Luis Suarez

[It's Your Round]

We won’t be pulling Suarez off in January. That’s a relief (not for Luis).

[tomav84]

3 minutes ago, It's Your Round said:

We won’t be pulling Suarez off in January. That’s a relief (not for Luis).

[mottaloo]

2 minutes ago, It's Your Round said:

We won’t be pulling Suarez off in January. That’s a relief (not for Luis).

Too easy !

 

[TRO]

1 hour ago, osmark86 said:

fair enough. I'm not sure that SG is so desperate for the Liverpool job that he'd toss us under the bus for this sake. Klopp is still very successful with them and not looking to move on right now anyways so even if he was desperate for it there are no guarantees he will be called up by them in the short term. I think that SG just wants us to have a little more experience in the squad to balance it out with all the young players we have. We can agree or disagree with this, but I don't think that what he is saying & doing is evidence of something more sinister than this.

I think you have a point....its so difficult to bring in the right quality, without European football.....we are assembling some top class youth, but the gap is a little too big.

We need some "here and now" quality to get us in to the better league placings....Hence the temporary switch in strategy.

My worry is, we have lost 11 games, so far.....we need some defensive reinforcements too.....we can't be losing so many games, like this.

[osmark86]

17 minutes ago, TRO said:

I think you have a point....its so difficult to bring in the right quality, without European football.....we are assembling some top class youth, but the gap is a little too big.

We need some "here and now" quality to get us in to the better league placings....Hence the temporary switch in strategy.

My worry is, we have lost 11 games, so far.....we need some defensive reinforcements too.....we can't be losing so many games, like this.

I agree that we are a little bit leaky at the moment. I'm not sure if that is a form thing or a player/coaching quality thing, but I'm leaning more towards the former since we have witnessed Konsa and Mings as a powerhouse pair in the past (our entire back 4 + Emi tbf). I do think that we are a little short in cover there atm however which is a worry now that we lost Axel. At least we got a better cover for Emi now in Olsen and upgraded on Targett with Digne.

I know that you would love us to sign a CDM to improve on Luis and Nakamba and I see a point in doing so if we want to play our RB and LB more aggressively in attack. I think an absolute workhorse in this area would elevate us. 

[Beastmix]

26 minutes ago, It's Your Round said:

We won’t be pulling Suarez off in January. That’s a relief (not for Luis).

[osmark86]

...but I digress. Let's sign Luis eh lads?!

[villalad21]

Gerrard will be looking at Fernando Torres soon

[osmark86]

3 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

Gerrard will be looking at Mohamed Salah soon

ftfy

[TheStagMan]

7 hours ago, hippo said:

Ashley Young, Ings, Digne, Coutinho.

Think that policy is pretty much dead anyway.

and yet, less than a week ago, we signed 17 year old future prospect Kerr Smith

[ciggiesnbeer]

8 hours ago, rodders0223 said:

I'd really start to question the club and Gerrard if this is a credibe link.

Anyone who's actually watched him and not just looked at stats would see this would be an incredible waste of wages.

He can't run he can't move. He's so stiff and immobile.

Just don't do it 

I havent seen him at atletico madrid so how does his scoring work these days now he cant move?

Do they wheel him in the opposition penalty box at the start of the game while the other plays bounce the ball off him into the goal?

[jacketspuds]

6 minutes ago, TheStagMan said:

and yet, less than a week ago, we signed 17 year old future prospect Kerr Smith

[allani]

2 hours ago, HKP90 said:

Maybe, although given that one of the concerns when SG was brought in was that he's desperate to get the Liverpool job, his signings so far don't do anything to dissuade the possibility that he's going for that in the short term. It's certainly not a long term strategy. IF he does use an improved league placing to put himself in the shop window in the next season or so, we need to be damn sure he doesn't do it at our expense by shouldering us with massive wages. I'm OK with Coutinho as it's a short term loan first, but we need to be really careful here. I am loving what SG has done so far, but he's not filling me with confidence that he'll be here in the medium term.  

Besides, how does Grealish leaving a week before the new season not imbue cynicism? In no way did I think he'd leave for Man City, and that proved massively naive on my part. 

Couple of points in response.

Digne is not a short term signing.  At 28 he has 3 or 4 seasons left at this level easily.  If you assume that our strategic plan is looking forwards 5 years (which is pretty standard) then Digne could be expected to be playing for almost all of that period.  At the very worst that is mid-term planning.

Coutinho is also not an old player who is just plugging a hole for 18 months.  His loan signing is obviously short-term (as is any loan) as it only lasts 6 months.  But the fact that we seem to have negotiated everything that would allow us to buy him in the summer suggests that we are hoping that he is here well beyond May.  Let's assume we do buy him in the summer - then again he should have another 3 seasons at the top level - possibly more because much of his game is built on his speed of thought rather than just blistering pace.  So again we have him for most of the next iteration of our 5 year plan.

So the signings of Digne and Coutinho are a long way off short term strategies.  OK they are a bit different from the previous approach which seemed to be to buy players in their early 20s.  However, if you think about it the length of the "vision" behind the deal is actually almost exactly the same.  Take Matty Cash for example: I think he was 22 when we signed him so in theory you could argue that he has 10 years left in his career.  However, he was not / is not a player that would walk into the Top 4 / Top 6 clubs.  Therefore, it is quite reasonable to assume that he was also bought with a 4 - 5 year plan in mind.  We didn't necessarily expect him to become one of the best right backs in the world - but he was an upgrade on what we had and we could expect him to be a pretty decent PL right-back.  So we'd probably only planned on him being a major part of the first team for 4 or 5 years.  Which seems to be panning out - I suspect right back is probably getting higher on our list of priorities (especially given the way that Gerrard wants our FBs to play). 

So in terms of looking at our overall transfer strategy from a purely playing perspective I don't think that our strategy has changed that much.  We are looking for a core of players with a 4-5 year shelf-life in our first team supported by a strong academy set-up to bring through the next wave of talent and hopefully reduce the cost of having to keep on buying first team players.  In that regard signing Coutinho and Digne is not very different from signing Cash or Targett.  I guess you could say that Gerrard seems to have prioritised experience at the top level over growth potential.  However, the only way that Cash / Targett are longer term signings is if you are planning on them being your first choice fullbacks for the next 8 to 10 seasons - in which case you are basically accepting stagnation in terms of always being a mid-table team battling for 9th - 15th in the table.  Or you are taking the high risk gamble of spotting a group of Championship players who all become elite footballers.

The only thing to suggest that the above is not our plan was the rumour about Saurez (and so far that seems to be nothing but a rumour) and arguably the signing of Ings.  When you take into account the signings of Buendia and Bailey, alongside the emergence of JJ and possibly Chuk - I really struggle to compute how anyone thinks our approach has suddenly changed to one of short-term / panic signings.  Given the current standard of our squad I would far rather take a £6m "gamble" on a genuine, elite level footballer aged 28 who has struggled to play at one of the biggest clubs in world football than be signing a 22 year old player whose had a couple of good seasons at Swansea for £25 million in the hope that they might be the next big thing.

£33m for an elite level player who might only be "very good" after struggling at Barca and £25m on probably the best left-back in the country outside of the Top 6 is nothing like the dark old days of us signing 33 year old plodders on comparatively huge wages in the hope that might help us avoid the drop.  If Coutinho is 80% as good as he was 3 seasons ago then we can sell him next season for a profit easily - the market value for a 29 year old CL level attacking midfielder is easily £50m.  Digne was an absolute steal - if he hadn't fallen out with Benitez (and the rumours are pretty clear about who instigated that particular issue) then we wouldn't have been able to sign him for less than £35m.  So I am bemused how anyone can be anything other than delighted with the deals that we have done this window.

[Zatman]

2 minutes ago, ciggiesnbeer said:

I havent seen him at atletico madrid so how does his scoring work these days now he cant move?

Do they wheel him in the opposition penalty box at the start of the game while the other plays bounce the ball off him into the goal?

Last few times I have seen him he has been like Ronaldo. More poacher than how he used to play

[LondonLax]

2 hours ago, Loxstock92 said:

In before the lock.

I don’t think anyone was claiming a January transfer were they?

The discussion was whether he would sign an agreement to join in the summer. 

[The Fun Factory]

Reminds of me when I was playing a very old version of Championship as the Burnley manager when you could sign Diego Maradona on a free. Skill rating-20. Pace rating-2.

[sidcow]

My word.  Remember when we thought it was impressive that Coutinho had 23.5m Instagram followers.

Suarez has 42.8m followers.   That's ridiculous.

You can see how from a marketing point of view these kind of players can transform the profile of the club.     

You can bet there are some really big fat sponsorship deals lined up on the back of these.  I've seen it written that a lot of overseas fans follow players rather than clubs.   

I know it's what happens on the pitch which is THE most important thing, but it can't but help matters if it drums up significant interest in little old Villa and enhance our profile to sponsors.

[LondonLax]

7 minutes ago, TheStagMan said:

and yet, less than a week ago, we signed 17 year old future prospect Kerr Smith

I don’t think anyone would suggest we would never sign another young player for the future but the signing policy has clearly changed in the summer.

We previously had a policy where we only buy under 25s and look to improve them and ‘add value’ but we are now willing buy fully developed players with little resale value as part of the mix. 

[allani]

1 hour ago, TRO said:

I think you have a point....its so difficult to bring in the right quality, without European football.....we are assembling some top class youth, but the gap is a little too big.

We need some "here and now" quality to get us in to the better league placings....Hence the temporary switch in strategy.

My worry is, we have lost 11 games, so far.....we need some defensive reinforcements too.....we can't be losing so many games, like this.

"here and now" implies that Digne and Coutinho won't be around in 3 or 4 seasons.  I don't think that is what you meant.  But it sounds like a stop gap / temporary fix.  If Coutinho is 80% of the player he was for Liverpool - he is the fulcrum around which the rest the team is built for the next three or four seasons.

[ciggiesnbeer]

5 minutes ago, Zatman said:

Last few times I have seen him he has been like Ronaldo. More poacher than how he used to play

Cheers! I was just funnin @rodders0223  

But I take both your words for it. i agree fwiw we dont need a slow poacher type forward if thats what he has become.