It takes two to tango— maybe we don’t think he’s worth what he’s asking for and refused to budge? And, I’d also be wary of these leaks— Konaté’s camp has every reason not to want to appear the villain in the piece.
I have tickets to the Sunderland game in July, excited to meet the ambassadors and maybe some of the players. The official fan club is planning something that Friday night.
If I am Quansah, I want written guarantee about playing time because he left to get regular playing time. If Leoni is as good as we suspect plus the way Slot uses his squad, he might find himself outside looking in again. Tough decision.
Highly doubt that any team would give any player a playing time guarantee. Let’s suppose Konate had one of those this season, but we also had a dependable backup. How much ridicule would Slot have shipped on board early in the season, when Konate was playing dogshit, if he said “I can’t play [Leoni] because Konate’s contract guarantees him to start in every game when fit?”
Paul Joyce: “Discussions have started with Dominik Szoboszlai over a new deal but have not, as yet, reached an agreement. In light of the development with Konaté, it will be interesting to see whether, and how quickly, that is resolved.” The way to avoid the next Ibou/Trent is to sell players before they run their contract down. You can say that players leaving on a free is part of the game now, but if that’s true where are all the players we are signing for free? We still have to pay big transfer fees to acquire players. We can’t spend huge money to acquire players and then let all of ours leave for free. Ryan Gravenberch has signed a contract extension. Szoboszlai has not. Is Dom eyeing a Trent/Ibou like exit? Dom now has 2 years left on his contract. Suggesting selling our best player from last season with everything else going on is probably a terrible idea and would go over horribly with the fan base. However, if we don't sell now we will end up in the same spot we did with Trent and Ibou. Szoboszlai's best position is Florian Wirtz' position. Earlier in the thread I made a possible eleven that did not include him. He is probably our most sellable asset. The best case scenario is that he signs long term like Gravenberch did. But what if he doesn't? How many players are going to watch leave the club for free in the prime of their career?
Online figures show Konate on 80k/ week, which is very low for a starting CB on a team with title aspirations. He allegedly wants 200k/ week. He'll probably get closer to that elsewhere. I'm guessing the club offered 150k/ week and he wants more. Gakpo gets 200k/ week and I'd argue that Konate is more worthy of that amount than he is. But given Konate's streaky performances, maybe the club are ready to move on and save the money.
If Ibou and the club were 50K a week apart in negotiations, that is about 2.6 million a year. Over a 4 year contract that is a little over 10 million. Now the club will have to pay 50 million to replace him, and pay that player's wages on top of it. I know it is more complicated than that, because what you pay one player impacts the wage structure of all the players and all future players. However, losing players who have very high values for free is a major financial blow.
Plus if you knew the signing was having issues - then sell him for some money last summer. This is multiple windows now that we have let prime level players leave for free. we are looking really really inept. (let's caveat - Trent and Ibou we're both instrumental in winning 20).
But once again how does that work if the player is intent on seeing his contract out so he can leave as a free agent? And it may well be that Ibou has been stringing the club along just as Trent did so not sure what the club can actually do in cases like this.
The club reportedly had perhaps the second highest but definitely one of the highest wage bills in the league so are clearly not shy when paying players. None of know exactly whats gone on in negotiations and I'm sure Edwards and co are fully aware of replacement costs etc . So is it the club at fault here or the player wanting a big payday? We dont know but for me its the player who benefits most in these situations and it frustrates me to no end.
Liverpool seem to be unique in that they continually find themselves negotiating with players up until the last minute when they are on the last year of their contract. Last year it was was with Trent, Salah, and Virgil. This time it was with Konate. Why is this not happening at other clubs? Yes, players leave clubs on a free. But besides Mbappe, I would say that Trent and Ibou had by far the highest market value of any players who have left their clubs on a free in recent times. Do Liverpool have a unique philosophy that makes them more comfortable than anyone else about losing players for free? Or they are doing something wrong by failing to agree new contracts or selling while they have the chance?
Konate did not have a great season last year but someone made a good point - it will be much more expensive to replace him than to give him the wages he wants. We also could have re-signed him and then sold him a year from now. So it makes zero sense what we're doing with him.
] INFO: A replacement for Mohamed Salah is needed as a priority and Yan Diomande is a preferred target. Liverpool are also looking to bring in another attacking player. They had interest in Gordon but he wanted to join Barcelona. The decision on Konaté has been made to allocate money for those areas that require urgent attention rather than going ahead with what they deem would be an expensive renewal in the case of Konaté. Liverpool intend to give Leoni and Jacquet the opportunities to fulfil their potential and they do have a buy-back clause for Jarell Quansah [in 2026 & 2027] [@_pauljoyce] THIS IS STUPID
Who do you want in? Gillet, Hicks and Uncle Woy? be careful when clamouring is always a note to self worth taking.....
So, we spend the next 7 months working with him on a good 5 yr deal and if that's not me we sell next summer.??
Konaté, and Alexander Arnold before him, had already decided on what he could get elsewhere which we could match. You can’t sell players who don’t want to leave. As I said up thread, it takes two to tango.
By then he only has one year left on his contract so his value declines. Also, at that point, Real Madrid tells him that they don’t want to pay a transfer fee for him. Wait it out for a year, refuse any transfers, and they we will give you a huge signing on bonus.
Setting aside all the details, the overall issue for me is that the club is now in pure react mode. We're not able to do what we've done for years i.e. plan and execute a proper transition by moving on players who we don't The one and only thing that is hard to understand about this is that more players don't do it. If they have a new club lined up behind the scenes, the only risk is a bad injury before the new deal gets finalized which means they lose income (unless they have personal insurance of course).
I dont believe there's any philosophy like that at the club . However , players talk and watch what others do . Trent was sneaky in the manner he left and Konate has followed a similar route. I've no idea why its happened with us but judging by the sizeable wages the club has paid in recent years I have to think Konate would have been offered a good salary but and its a huge but he also can probably get a multi million signing on fee when he leaves as well as a equally good salary from another club which won't need to fork out big transfer fee.
Exactly , We can offer competitive wages easily. However if another club can sign a player like Trent on a free cos hes run his contract down then there is no 60m transfer fee to be paid is there. Instead of a transfer fee Trent gets say 20m just to sign .
The club has a bit more power than that - they could reduce the players role, put him in the reserves, or work out a deal with the player and agent. Yes some of those are extreme measures - especially with a quality player - but sometimes you have to get some control back.
I'm not sure , Newt. Putting a player into the reserves just because he doesn't want to renew his contract or be sold to another team? I'm not sure a club can do that. As long as the player is honoring his current contract he's done nothing wrong.
It's assuming his wrong and the club's wrong are equivalent and have some kind of legal weight where, in fact, neither is the case. he signs a contract to play where the club tell him to for them. Not where he primarily wishes to
I do think we have a lot of work to do updating the squad, but I'm a bit more sanguine about our current situation. We have probably the first year in a three-year rebuilding process. One of the criticisms that was occasionally broached (usually by columnists looking for a bright lining on LFC dominance under Klopp) was that we had a lot of players that were all about the same age, and that they at most had a 3-4 year lifespan before they were likely to age out and need to be replaced. While last year's recruitment hasn't been a great success, Kerkez was brought in to replace Robertson, and Frimpong was brought in for TAA. Probably the biggest mistake after not adding Guehi was that we held onto two aging players in Salah and VvD, and got rid of Diaz (and lost Jota). In hindsight it might have been better to sell Salah and keep Diaz (or sell Gakpo instead). But Ekitike, Kerkez, and Wirtz are all 23 or younger, and Frimpong and Isak are only 25 and 26, respectively. While I guess it isn't great that Konate leaves on a free, the truth is that he really didn't perform that great this year, and given that he's already 27 you'd probably hope he'd be showing better consistency in performance. With Gomez already at 29, we really probably need someone who is already 27 to be much more dominant. While Konate is big and fast, I think he probably operates better as a second CB rather than a backline leader (same goes for Gomez). So I'm fine letting him go as long as we bring in someone in the 24-27 age range who _is_ a backline leader type who can replace VvD after next year. Kerkez played much better later in the year, and held up quite well. So I'm not super concerned about replacing Robertson with someone who is a nailed-on starting LB. I'm frankly more concerned with the RB position, because I don't think Frimpong can play that position against the more rough and tumble wide players in the EPL. In the midfield, I think we have to probably consider moving MacAllister along as I think his legs are gone. Endo is probably also not going to be useful for anything more than a stopgap squad player, so probably should move on if we can sell him for anything. I'd like to see us hold onto CuJo, but if we can't make the numbers/playing time work for a contract renewal perhaps the best would be for him to move. That probably means at least two new MF, one of which who should be ready-to-play (preferably a deep-lying playmaker or DM-style player). I think Szobo could come in as a second MF in a back two, although it will be interesting to see if he and Wirtz battle it out for the more advanced MF (assuming Wirtz doesn't get moved out the the LW). For the attacking players, I think we have to move Gakpo along as well as Chiesa. I could see holding onto Gakpo, but only as a back-up to a pacy LW style player. This means I'd really prefer to try to keep Wirtz out of the LW. Ekitike can also play out on the left, but i) who knows when he'll be back in contention, and ii) he's fast, but not blisteringly fast. It might be interesting to see if Frimpong could slot in on the left as an inverted winger, but I doubt we'll ever see him used like that by Slot... What that means is that we likely need a ready-to-play <25 year-old RW (backed up by Frimpong), another pacy ready or nearly-ready LW, and an older, stop-gap attacker who can fill in as a back-up for Isak in a more central position. Theoretically, we might be able to avoid the third more central attacking player by rotating in academy players, or by playing as a 4-2-2-2. I'd really like to see this tried in some sort of sustained way. We did see it rarely this year, and it was fairly effective, but Slot never stuck with it. With two pacy wingers we could play them out wide, with Szobo and Wirtz in advanced positions (possibly with Szobo having more defensive duties), and a pair of Gravenberch and "new defensive MF" behind them in support. All together that is one CB, two new MF, and two new wingers. We may not see all of these this summer, but if we got one CB, one MF, and two wingers I'd be very pleased. We could probably do fine with one new winger, especially if they could play on either side. To me, recruitment isn't the issue - rather it is having the staff who can set them up as a cohesive team and adapt as we see what their particular strengths and weaknesses are.