sharkyvilla

Agents aren't wise, just greedy.  We could offer him a pay rise with a release clause in, but to be honest I think we would be better off selling him this summer if one of the big clubs put in a £25m bid.  His career would probably go backwards but they all seem too stupid to realise that and it's not our problem.  Get in a partner for Vlaar from Europe, a strong midfielder and two wingers with the money and we won't be relegation fodder next year.  It's amazing Benteke has scored so many goals when he basically been our only attacking threat, but given the right service next year Bent and Weimann would score plenty.  If we just keep Benteke and don't have the money to add any other players to the team then we'll struggle again.

I think there is something there.  With a full pre-season getting fitter and hopefully someone playing ahead of him on the left who he can overlap and also give him some more protection he could make it.  Given the circumstances I'm not surprised he has struggled in his first season in the big time, he may well turn out to be not good enough but it's still very early.

I very much doubt we'd get 10m for Guzan.

 

As good as I think he is, that's a lot of money for a goalkeeper.

On second thoughts it was perhaps a bit high but I would still think that at 29 and having shown he can do it in the Prem, he would command at least £8m.  Lloris went for a ridiculously cheap price and is worth at least £15m.  I'm sure Wenger would be interested in someone like Guzan and maybe even Fergie would think he's more dependable than De Gea.  He would still provide a massive profit for Lambert.

I would take £24m+ in a heartbeat for Benteke.  I doubt he would sign a new contract with us and his value would only decrease imo.  We could buy two decent wingers, a central midfielder and a commanding centre back for £6m each whilst keeping Bent and Weimann who will score goals in a better team.  This has to be Lambert's main strategy for rebuilding the club imo, and it's crucial he keeps finding players on the cheap that can keep turning profit.  It's quite refreshing that we can talk about money we've spent that looks like not being written off.

has anyone got a list of all the players Lambert has bought so far and/or their cost?

 

This is what i can remember:

 

Benteke - £7m

Vlaar - £4m

Lowton - £3m

El-Ahmadi - £2.5m

Sylla - £2m

Westwood - £2m

Bowery - £0.75m

Bennett - ?

Guzan - free

Dawkins - loan

 

Have i missed anyone?

Considering Benteke is probably sellable for £24m and Guzan close to £10m that's decent profit

So your tidbit of itk was that Mon was forced out.

Thanks for clearing that up for us.

If he was forced out why didn't they just sack him in the summer and then not have to wait until a few weeks into the season to appoint Houllier?  If they did it earlier in the pre-season they might have been able to prise away a manager from another club rather than go for an out-of-work one.

WTF, Davies had to be the highest earner?  That's just mental if true

I enjoyed O'Neill's time at the club, which is why I'm disappointed with the fact that he just decided to give up and leave when things were going to get a bit tougher.  I think it's his inflexibility that has stopped him from becoming one of the top managers and he'll never get the Utd/Liverpool type job that he once seemed destined to get.  People seem to think it's all black and white that it's either O'Neill or Lerner (I think Houllier was just as culpable) but like with anything it's for a number of reasons but what's happened is in the past and I think Lerner has genuinely tried to learn from his mistakes.  He's gambled this season but if we stay up I think it will have worked out pretty well in the end and should put us on the road to recovery.

We're going round in circles here but if so much of the money Randy authorised hadn't been spent on players who we had to release on free transfers we wouldn't be in this mess.  That's been our biggest problem and a huge waste of time and money.  If we stay up this season, we can get rid of the highest earners who do naff all and get in the extra TV revenue then we'd have put ourself back into a reasonable financial footing within one season I think.

Going back to when he came to us, just how highly was he rated in Europe?  Lambert has to take huge credit for Benteke, I hope he has a list of other targets of similar unknown quality as he's in theory made back nearly all the money he spent in one player's valuation.  Picking Sylla from obscurity shows he or someone he knows must have a massive dossier on European players that can be bought on the cheap.  That's why we need to keep Lambert, and if we stay up and if in the summer the wage ratio gets closer to the 60% mark (with the increase in TV money and shifting some more of the shite it shouldn't be far off?) then I think we should be steadily moving back on the upward curve.

It's amazing sometimes how one new player can suddenly balance a side out.  Hopefully Sylla is that player for us that stops the oppo steamrolling through the midfield and putting 4 against us, as we've got the forward options to win games if we can keep the goals out.

How the **** can the wages go up £30m in one year?  That must be the season that absolutely screwed us over, and no wonder O'Neill and Lerner parted ways on such bad terms.

Edit: how would those figures stack up next season assuming we stay up?  Dunne, Ireland, Given and Bent probably all gone from the wage bill and the increase in TV money, surely we'll be back in the 60% bracket?

We've got a decent keeper and 4 decent attacking options when they can be arsed, the rest of the side is amongst the worst I've seen. 

If Mike Ashley can turn Newcastle around then I don't see why Lerner can't do it for us.  Forget the blame game, yes O'Neill's transfer policy wasted a ridiculous amount of money but Randy made mistakes too, but that's all in the past.  If we stay up this season then we will be in a financially pretty strong position from next season, am I right? 

I think that's a bit unfair. Do you think MON was making decisions thinking it would be bad for the club? Our issue was wages in relation to income and there's only one man who should be on top of that.

 

 

so resigning 5 days before season started was good for the club?

Exactly.  I actually thought the Houllier appointment was a good one considering the circumstances, in hindsight it was a disaster and we would have been better having him as director of football.  If we had done then I'm sure that signing players like Sissoko would be a formality for the club now.  Sadly things have gone from one disaster to another and if we stay up having not spent then it is a massive result for the club financially and crucial in turning things around finally after the years of mismanagement.  A massive gamble though.

I don't know why but I can feel it in my bones that this guy is going to be the bollocks.  Hope we get to see him at the weekend.

We need to auction him to the highest bidder, hopefully get something like £24m and reinvest in similar players.  The likes of Dawson and Parker aren't what we need or what Lambert wants.  Lambert is no fool, he must have a massive dossier of European players that would be much better value for money.  Even if Benteke does leave we could still have Weimann, Bent and Gabby at the club, if we get the right support players in with the money we will be flying.

Barrisco, not too bad.  I used to be Bazvaldo when we played in the pig pens as kids

Either way, what a **** signing he was and completely different to what we've been used to.  I just hope Lambert has some other unknown top players up his sleeve should he get a proper transfer kitty.

If we get silly money for him fair enough, but I mean £25m and above silly - anything less than that and he doesn't go. Simple.

If I was a manager and someone offered me £20m+ I'd take it.  We could buy two quality wingers and keep Bent and Weimann and we'd probably be better off as a team.  Of course I'd love Benteke to stay with us for as long as possible though.  He'd only end up a bit-part player at one of the big clubs but that doesn't stop players going anyway.

Great business by Lambert to bring him back in, we've got a 28 year old keeper good enough for the Prem for a free transfer effectively.  He could easily be our keeper for 10 years.

Certainly makes a big difference when our senior players perform, hopefully Zog can go from strength to strength.  It's often the ones that seem to have the biggest egos that are actually quite insecure and rely on confidence (or so I've read in some sports psychologist bollocks), hopefully now that Lambert has given him the prime role and he has responded he and Benteke can steer us to safety. 

His tactics on the most part against Barca won't really sit easy with many of their fans either.  If they finish below Atletico it will be a bit embarassing.

Randy couldn't afford that wage bill however good the players were. How does a player being good make it easier to afford their wages?

Shit players often make the team worse, so they end up getting dropped and not used, and you have to bring in someone else and pay them to replace them.  We've had incredible difficulty shifting players so you're effectively paying two players, with the one who actually has to play in the team getting paid less.  Good players generally retain or improve their transfer value as well, shit players don't.  The money we've written off on transfer fees could probably have funded the club's wages for over half a year.  I think Randy is wealthy enough to fund a large chunk of the club as he did for the first 3 years but not rich enough to piss away £40m a year.

I would say fruitless rather than reckless....referring to the quality we got back for our money.

That's exactly right.  I wouldn't say that giving O'Neill the 6th biggest wage budget was at all reckless, OK it may have been above the ideal ratio to turnover but Randy seemed more than willing at that stage to fund it.  It's just that so much got pissed away on poor footballers and that can't be down to Randy, merely down to the manager's recruitment.  He couldn't have done much more for the club up until that point.  He's made bad decisions as well but appointing Lambert and restructuring the finances was a good one in my book, despite all the short-term pain we're suffering at the moment.

In theory Dawkins and Sylla should give us the balance we need but it depends on them not being utter shit or getting injured.  Even then we may still not be good enough to stay up.  I was expecting us to be near the bottom 3 come January before improving but we're certainly leaving it late.  Frigging hurts.