Rumor: Scouting for European Downings - The Summer Transfer thread

Liverpool close to securing Cavani for 31M.

Man City offers 35M.

 

Wrong.
Liverpool offer £31 Million
Cavani about to sign.
City put a late bid £31 Million
Wages
Liverpool £100,000
City £260,000 a week AFTER tax.

 

my take:

if Cavani was coming to Liverpool, Suarez was leaving.

 

I felt compelled to let you in on a little secret: PSG already signed Lavezzi. For 25m.

 

This guy gets it.

 

those crazy Ukrainians...

 

Downing is still arguably worth 8-10M. 1 bad year doesn't cut your value down THAT much. If he has another horrendous season though then it'll half itself again.

 

i was being silly about Downing. he's easily worth 6M. FWIW, Victor Moses is probably worth 6M.

 

Also, I think Ba would be the better buy. 7 million for a pure finisher, just the type of player we need. I'd also still like to pry Sigurdsson to our side, and then add Gaston Ramirez. That's about 30 million total, sell Adam for 4M (Sigurdsson is better, plus we can offer him more than the presumed 65k we offered if we dumped Adam's 65k), sell Maxi for 2M, I'd sell Danny Wilson for 2M at this point too, he's a surplus to requirements, sell Downing for about 8M if we can offload him somewhere, I'd settle for as little as 6. We won't be able to sell Cole as long as he's on the 90k/wk wages. Let's say we get 8 for Downing. We'd have a net spend of only 14M, which would allow us to offer decent enough wages to those 3 players so that we can attract them. Finally, and I know this sounds crazy, but I'd try to sell Glen Johnson so that we get ourselves some January money to make any fixes we may need then.

 

Only if you want to be a middle of the road team mate. The baseball guy they wrote about "never" won what he wanted with it and then faded back into obscurity. The moneyball claim to fame was from the movie they made from the book.

Trying to equate it to football, well, I guess that's an American thing for people who don't understand the game. It's a comfort thingy.

And happy hamburger day to you all. Oh yeh, we've got in a couple of nice racks of ribs. Now if the rain can go away for a while.

 

Adam isn't going anywhere. Sigurdsson is almost certainly going to Spurs.

Johnson is a poser. Sometimes he's phenomenal, but sometimes he makes Flanno look great. And if no Johnson, then Kelly has to stay healthy, and that's dicey. I don't want to be depending on Flanno for a stretch of matches.

Gaston Ramirez is 10M+. Aquilani needs to be dealt with. Maybe if he can play EPL football, Adam isn't needed, but really, he didn't meet expectations, but he wasn't scary bad, not Downing bad.

Don't say aught about Spearing/Shelvey. Not big picture lads.

Who's the new CB?

 

i get what you're saying, but right now the goal is the become flush financially, and that means qualifying for CL at the minimum. what Oakland did was to reach a level of accomplishment that was ridiculous based on expenditures. it's roughly akin to Stoke City qualifying for the CL.

has tha seen the film?

 

The dirty little secret about "moneyball" is that Oakland got really good by being awful for several consecutive years, thus earning very high draft picks.

 

I want the term 'moneyball' banned from the forum forever.

 

good luck. let's call it "$bol"

 

Can I just elaborate a little on that? Aherm... "$Bollocks"

 

Well it's always good to come back and see that whatever ideas anyone has can be rapidly dismissed

Wake me when we sign someone or Pontifex Maximus allows any discussion of players we could acquire, no matter how silly or speculative

 

when you wake up, let us know who your best three targets would be and how much should be offered.

 

Weird, a rumor came out that AC Milan is interested in Andy Carroll.

Depends on what the price is, honestly.

 

Whatever 3-4 players Rodgers thinks will improve us, we can afford, and who are willing to come. I am not a talent scout

 

I agree. Very few here actually use it properly and throw it around to whine and complain about the perceived stinginess of FSG.

Re: the A's, it's true that they built their success on mostly draft picks, but "moneyball" isn't just about getting good value in the free agency/transfer market. It's more so about evaluating players differently to exploit gaps in the market. For Billy Beane and the A's, they used advanced saber metrics to determine that on-base percentage was more valuable than batting average. They were successful and John Henry wanted to apply the same approach to the Red Sox, albeit on a much, much bigger payroll. Oh, and they went on to win two World Series with a team that has been cursed since the Bambino left.

How this applies to Liverpool I honestly don't know, except that Commolli was by all accounts very stats-driven in his evaluation of players. He also apparently values left-footed players. I think the only concrete thing you can say about Henry and FSG is that they're not afraid to take a non-traditional approach when rebuilding their club(s). They went way outside the box when they hired the youngest GM in baseball history in Theo Epstein. They gave Commolli a shot (as well as a rather large war chest) and quickly gave him the pink slip when his transfers bombed. Their first real act as owners was bringing in Brendan Rodgers, a very forward, progressive manager with a limited CV but bright, refreshing ideas about football.

I have no idea how much FSG will spend this summer. I don't think they have a set budget, but rather will spend, within reason, to get the guys that the manager wants.

They dropped a lot of loot on players that Kenny and Commolli wanted, with mixed but mostly poor results. I think they will be a bit more prudent this time around but I fully expect 3 or 4 players brought in because they desperately want Champions League and the revenue it will bring in.

 

Actually she spotted me in the lower leagues and saw a spark that, with training, could meet her expectations