Did we even bid 100m? Tbh I’m not fussed if he’s going for that fee, we’re we even going to go that high? 
 

Brighton are bandits at the mo, but teams are paying so good luck to them.

Liverpool are the bigger mugs paying 110 mil, that's about 40 mil over what anyone should have paid. 80 mil was more than enough, so I am glad we haven't had our pants pulled down over this one.

Liverpool feeling the heat from their fans and manager. Doubt they go for Lavia too. 

90m was a more than fair offer, so actually glad we didn't overspend. 

 

Never send Brighton anything more than a postcard ever again and move on. 

1 minute ago, Gol15 said:

Was it really? During this whole period I never saw Caicedo as a player that is worth more than 60m, we apparently offered 80m first and then 100m and both got rejected.

I couldn't care less about this transfer target as it got overblown and Liverpool took the bait and massively overpaid. Our problem has been our attack, the midfield with Enzo alone is already decent.

Enzo alone can't really play in midfield though, can he? Ne needs a partner to do the dirty work, so to speak, and Caicedo was the best of available options, everybody else (Lavia, Adams etc) is a massive step down.

I must be the only who noticed that we sold or released our whole central midfield since January and only brought in Enzo. I know he's good but he's not good enough to do everything by himself, he needs help.

2 minutes ago, Blue Exile said:

Did we even bid 100m? Tbh I’m not fussed if he’s going for that fee, we’re we even going to go that high? 
 

Brighton are bandits at the mo, but teams are paying so good luck to them.

I think it was 90mil +10mil add ons

2 minutes ago, Malcolm9 said:

Liverpool are the bigger mugs paying 110 mil, that's about 40 mil over what anyone should have paid. 80 mil was more than enough, so I am glad we haven't had our pants pulled down over this one.

We literally offered them the 100 million they would have accepted a month ago. But at that point it was already too late.

Could have had him for pre season if we acted a month ago. A cock up of massive proportions.

No amount of money in the world can change the fact that they are dirty scousers 

 

7 minutes ago, Frankie8Lampard said:

People complained about Todd's overspending last summer, Stuart and Winstanley have been more conservative this summer and did the same thing Marina would have done had it been the old regime so not sure what the difference is? I highly doubt Marina would have spent 100mil at the first bid or matched Liverpool's 110. Brighton are the ones that did us dirty I'm not going to put any blame on the board.

The board spent three months trying to nickel and dime Brighton in a one horse race even when they originally stated very clearly the purchase price was £100m. A price we we're quite happy to pay last night when it turned out we had serious competition for the player.

We had a chance to be competitive this season, The board have f**ked this up royally and we're finishing 7-8th at best in a season a lot of us were (very much past tense now) looking forward to.

Edited August 11, 20232 yr by Luca Vialli

Just now, abramovich said:

Enzo alone can't really play in midfield though, can he? Ne needs a partner to do the dirty work, so to speak, and Caicedo was the best of available options, everybody else (Lavia, Adams etc) is a massive step down.

I must be the only who noticed that we sold or released our whole central midfield since January and only brought in Enzo. I know he's good but he's not good enough to do everything by himself, he needs help.

I don't think it's right to say Enzo "needs" help, it's just that having help allow us to make better use of his unique talents. Sure, he can play as a deep-lying playmaker and ping balls to Mudryk/Madueke/Jackson on the counter, but then you lose his ability to progress the ball on the dribble, make slide-rule passes around the box and also his ability to finish from range. 

Pairing him with a midfielder like Caicedo or Declan Rice, both of whom are quite good at recovery runs, allows him to play further up with less defensive risk while also have a defensive player who is no slouch in attack themselves.

In saying that, just stick Reece James there and call it a day. 

6 minutes ago, BordeauxBlue said:

Never send Brighton anything more than a postcard ever again and move on. 

Edited August 11, 20232 yr by azpi28

2 minutes ago, OriginalS said:

We literally offered them the 100 million they would have accepted a month ago. But at that point it was already too late.

Could have had him for pre season if we acted a month ago. A cock up of massive proportions.

You don't know that, and it's hardly a cock up. It's one player, look at the great refresh of our squad and where we are team wise compared to the last season.

We don't need to be spending a further 100+ mil on one player.

6 minutes ago, abramovich said:

Enzo alone can't really play in midfield though, can he? Ne needs a partner to do the dirty work, so to speak, and Caicedo was the best of available options, everybody else (Lavia, Adams etc) is a massive step down.

I must be the only who noticed that we sold or released our whole central midfield since January and only brought in Enzo. I know he's good but he's not good enough to do everything by himself, he needs help.

Like Fabregas without peak Matic. Impossible for it to work.

1 minute ago, Luca Vialli said:

The board spent three months trying to nickel and dime Brighton in a one horse race even when they originally stated very clearly the purchase price was £100m. A price we we're quite happy to pay last night when it turned out we had serious competition for the player.

We had a chance to be competitive this season, The board have f**ked this up royally and we're finishing 7-8th at best.

We didn't negotiate last summer for any of our players and just paid the asking price and look where that got us? Multiple players with fat contracts that we wouldn't have been able to offload if it wasn't because of the Saudi clubs bailing us out. There's nothing wrong with negotiating to try and bring a price down especially if a player isn't worth over 100 million. If Liverpool weren't willing to pay silly money we probably would have got him for the rumoured 90 + 10. 

4 minutes ago, Scott Harris said:

Make no mistake about it, we f**ked this one. It doesn't matter that we don't think he is worth 100m, that is the price the club were (reluctantly) going to pay. If they had paid it earlier, he would already be a Chelsea player by now. We spent the entire summer wasting time, and we've paid for it. We've had done to us what we have done to so many clubs in the past 20 years. We've changed for the worse since the change of ownership, there is no point denying it at this point, it's just constant bad news following this club since they came in.

If we sign Lavia and Adams then this midfield of ours is awful. You can forget about top 4 or even top 6, we'll struggle to make top 10.

Yes - we f**ked the deal. But then again not. Clearly we wanted him, and as you say, if we’re willing to pay £100m now then we could have just done it a month ago. 

We didn’t as are SD’s decided to work the transfer slowly to see if Brighton would give in. The didn’t and now Pool has come in with a bid I highly doubt we’re ever pay.

Adams is a produkt of the Red Bull academy. If he’d played for Brighton I could easily see him being as important as Caicedo. I’m not saying he’s a world beater - but you make it as if Caicedo was the reason we’d get top four. I believe it’ll be down to the overall team function - not one player.

There is so much to say on this it’s mind blowing.

He was our number 1 target.

Brighton said they wanted £100m, we could of wrapped this deal up literally anytime from June to Wednesday this week.

We offered the £100m only after Liverpool got encouragement after how slow we was.

We asked him to put pressure on Brighton, he did that on Saturday when he told them he wanted to leave and join Chelsea, yet we still did nothing and then literally waited for validation from Liverpool to see if we was the only club who thought he was worth around £100m.

Caicedo got fed up of waiting and Brighton did too and in the end Liverpool outbid us so the decision was taken out of Caicedo’s hands.

There’s so much more I could say but I can’t be bothered atm.

Brighton did nothing wrong, we spent 3 months low balling them until it was too late.

Caicedo did nothing wrong, he can’t sign for us until we agree a fee with Brighton.

 

Liverpool’s number 1 target was McAlister 

Arsenal’s number 1 target was Rice

Man Utd’s number 1 target was Mount

All these clubs made their number 1 target a priority, while we messed about sold our midfield off, concentrated on young players who either need time to adapt or players we plan to loan out to Strasbourg.

 

Liverpool have come from nowhere and got our number 1 target, let that sink in!

 

But hey, we’ve gonna get Tyler Adams (when he’s fit again) and probably Lavia as he’s probably our only option who is available.

This level of incompetence from the our board in this saga is truly astonishing.

And just like that we’ve strengthened another rival this summer, we just did it the long way round this time.

We’ve also let Poch down and Enzo probably.

Maybe the 2030 project is literally that, because we are probably 7 years away from competing at the top table lol.

I had a feeling there would be one crazy move the board would do this transfer window to undo a lot of the seemingly promising progress this summer.

I thought it would be overpaying for an injury prone overseas player with his best days behind him.

But hats off to our board, this one I didn’t see coming, not on Wednesday anyway.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 11, 20232 yr by 2211

2 minutes ago, abramovich said:

Enzo alone can't really play in midfield though, can he? Ne needs a partner to do the dirty work, so to speak, and Caicedo was the best of available options, everybody else (Lavia, Adams etc) is a massive step down.

I must be the only who noticed that we sold or released our whole central midfield since January and only brought in Enzo. I know he's good but he's not good enough to do everything by himself, he needs help.

Obviously not but in all honesty I am much more impressed by Liverpool signing MacAllister and Szoboszlai, they are going to make that midfield great.

For us, having Enzo is actually having the only real 100m player that is as an individual, worth it. Yes he needs a partner but his partner doesn't need to be world class. Let's not forget that Liverpool won the league with a Milner-Henderson-Wijnaldum midfield which was if we are to be honest a very mediocre midfield.

What's stopping us paying 50m for Lavia if we really need an extra player there? He might grow to be even better than Caicedo.

1 hour ago, JM7 said:

I know we didn’t match Brighton’s valuation but it feels like Brighton continue to screw us at every opportunity. Goodwill only appears to be on our side. 
 

We should go and buy Kudas to annoy them. 

Short memory? Only a few months ago Chelsea took Brighton’s manager, coaching staff and player of the season. It didn’t work out but thats hardly Brighton’s fault. Do you really expect a club to sell a player for less than their valuation out of ‘goodwill’?

2 minutes ago, Scott Harris said:

Like Fabregas without peak Matic. Impossible for it to work.

Cesc worked with multiple different players in several clubs. 

Has Caicedo said yes to Liverpool? 

1 minute ago, Malcolm9 said:

You don't know that, and it's hardly a cock up. It's one player, look at the great refresh of our squad and where we are team wise compared to the last season.

We don't need to be spending a further 100+ mil on one player.

Reported by everyone who reported Liverpool have agreed a fee so yes,

And alright, if "great refrish" means transition to mediocrity or worse I agree. Fecking Aston Villa got a stronger squad, no joke.

They've cocked it up. Lopetegui left Wolves, I can see Poch leaving Chelsea before the seasons over.
If (when) Liverpool hammer us in two days and West Ham beat us it will be toxic everywhere. We have a manager who wants to win and compete and a squad that can only compete for Europa League at best. Bound to go to sh*t.

lol this is melt down of epic proportions in here.. reading we may have lost out on prime maradona.. yes we targetted him and tried our best and a fair price what are club felt. another valued the player differently and that was that. happens all the time .. we did with Mydryk a few months back.

Caicedo is a good player but he is no KDB.. We need a DM and will sign one. Maynot be our first target but that is ok...we have gotten our no 1 target in the past and that has not always turned out for the best..

2 minutes ago, Gol15 said:

Obviously not but in all honesty I am much more impressed by Liverpool signing MacAllister and Szoboszlai, they are going to make that midfield great.

For us, having Enzo is actually having the only real 100m player that is as an individual, worth it. Yes he needs a partner but his partner doesn't need to be world class. Let's not forget that Liverpool won the league with a Milner-Henderson-Wijnaldum midfield which was if we are to be honest a very mediocre midfield.

What's stopping us paying 50m for Lavia if we really need an extra player there? He might grow to be even better than Caicedo.

Respectfully disagree. You have to get the best player possible, if you want to be competitive, it's called ambition. Arsenal overpaid for Rice, now Liverpool overpaid Caicedo. Both clubs significantly improved and get the player they wanted. What did we do all summer? Buying unknown youngsters from Brazil to strengthen Strasbourg. f**king hell.

 

3 minutes ago, Frankie8Lampard said:

We didn't negotiate last summer for any of our players and just paid the asking price and look where that got us? Multiple players with fat contracts that we wouldn't have been able to offload if it wasn't because of the Saudi clubs bailing us out. There's nothing wrong with negotiating to try and bring a price down especially if a player isn't worth over 100 million. If Liverpool weren't willing to pay silly money we probably would have got him for the rumoured 90 + 10. 

We had Frank Lampard and Potter 'guiding' Bohely last season. I trust Poch's talent ID a hell of a lot more than those two with a new owner who thought he could do everything from day one.

We didn't get him and that's the only point that matters.

3 minutes ago, OriginalS said:

Reported by everyone who reported Liverpool have agreed a fee so yes,

And alright, if "great refrish" means transition to mediocrity or worse I agree. Fecking Aston Villa got a stronger squad, no joke.

They've cocked it up. Lopetegui left Wolves, I can see Poch leaving Chelsea before the seasons over.
If (when) Liverpool hammer us in two days and West Ham beat us it will be toxic everywhere. We have a manager who wants to win and compete and a squad that can only compete for Europa League at best. Bound to go to sh*t.

C'mon be for real. Spurs don't spend a quarter of the money we spend and he spent years there. Poch isn't going to walk away just because we missed out on one target.

2 minutes ago, OriginalS said:

Reported by everyone who reported Liverpool have agreed a fee so yes,

And alright, if "great refrish" means transition to mediocrity or worse I agree. Fecking Aston Villa got a stronger squad, no joke.

They've cocked it up. Lopetegui left Wolves, I can see Poch leaving Chelsea before the seasons over.
If (when) Liverpool hammer us in two days and West Ham beat us it will be toxic everywhere. We have a manager who wants to win and compete and a squad that can only compete for Europa League at best. Bound to go to sh*t.

That's the spirit!

Anyway, if Caicedo is indeed going to Liverpool,  there is no way of knowing who will be right, the "good thing we didn't overpay, it's not about 1 player" camp or the "board f**ked up, we're sh*t and we're doomed" camp. We can discuss it from here til the sun explodes and not agree. We'll know next May, and in the meantime let's thrash Lpool.