Liverpool FC Team Talk, Gossip, Rumours 2024/25

Surely I’m not the only half expecting (okay, not really) City to end up with Grealish, Kane, Messi and get Aguero back now as a result of this Barca debacle. If they only just stopped pretending they didn’t have the money to do it, there’d be little standing in their way tbh.

The rumours are he's got his lawyers looking for way out of his Barca contract.

Hendo been back training in Liverpool Klopp said post match the other day...

Adding no one this summer would seem to suggest the plan is off schedule

They did spend over 30 million on a top young CB...

Seems like that was the transfer we could make immediately regardless of outgoings, but that the next ones will require thinning out an increasingly bloated squad first.

I fully expect that come the end of this window we'll have made back the 36m we paid for Konate

Do you have a quote from the club were they've said we'll spend 250m on players?

Sarcasm , Point is its always next year.

Ah but we sold 75m worth of players in last 12 months.

So what?

We improved the squad by selling those players.

You say that as if for all of those 3 summers we didn't have squads competing for leagues and champions leagues, winning both in the process...

Which is the prudent way to run a club when you aren't owned by a country. We spend what we earn. The accounts show that year on year. The owners have never taken a penny out but also don't put a penny in. I'm OK with that.

There was loads of moaning the summer before we won the league too. Some people are never happy.

Klopp is the man to credit with that not FSG.

Ok but who brought Klopp to the club.

In fairness, we have a good record over the last few seasons of buying the 'right player'. The likes of Mbappe and Haaland are almost ready made superstars that Liverpool have never been in for. I like the PSG model of spending what we earn.

Obviously it’s both. They went and got him against the odds. They gave him the best scouting analytics out there. They’ve backed him with building his support staff and playing staff, and they’ve stayed largely out of his way. They’ve built long term too, with both our physical and technical infrastructures leaps and bounds beyond what they were when they arrived. Oh, and they also saved the club from going to the fcking’ wall!

They’ve made some stupid PR fck ups, but have apologised and rolled back every time there was a reaction. Tbh, looking around the league i’m not sure there’s an ownership I’d prefer.

Squad places. Our squad is full. We can't sign other players as the squad is full. We have exactly the same problems as our rivals do in that we have to get rid of our shite before we can add to the squad. People interpret that as having no money and maybe we don't but the facts are we can't sign any foreign players until we have a squad space free to put them in.

Or maybe we should just pay lads to sit in the ressies and keep buying players for the craic.

I like the intention, but the reality is that 25m a year wages wouldn’t come close to getting Mbappe. That would only be a hair above what he’s on now. His next wage contract will be closer to 42m a year. Haaland will be the same.

Those are just the sorts of players and terms we’ve never been in for, and never will be in for.

Whoever gets Mbappe is not getting him for free if he runs his contract down. He's going to be getting his transfer value (or at least the majority of it) built into his contract. Large signing bonus, loyalty bonuses, and wages. And I think we'll be seeing more of it, why let clubs get the money when you can very likely get someone to insure you in case of a career ender (very rare) for a small (in comparison but still millions) fee.

The biggest stars should sign short term deals, 2-3 years, insure themselves against a disaster and move if they feel like it every few years. Or you go the Haaland route and force in a low (in comparison to his worth) get out clause.

Minimum… he’s thought to have 800k on the table to stay with PSG.

This often gets said, that at some stage the PL bubble has to burst and most fans wonder why it hasnt yet. But I read an interesting article a few months back that said there is still plenty of growth left in subscribers worldwide. Its central example was that China has 180 million Premier League fans and the EPL allowed them to watch it on free to air tv for many years in order to get them hooked. Now that they're hooked pay tv and streaming services have entered the equation.

Its still early days but in China you get 3 or 4 free PL games per week from a streamer and then they have to pay for the other six games with the top teams playing. Eventually there will be no free games and they'll start upping the subscription prices as China gets wealthier which it is at a ferocious pace. The sub prices wont get as high as here but they dont need to because of the much bigger population. But that aside the article said what will really blow things up will be the first Chinese player to play for a top PL club, at that point subscriber numbers will explode. They already saw this effect when a Chinese basketball player made the NBA in the US, he drove the popularity of the sport to huge levels right across China. The same effect is already in play in South Korea right now where millions tune in to Spurs games just to watch Son.

In the US there is similar growth in tv subs expected, the PL is only now beginning to really take off there. It has become popular with the under 30s with many of them now following it over NFL or basketball. Between there and Asia there is lots of growth still to come. It will all end up driving tv money, players wages and transfer fees even higher than what they are now. It makes a lot of sense when you look at the revenues of the NFL ($13bn) and Major League baseball ($10bn) compared to the PL on only $5.2bn at the moment. Football is easily more popular globally than NFL or baseball and PL is the most popular league worldwide. Theres no reason why the PL wont some day challenge the NFL as the highest revenue generating league in the world. As long as they continue to grow it globally the tv money can only go one way. Theres been talk of the PL bubble bursting for year after year after year now but I think it is just lazy journalism when you look at it objectively.

A lot of talk about marquee signings as per the time of year. Hope the club are looking at the next big things and not the current big things, the Grealishes & Sanchos of 2 years ago. I have faith in the recruitment department. I don't lose sleep about price tags, just buy hungry talent - it's served us well.

He just signed a new contract with Sporting, but I’d love us to move for Pedro Gonçalves. Just turned 23 and scoring at an incredible rate as a wide player. Already has 3 in two games this season.

To an extent, but that only really applies to lads on their first contract. Anyone renewing is effectively in the same position as a new free-transfer. Those players choice is literally to sign on for longer or leave for free. So you have to be competitive towards what they'll get elsewhere. Someone like Mo isn't going to be happy extending his contract on 250k, instead of leaving on a free, while a guy comes in who left elsewhere and gets 500k+. That sort of disparity disincentivizes our biggest players from extending.

Also, I'm pretty sure UK contracts are reported as gross, not net. And France's super high tax bracket has been gone for a while - their highest bracket now is 45%.

Thiago and Milner both came in as league-winning free transfers with a view to being key midfielders - and while they got high wages, they still fit into an existing wage bracket. It's just not really comparable to someone coming in and blowing everyone else away with double anyone elses wage.

Wilson scores for Fulham, wasn't aware he had joined them at all