KopTalk.com Forums Football Liverpool FC Forum Werner the new Torres

The post mortem on this another main/priority transfer target gone sour. Klopp must be raging that a player he had made "a must" have for a number of years, didn't materialize.

There's a dejavu feel here where we had always been "the bridesmaid and Never The Bride". Low balling and making our interest known for sometime, ultimately leaving us with egg on our face. It was a familiar routine feeling as a Liverpool fan, that we thought had changed with the acquisitions of Van Dijk and Alisson.

It was not so long ago under our current Owners, where we'd wave Ian Ayre off with excited trepidation on what seemed a slow boat to China, to such far fetched places as Ukraine for Konoyplanka or Shakhtar's training base in Florida for the next wonderkid in Teixeira etc...etc... for Ayre to turn up months later with tanlines, sombrero, maracas, having used up all his glass bartering beads, but with "No" Konoyplankas or Teixeiras!

I get the feeling there was an over confidence to getting a deal done for Werner, at whatever price Liverpool's hierarchy felt.
The ChiComm pandemic being used as an excuse is poor, considering the credit Klopp and the team had already banked for the Owners.

They had invaluable experience to know Leipzig (who are bank rolled by the BIG BRAND Red Bull) where never going to budge on the price set for Werner. Our ridiculous pursuit of Naby Keita and Leipzig's business model is known to buy low and cultivate and sell at the price they set, pandemic or no pandemic.

Our hierarchy's inability here is compounded by the fact with no football for 3 months and a much smaller world with such technological advances in telecommunications, there was no need for in-person, face to face sit down talks, they had all the tools at their disposal to get this deal over the line. Their low-balling / stalling, emboldened Chelsea to nip in and get Werner under their noses. For 2 1/2 months at least, we where Werner's wet dream...Chelsea where knowhere to be seen or even on Werner's radar, so the money issue was purely the transfer fee!

We paid £40m or so for Alex Oxlaide-Chamberlain
We paid £40m or so for Mo Salah
We paid £36m or so for Mane

Surely Werner's £45m release clause was right...possibly even cheap considering what we would likely be getting? We even had the chance to get him a season earlier for £22m before Leipzig extended his contract.

There was no other reasons here other than an over confidence and greed that ultimately led to Klopp missing out on a player he rates very highly.

A BIG missed opportunity!

Totally agree

I like Werner, I wanted us to buy him, still not 100% on how we would play with him as he is abit different playing in space and off the shoulder of the defenders as the focus of attack when I have seen him for RB, so with us that would have changed, but I always think a quality player can change their game to suit the team.

I think the agent would have got £12 million who ever he signed for, that was just the commission he got, players usually go where the club pays best commission to agents !!!!

With VvD we were trying to low ball Southampton, didn't we offer about £40 million (expected price was said to be £50 million in press) when the sh*t hit the fan and Southampton threatened to report us for illegal approaches so we put out an apology to the press?

Also Alisson, I am sure we were in for him but Roma wanted about £80 million initially, so we dropped interest, then Roma dropped the fee to about £65 million a few months later as they needed to sell to get FFP balanced, the Fekir deal collapsed and Karius had a shocker in pre-season and we bought Alisson for about £65 million.

So even our big deals we have tried to reduce the fee, there is nothing wrong with that, its a negotiation, you don't go in a car showroom and pay the price on the car, its negotiation, that's business, I do think we were complacent thinking we had Werner in the bag and we was going nowhere else, so that probably influenced our stance.

Most press/people in the know sing the praises of Michael Edwards/our recruitment Team, saying we have done great business in the last few years, which we have, we would not have won the CL or PL without them, so you cannot then turn round and slate them when we miss some players or pull the plug on deals. We do not see all the information, look at how it's come out on the agents fee. We cannot always get the players we want for a variety of reasons, if Werner would have waited, I still think we might have got him when Covid restrictions are lifted, either in the summer or winter, so the club knows the financial situation better, like if we have fans in the stadium/selling merchandise etc, but Werner wanted to move now, that's his choice.