly not desperate enough to sign somebody that isn't considered a long-term solution imo.
 
Regardless of any suspension, I can't see him playing CB in a PL game. He's not physically ready and Klopp already hinted that he was going to pick Henderson alongside Fabinho in the Wolves game before Hendo picked up a small knock. If he were to feature it would be at RB I'd imagine.
 
All the Liverpool press pack are reporting that Robertson has agreed a new 5 and a half year contract. For all the praise other signings have got, at £9m he's got to be right up there with the best signings we've made in recent history and I don't think it's a stretch to say he's the best LB in the League.
 
We are taking the **** with this Riise talk, aren't we? Riise was bang average, at best - the best thing you can say is that he was better than Moreno and Konchesky. Aurelio was very good but never fit but Robertson has been outstanding and by far our best LB in my living memory.

Anyway more good news, Trent's signed a new deal too - the long-term state of our squad is looking very positive with all our key players tied down for the best years of their careers. And a bit more good news, it looks like Trent's injury isn't as bad as first thought - Klopp said in his press-conference yesterday he's very close to being available today. Supposedly Klopp was being a bit economical with the truth and he won't play today however he has a real chance of being back vs Leicester.
 
I'll admit I do have an irrational dislike of Riise but nobody is convincing me that he was any better than average. He lived off that free-kick and a few other goals for far too long. Defensively he was far from great and while he had a mean shot on him, his attacking contributions in terms of build-up play, foward passes and crosses were non existent. Aurelio was far better than him but couldn't stay fit and Robertson's even better defensively than Aurelio and while he doesn't quite have the left foot that Aurelio had, it's not far off and he throws in super human running power and energy levels too.
 
Just a quick point on this record profit. This record profit (it's not confirmed as £88m btw, just reportedly at least that) does not mean we made a heap of cash. The way transfers are accounted for on the books meant the second we sold Coutinho for such a huge fee we were always going to make a massive profit regardless of what we spent.

When you buy a player their fee isn't an expense on the accounts - what you record is the drop in value of that player. With footballers that's calculated by dividing their fee by the length of their contract. So if you take Ox as an example, he was signed for £35m on a 5 year deal so from an accountancy point of view he cost us £7m last year and of the start of this season he was worth £28m (£35m - £7m) on the accounts*. When you sell a player you record the difference between what they're valued at on the accounts and the guaranteed part of the transfer fee received (add-ons are accounted for as they're paid). So in Coutinho's case he was worth approx £2m on the accounts and according to reports was sold for approx £102m guaranteed so we would record a profit from his sale of around about £100m.

Very roughly, if you exclude the £40m of add-ons in the Coutinho deal, we had a net spend of around £10-20m last season in terms of actual transfer fees paid and received. However the £160m odd worth of transfer fees we paid only cost us about £25m on last seasons accounts. In contrast of the £140m odd in transfer fees received, about £125m of that will be profit on last seasons accounts.

*When a player signs a new contract, whatever their value on the books is then divided by the new contract length. So had Ox signed a new 5 year deal last summer that £28m would be spread over 5 years, costing us £5.6m per year moving forwards.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom