re: Liverpool FC 2013/2014 - Season Long Thread

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What does bother me is we play so much grab arse at the negotiation table... for three weeks... and then CFC comes in for him in a day (after Mata) deal and gets him...

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This has been an on-going problem. I'd rather not hear anything until a transfer is official than to hear this three week dance routine allowing other suitors to step in and beat us to the punch. William, the unspellable guy now at Dortmund, etc. It just keeps on going.

I understand the information flow isn't entirely in our control, in fact, in this case its to Basels interest to put it out there and hope another teams pays as high as possible, but other "higher" profile moves happen in a lot less time and with less drawn out rumoring. There is definitely something wrong or different with our lame transfer attempts.

While a good comparison, I think its worse in our favor.

Its almost like we're finding the good deals/fits/players "auctions", doing the low ball bid, and then making sure all of the richer people that bid on e-bay are aware of things before time runs out.

Perhaps its just one massive troll job/long term con by BR to make sure we're the only team that has $$ to spend come the FFP rules?

Otherwise, not only is it frustrating as hell for the fans but it also makes our "transfer" committee and management look completely inept. We need to photoshop BR/IA into that Moyes "I have no idea what I'm doing" picture.

It's almost comical now with us doing the scouting to find good players, put in an offer we know is well below other team's valuation, get a "fee agreed" and talk them down just in time for a bigger club to swoop in and offer more money.

Maybe now we'll quit dicking around and go get a DM and another defender

Yeah it's pretty scary how thin our squad is. I think I saw BR say in his press conference today that he's got 15 players to choose from.

15!!

This is a somewhat inside account of the Salah saga that was posted on RAWK and verified by their mods. Looks like we dropped the ball.

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Ok guys, I was the source the RAWK source during this whole thing. I didn't want to reveal myself cause I didn't want to get bombarded with PMs every couple of hours about him, but since this one is basically as good as over for us, there is no harm in pointing out some details about this transfer to let the RAWK universe know how much we fricked up during this transfer as my source is as close to the player as you can get.

First of all, let me tell you that I'm not a fan of the club overpaying by any stretch, I hate it when clubs like City or Chelsea pay over the top fees for the likes of Lescott or Shaun Wright Phillips cause that means the market is inflated. However, just because the market is inflated doesn't mean that there are some players out there who are worth a good chunk of money to be paid for.

There is also a fine line between being too smart and being too smart for your own good, I didn't exactly followed the ins & outs of our other negotiation models with the other targets in the summer but there is a pattern developing of us missing out on first targets like Dempsey, Mkhitaryan, Costa, Willian and bar a miracle now, Salah. It is hard to properly judge the transfer committee plus I feel for the scouts who have their hard work cut out for when a club comes in and gets the players we have been following for months.

Now we were following Salah closely since October, we sent a lot of scouts to Basel games, began negotiating in November and his agent met with Ayre in the West Ham game to discuss terms with them. We had a verbal agreement with Basel regarding everything and we quickly became Salah's favoured destination as he saw us as a club where he can grow, get a lot of 1st team action and become a world class player. I don't know what happened between Salah's agent and Ayre, but the impression that the club got from that meeting was that, in reality there is no way Salah is going to leave for anyone bar Liverpool and/or there are no real offers on the table for Basel bar us. When we got to sending Basel our opening offer, it was a laughable offer well below what was verbally agreed upon, think of Wenger 40 million plus one pound bid, this was even more laughable.

Basel raised their as a result of being pissed off. We tried to up our offer but it was again well below what was previously agreed upon and Basel didn't want to lower their demands as they sensed that we were wasting their time. They even began courting other clubs that Salah is available. Milan & Inter thought that Basel's original demands were too high for them, Leverkusen, Wolfsburg & Monchengladbach were ready to pay but Salah didn't want to go to Germany. Basel tried to claim that Atletico was interested but it was a bluff by all accounts, however a host of other clubs wanted to be kept updated on the deal one of whom was Chelsea.

Since we saw that Salah didn't want to go to the Bundesliga and with no other club offering Basel any offer, we assumed he'll stay there till the summer and we can re-open negotiations, but Newcastle offered Basel a good first offer and now him coming to us in the summer was in doubt if Basel & Newcastle agree a fee. That's why we came back with a much more improved offer, almost what was verbally agreed upon before the window even started. Salah's personal demands were also agreed previously so there was no problems with him & his agent, just us agreeing some minor details with Basel. Chelsea, who were updated on the deal, at last asked about his availability and Basel asked about 8 million more than what we were offering (they tried to fleece Chelsea and I'm sorry last night I got confused cause I misunderstood my source as telling me Chelsea offered 8 million more, which isn't true) but Chelsea really offered a couple of million more than us but with a lot of add ons that favour Basel heavily, we didn't even hesitate and backed off, not even matching their deal.

The only thing stopping Salah from going to Chelsea is that he doesn't want to go there, full stop. Him & his advisers believe he won't get much playing time there and if it is in his hands, it is better to stay at Basel and wait till the summer to get his move, however Basel want to sell & get their money now and begin scouting their next target (who will also be from Egypt). There is a third club who asked for Salah's availability (my source won't tell me cause Salah doesn't want this to go public as he prefers to join that third club over Chelsea and doesn't want a repeat of the fiasco surrounding his negotiations with Liverpool) but like I said barring a miracle, most probably he won't be our player come the end of the window.

What makes this irritating is that we wasted three months of scouting him, weeks of negotiations and then tried to lowball Basel and looked stupid at the end when we fell flat on our arses. Board wise, there have to be some questions asked about how good we are at negotiating some deals.

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at least we thought we were triggering some sort of clause with our cheeky arse bid

Had to load up my old FIFA 12 Manager Mode just to be able to see Liverpool successfully buy a player (FYI it was Bale).

There is a certain ineptitude with our transfer process. I have no idea if it is with the management side or the purse-strings ownership side. But one thing was made clear with this ownership - they weren't going to overpay.

Its possible we're seeing the results of that "culture" filtered down to our management in their transfer policy.

The frustrating this is - if thats the case, then there is ZERO point to working out a deal ahead of time if we're just going to not end up offering that amount. Would John Henry tell them they can't offer the amount already agreed to? Then shouldn't you get his approval before agreeing in principal to it? Clearly someone at the top has no idea how to negotiate and make things happen while not allowing competition to swoop in and steal the player.

We wasted countless months of scouting this guy only to waste the opportunity. How many others could we have looked at that would have been good fits?

ITV1 is showing it so I'd assume LFC tv will along with illegal streams.