Chez

Not disagreeing, but no matter how low the price is for a player, its essential that they have the ability and/or potential to be a good player for us, otherwise they fill a shirt that could be filled by someone else. Low transfer fee mean less up front money, but wages and long term contracts mean it's no less risk. The same applies to free contracts.

The £70m loan didn't give it away? I like the idea of a loan signing. The fella has talent, but we need to see it displayed more often in games and for him to dictate games before we give him a long term deal. Perhaps he's had enough chances, but having not seen him live, I'm gonna sit on the fence.

I was hoping we'd look at Ryan Kent, but that ain't gonna happen

The way I read Ralphs comments to date, is that he has been told by board that they will allow Ings to wind his contract down (giving us another season) rather than sell for less than their valuation of him. We won't simply accept the best offer we get. What that valuation is, I don't know, but Ralf's confidence that he will stay, perhaps suggests its sizeable. However, a club our financial situation cant afford to allow all assets to leave for nothing, so as you say, if that valuation is met, he's gone.

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/liverpool-can-raise-80m-selling-20697081 Maybe the writer just has made educated guesses, but the suggestion is £10m for Minamoto. I'm not advocating his signing, but I'd offer £7.25m max on principle. Why on earth Liverpool should make a profit from a failed signing, especially in a downgraded market. Yeah, OK, I know why...

not exactly comparable. Personally, I couldn't care less when we get them, as long as we do get the right players. VVD signed for us on the last day of the window. It was worth the wait. Good players don't need a long bedding in process. Good players just play and improve sides. They will all be doing fitness work for their current clubs. Expect lots of knock backs. It's normal. If united can fail to sign players with all their might and glamour, we have no devine right to get the players we want. Aim high, if you fail move on to the next best target.

As Newcastle found out, Burnley don't have too many good players and Jeff Hendricks isn't one of them. Brady is an OK player, decent ability, but unless it's McNeil, Pope or Tarkowski being discussed, which it won't be, then its a big `no thanks' from me.

aren't our socks usually white and shorts black?

Likewise. They'd look much better in dark blue, like in our earlier years, but can't see us ever going there. Shame.

Irrelevant. When he asked for a wage rise it was 2017 and he was the England full back, and among the best left backs in the league. He was in the pfa team of the year. Walker went to City and got his 200k, while he remained at spurs and on 65k. He and walker were at a very similar level. Spurs underpaid their players compared to other prem clubs. He questioned that.

we needed cover because when Vokins got his chance he was found to be out of his depth. I repeat, why did we offer Bertrand a contract if we were so keen to upgrade?

we didn't want to pay him what he felt he deserved. Simple as that. Absolutely nothing to do with us wanting to upgrade. If that was the case, why did we offer him a contract at all?

I think he was a good player before Poch turned up. He's always been decent. The issue was Spurs didn't pay him what similar players like Walker got elsewhere. He wanted to get paid. He also wanted Spurs to be better. I don't see anything wrong with that.

Bertrand turned our contract offer down. We didn't offload him because we wanted an upgrade, he departed because we didn't want to pay him. We may not sign better than Bertrand is now. Hopefully we will, but there is no guarentee.

You might be right, but Spurs obviously underpaid him. He will have asked for a pay rise and Levy probably told him where to go. He asked for a move, but Spurs obviously priced him out of that move. In the end there no winners, but Spurs could have an England fullback playing for them if they had put their hand in their pocket, but instead paid him less to do nothing. He said he couldn't wait to get out of football because of the racist abuse he got. I think that is fair enough. Not sure what his driving has to do with him being a solid pro. Is Shane Long a solid pro?

I like Rose a lot. I thought he was a very decent full back a few year ago. Speaks his mind and has suffered because of it. Saying he wanted to win things and Spurs should be signing top player and paying them properly was spot on. I didn't see him at Newcastle. How did he play? Why didn't Spurs farm him out again paying a chuck of his wages? Or did he refuse to budge? We need two left backs. If Bertrand has taken a wage cut, then he'd of been ideal cover/rival for a young prospect. Not sure if Rose would come cheap, but same could apply. A younger guy with an older guy pushing him could work for us.

The 21/22 shirt harks directly to the Hummel shirt of 1989 - see the pinstripe between the stripes, plus also the black chevrons on the sleeves. Strangely I really like that 89 shirt, maybe cos Jimmy Case wore it, and everything is better from ye olden days. Note the collar on the 89 shirt ties in nicely with the chevron design. The 21/22 collar doesn't tie in well at all.

would be boring if we all liked the same thing. I had a rather nasty red white and back striped carpet as a kid in the 80s and it may have left an indelible mark.

After bigging up Hummel all summer, I have to say I'm pretty disappointed. I saw the Denmark third kit earlier in the week and it looked tremendous. I was `excited' about our new shirt design, but they have failed to deliver the same wow factor. I like the Chevrons down the stripes, but really hate the black pinstripes between the red and white stripes. I guess it harks directly back to the 89 kit, but I really don't care for the black in our colour scheme - so there will be no pleasing me if its used in the shirt and not just the shorts. The collar is not great too. Just looks weird. I guess its original, so maybe I will grow to like it. It's certainly an improvement on the dreadful UA designs, but I was hoping for something a bit classier, but maybe its not possible when using red, back and white, as that is just a bad colour combination.

didn't we spend £20m on him when he had a year left on his contract and a far more serious (recent) injury record?

We all want him to be he next Mane and he has time on his side, but right now he doesn't seem to have any idea what he is meant to do and the output we get is almost non existent. If he could blossom, then a lot of our problems in the final third would be solved, but something has to change with him, be it his approach, confidence and coaching or all of those things, otherwise we will continue to create very little and suffer as a result. I know it's the modern game, but I just cant have his crying and feigning of injury. It's embarrassing and if it was an opposing player he'd get dogs abuse from me.

Fair point and they have to get a lot of recruitment decisions right, which everyone knows you just don't. It will be very interesting to compare us with them next season. We have both been pretty shit this season and star players Ings and Zaha are both potentially off. We can't do much in the market and they have to. They can clear dead wood and remove failure, we must retain ours but perhaps can pull things together once more. I wonder who will finish higher next season.

the only issue I have with this is that it isn't this summer. Finding new players is not hard. Signing them can be tricky of course, but the real issue is when you have players you don't want but cant shift. The new manager at Palace may have a massive rebuilding job to do, and perhaps 16 players out of contract is a lot to deal with, but at least he won't now have the likes of Wickham, Kelly and Ward eating wages despite being championship at best. Imagine if we had 15 players out of contract right now. That would be a godsend.

the point is, Ralf is stating openly that we have no intention to do that. Maybe he has no choice but to say that in order to maximise the value in the event of an enquiry for one fo them.

maybe that's our problem - trying to play like Barca, but with players ill equipped to do that? That said, god knows what are tactics are these days.