Not signed yet, but rumours. I can't blame the Pozzos for not spending £15m we don't have on improving the team. But if they miss out on a target, who is available for loan, to a Championship club, then they really aren't trying hard enough.
I put it in another 'transfer window' thread - Sky are reporting he is having a medical this afternoon, with a deal agreed.
Surprised to see one of the 5 further players they expect to bring in includes longtime wfcforums rumour-darling Siriki Dembele. And people claim they're not our cast-iron, died-in-the-wool, deaths-whenever-we-clash rivals.
We keep trying to bid for Liverpool players and they offer us stupid valuations. I wonder why? Who knew that and selling Zielinski to Napoli for less than Liverpool offered because our board thew a hissy fit would come back to bite us? Yet another instance of someone who don't want to deal with the ******* clowns on our board throwing their toys out of the pram.
Bournemouth hoovering up more of Liverpool's rejects for the price of Salah. That's Solanke, Ibe and Phillips.
Which members of our board are on Udinese's board? I'm not being obtuse, I know there's a family link at the very top, but I should think for all sorts of legal, regulatory and football rules reasons the two are pretty separate.
I was referring more to the football decision making "board" rather than Directors under the Companies Act or the Italian equivalent (as I dont have any great insight into either structure). They have long said there is a 3 person decision making process - Pozzo, Giraldi (now Giaretta) and Duxbury - when it comes to sporting decisions. Given the petulance over Zielinski (an Udinese decision) happened as a result of Liverpool wanting too much for Jerome Sinclair (a Watford decision), I think it difficult to argue that the decision making body is ultimately the same in practice.
You've described the Watford structure there though. Duxbury has nothing to do with Udinese's sporting decisions. I suppose on the bigger point I don't really see it as that likely that Liverpool are driving a harder bargain for us on Phillips because of a bit of hard nosed business on both sides 5 years ago. Surely? Plus Liverpool offer everyone stupid valuations for their fringe players and that's most likely because they have a track record of getting them.
This is beyond a joke, how has the penny still not dropped for our clowns in charge when a Championship club are strengthening their defence more then we are. He’s really going all in on a 74 year old being able to work an actual miracle.
I dont know what role Duxbury does / doesn't have regarding Udinese, but both Pozzo and Giraldi clearly had significant influence over what is going to at Udinese at the time. I don't think losing money to spite someone over a U23 player was really hard nosed business - it was frankly just petulant. In the end of the day, Watford still had to pay £4m for Jerome Sinclair and Udinese lost money on Zielinski. They aren't driving a hard bargain with Bournemouth though. Maybe it is unrelated - none of us can know. I suppose I just think it feeds into the impression I have that the way the decision makers conduct themselves puts clubs and agents off doing business with us.
Wait until midnight mate. There’ll be a few on here willing to offer up some excuses for him. Same ones we have been hearing for weeks.
Maybe Liverpool didn’t want to loan to a PL club otherwise sure there would have been a few takers ? Seems a strange move otherwise unless there is some sort of permanent deal connected to the loan ?
Exactly. He's going to the Championship because he's not PL quality. There's a reason Klopp was so panicked about having to play him.
Given the circumstances, I'd bet Bournemouth have an obligation to buy at a stupid price if they get promoted, likely the overpriced value Liverpool want.
Because we have worse ones who have far more appearances and have proved they aren’t up to it? At least Phillips are proved himself at PL level in his few performances. Sierralta has played a similar amount of games at a similar age and has done no such thing - and yet many claim him to be our best CB. Pretty obvious why people are angry that we seem to be underplaying the need for better defenders once more.
Because Craig Cathcart and William Troost Ekong, not sure if you’re familiar with their work. Gino (supposedly) bid £7m for Phillips, which is probably more than what we’ve spent on our entire defence combined over the past 10 years, so it’s probably a fair indicator he might just be slightly better then what we’ve got, you know the defence that haven’t kept a clean sheet all season.
I wasn’t sure about Phillips but if he was identified as a target and we did bid £7m+ for him, it’s baffling that we were unable to get him in on loan.
As I said earlier, if it indeed is true that we made offers, then the only conclusion I can arrive at is that Liverpool and/or the player have major reservations about us as a club and the way we are performing. I think our defence is in such a state of disrepair that any half-decent player we may look at buying may balk at the idea of being part of it or the pressure of being seen as the player to improve it. When you add to that the addition of a fairly 'industrial' manager in Hodgson, I just think the whole thing has maybe gone beyond the point of coming back.
Seems that Simon Jones reported that the player just wanted assurances of game time given how little he has played through his career. Not sure if that reflects as badly on us as you suggest. But we could/should have been more persuasive. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/f...ps-set-join-Bournemouth-loan-rest-season.html
Surely out of all the teams he could join we could guarantee him more game time than us? Look who he’s up against.