Liverpool FC Team Talk, Gossip, Rumours 2024/25

That's fair, but we have a once in a generation manager and a word class front XI put together on some smart buying and selling. There is potential there for further success, not investing a little bit in your asset from a position of strength is shortsighted IMO, you will end up paying more at a later time rebuilding the squad.

What happens if we finish outside of the CL places? That's like 60m less in revenue, the vultures circle for your best players, once you fall out of it, its hard to get back in unless you throw money at it.

No one looking for massive money to be spent, couple of players youngish with potential. Long term is great but their is a short term need too, the squad isn't strong enough to compete. An bad injury to fabinho, or front 3/4 and we are bolloxed lets be honest. Klopp as brilliant as he is, has wrung everything he can out of this group of players.

Youngish with potential = Jones and Elliott or what would you be thinking of spending such that they'd be both good enough to cover for the front 3 (we rarely play with all four of Salah, Firmino, Mane and Jota) whilst also not being massive money?

Any such transfers this summer you can point to which meet those criteria?

I see a lot about us having the 2nd highest payroll in the league. I'm assuming that's the whole squad and not just the first 11.

Fair enough the starters are paid a ridiculous salary, but our bench constantly looks weak and void of any real options.

The first 11 picks itself, the only change might be Jota in. Our non starters are taking home huge money and doing fcuk all to earn any of it.

If Origi broke a leg and missed a year of football he'd realistically miss 3/4 games. Taki is probably the same. Naby and Ox are constantly nursing some kind of an injury.

That's a serious chunk of money wasted every month and could probably cover the wages of 2 exceptional young players plus an established 25/26yo who would get game time and help freshen up the team when we have 3 games a week.

The whole squad and full time staff 900 odd people, every club has players on their books they would like to move on but it's difficult to do, sure we still have karius. The good thing is fsg are looking at increasing income to keep the club sustainable going forward, with covid it has been running at a loss.

I'm not sure if other clubs also include all staff in their annual reports too, along with pension & insurance costs. The one thing that annoyed me about that Swiss Ramble thread, but I guess it's coming from the official end of year accounts, is that there is no breakdown of what costs were actual playing squad members.

The total Liverpool 'staff costs ' shows £325m, but really only £289m of this is actual salary costs, and we don't even know how much of that is playing staff.

If you were to take this £289m figure as only playing staff, and for arguments sake lets say there is 35 playing staff. That would put everyone earning over £150,000 every week. That just isn't happening and is not correct. I'd take a guess that there are some very high director salaries in that figure, along with a lot of scouting & analysis costs plus the high coaching staff costs. Klopp is one of the best paid managers around too, and deservedly too I should add.

So even if we took it as directors, coaches, youth team players & 700 odd other staff making up a total annual cost of around £85m, and for arguments sake lets say that £25m was paid out for squad bonuses for winning multiple trophies during that accounting year, then the playing staff wage costs would be closer to £180m, spread across around those 35 players. An average of around £100,000 a week is probably closer to the mark for the senior squad.

Definitely true, the swing in income has been huge, from a likely very healthy profit, to a painful loss and stunted momentum.

But, looking at it the other way, imagine if it had happened a season earlier and our momentum was killed just after finishing second with 97 points. Imagine if that win never happened... my god, the heartbreak if we'd not been able to push on and win last year. So, putting on my optimist hat, at least we got that all important big win before the world caught fire.

I still think we'll be in the hunt this year, but we definitely need a fair few things to fall in our favour.

I think one of the hidden costs of COVID was the inability to sell players for fees that the club would have banked on getting. The likes of Southampton, Crystal Palace, Newcastle, Burnley etc who would have bought players from Liverpool didn't have the cash readily available to spend and buy some of the squad players for the prices Liverpool wanted. It was even harder to sell to the mid-table clubs in the European countries.

In 2019/2020, Harry Wilson scored 7 PL goals for Bournemouth and even though they were relegated, he gave a good account of himself overall. The club expected to be able to sell him for around £20m. Clubs didn't have that sort of money to spend - Burnley offered £12m which was nearly half the asking price and it was declined, so he went on loan again, this time to the Championship before. He then left this summer for £12m to Fulham after the club just decided to take the offer as it was the best option for both parties.

Minamino was rumored to be going to Southampton this summer for over £20m after his loan spell, but Southampton did not have that sort of money to spend on the player and instead chose a HG option to spend the Ings money on his replacement. Likewise Liverpool wanted around £10m for Neco Williams but again Southampton chose the cheaper option in Livramento from Chelsea.

The club would have wanted similar amounts for Shaqiri, selling for around £15-20m. But the foreign clubs did not have this sort of money to spend, and again a reduced fee was eventually accepted.

Nat Philips was probably priced out of a move at £15m where the likes of Newcastle couldn't get the funding to buy him and while some clubs could afford to buy Origi, they couldn't also afford his higher wages and so instead choose to spend similar transfer fees on players with lower wages ed Edouard from Celtic. A similar transfer fee, lower wages and potentially a better player. More on- field risk, more reward, but less financial risk.

Pre COVID, there was probably some German club that would have paid the £2m for Karius.

You're looking at around £65m-£70m extra in sales there that the club could have brought in and re-invested into the squad.

Naby Lad is on a plane back to Liverpool.

The club accounts every single year show you where the clubs money goes and it isn't going to FSG. Nor does their money go to the club aside from capital spend projects like the main stand and the training centre. The clubs money is the clubs money and as the Swiss ramble thing shows, the club spent it. He has threads every year when our accounts come out. Its all there. FSG have never invested in the playing squad so I'm not sure why people expect them to now or expect them to have to do in the future if we fall away from the top 4. It would be a complete change in their business model. As far as I'm aware they don't do it with any of their sports teams.

They bought us and then appointed excellent people in various jobs inside the club and those people along with the money the club earns itself got Liverpool to the top table again and if they fall away that's how Liverpool will have to get itself back up. Granted it gets much harder to do now when state backed clubs can lash unlimited cash everywhere. We can pine for them to invest money all we want, its not happening and nor is a golden goose going to buy us and do it either. The biggest killer fir us was not our own covid losses it was everyone else's as we had nobody to flog our shite players to or to flog a star for huge money to allow a rebuild.

United are the benchmark, they don't have Arab owners and have a huge debt to service and still can comfortably spend every summer because their commercial income is gargantuan and has been for 2 decades. That's the target for LFC, get to that level of commercial wealth. Winning makes that a heck of a lot easier of course!

Haha. Don't get me wrong, the 9 months leading up to the title win were glorious! That win at Leicester only a few days after winning the club world cup was exceptional and being 15-20 points clear in Feb/March, everything was great that year but of all the years for the world to just close the way it did was just typical Liverpool right??

I remember my housemate asked me in December 2019 how it feels to finally know we are gonna win the league (non liverpool fans were far more confident we would win it than we let ourselves be) and I joked that the world would end before Liverpool won a title...I was kinda right! 😐️

Van Dijk hobbled off in the challenge that led to the Turkish goal tonight. Fingers crossed.

Van Gaal said VVD is "a little bit injured" according to Sky Sports News

He said he is fine in a post match interview.

Gomez is a forgotten man, international duty.......

third kit released this morning. Goalkeeper jersey is nice.

Welcome to Wowburger….. can I take your order please haha

The weekend is going to be very interesting ,

No way VVD plays the next 3 games even more so because he played last night , Matip probably won;t either so interesting to see how gets a game,

Next few weeks will really tell us about the squad ,

This is a bit ridiculous...

Richarlison can play because of good relationship between Everton and the Brazilian FA?

But they couldn't have played anyway ? The four Argentina lads got arrested because they came form England .

Makes no sense

The quarantine rules the Argentinian players fell foul of only applies to non-Brazilians traveling to Brazil from the UK so they could have played... for 8 minutes before the match was suspended.

It's only going to get worse as FIFA have approved internationals to allow Brazil etc. catch up on qualifiers in January during the PL mid-season break. Klopp will love that.

I can’t believe they’ll uphold the same stuff during Covid though - everything’s more complicated now, from the quarantining times, to the inherent issues with ‘forcing’ players to go to countries where Covid is totally out of control. The reality is they’re waaaay more likely to pick up Covid on international duty in Brazil, which effects their health but also their livelihood.

Hopefully they’ll find a compromise..