KopTalk.com Forums Football Liverpool FC Forum Ian Ayre

like balotelli, carroll, borini, aspas, luis alberto, markovic, lambert, lovren etc who we'd be lucky to recoup half of what we paid for them?

not so sustainable if you ask me, short term or long term

the system we employ of using this committee is certainly not working

ok we've made a few potentially good additions thus far, but does that make it successful until any of them have even kicked a ball or been given a chance?

Sakho was not a big name signing, he was on the bench at PSG, how is Lallana a big signing, only you know, Firmino is a player with big potential definitely not a big name yet, what has he achieved in the game? Stop talking shiite.

The aim is for them to be long-term sustainable investments. On paper nearly all of our signings have been but sometimes things don't work out for one reason or another and their value decreases.

All those players you've listed except Lambert were considered long-term sustainable investments at the time of signing. Most obviously haven't work out yet and may never. But the thing with long-term investments is to judge over the long-term. You can't conclusively judge Lovren or Markovic over one season. They may turn put to be really good pieces of investment in the end.

Signing largely unproven players means our success rate will be lower than other clubs. However, our success rate is lower than acceptable at the moment (that may change as players develop). That doesn't mean we should instantly sack people or change recruitment strategy.


What's more worrying than our recruitment is the way we seem to be allowing our best players to leave when they come good.

Sterling has probably been our most promising youngster in the last season or two yet he looks like he may leave. If our signings do become successful and then we just sell them for a big fee we will be going around in circles stuck in transition because of the volume of personnel that needs to settle in to the club.

When Lallana signed he was one of the top players in the premier league the season before.

In some peoples eyes Sakho would be classed as a big name signing. He played a lot of games for PSG so he wasn't on the bench all the time. It was only when PSG started spending massive amounts of money that he lost his place if I remember rightly.

If your thinking of big names signings as being just the likes of Messi, Ronaldo, Benzema, Pogba etc etc then yes we havn't signed any big name players.

So as a fan if the rule the club used gets you to that point (of which you just beautifully described FSG in a nutshell) then what was the point in the rule?

I will take a guess with my humble opinion (and other people please chip in if I have this wrong) that we as fans (or most of us) are not interested in a Lallana bought £25 million turn into a £40 million player 3 years later as if some race horse and then sold, weaken the team and start again.

Rinse and repeat that 5 times and you are getting nowhere.

I am a fan to WIN TROPHIES and build a team that will replicate our great teams of the past as a stable and consistent force at the right end of the table.

Sounds like you are an FSG shareholder!

Maybe I'm being old fashioned?

and that is exactly the point I'm trying to make. we need quality, not quantity. the sooner these owners realise that the better. but no, they want to count their dollars, struggle to cough up big money for the better players out there and eventually we lose out. then its back to the money ball strategy which is not proving all that much fruitful.

they need to stop trying to emulate the arsenal of yesteryear, signing youngsters and scraping 4th place by the skin of your teeth. if you actually look at arsenal's current model, they have abandoned the strategy that we are trying to copy. we've seen ozil make his move, then sanchez last summer... they seem to be adding a marquee player each year and look how much more dangerous they look!

depay was available last year and far more promising than a £20m markovic in my book, yet he was ignored in favour of the serbian. markovic could be a good player in the future but still worrying imo.

taking markovic and lovren out of the equation. there is still £50m+ worth of acquisitions that we'd struggle to recoup half of what we payed for. if that doesn't set alarm bells ringing then what does? why not go all out for a player with that kind of cash (especially when you have CL football like last summer) and pay the massive transfer fee that they are worth. surely the shirt sales alone would compensate towards a decent amount of the fee.

as for sterling, i can't help but feel that if the lad wants to leave he should be allowed to go. after all, if you look at what the owners are doing, allowing players contracts to run down, you will see they are playing a dangerous game and i think maybe this time its back fired on them and his head has been turned. when you think about it, if you're going to give a player a 50% pay increase, that could cost somewhere in the region of £3m to £5m over 6 months depending on the salary. they have done it with sterling and now henderson and skrtel are getting the same treatment. they are cut throat penny pinching businessmen, simple as.

the way i see it, we have failed massively in the transfer market over the last 20 years and its about time something was done about our incredible incompetence to sign the right players.

their strategy isn't built for success, its built for business