In Comolli We Trust

[Exiled_red]

Yeah, I can accept we might have a ceiling price - an amount we won't go over, but my take on the Wickham transfer is that we would have gone that little bit extra if we didn't get so cocky. I don't think we were too far from agreeing a fee, from memory, maybe £1m off - if the fee was poles apart, than yeah, I agree, you have to limits and stick to them, but I think when it comes down to a little bit extra to secure a player we had identified as the future of this club, then we would have paid it.

I think the transfer failed because we got too big for our boots; we belived Wickham wanted to come to Liverpool. However, Wickham got cold feet and when we didn't seem to value him, he got worried he was going to be left in limbo.

This tactic worked with Adam, we knew he wouldn't go anywhere else, so we dragged our feet, but we were playing with a teenagers future here and Wickham made the decision to go to Sunderland. We can't take that risk with another upcoming player next year, I just hope we learn from these lessons and not become rigid in our approach.

A maximum limit has to be a maximum limit. In terms of a £10m or so fee £1m is an extra 10% that's not an insignificant amount. We are also talking about a player with no top flight experience and will probably be at best 3rd choice in the short term, possibly even loaned out for experience. Ideally we would have signed him up but that would have had to have been at the right price, ~£10m is a huge risk.

[Chris]

You are making an awful lot of assumptions on information you admit to ‘not being privy’ to. For that reason, I find it hard to answer your questions, but I am confident that the club as a whole will move successfully forward and get the right players when available.

Yep, it's really, really weird all this. We know **** all about how a transfer is conducted or what goes on behind the scenes yet here we are with people on the internet declaring us slow, cocky, what we have to do, how to do it. I find it utterly bizarre.

Teams miss out on signings. Deals drag (Modric to Chelsea, Nasri to whoever, Sanchez to Barca, Aguero to whoever), its just the way it is, there doesnt have to be a crisis, its just football.

[Muddled]

I have absolutely no idea how Comolli would enter negotiations for any player next year and have no idea if he just has carte blanche to negotiate how he feels fit or if it’s discussed at length with the board and Kenny.

My gut feeling about the transfers so far is that they’ve been a success. As has already been mentioned, we seemed to have identified our targets and by and large got them. If you believe the press and think we lost out on Young and Jones, can the club (or Comolli) really be blamed when in competition with United? If that’s the case then they deserve great credit for getting Henderson ahead of them and to a lesser extent Adam. There was also major interest in Carroll and our decisiveness there brought him to Anfield. Of our other perceived missed targets, Clichy said he wanted CL football (and more money) and the club were right to walk away from Wickham at £10m when he hasn’t kicked a football in the PL and hardly set the Championship alight, despite a few flashes of brilliance.

The obsession with our transfer activity this summer has been mind boggling. Fans were moaning before the window was even officially opened and that was despite us being one of the few clubs to make a signing. I admit the players signed probably wouldn’t have been my first choice, but I don’t see how the club (or Comolli) can basically be accused of incompetence before we’ve even finished our dealings and before a ball has even been kicked by any of our signings.

I think it's mainly to do with the lack of football, talking about anything to pass the time. I should say, I'm not saying the club is incompetent, nor am I asking for Comolli to be sacked. Neither am I angry at the players we have bought; I guess I'm just passing the time and guaging other people's views on how we approach a transfer - mainly because I don't want to talk about the players we *have* bought, more the method behind the madness.

There is no shame in losing out on Young and Jones to Man Utd, I can completely understand that; I'm just making sweeping assumptions on the players we have bought and how each transfer has played out the same. Say we miss out on Hazard next year (as an example) for not increasing our offer by an extra £1m, this place would be in uproar.

[RedReet]

Yep, it's really, really weird all this. We know **** all about how a transfer is conducted or what goes on behind the scenes yet here we are with people on the internet declaring us slow, cocky, what we have to do, how to do it. I find it utterly bizarre.

Teams miss out on signings. Deals drag (Modric to Chelsea, Nasri to whoever, Sanchez to Barca, Aguero to whoever), its just the way it is, there doesnt have to be a crisis, its just football.

On that note I’m so, so ****ed off with the whole Fabregas saga. Was stranded in work over lunch due to the rain so decided to buy a paper for the first time in years as it was quiet on here. 4 measly pages of football and 25% of them dedicated to this Fabregas story that hasn’t changed in 3 ****ing years.

[Muddled]

A maximum limit has to be a maximum limit. In terms of a £10m or so fee £1m is an extra 10% that's not an insignificant amount. We are also talking about a player with no top flight experience and will probably be at best 3rd choice in the short term, possibly even loaned out for experience. Ideally we would have signed him up but that would have had to have been at the right price, ~£10m is a huge risk.

Surely £1m in the context of football is not that much? Yes, it's a lot of money to me and to the majority of people in the world, but £1m extra in a transfer fee is like rounding up a £12 haircut to £15. I understand your point about the player himself, but haven't we been frustrated in the past about not going that extra mile to buy a young player who has then gone on to greater things? Surely if we had identified Wickham as worthy of a £9m bid, then he's worth a punt at £10m?

[RedReet]

I think it's mainly to do with the lack of football, talking about anything to pass the time. I should say, I'm not saying the club is incompetent, nor am I asking for Comolli to be sacked. Neither am I angry at the players we have bought; I guess I'm just passing the time and guaging other people's views on how we approach a transfer - mainly because I don't want to talk about the players we *have* bought, more the method behind the madness.

There is no shame in losing out on Young and Jones to Man Utd, I can completely understand that; I'm just making sweeping assumptions on the players we have bought and how each transfer has played out the same. Say we miss out on Hazard next year (as an example) for not increasing our offer by an extra £1m, this place would be in uproar.

We would never know for sure though.

Nah, the topic has been raised on multiple threads and even had a few similar threads dedicated to it and it’s all based on pure speculation. I don’t mind having the odd hypothetical conversation, but with so many variables in this scenario, it’s hard to have a worthwhile debate. Then you have people moaning about the situation and going OTT, even though they have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes. I just find it a bit odd.

[Muddled]

Who’s to say that isn’t what we did for Henderson and Downing which has also drawn criticism from all quarters?

Perhaps we did, but perhaps we weren't as confident of the player coming to us as we were of Wickham and Adam.

[Muddled]

Yep, it's really, really weird all this. We know **** all about how a transfer is conducted or what goes on behind the scenes yet here we are with people on the internet declaring us slow, cocky, what we have to do, how to do it. I find it utterly bizarre.

Teams miss out on signings. Deals drag (Modric to Chelsea, Nasri to whoever, Sanchez to Barca, Aguero to whoever), its just the way it is, there doesnt have to be a crisis, its just football.

People coming on to a football forum to talk about all things football is not really bizarre. We don't have the first idea about what goes off behind the scenes, but we still talk about it - mainly to quench a thirst for curiousity, sepculate and guess at how things happen and see what other supporters think too, guage opinions and whatnot.

I don't think I've mentioned a crisis anywhere? I am also aware that some deals drag, but wouldn't it be fair to say every one of our transfers has played out the same?

[Chris]

People coming on to a football forum to talk about all things football is not really bizarre. We don't have the first idea about what goes off behind the scenes, but we still talk about it - mainly to quench a thirst for curiousity, sepculate and guess at how things happen and see what other supporters think too, guage opinions and whatnot.

I don't think I've mentioned a crisis anywhere? I am also aware that some deals drag, but wouldn't it be fair to say every one of our transfers has played out the same?

Yeah, talking about things you can actually see isnt bizarre like players performances where you can watch them on the pitch. You cant watch Comolli in the negotiating room though which is why I find all this advice on how to do his job better weird.

[RedReet]

Yeah, talking about things you can actually see isnt bizarre like players performances where you can watch them on the pitch. You cant watch Comolli in the negotiating room though which is why I find all this advice on how to do his job better weird.

I’m sure Mostar is working on that as we speak.

[Chrono]

Surely £1m in the context of football is not that much? Yes, it's a lot of money to me and to the majority of people in the world, but £1m extra in a transfer fee is like rounding up a £12 haircut to £15. I understand your point about the player himself, but haven't we been frustrated in the past about not going that extra mile to buy a young player who has then gone on to greater things? Surely if we had identified Wickham as worthy of a £9m bid, then he's worth a punt at £10m?

It's the thin end of the wedge and the money is almost not even the point.

If you bid for a player at £6m and get told to **** off you go to £8m. They tell you it's still not enough money and you had budgetted roughly £9m for the purchase but kept a little in reserve and say "our final price is £10m take it or leave it". They immediately say "You can have him for £11m". You think to yourself, it's just £1m more so yeah let's do that.

The next thing you know, every manager knows that you will always climb that little extra to get your player and that there is always more that can be milked out of the club. In my opinion it would make perfect sense to bid on players that you had no intention of buying just so you can show that you are willing to walk.

The best way to think about it (again imo) is that imagine we have a budget for senior players and one for youth development. If we over spend on one we will impact the other to potentially extremely damaging effect. We should absolutely not be accepting to pay even 100k over our line as the knock on effect is massive.

[badpiggy]

People coming on to a football forum to talk about all things football is not really bizarre. We don't have the first idea about what goes off behind the scenes, but we still talk about it - mainly to quench a thirst for curiousity, sepculate and guess at how things happen and see what other supporters think too, guage opinions and whatnot.

I don't think I've mentioned a crisis anywhere? I am also aware that some deals drag, but wouldn't it be fair to say every one of our transfers has played out the same?

I totally understand what you're saying. In the end it's just the absence of actual football and the bizarre slowness of trnafer dealings that grates on all our nerves. Although it can be quite annoying when posters seem to talk with great authority about our dealings when they clearly can't have a clue. The Fabregas situation is a brilliant example of the madness of it all - what the **** is actually going on there? And I don't expect an answer that makes any sense. Even the top football journos who are supoosedly close to the agents etc are wrong way more often than they are right. I'd say the whole process isn't helped by the amount of shysters, hard men, criminals, bull****ters, know-it-alls, borderline retards, drunks, prima donnas, hangers-on, WAGS etc that make up the football transfer community.

[Exiled_red]

Surely £1m in the context of football is not that much? Yes, it's a lot of money to me and to the majority of people in the world, but £1m extra in a transfer fee is like rounding up a £12 haircut to £15. I understand your point about the player himself, but haven't we been frustrated in the past about not going that extra mile to buy a young player who has then gone on to greater things? Surely if we had identified Wickham as worthy of a £9m bid, then he's worth a punt at £10m?

It becomes a point of where you draw your limits, we might value him at ~£6m but have decided we're prepared to pay up to £9m.

If we get him for less than £6m we'll be delighted - we've got a great deal.
If we get him for £6m we'd feel good we've got him for the right price.
If we pay between £6m & £9m for him there's something in it for us but we're paying over the odds.

We're probably not really happy paying £9m but we're satisfied there is something in it, so we bid £9m. Once the price goes above that we have obviously decided that there is so little in it that the deal no longer represents a good deal so we walk away. So you see just because we had bid £9m it doesn't neccessarily mean we should bid £10m. Once you bid £10m, why not £11m then £12m etc. if you think like that where do you draw the line?

[Muddled]

It's the thin end of the wedge and the money is almost not even the point.

If you bid for a player at £6m and get told to **** off you go to £8m. They tell you it's still not enough money and you had budgetted roughly £9m for the purchase but kept a little in reserve and say "our final price is £10m take it or leave it". They immediately say "You can have him for £11m". You think to yourself, it's just £1m more so yeah let's do that.

The next thing you know, every manager knows that you will always climb that little extra to get your player and that there is always more that can be milked out of the club. In my opinion it would make perfect sense to bid on players that you had no intention of buying just so you can show that you are willing to walk.

The best way to think about it (again imo) is that imagine we have a budget for senior players and one for youth development. If we over spend on one we will impact the other to potentially extremely damaging effect. We should absolutely not be accepting to pay even 100k over our line as the knock on effect is massive.

It becomes a point of where you draw your limits, we might value him at ~£6m but have decided we're prepared to pay up to £9m.

If we get him for less than £6m we'll be delighted - we've got a great deal.
If we get him for £6m we'd feel good we've got him for the right price.
If we pay between £6m & £9m for him there's something in it for us but we're paying over the odds.

We're probably not really happy paying £9m but we're satisfied there is something in it, so we bid £9m. Once the price goes above that we have obviously decided that there is so little in it that the deal no longer represents a good deal so we walk away. So you see just because we had bid £9m it doesn't neccessarily mean we should bid £10m. Once you bid £10m, why not £11m then £12m etc. if you think like that where do you draw the line?

I can see both your points.

But if we look at it another way, what was the fee paid up front by Sunderland? £9m? I'm sure there is add-ons, what if we thought £9m the price we would go too, yet £9m would secure his services and with personal and club success, the fee would rise to £13m - would you include that in your price for neogtiation?

Surely those add-ons will be the result of success so would be worth the extra expenditure? What would you think if we missed out on Wickham because we thought we didn't need those add-ons and it was £9m take it or leave it?

As for tabling bids to show we can walk away from a deal is an interesting point; I can see why you would do this, but it relates back to my initial post about being too obvious in our strategy, I can't see any major differences to any of our transfers - perhaps we are mixing it up with a few bids that don't go anywhere, maybe Wickham is an example of that.

Chrono's point about a split budget is a valid one too, something I hadn't really considered.

[Muddled]

Yeah, talking about things you can actually see isnt bizarre like players performances where you can watch them on the pitch. You cant watch Comolli in the negotiating room though which is why I find all this advice on how to do his job better weird.

I'm not giving advice on how Comolli should do his role, I'm trying to canvas opinion on *how* he does his role. Going by your reckoning, we should only discuss tangible actions - things we can see; surely in that case, we might as well close down the LFC forum during the summer?