I'll take Barcelona over Real Scumdrid anyday.... How does a team that was essentially the club of resistance (well one of two) to a fascist dictatorship become somehow viler than th one that was the mascot of said Fascist dictatorship, and actually revelled in this status?? I think there might be some differences in the interpretation of what constitutes "vileness' here ......
I'm sure Barcelona is a wonderful city. Manchester isn't bad either... of course, that says nothing of its resident clubs. That said, I'm sure Espanyol is fine.
I've been trying to say this earlier as well - Trent took a lot of actions of his own volition that led to the booing. The supporters aren't stupid about what he was doing in engineering this move.
Agreed. Though I believe my point stands about booing the shirt. Let TAA make his mistakes, shun him during celebrations, after matches, everything. Boo the f.uck out of him when he returns in a white shirt, but at the end of the day the most important thing is a win. Booing him significantly hinders that objective and it casts the fans in a poor light and doesn’t help the team or club. It’s short term and short sighted and helps no one except the opposition. As I said, let him disrespect the shirt, we don’t have to.
Don’t forget his performance against Man United right after the Madrid story first started coming out. His effort was questionable at best and Virgil was disgusted with him. Not exactly future captain type stuff. But agree. Nobody should be booing him while he is playing for Liverpool.
Might be a criticism bridge too far, but didn’t Arsenal also equalize just after he came on, when he was still getting to grips with the pace of the game?
It looks like Trent's replacement will be Frimpong. The fact that we are going for a player that is so different from Trent brings me back to my theory that Liverpool might not have been that bothered with him leaving. Yes, we offered him a new contract, and since Slot is a good manager he could have built a team with Trent in it. But now that Slot is able to pursue his type of fullback, we are seeing that it is nothing like Trent. Virgil and Salah we were desperate to keep because its hard to imagine our team without them. Trent would have been nice to keep because of how good he is, but Slot might actually prefer Frimpong's skillset. We still don't know what negotiations were like, how loved Liverpool made Trent feel, or if Trent was even happy with his role in the team this season as a more conventional right back. In a way I think I am defending Trent. It might not have been that Liverpool were begging him to stay and he told them to **** off. We don't know what money was offered, or how Trent's future role was presented to him.
My guess is we offered him great RB money... but he was looking for star player money. Didn't get it and so rolled his contract down and got a big payday at RM so he could play with his best bud. Fine, whatever. Honestly can't be bothered about how the fanbase treats him. He made his bed and he'll have to lie in it. If booing a Liverpool player while they are still wearing their shirt leaves a bad taste, well then so should leaving your boyhood club on a free... I'd already given up on caring what TAA wants/feels, when he decided grass was greener on the other side of the hill and screwed the club out of a transfer fee. Would have been easy to negotiate a relatively decent buyout fee with fine wages that would have forced RM to cough up at least a nominal fee for one of the best RB currently playing. Don't do this and you might face some consequences with a subset of the fans...
We offered to make him the highest paid fullback (and I think defender) in the game. Plus other stuff concerning image rights. The truth of the matter is that LFC were looking to pay the smallest amount possible and TAA was looking for the highest amount possible. It appears that the club was playing, as they say in cricket, with a straight bat. Then again, that’s the club getting to tell its story first and controlling the narrative. There has been nothing from the TAA camp about not enough money and not appears to me that ultimately the money wasn’t the prime or only driver. In which case the club was always playing second best and the only way he stays is if Real f.uck up their negotiations and contracts. While any contract negotiation is always going to be a pig fight in a mud pen where no one remains clean, and both sides carry some blame, the most important question is when he made his decision to leave? Was he negotiating in good faith for essentially the last year, from roughly after Klopp made his announcement to the appointment of Slot to the beginning of the season? Or was he (his agent) wise and playing to the Real balance sheet, knowing he’s a more attractive option as a free agent than a full transfer fee?
Yeah, highly doubt money is the actual issue here... it may be a significant factor, but there's so much more to this move than just getting some big payday.
Well, other stuff aside - my problems with Madrid's fan culture comes down to this.... well, what best to call it - the utter rubbish mystique that they portray. parallels of a fact faced: When we won the CL in 2005 most Liverpool fans weren't wandering around speaking of themselves as being a better team than that AC Milan team. We knew how ridiculous that was. We won the competition and that was enough and all that mattered. Similarly, I was in Barcelona in summer 2006 and a number of Barcelona fans were quite willing to attest that Arsenal and they were of an equivalence that year and that they were lucky that Lehman got red-carded and Pires went..... Take these attitudes up against the moronic cretins who follow Madrid and the ridiculous hype machine of the last dozen years of Madrid. Where not once (ok - we'll give them 2014, as a maybe, maybe - because they were very good that year - but that happened to be the one year when Athletico were better ......) were they the best team in Wurope on any of those half dozen CL winning seasons.... Anyway, to listen to these brain-cloistered, football-eyed-inadequacies bullsh!t about how Liverpool weren't;t a much better team than them on both recent final occasions (and on that disastrous self-suicide night at Anfield a couple of years ago) is to witness a mental illness of fandom...
I've got the impression of that myself. I still don;t like the way the fans are going overboard on this. TAA has been a key part of a club regeneration which has netted us 100s of Millions (in monetization of popularity and success) so, 20-30M not gotten ....we'll survive......
It was not at all surprising that our performance on the field changed dramatically when the fans went from jubilant to negative/booing.
This means more' - why some fans booed Alexander-Arnold Lifelong Liverpool fan Carl Duffy, 41, was at the game with his daughter in the main stand, and said both of them booed Alexander-Arnold's introduction. Duffy isn't worried about the hole Alexander-Arnold's exit leaves in the squad but said the emotional aspect was tough to accept. "We've lost big players before like Michael Owen [to Real Madrid in 2004] - the next year we won the Champions League, so history tells us not to cry about losing a player," Duffy said. "It's the hurt and emotion behind it that's the killer, not the loss of a right-back. "I think if Alexander-Arnold had anything about him, he'd have signed a new deal with a clause for Real Madrid set at say £40m and said: "'I'm not going to screw Liverpool out of money. If Madrid want me that much they will pay the fee.'" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Richard Davis, 50, was at the game against Arsenal and also condoned the booing from some supporters. "Alexander-Arnold is widely known as a local lad that is a Liverpool fan," he said. "I, and most fans, can't even begin to imagine how amazing it would be to be in his place so where's the respect to 'his' club? "If you genuinely love the club, and care, why would you run your contract down for the last year or so, to make sure that the club gets absolutely nothing to replace you after they have invested for the last 20 years in turning you into the superstar that you've become? "No-one begrudges any Liverpool player wanting to change their lives and go elsewhere if they want to, but go the right way. Go with respect and some class. Be honest and straight with the club, and don't play this 'will I, won't I?' game that he's been playing with them. "I am a fan, and this does mean more. Alexander-Arnold would have been a legend of the club had he stayed. He would probably been in most fans' top 10 Liverpool players of all time - but I think that legacy has all gone now and he's really tarnished how he's left so badly. "We'll always be grateful for the contributions that he's made. That contribution has been wonderful, but the way that he's left has left a really sour taste in the mouth which will hang around long in the memory." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why did Liverpool fans boo Trent Alexander-Arnold vs Arsenal? - BBC Sport
Platitudes solve all in the non-real world ..... First: History doesn't tell you that losing Michael Owen from a team that really could have used him is part of a natural slope that wins you things. Sure - we'll have a reasonably good shot at the CL odds with the book-makers next year, before it kicks off. That's because we are one of the 4 or 5 best sides in Europe right now. Would anyone have stated that in Aug 2004???? Trent's net into LFC far outweighs the non-recouped 30-40m these guys are so pissed about.
That's not what they really care about - they are just pointing to a fee. Paddy already laid it out - they care about the way he went about it. They are then saying that if that was the plan - then at least get us a fee instead of manipulating the system and screwing us. While the two are certainly intertwined - they aren't saying that 40m >>> Having Trent
True - but in counterbalance - we and they don;t "know" it was a plan. he may well have been on the fence for a majority of the time,and it may have been a tough decision. I don't know. Did LFC ever ask him to sign on that basis? Did either party? We don;t know?
We know there was a plan. All the evidence points to it. Will there ever be a trial to prove it? Of course not. But we know.
Slot with some very interesting comments about Trent in his press conference: “I think Mo has said already a few things about why he was in my office in pre-season and there were similar reasons why Trent was in my office in the beginning of the season!” he explained. “Maybe he said it himself, he’s going to leave either way so why not tell. Maybe it’s already a first gift I can give Xabi Alonso. If he is just at it and focused and concentrated, there are not many players that can go around him, because he’s fast, he’s agile, he has great mentality. “But it’s about showing that every single game, because in this world we are judged not only on the 34 games we do well, we are mainly judged on the four games we don’t do so well. “These things we spoke about in pre-season.” “I wasn’t completely happy with every single minute how he was on the training ground. “In my opinion in certain moments he could do a bit more, to say it mildly, and that’s what we talked about. “Combined with that I said to him: ‘You are a much better defender than everybody tells you, unfortunately you don’t show it all the time, that’s why people sometimes say you are not’.