Hightown Phil

Zenit the pot 3 team I’d prefer on the grounds they’re absolute bobbins.

I reckon this is the worst cup draw ever. No redeemable factor whatsoever.

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Yeah he’s great and definitely worth that, I just wonder if you paid the same for someone a bit younger with a higher potential upside that you could mould a little more they may prefer that.

The point was that we all know cos none of these players are gonna be good enough for us. I can’t get how you think Doku, Saar and David are in a bracket £5m higher than Nat Phillips. If they’re worth £20m he’s worth a bag of crisps.

Talking fifty mil though aren’t you? And he’s sort of of a level that you’d think you’d do much have earlier for the sake of both parties. If we were to get a midfielder it’s most likely someone early twenties who’s more for the future than immediately. Sort of think when we signed Thiago we wrote someone of Bissouma’s age off a bit cos by the time you really want him he’s 28 or so.

It’s a buyers market if you want to buy someone who isn’t wanted and pay their wages which were given to them in a different economic time, unless they fancy a pay cut. Realistically, who is there who is in that bracket who’d be worth our while? Jesse Lingard is in that bracket, and frankly he wouldn’t get on our bench.

Rude not to reopen it.

I see the UK and Ireland want the 2030 World Cup. Not really sure I blame Infantino for having a go though, he wants players to be able to play in his competition. It’s better than if he said “well if they don’t go they’re all banned for a month”.

I think we ended up in a unique situation about 3 years ago where we’d improved that much that players like Henderson, Mane, Matip, Milner, Gomez had gone from playing for a team much better than their wage so they got new contracts to give them a pay rise around the same time as we signed the likes of Salah, Van Dijk, Alisson, Robertson, Chamberlain, Fabinho etc that we ended up where a lot of that contracts everyone signed be they new players or ones that extended all broadly ended up due expire at the same time. We did a lot from 16-18 in terms of growth that as great as it was caused things that are out of the ordinary.

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Those centre backs played 9 minutes together last season, never mind the rest.

Mbappe has ten years and is a sure thing though.

Are those wages not a consequence of Messi and Ronaldo setting the upper end of the market though? If they earned £250k a week, De Gea wouldn’t earn £300k.

Completely agree. Been a bit bemused by this one for a while. A good player no doubt, but not really sure he’s quite as good as him being a £50m no brainer.

I get all this. But playing Jota over Firmino increases the likelihood of it turning in to a game of tennis where we have limited control, 13/14 style. If it was 16 of the 19 teams, maybe more, I’d say Jota, but City, Chelsea, United I’d rather be controlled rather than relying on Jota to take a chance he might not get. And ultimately a draw is absolutely fine anyway.

Somewhere in the region of 8% of your annual revenue on one player is a pretty bad idea. It’s more than double what their highest paid player supposedly earns.

Surely there’s no one paying him that?

I thought there was a chance we’d sign him and he’d then go to Real Madrid at some point, and part of the reason we may sign him was because we’d do just that. As it is, he’s most likely just going straight to Real Madrid which wasn’t what I thought either party would want to do at this specific point. This doesn’t change anything I’ve thought about it previously nor do I now think it was never going to happen.

Man City were miles better than us, had a go at signing van Dijk and we signed van Dijk and he knocked them back, I don’t think that was them not showing ambition. I get we’ve been better than Real for half your life, but they’ve won 27% of the European Cups played in his lifetime.

What are you after here, a kidnapping?

A multitude of news outlets at regular intervals for about four years. It isn’t a secret, he supported them as a kid.

It has yes. He likes Liverpool. It’s his dream to play for Real Madrid. Any time anyone mooted signing him it came with a pretty big caveat in that we’d sell him to Real Madrid for exactly that reason.

It’s been in the public domain for years.

Also entirely possible.