05 Jun 2024 08:17:50
Real can afford to pay Kroos et al £300-400k per week as squad players, can Liverpool? All well and good saying give them 5-6 year contracts, but unless buying young diamond in the rough replacements who will be on lower wages, how is it affordable?
05 Jun 2024 08:55:46
Not one person has said to give them 5 year contracts. You're just making up false quotes to back your point.
I said we should contract them to 35. That's a 3 year deal for Salah, a 2 year deal for Virgil and a 4 year deal for Alisson. You're not going to get world class players to sign 1 year rolling deals.
What's all this about squad players as well? Salah is about to turn 32, not 36. Lewandowski, Benzema, Suarez, Zlatan, Messi, Ronaldo etc were all banging them in well into their 30's. Virgil is 32. Guys like Terry, Pepe, Ramos, Puyol, Maldini, Thiago all played regularly way past their early 30's. Alisson is about to turn 32 and is a keeper. Some keepers play into their 40's!
I just can't get on board with this. Salah is the only one who even looks like he's in decline, but like many other world class wingers before him, he'll just adjust his game. Messi and Ronaldo went up front. Giggs and Barnes went into midfield.
05 Jun 2024 09:14:58
Nah not for me, although I agree some players still excel into their mid 30’s + I just don’t see salah or vvd doing it, I think the drop off last season was evidence of that, especially salah I don’t see him having the required skill set to alter his game enough to make a world class impact, I’d be looking at moving them both on if we received decent offers.
05 Jun 2024 09:41:36
Is Salah on decline? I could be talking nonsense here but personally I feel the last few years he has tailed off the back end of seasons. Then set off like a steam train the season after. AFCON and fasting seem to knock him off his stride. I haven’t got time to sift through stats so maybe it’s me mis-remembering but I wouldn’t write him off just yet.
05 Jun 2024 09:58:19
What Jaydee? looking to move them on? come off it, if we did we'd be in trouble. Don't get me wrong if we got a large sum for Salah then I get it but we aren't going to. At least give them a chance under a new regime. Tell me please mate, who would you want to replace them with?
I really don't understand why so many people are talking about selling our best players, it's every single day I come on here lol. Gobsmacking.
Who's going to be talked about tomorrow?
Too many people are thinking about the financial side of things, forget that. If you sell your best players it's completely bloody irrelevant, the other day it's Alisson now it's VVD and Salah. Do people not see how buggered we'd be without them?
Salah is definitely on the decline, that can't be argued but he still scores and assists, unless we get a huge offer I hope to christ we keep him because he does make a difference and MK is right, players learn to adapt. Good players do anyway and he is still a good player, world class? not anymore but he's still good enough to be kept.
At this point I think we should just sell every good player just to keep the minority happy.
05 Jun 2024 10:02:21
MK - I do get your point regarding keeping salah/ vvd/ alisson.
Alisson is a must keep, best keeper in the world but we do need to make sure we have a great backup as he does get injured a fair bit in the grand scheme of things for a goalie.
VVD is a tough one, I understand the players you are comparing him to but none of them were exactly blessed with pace, they relied more on their reading of their game so as they got older a loss of pace was not an issue. VVD has always been blessed with pace so this is why his ‘decline’ as he gets older may be more apparent.
Salah is also a tough one. I’ve never really thought of him as a technically magnificent player like other forwards he is compared to. I have always felt like he has relied on his pace to take on a player or fashion a chance for him self - it was that that enabled him to always cut in on his left not really skill or trickery. IF Slot wanted to try salah up top closer to goal then I would be happy for him to stay. If he was to stay as a winger then I would probably move him on.
Just my two cents and it’s great to hear different peoples opinions on it all.
05 Jun 2024 09:59:21
I'm with WYred and MK Scouser on this. Salah seems to start of well before tailing off, usually after coming back from Afcon. The season that just past, he even had an injury that he came back from and yet, he still ended up as our top scorer and had a decent number of assists as well. He was on fire before going for Afcon and many of us here, myself included, were commenting on how he has adjusted his game to prolong his career. True, he does not have his pace anymore but I do feel he still has something to offer.
The same goes for VVD. Before our slump in April, most of us were commenting how he is back to his best and how he is arguably the best CB in the league. He was not as imperious as he was before his injury but he is still a very good CB and I think he has more to offer as well.
I think we are forgetting how poor the team was in April and that has impacted our view of our players. It is true that we literally threw away three competitions in that one month and there could be many reasons for that happening. But on the flipside, these players are also the ones who got us to April in the first place, still believing in the quadruple. We got to that point because of VVD, Salah, Allison, and everyone else in the team, not in spite of them. So if Salah and VVD wants to stay on in the team, I am more than happy with that. I would not be showing them the door.
05 Jun 2024 10:36:53
In Mo's position only Palmer (padded by peno's) and player of the year Foden got more Prem goals than him in a season where he was supposedly diobolical. Both played more league games too. Guy is elite, been written off before on these pages many times, always answers the criticism. As for Alli nd Virg, ridiculous to even think about not keeping them. Both still the best in their position in the game.
05 Jun 2024 11:23:05
Id go one further and say that to lose their presence in the dressing room would be a mistake.
Alisson should not be part of this discussion, the man is outstanding and very much entering his peak years.
05 Jun 2024 11:25:42
Fair enough points Jaydee and Astarkey. However I think Salah and Dracred both nailed it. If we lose 2 or 3 of our best players in one go it will not end well and i really do believe our poor end to the season is skewing peoples thoughts. Salah was being talked up for POTY at one point and finished the season with 38 goal involvements in 44 games. Virgil actually still got nominated for POTY.
As WYred said, Salah does seem to to drop off slightly after an AFCON for whatever reason but in the Prem there is only 3 players with comparable goal/ assist returns to him; Watkins, Haaland and Palmer. He's still in the top 5 forwards in the Prem quite comfortably even if he does look slower. Because his ability to pick out a killer pass or just know where to be to get a goal is still absolutely elite.
05 Jun 2024 12:01:00
Sorry but if anyone thinks peak Salah is coming back you are sadly mistaken. That horse has long since bolted and been turned into glue.
To the supporters saying about his form after the AFCON, well it’s entirely likely that he’ll be going to the Olympic Games with Egypt, meaning zero pre season, meaning additional meaningless competitive international games which will affect his fitness and energy levels, then the possibility he picks up another injury, so how do you think that will work out for us?
Club always comes first. Players are transient employees. Without pace Salah is a complete shadow of himself and does not offer much. That was painfully obvious from January onwards. At his age he’s not recovering that pace. It’s gone, the sensible and practical approach is to sell now while there is some market value and reinvest as it’s easier to replace with a wad of cash in our pockets than not, and it isn’t like we can fabricate sponsorship like Man City do if they need to sign a player.
05 Jun 2024 12:11:43
Who do we have at the club who is better than Mo in his position?
05 Jun 2024 12:21:19
VV, nobody has said peak Salah is coming back so chill with that stuff that nobody said. What people are saying is that they think Salah w/ o AFCON and injury free going into next season can still do bits. You may disagree BUT that does not mean they said peak Salah is coming back.
As for @fuser's post again, I have not seen anyone here say our big players should get 5 year extensions with 300/ 400k a week. As long as out big players want to stay and the new manager wants them and a deal can be done then, why sell them? To prove what?
Also @Jaydee, VVD was the BEST centre back this season (after many thought he was washed) while in his 30's so that argument by just got debunked by facts. And it would be completely stupid to sell them all in one window as that would make NO business nor football sense at all.
And lastly, is it too much to ask that people actually respond to what people actually say rather than responding to things NOBODY said? Good grief!
05 Jun 2024 12:26:10
Theres no offer though victor, and seemingly no inclination on Mo's part to move this summer either. doesn't look like that big treasure chest you want so dearly is arriving, not for Salah anyway.
{Ed002's Note - He will be encouraged to run down his contract and leave next summer in exchange for a signing on fee for the value of his then transfer fee.}
05 Jun 2024 12:28:27
VV, make of this whatever you want but from January onwards Salah made 18 appearances for Liverpool and he scored 9 goals and registered 7 assists. His G/ A ratio was better than 1 per 90 mins. Didn't offer much after January though, eh?
05 Jun 2024 12:32:09
WDW, there is nobody in Europe as far as I'm concerned. Saka and Rodrygo are the closest in my opinion and they're still way off being as consistent in their end product.
05 Jun 2024 13:52:20
ed2 - you mentioned - He will be encouraged to run down his contract and leave next summer in exchange for a signing on fee for the value of his then transfer fee - I was thinking about Mo and also Real Madrid picking up Mbappe for "free". In the case where a club seems to agree with their player to run their contract down, do they also negotiate that the signing bonus would be paid to the club?
e. g., We mutually agree with Mo to let his contract run down and then whatever his signing bonus is at the next club, he agrees to pay that to LFC? do clubs do that?
{Ed002's Note - Never.}
05 Jun 2024 14:24:56
June Nkunku, Foden and Palmer also both had free roles essentially, often playing at the number 10 where you are closer to the goal. Wouldn't put it past Salah playing through the middle. His national team coach was even bigging up how he could play in midfield going forward. It's clear he has started to lose his pace, but he still scores and created goals so put him in a position where he doesn't have to burn past wing backs.
05 Jun 2024 14:34:10
Ye players often hand over the signing on fee they receive from their new club and hand it over to their old club, simply because they just happen to be really nice guys, I hear from a reliable source that mbappe is handing over his entire 85million signing on fee to psg, what a great guy.
05 Jun 2024 15:38:05
Mk you mentioned Barnes and Giggs both playing centre midfield as they got older but you fail to mention how awful they were in that position. Because they were both pretty poor there and looked physically shot. I’m not a fan of giving someone a role in the team on the ground of sentiment. We’re Liverpool Football Club, not make a wish. As for Salah after 1st January, he only scored 6 times in the league and most of the season he was struggling to beat defenders.
Whether you want to admit that his time is up doesn’t matter, the facts don’t care about feelings. Age and time have caught him up, he’s been a great player but calculated cold decisions need taking. We can either have a season where we’re just trying to fit him into the team for sentimental purposes or we can do what we used to do and move a player on whose best days are behind them. Bob Paisley always said he preferred it if players legs went on someone else’s pitch and to this day he isn’t wrong.
05 Jun 2024 16:02:40
After the 1st of January he only started 9 times in the league ? that's 6 goals from only 9 starts. Some strikers are more than happy with that. Why are you so hell bent on bending the stats to discredit him?
The "facts" you talk about are actually your subjective opinions. The only fact on this thread was posted by me; 38 G/ A in 44 games. That is what a fact looks like. Buy a dictionary and look the word up.
Giggs and Barnes weren't awful midfielders either by the way. They both stood out still in their respective teams as driving forces from midfield capable of scoring and creating goals. Giggs was arguably better in midfield in my opinion.
05 Jun 2024 16:33:10
giggs and barnes were awful in midfield? did you even watch them play? maybe you might not think they were the best midfielders in the world, but giggs started virtually every game when fit and barnes did as well, all the way up to his very last season. barnes was our skipper in midfield and i seem to remember him laying on the winning assist for collymore in *that* newcastle game from exactly that position, after a surging run from deep.
05 Jun 2024 18:12:20
Moving Allison, VVD and Salah along all in one season is like tearing the heart and core out of the team. And nobody is looking at that in terms of what it could do for on field performance as a team. Let's forget about replacing them with new purchases for now, but just look at their current backups to see the sheer gulf in ability and performance that we would have; Kelleher, Quansah and Elliott.
Even the most eager coach / manager, no matter how ambitious he may be to put his stamp on the team, would never try something like this.
05 Jun 2024 18:13:37
I should have said 3-4 years not 5, but Salah, VVD et al can easily get 300-400k/ week in the US or ME for their final years, so why would they sign extensions on lower amounts. Even Ed002 has said that if Salah was to sign an extension, he’d want a pay rise despite already being Liverpools highest paid player. My overall point stands; they’ll only sign extensions for big money and can Liverpool afford to do that whilst signing top level replacements or will it result in buying younger replacements on lower wages.
06 Jun 2024 01:06:16
If anybody seriously think the club are going to let Ali, VVD and Mo all go before the start of next season, then I think you’re probably in for a surprise.
The thing about age is irrelevant. Just because X is still playing at 38 or Y has just signed a new contract for a club at 35 years of age has no bearing upon a completely different player with an altogether different medical history aged 31.
Players, irrespective of age, position or fans fanciful thoughts, will be judged by their suitability for a spot in the squad and the potential for extended contracts by the club. This thread, like a lot since the end of the season are just rationalisations to justify why players they like (or don’t want anymore on the other side of the coin) rather than about the players’ being fit for purpose.