Liverpool can’t afford to chase lost causes in the transfer market as Andoni Iraola prepares to take the club into a new age…
I love how little it takes to change minds.
When Yan Diomande’s name came up as a possible sort-of replacement for Mo Salah, or at least play in his area of the pitch, it was difficult not to get excited. He’s quick, he’s young and exactly the sort of player a club like ours can get behind. This would be a significant signature to get. I was all in on him.
Then the news came. He fancies PSG instead.
Nah, he’s not worth the risk. A huge bulk of the transfer kitty thrown away on a largely untried player with only a handful of appearances to his name, and none of them in the hardest league in the world. Probably best avoided. Plus, he’s only 12 years old or something
Hell hath no fury like a Red scorned.
I’ve read this week that this is somehow a failure on Liverpool’s part. I can’t get on board with that. It looks like he’ll be joining a side with back-to-back European Cup wins and more money than God. Liverpool staggered to fifth place in the league last season and have a new manager who has to deal with a massive squad overhaul. It’s easy to see why he’s making eyes at Paris rather than town.
I suppose you can’t sign everyone. What’s important is that the club don’t dick around for ages on a lost cause. Let the baby have his bottle and move on.
I’ve no interest in players who don’t want to play for Liverpool. No bad faith there, it’s just that I invest so much time in those who do want to be here that it’s simply a case of mental capacity. I’m the same with returning players. I never got on with the booing of Trent when Madrid came here last season. The second he took our shirt off he stopped being my business. Alonso too, to be honest.
There’s so much work for Liverpool to do and the World Cup doesn’t help. Prices inflate based on a handful of games and we have to deal with that along with the usual nonsense. In 1994 Phil Babb somehow became Beckenbauer. In 2002 El-Hadji Diouf was … well, let’s not go there.
I don’t know how the club can identify players, scout them, approach their clubs and agents and persuade them to move jobs, countries and dislodge their families while they’re playing in the biggest international tournament in the world.
I just hope Bradley Barcola can multi-task. I’m all in there too.
But if he can’t we might be looking at doing all of that work on second, third and fourth choices in a handful of weeks. A handful of weeks where the players are probably on holiday, too knackered to start looking at schools in Freshfields. True, that’s what agents are for, but they’re not the ones moving house and learning new languages.
Transfers are really, really hard as it is and this is the worst time to do it.
And Liverpool can’t afford to get this wrong. Last season was hardly an unmitigated success when it came to the big signings, though I’m optimistic that a second season for Isak, Wirtz and Frimpong in particular will reap rewards. We can’t have another year of scattergun signings while huge areas of the pitch aren’t covered.
These are interesting times and so much of what is to come is based on sheer luck and I hate having to rely on the uncertainty of luck.
What Andoni Iraola has though is a blank piece of paper. Not only can he tear up the Klopp/Slot copybook, he’s actively being encouraged to do it. He can go where he wants now as the age of Jürgen is now completely over. It’s his club now. This is a new age albeit the scariest part of it.
RB Leipzig recently stated that they’ve no need to sell Diomande at all and they might hang on to him. I hope this isn’t seen as a slither of hope from the club. We’ve wasted time on lost causes before.
In any case as things stand it’s no Diomande. Fair enough. I bet he’s rubbish anyway.
