‘Reece Oxford could be a £40m star if he proves it at Gladbach’
Liverpool fans believe the club can negotiate over Virgil van Dijk’s £70m asking price, while Arsenal’s move for Alexandre Lacazette, Jose Mourinho’s style and Reece Oxford’s move to Borussia Monchengladbach are also debated.
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£50m for Lacazette isn’t crazy – it’s the going rate!
I don’t know why Olivier Giroud is ahead of Alexandre Lacazette in the international pecking order – as Mad Max suggests, it’s probably down to the set-up – but if you compare Giroud’s record in Ligue 1 to Lacazette’s, Lacazette is streets ahead and that’s surely the best way of comparing the two?
Paul Davis never earned a senior cap for England, despite being one of the best English midfielders of his generation. Per Mertesacker is one of the most capped players ever to play for Germany and while I personally like him myself, probably 95% of Gooners would question that too.
International football isn’t always the best guide to whether a player is any good or not.
Lacazette’s also a lot more versatile than Giroud and can play anywhere across the front three, which is something Wenger loves in a player and is far better suited to our style of play.
On the fee, a £50m player today is the same sort of player you wouldn’t have paid more than £30m for a couple of years ago. We bought Sanchez for that kind of money. Fees have gone through the roof.
When £115m offers are being made for an 18-year-old who has never played in any of Europe’s top leagues, £50m for Lacazette ain’t that crazy at all.
Al the Gooner
Alexandre Lacazette would be an utterly disappointing signing, simply because to have to wait all these years only to sign someone like him would simply not be worth it.
Even if he’s a good player, I’m fairly confident he’ll not take us to the next level.
Man United, Chelsea and Liverpool are all in need of strikers yet we’re the only ones who are going in for him is it any wonder?And that too for a possible £56m. Absolute joke.
If we are going to replace France’s first choice striker with someone who usually is not even picked in the squad then that says it all about the signing doesn’t it.
The fact that Arsene Wenger wants to spend so much on Mbappe, there are other fairly acquirable targets we could get. Andrea Belotti, Mauro Icardi, Karim Benzema, Romelu Lukaku or even Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. I’d take these all over Lacazette.
thespecialone
Let Walker go and improve the other side of the defence
(Walker can go) and while we’re at it how about a more convincing backup at left back than Ben Davies. Danny Rose is great going forward and adequate defensively if he comes back soon.
Davies however, I never noticed him at Swansea and I barely notice him for us. He offers very little going forward and maybe isn’t even as good as Rose defensively.
I think it’s pretty clear Walker is on the way out judging by how Mauricio Pochettino froze him out the last couple months of the season.
box2boxmf
Looks like the Walker deal is close but no to selling both for me.
Walker will always be error prone but uses his pace to cover not only his own mistakes but also bails out/relieves pressure on the centre backs. Trippier is good but Walker has the extra strength and aggression we’ve been lacking over the years.
Davies can’t match Rose but is a good backup player and is still improving. Works hard doesn’t complain and can fill in at centre back.
tom182
No pay rise for Ramsey and what about the Ox?
With Aaron Ramsey my gut reaction would be no! Personally I don’t think he should be holding down a regular spot in our team. I will admit he played well at the end of the season and has a gift for getting important goals but he just isn’t the level of player we should be having in our engine room for me.
He is absolutely worth keeping but not if he is asking for crazy wages. He isn’t a player I would be worried about us coming up against if he was sold to another Premier League team. That’s the way I judge it.
Alex-Oxlade Chamberlain is an interesting one. I really like him and would love him to stay but Arsene Wenger has a real issue with team selection here. Alex did more than enough at the back end of the season to suggest he can make that Wing-back role his own.
Add to that the fact that Hector Bellerin had a pretty poor season and you can see the issue here. Wenger wants them both to stay but neither of them will tolerate sitting on the bench. The key issue is what the Ox wants.
By that I mean, is he happy to accept that his position in the side is primarily as a wing back? Because, if he still has aspirations to be a central midfield player, I don’t personally think he is good enough for that. Lots of rumours linking him with a move to Liverpool but again, I don’t see him getting a role in that midfield either.
andy528
Chelsea fan not impressed with their transfer dealings
Sometimes i would like to be as optimistic as some of my fellow posters here are. A while ago the most widely believed view was that Romelu Lukaku was an 80% done deal, but it turns out that is not the case and we are nowhere near making a deal with either him or Everton.
The player dismissed any proposed move to Chelsea, that is what the news papers are reporting. Although I’m guilty of reading them since i was told to ignore papers. but then again how do we receive the news about the club? It’s not like we get a briefing from the club spokes person like the White House does.
Whether we refuse to believe it or not we rely on papers giving us information, and by the verdict of this. they are reporting no agreement or anywhere near agreement is reached.
Another frightening development is the idea of trading our best defender for a left-back who hasn’t been tested enough since his team dominate the Serie A. Why? I still can’t come to terms that we are considering trading Azpilicueta plus cash for Sandro who i feel isn’t that much better than Alonso.
Might this be lazy journalism as some may dismiss it? Well I hope so, even though they say there is no smoke without fire. I don’t know if someone within our board wants firing. but the last few reports from Chelsea has been scary for a Chelsea fan.
£20m for Matic to United. £48m plus Matic for Bonucci, £60m plus Azpilicueta for Sandro. £100m for Lukaku.
We are selling players without inserting buyback clauses. What if we had buy back clauses for Lukaku like Real Madrid had for Morata? Would we be worrying the £100m on his head now? De Bruyne left without a buyback clause inserted in to his sale.
Thorgan Hazard left Chelsea without buyback clause. Salah left Chelsea without buyback clause. Why are we not exercising this aspect of the transfer since to my knowledge it isn’t illegal? We are about to sell Nathan Ake, a proven Premier League player for as little as £20m to Bournemouth, yet I bet once he develops and reaches his peak, we are granted to go for him and offer Bournemouth £70m.
This is ridiculous and it can’t go for that. Why are we giving Lyon Bertrand Traore yet we not asking for someone in return? And to my frustration we are throwing him as little as £16m? Why can’t we not ask for their striker in return. because i heard he has scored 37 goals in all competitions last season.
Do we need any other proof? Isn’t he an alternative to Lukaku and cheaper than him? £57m for a striker that has scored 37 goals last season is a steal! Watch out one of our competitors taking him from under our noses.
Wise-fan
Liverpool can get Southampton down to £60m for Van Dijk
If Southampton want £70m for Virgil Van Dijk, perhaps they can be negotiated down to £60m, still £10m more than we were originally wanting to pay.
It’s still a lot of money but the way transfers are going we might be doing ok. Remember Van Dijk still has five years left on his contract and is one of the, if not the best centre-back in the Premier League.
gingerlfc
Mourinho has a style, but needs to add some unpredictability
Jose Mourinho’s primary style is “not losing” and he’s at least made us tough to beat. These potential transfer targets reflect that but if he wants to create a team capable of winning he’ll need to add that bit of unpredictability; someone who can come up with a bit of magic.
His teams have always had those kind of players but even if Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored a lot of goals last season it was too much to ask even him to be our talisman week in, week out. We need more pace, but also intelligence and persistence.
Alex Ferguson’s best teams used to come after their opponents again and again until they eventually cracked but it seems like ages since we had teams on the ropes like that. In order to do that we’ll need to strengthen all over the pitch during these next few transfer windows.
A stronger attack ensures our opposition will think twice before attacking us full force in fear of leaving themselves exposed (much like we do against the better teams at the moment) and a stronger defence will give our forwards a better platform to attack.
It’s not only about pace, steel or intelligence but a mixture of all three and seeing that we’re lacking in every department it’s going to be a while yet before we get back to where we believe we belong.
roygbiv
We wont be spending shed loads – we made a loss last year!
Liverpool made a loss in the last financial year and that included money from the Europa League where we went all the way to the final, this year we were not in Europe at all.
I am not sure if we could include the Champions League money because we haven’t earned it yet. We haven’t even got through the Champions League play-off games yet.
Credit to Fenway Sports Group (the owners) for converting £69m of the stadium expansion cost to equity but I believe the full cost is higher than that and we haven’t fully repaid those debts.
Certainly a portion of the new TV money deal of £148m would be invested in players but spending £250m net is a little far fetched for me.
gabara
The length of transfer sagas is becoming very frustrating
Do we know why some transfers are easy and can be done quickly whilst others drag and drag? That’s where the frustration comes from isn’t it? If every transfer took the same amount of time then I think we’d all be fine with that.
How can we (Manchester United) race into the market and snap up Victor Lindelof but then go completely silent for weeks and weeks? Especially as we all know there are more players to come and “the list” has been common knowledge at United for months?
happyhurling
Obviously we never know what’s going on in the background but to give some examples, I reckon the Lindelöf deal was agreed months ago. RE Ivan Perisic, I think Inter are holding out as long as possible in the hope somebody else comes in with a higher offer.
Re Morata it could be delayed because of the uncertainty with Cristiano Ronaldo but I think it’s more a case of Real Madrid holding out until we get closer to their valuation of the player.
Obviously if we have an offer rejected we can’t come back the next day with a higher offer or we will look desperate and Real will add another 10 million to their asking price.
homerjay540
Oxford moving to Germany took me by surprise
Reece Oxford looked pretty decent in the spell he had in the team, I’m not sure why he dropped out of favour. So I’m a little surprised he’s been packed off to Germany this season.
But for a young English centre-back, West Ham would want crazy money to sell him permanently. I bet they value him at £40m already!
Moonster