KopTalk.com Forums Football Liverpool FC Forum Commolli did the dough!

Dunk has clarified this debate in his latest piece. Commolli is responsible for the prices paid for the players signed including Carroll.

I really feel for Kenny here because this isn't just a league position issue per se. Much of it stems from the money that has been done on these players.

Unless Rafa steps in short term I'd prefer Kenny stays until the end of the season. I know some of you have already made up your minds and this doesn't excuse results or the manager but that Commolli has to go.

It has doubled the pressure all season all round.

It was a naive and ignorant appointment to start with by a company who are appearing out their depth running one of the worlds most famous clubs.

Where can one find this piece? How does Dunk know what's going on behind the scenes at the club?

And no, not that much of our problem with Kenny comes from the amount spent on players. We could have spent £1 billion on Carroll for all I care; it's not my money. As long as he's banging in goals, his price is pretty irrelevant. Madrid spent a f*ck-ton of money on Ronaldo, but he's been worth every penny, and then some. The problem has to do with the fact that we bought a load of sh*t. We've been had. Newcastle, Sunderland, Blackpool and Villa have been laughing at us all the way to the bank. And, I would also say that being in 8th f*cking place has more than a little to do with it.

I've said al along that the likes of henderson and carroll are nowehre near good enough for the club. Their fee is a seperate issue. If you put the money issue to one side, we've still got adam, downing, henderson and carrol as regulars and because of those signings (plus poor tactics, training etc) we are 8th in the league. Even if they were all free transfers we'd still be 8th in the league.

That said, we don't really know what comolli's role is. I've always thought he as just a scout with a fancy job title but he appears to be much more involved at times. Can't see the point of him though and very few of his ex-colleagues will say a good word about him.

With a title like Director of Football, it makes sense that Commolli does more than being a cheif scout. I believe he handles agents and player contracts etc., which is fine - leaves the manager to focus purely on the footballing side of things.

It therefore does make sense that he may have been responsible for the fees. The club sets a budget for the window; Kenny informs Commolli of his requirements; Commolli fullfils them within the budget.

Seems reasonable at first but as we have seen, this system fails to take into account the psychological effect of a players fee or wages on a player and the team, and the ammunition it gives to the media. Now we perhaps understand why Wenger refuses to splash the cash willy nilly at Arsenal.

Previously when Rafa was in sole charge he made similar mistakes like gettin Javanovic signed up on a reported £90k a week (cos he was a free transfer)

So whichever system you have in place, mistakes will be made if the judgment of the person(s) making the decision is flawed.

At some point, Commoli would have sat in a board room (or had a conference call) with kenny and someone from FSG and said "we can get carroll but it will cost £35m - do you want to proceed?", and kenny would have had to say yes and persuaded the board that AC was worth the money. No way is commoli solely responsible for deciding how much a player is worth and then going ahead with it as long as he was on some shortlist. If that's how things are done then our club doesn't deserve to have such loyal supporters!

Agree with this. If the price is exorbitant that's not Commolli's fault if the manager wants the player that much and the owners are willing to pay it.

It may not be Commolli's fault but it would be a flaw in the system.

I would've thought that for each transfer window they have a set budget. They'll also have an annual wage budget and maybe even a 3-4 year projection/budget of wages given the contracts in place.

Kenny surely has the final say on which players he wants. If Kenny also has the final say on what price to pay and what salary a player is worth then what's the point of Commolli other than a glorified chief scout and secretary to Kenny?

Basically, it seems the picture isn't clear and hence why the cock up in the prices we've paid.

For what it's worth - in baseball, the signings are almost entirely down to the General Manager, not the Manager. Some managers are given more freedom than others. Some might be able to say, "I want Player X," but that is about the extent of their involvement. Even in that situation, the GM will handle the contract negotiations, organize the trades, etc. Some managers have literally no say in how the club's business is conducted. The GM and scouts will draw up a list of potential targets, narrow things down, talk to other GMs and organize the deals, handle the contract negotiations, and so on and so forth. Moneyball (the book) gives a good account of this, which I encourage everyone to read. A lot of people say we're making "Moneyball" signings, but we're not, and those people have no idea what they're talking about. A GM in baseball is equivalent to what Comolli is doing for us. Not saying this is how things work at LFC, but this is the system that John Henry knows. It would not surprise me if this is how he set things up here.

Basically it seems we have owners who don't understand football, who aqppointed a director of football who has never played or managed, who in turn treads on the toes of a manager, who himself has been out of frontline management for over 10 years.

I don't think that Kenny has any part of the decision-making process regarding wages for instance. That would definitely be Commolli's department.

Think of it this way. You have 80m budget. You need 5 players, you need to make sure you get all 5, and you want to do your best to make sure they all work because your squad has no real cover for these 5. That puts you on a hiding to nothing in the transfer market, because you can't really afford to gamble on foreign players that might not adapt to the English conditions and the English game (or who take 6 months to adapt - not every foreigner takes to the league the way Suarez and Torres did). You *will* end up paying too much for the targets you want because you will do your best to make sure no one else signs them first (or delays the deal by a few weeks that the player could have spent getting acquainted with your existing squad). Therefore our targets were players proven in the league, and we were prepared to pay over the odds for them just to make sure they got signed.

A lot of people are very negative regarding our transfer activity last year, but I'm much more relaxed about it because we were walking into a seller's market with big pockets and we weren't prepared to gamble (either on weaker or unjustifiable players, or on the chance of missing our first pick). That made us lame ducks. Everyone knows (or should know) that Torres would be sold for 15m more than whatever it was going to cost us to sign Carroll. We were spending Chelsea's money to buy him, though quite frankly someone should have heard alarm bells at breaking the transfer record for a guy who'd spent only 6 months in the EPL and was injured. It would also be nice if people remembered that Redknapp offered 28m for the player, and Mike Ashley knew he could squeeze another few million by rejecting our offer of 30m.

We could have signed no one (or a bunch of Rafa-esque gambles) and no one can say we would be better off without the benefit of hindsight. Suarez could have taken 4 months to adapt, in which case we would probably not have finished in the top 10 last season. It's a lot of ifs, buts and maybes, and I'd prefer if people stopped bringing up the transfer fees - they're not the whole picture.