tajjuk

I'll give you all of that, but none of that = 'the club is falling apart'. In fact it shows the opposite because the not great season with 8th papering over the cracks is why we are changing manager, so instead of 'falling apart' would this not actually be recognition of the management that A. The season was not that great despite the finish and cup final, and B. They made some mistakes, particularly in the recruitment of the manager that they are trying to rectify. Wouldn't you be just as critical, if not more so if the club came out and said what a great season we'd had and gave Pule a 2 year contract extension? Would you also not recognise that by making that decision and making the managerial change, that will have an impact on potential signings we make. This is not particularly direct at you, but again I don't really get what people expect the club to do when a bigger club than us flashes more money at our better players, and the said player decides he wants to go, the best we can do is hope the club plays as hard ball as possible, either extracting a massive fee or trying to get the player to stay on another year avoiding a full blown tantrum/strike. If VVD doesn't want to be here and he wants to go to Liverpool then there are limits to what can be done, the club can refuse to sell, and particularly to Liverpool and that is what they seem to be doing but they risk having an unhappy player that really benefits no one. Hell supposedly we have reported Liverpool for an illegal approach, not sure how that equates to 'We do sod-all to keep our players.'

I seriously doubt this, unless the stories are completely made up, we wouldn't report them if this was the case. Let's be honest, most 'ITKs' are complete BS anyway.

Unless they took us to the Champions League, they might be inclined to stay and continue the progress.

Get him in, sit him down in a press conference next to VVD and get him to tell his fellow countryman Klopp to politely f*ck off. That's my dream scenario.

I think it's more the comments that he's personally chatted with Klopp, they obviously recognise agents and middlemen meetings might be going on, but having one clubs manager directly chatting with another club's contracted player seems a bit too far. And Liverpool were the ones blagging about that so they only have themselves to blame, they leaked that to their own press.

Yeh we are doing pretty well for a club that falls apart every year, I guess they are having more fun over at clubs like Sunderland, Newcastle, Crystal Palace etc. with their roller coaster rides of flirting with relegation and sacking managers. A lot is going on, well actually, more correctly a lot is being speculated. Are we selling VVD? Club seems to say know and the complaint to the Premier League seems to dispel most of the media reports about him essentially already being a Liverpool player like 6 months ago. We are getting rid of our manager yes, but I presume we are doing this because we want to be better, rather than having stability for the sake of stability, also if you listen to some reports we are getting rid of the manager to appease players like VVD and Bertrand. Plus there is the whole takeover thing, but getting more money into the club to improve can't be a bad thing and if it's fallen through we are no worse off and other investors could come forward. And finally hardly any teams have signed any players yet, plus people should remember that we broke our transfer record in January. I can't see how it's us falling apart, we can't do anything about speculation for our players, if they truly want to go then there is not much point keeping any unhappy player, we chose to change the manager and I'd imagine that has an impact on transfers as we will want his input on them. The investment thing is probably something that is going on in the background all the time, the club is continually looking at ways to increase revenue, grow the brand etc. so why worry about that. I kind of think this sort of meltdown thread is more of an August thing.

There is no way I can see that happening, it would be a complete farce.

Does this mean we have someone lined up? Cos I thought we were getting that sorted at the same time.

let's be honest, if they got a transfer ban I bet the majority of premiership fans would love it, just because of their delusional ignorant fans. That article is disgusting as well, basically we should just bend over and let them do what they want because they are 'mighty' Liverpool who haven't really done anything of note for years, let's also remember this is 'mighty' Liverpool that finished what 7th the year before last and are only in the Champions league this year because they had no Europe. Van Dijk is better than that Liverpool team , he should be going to a team is actually going to win things, not some slightly above average team that without Mane would have barely scraped the top 10.

Liverpool fans, complete morons.

tell me about it, apparently they 'develop our players', yeh they developed Lovren all right, developed him into a clown and Lallana/Clyne are no better than when they played for us IMO, probably a bit worse. The sense of entitlement over there is staggering, they just seem to think they should be able to whistle and we'll just fold. they aren't bloody Real Madrid, they are haven't done anything for like 10 years, haven't won a title in nearly 30 years, just snuck back in the Champions League Liverpool, if any actually good big club came in for one of their players they would be gone in a flash. If it wasn't for Mane, they'd have finished like about 5 points better of than us, they were a decidedly ordinary team when he wasn't playing. One of the their ITKs is claiming it's a done deal apparently. Yeh jog on. And they are totally playing the victims here, the amount of 'what us' and then trying to claim Man City and Chelsea should be reported as well is completely pathetic. They are a sad club, with sad supporters stuck in their glory years which are older than most of them. At least we know our place, if you based Liverpool's status on what most of their fans think they would be Real Madrid, Barcelona and Harlem Globetrotters rolled into one.

One area i think we could be better is hovering up the top young talent from the championship, we don't seem to do that very often. Look at Spurs, Ali, Rose, Walker, Bale before that that is some top talent recruited from the lower leagues, we haven't really done much of that since Clyne. I was kind of sad we didn't pick up players like Lewis Cook and Lookman.

Be interesting to see how quickly (or at all) Liverpool come out and deny this. Any long delay for a statement would be pretty damning. Would love a transfer ban, would be highly unlikely but hilariously funny.

That's the point, all Liverpool's leaks to their Echo is coming back to bite them in the arse, I'm pretty sure Chelsea and City have said nothing about Van Dijk.

They are not as good as him but then why would we expect 21 year olds to be as good as a 27 year old international, but 'anywhere near' is a silly statement, they've both shown enough quality to perform in the PL and both are still young so can keep improving, they are basically the England U21 left backs as well. I'd rather have them than Clichy, or Gibbs or whatever middling left back we'd probably replace them with.

Liverpool fans are a deluded bunch of ***** aren't they, first time they've been a champions league club for what 4/5 years? and they only made if by the skin of their teeth and they are back acting like billy big club again, as if how dare Southampton stand up to them and of course van Dijk would chose them. Hope this definitely means we don't sell to Liverpool now or ever again. I'd quite happily see us make their rivals richer just to screw them over just see to see their fans whine about it.

Every club is a selling club, I'd imagine if someone big enough comes in with enough money then the likes of Harry Kane and Deli Ali will go, they are losing Walker to a club that finished below them. Man Utd lost Ronaldo and they are one of biggest clubs in the world, Juventus lost Pogba and they were just in the Champions League final, have won titles for years and yet he moved to a club that finished 6th and 5th over the last two years. We just have to make sure the deal does the best for the club if these players want to go and the club has obviously avoided the player running the contract down like with Wanyama to ensure full value. IMO we should have got more for Mane, but we got good deals for Morgan, Lallana, Shaw and Lovren and many of our sales haven't worked out amazingly for the buying club or the player. i also reckon we must be stretching it on wage budget, I'd reckon we don't need to sell for transfer funds but their can't be a huge amount of room in the wage budget. We probably need to off load Jay Rod, Clasie and Long I reckon to make room for some new players. As I reckon all 3 of those players will be paid in the 40-60k bracket easily.

I'd imagine wage budget is more of an issue than our transfer budget. Though if we get rid of Long, Jay Rod, Clasie from it then than should free up enough I reckon for some decent players, plus we had Fonte go from it mid season and Gaston the year before. I'd imagine all 5 of those players are pretty high earners.

If we do sell Bertrand then I hope we stick with Targett and McQueen as our left backs, both have shown enough promise that they deserve a go, rather than us spending £20 million on some foreigner who is unlikely to be much better.

I still think he'll go, but I think it will be unlikely to Liverpool now. Barca or Real Madrid for a huge fee would be my preference if he has to go, just to wind up all those Chelsea/man City/Liverpool fans.

Not Liverpool, not £50 million, but I still think this is media posturing again.

Probably 8th is about right but I'd reckon most people would have been happier if we were a bit closer to the 5th/6th in points, having a go for Europe and falling a little short is a lot better IMO than stumbling your way to 8th because 12 clubs just happened to be a lot crapper than you. Plus overachieving is a thing, wouldn't take much to push us to challenging for 4th, 5th, 6th if we had some luck with injuries, as we saw last year.

100%, pretty much anyone we buy should be an improvement on a first team slot, our squad is good enough and better than it has been for a long time, but our first eleven is not as good as it was. A full season of Gabbi/Austin with proper support should be good enough striker wise and I think getting the most out of Boufal is key cos the lad is clearly very talented. A further winger/attacking mid that can score goals that is better than Redmond/Tadic would be my main priority and probably an upgrade on centre-mid to replace Davis if Hojberg doesn't come good. If you think 4-3-3, then presuming Van Dijk stays then you'd still think we'd need another centre back, full backs look fine as we have good cover there, Romeu is the quality holding player, of the two centre-mids then hopefully JWP will continue his progress and I'd be looking for another upgrade in that area with Clasie going, you then have Boufal/Tadic/Redmond and hopefully another, with Gabbi/Austin/Gallagher as forwards. We probably do need a good back up/rotation option for Romeu. Pace as well is key especially if Long goes because for all his failings he does provide that pace to get in behind. Really we need a new Mane, like an exact copy of him somone with pace and direct that scores goals and can play wide or as second striker.

£70 million is fair enough, should make them think twice. I don't think Liverpool can pay that much, their new CEO was saying they want smart buys and Coutinho only cost £8 million, but thing is the media have such a Liverpool bias going on they'll think we'll just swoon and roll over for a lesser fee. As long as we stick to our guns and hold out for that high fee I'm not so bothered. Preference is obviously him staying, then selling him to another league (I'd take a £20 million hit to see him go to Juve or Barca or Real over Man city or Liverpool), but if it is PL the and he wants to go then make them pay through the nose.

If he wants to go then he'll go sadly, we'll see how much he agitates for it, but he seems a fairly stable character so we might get another year out of him. Plus I doubt anything will happen until the managed situation sorts itself out. I'm also pretty sure he's our highest earner so 180k can't be 4 times his wages and with 5 years left on his contract there is no obligation or rush to sell. Who knows, we might get Tuchel in, he has a big chat with Virgil, makes a couple of big signings and the guy will want to stay, we can but dream.