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He really isn't. :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by Özim
A journeyman striker who's only kind of come good recently right in the tail of his career, who's league goal record isn't any better than Giroud's and who couldn't even get ahead of Giroud and Gignac in the French squad for the Euros.
This is where we are on the same page and we go into 'moaning' territory. Janssen looks like a decent player and can find the back of the net. Intetelligent finishing. No idea why we didn't move for him. Then we have that fee for Xhaka. Is he that special that special? It just seems like we could have bought a player for a fraction of that price and focused on buying a striker after.Quote:
Originally Posted by bignev
I couldn't see Aubameyang going for anything less than £80m in this current market. Just into his peak years, his profile at his highest, a new contract signed last year and of course UK clubs are ripe for the money. I could be completely wrong of course about the value but comparing him to Higuain, or Lukaku, Morata, Lacazette - his value would surely have to be far higher.Quote:
Originally Posted by bignev
I don't know what happened, if anything at all, with Mkhitaryan. As with a lot of transfers, especially in the quiet early stages of the window, they throw up conflicting story after story pumped out online, without any hint of verification. I read that he was going to happen, he wanted to come etc and you were reading the opposite - which is the usual bullshit approach from 'writers' covering every eventuality so they can pat themselves on the back in the end.
Jansson I'm not to worried about. He had a great season last year but very unproven and still a lot of question marks over whether he can adapt or just how good he really is. No one over here has really seen him beyond YT clips so who knows? Could be £18m bargain in years to come or a huge waste of money for a team watching their pennies while they build a stadium. Wanyama was in his last year of his contract so I get that price and Xhaka's price makes sense in the current market, especially has he had a good chunk of his contract left at BM too.
Our secrecy, seemingly ponderous approach and Wenger's apparent reluctance to fix flaws in the squad for years is easily exploited and manipulated in the transfer window. So far we've shown interest in every striker in Europe if the bullshit written online is to be believed and too many fans lap it right up. To a degree I can understand why because of the growing frustration most of us share but people do need to get a grip of themselves in the main.
It's been done a million times now and I tend to be in a minority on it but our real cock up with Suarez was trusting the veracity of the dodgy clause rather than the pound in excess offer.
Xhaka's price is a surprise but ultimately of little concern to me. If anything it encourages the belief that he is actually quite good as I cannot imagine we were thrilled to pay that price for a player still something of a unknown quantity in the sphere of world or 'popular' football culture.
We are actually guilty of serious short mindedness (that which we purport to be highly resistant to) and lacking conviction in paying high prices for forwards of obvious quality.
Higuain, Suarez and he wasn't one of ours that got away but, Aguero was one of the most obvious signings of quality with a high price tag I can remember in my lifetime. Picking them out isn't always the work of a genius but there are very few of them left these days belonging to clubs where your money will really talk.
Nah it was the other way around Blink.Quote:
Originally Posted by Blink 1nce Quince 2wice
John Henry has confirmed that the clause did exist in Suarez's contract however he gambled that we (and Suarez) wouldn't take it all the way to the courts to really force the issue. He was ultimately right of course.
We were right to try and activate the clause but the +£1 was pretty insulting and made Liverpool indignant which in turn caused them to circle the wagons and refuse to play ball, whereas a straight up £50 million as alluded by Rodgers may have done the trick.
Would have done the trick in terms of them agreeing to sell Suarez, but i still don't think we would have ended up signing him.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Emirates Gallactico
The buy out clause we met would have been enough on it's own if Suarez had pushed for the move, don't get me wrong i thought the plus one pound thing was a piss take and would have been enough to get anyone's backs up but it would have sufficed had Suarez wanted to come to us
I initially thought as you did but I now say this on the basis of the fact that the FA chief whatshisface said that the makeup of the clause itself was questionable. I surmise from that that it was anything but a standard buyout clause covering the party of the player for all eventualities and on that basis a legal grey area. I guess it was a bespoke/rewritten clause but poorly done or at least poorly selected.
Never before has the meeting of a 'cause' been met with such brazen refute, resistance and stubbornness from a club as it was Liverpool and that was basically because the clause itself was not water tight. Liverpool played on that fact brilliantly whilst defecting with being insulted at our supposed derisory offer of a pound in excess.
Theoretically, I am a tight arse so I see no need why if a buyout is met, why the offerer should offer a penny more if he doesn't want to....just as I don't feel obliged to tip as a matter of course American style or go into Waitrose and pay more for their finest cut of lamb than is necessary.
My understanding, and the same of the PFA guy, was that it was a good faith clause written on the basis that should a bid come in, we would sit down and negotiate nudge wink we'll let you go. Instead, we just told him and his agent to fuck off.
Which doesn't really sound like a buyout clause at all. Kind of thing you include in a letter of intent rather than a formal contract so is it any wonder Liverpool mugged us off. I'd have been pretty unhappy with my agent in his shoes.
Why didn't we bid extra after the clause nonsense?