re: tOfficial Liverpool 2017/2018 Thread: “Upgrades Incoming Edition: A Great Season!”

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Allaboardthejayboat 63 points 14 hours ago
Exactly how I feel. Panic buys get in the way of actual targets and frick up our wage structure. Not ideal, but were better off not signing flops or square pegs in round holes just to keep the fans happy.

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SJ_Doublebluff 8 points 8 hours ago
So get the actual target, nobody here is arguing for a panic buy. Couts' shouldn't have been sold without a replacement coming in. We are the only side competing for top four that weakened their squad this January. It's disgraceful conduct.

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[–]Allaboardthejayboat 5 points 3 hours ago
That's cool. Keep that opinion if you want. I've had no luck persuading anyone with this opinion, otherwise. But from my standpoint, take Keita as a prime example - By all accounts we wanted him early - so he was a target. We tried. RB wouldn't let it happen. That's the end of the line for that target. Rinse and repeat.

After ruling out the players who can't come for similar reasons, or even personal reasons; which could even be that they want their kids to finish the school year (these are human beings, not trading cards), then we may have been looking at a couple of players. I've grown so massively tired of people just saying "go out and get someone", with no appreciation of the fact that we're dealing with a highly convoluted process that has a million influences. Player cost, agent fees, Agent attitude, does the player want to leave their current club? Does the player want to move to our club? Our City? Does the player fit Klopp's system? Do they have the right attitude for Klopp? Do they have a hankering to play for some other team that they are waiting on to see if they bid? Do their family want to move? Do they have personal reasons to stay near family? will they actually improve us?etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. It's probably such a small list by the time all of the scenarios are accounted for, that it isn't just a case of, "okay, we sold Coutinho, so let's bring in one of our three targets, let's throw money at the situation until they come".

Klopp has come out and said he didn't want to sell Coutinho. That he thought the first half of this season might give him time to persuade Coutinho to stay. He's come out and said it wasn't planned, but he felt he couldn't have gotten Coutinho to stay focussed and see out the season. Say all you want about that, but unlike half the people in this sub who think they know better, Klopp is literally, the, only, person, who has enough behind the scenes information to make that decision. He's the one who dealt with the fall out of it over the Summer. He's the one who had ongoing conversations with Coutinho. He's the one who was getting grief from Coutinho's family. He's the one who saw all the permutations of what a distraction that was to not only the squad, but to his management. He has added all that up, and concluded he had no choice. That decision had no bearing on whether he had a replacement lined up, because he felt he couldn't get the player to commit to what he was trying to do.

I've had to listen to three weeks of armchair scouts saying "(X) is available, why don't we just go and buy him" (with no appreciation of whether 1 - they fit Klopp's system, and 2 - whether we have already spoken to that player and it can't work right now. I've had to listen to armchair managers saying "It's world cup year, Coutinho would have had to play for us", and it's so ridiculous to listen to because these statements are made with such little information about what was/is going on behind the scenes. The information that we have is Klopp felt he couldn't have done any more to keep a player. This coming from one of the best man managers in the league. So why do people sat at home, in their bedrooms, feel that they can question that? Why do they feel that they; in all their worldly knowledge and experience of top level Premiership Management, could have done otherwise?

Coutinho left, it wasn't ideal. Klopp didn't want him to go, but he didn't feel he could keep him. Let's draw a line under that, because it doesn't make a target magically become available. That's probably why Klopp tried so hard to keep him, otherwise he'd have gone in the Summer.

Our targets weren't available (Who we may well have been investigating for months, maybe even years before Coutinho left), so we didn't move a tier down and panic buy someone who would just block us getting one of our actual targets in 6 months time.

If our actual targets, who we've been researching and maybe even talking with for months, weren't available, buying someone else would have been a panic buy.

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But from my standpoint, take Keita as a prime example - By all accounts we wanted him early - so he was a target. We tried. RB wouldn't let it happen.

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Klopp has come out and said he didn't want to sell Coutinho.

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He's come out and said it wasn't planned,

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We know you are all #KloppOut.

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Okay, so we reach out to see if we can snag Alisson or Oblak, we're turned down by both clubs or players or whatever...

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I know that looks like a fantasy world,

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