RaoulD

Looks like he has being playing Football Manager too much again! Of course Jurgen knows nothing and persists in playing a guy who only scores 20+ league goals in a season.

I am not sure whether there was a compromise available. At 30 Gini's agent would realise that there was only one more opportunity to secure a long-term contract i.e more than 2-3 years and that Liverpool were not prepared to commit to a 4-5 year term. As a player gets older, the contract lengths get shorter so realistically, Gini either had to choose between staying at LFC in the hope that any new short-term contract would be extended in say 2 years time or looking elsewhere. I cannot see any reason why he would not have been offered a 2-3 year contract like Milner was in 2019 unless he or his agent were holding out for a longer term/better paid deal or some guarantee of renewal.

I don't think I would cope with an editor!

No - purely personal opinion

I can think of at least five great teams that I have seen of which certainly 3 evolved into arguably an even better team. Shankly's last team of the early seventies became Bobs all conquering team of the late 70s The late 70s team evolved in to the early 80s team that won 3 titles in a row the early 80s team became the flamboyant team of the late 80s It is true that it all went downhill after 1990 but there is no reason to suspect that having finally got back to the summit, we are going to let it all fall apart again. It seems to me that the rebuild started last season with the signings of Jota and Thiago and the emergence of Curtis Jones as a first team member.

Transfer fees are paid in stages normally and amortised in the accounts over the length of the player's contract, loans to buy players will fall within normal trading activities and will be offset against the player's value. It is the amortisation that is the cost alongside wages which has to be matched by revenue. FFP only prevents the owners covering trading losses in years of account over a certain amount, it does not prevent owners putting money into the club to finance operations provided the costs do not cause the club to make losses over the threshold. It is rather like buying a house, you borrow the money you need to acquire the house and then repay it back over time. How much you can borrow and the period of repayment depends on your income. The uncertainty regarding revenues due to the absence of fans will hopefully not be as big a factor in the next 5 years as it was last year and the television deal has just be renewed so tv income is also more certain. Factor in the Nike deal which is more lucrative for the club if sales are bigger, getting a world class player in a LFC shirt is bound to have off-field benefits as well. The real obstacle to date is that FSG are notoriously risk averse hence the relative lack of investment on the back of a title winning team, particularly in defence and the worry is that having secured Champions League football against the odds, they are not prepared to gamble. I think Jurgen needs to make the football case for signing him more than the financial one because that is what led to the signings of VVD and Alisson for fees which at the time were record-breaking.

Ramos would probably have been in the squad if he was fully fit but I suspect that because he has hardly played since the start of the year and missed the end of the season with a hamstring injury, it was not worth the risk. Spain have only announced a squad of 24 players so could have included him if they felt he was likely to be fit.

This is the only window where there is a real opportunity for us to make a statement signing such as Mbappe. His contract at PSG expires next summer so if intends to leave PSG it will either be on a free transfer next summer or now so that PSG can fund a suitable replacement without falling foul of FFP rules (which will almost certainly be back in force next year). He is going to be hideously expensive but so, relatively speaking, was Virgil and Ali at the time. His wages are going to be huge but we are no longer uncompetitive in terms of what we pay our top players and if wages are an issue you seriously question if the player is right for you. He is young and will potentially still have a significant value at the end of his contract so as a pure investment decision it makes sense in the long term. The secondary benefits of marketing etc are also significant pluses on a balance sheet and would enable us to increase revenues from "partners". The Premier League is increasingly been seen as the dominant league in Europe and we with our history, our fans, our global presence and our manager are a massive draw. One of Mbappe's mates from his Monaco days already plays for us too! His style of play suits ours so it is not hard to see how he could fit into our current side. The main rival for Mbappe would still be Real Madrid. As a young boy he idolised Ronaldo and with Zinedine Zidane as manager, it is easy to see the lure. He might have signed for them in 2017 if it weren't for the fact that he was not guaranteed a place in the starting line up (a problem that does not exist now). However, Ronaldo is no longer there and although Zidane has a contract until next year with Madrid, there must be some uncertainty about his position given that Atletico have just won La Liga and their exit from the CL at the hands of Chelsea. There is also the fallout from the ESL to consider. Whilst we are obviously not immune to its consequences, UEFA may make an example of Real Madrid as it still seems to be behind moves to create an ESL and that might curtail their ability to sign players this summer. The ball is in FSG's court...

This season proved that we and City are still head and shoulders above the rest of the league in terms of quality and it was only injuries to key players that has masked that reality in the last 3 seasons. City addressed their problems at CB last summer by signing Dias. Their failure to replace Kompany the previous summer was a factor in their inability to compete with us in 2019-2020. We need to do the same this summer. Allowing Lovren to leave without signing a replacement of at least the same, if not better quality, is the main reason why we are looking at 3rd rather than 1st this season. Losing Fabinho from midfield unsettled the whole team and it is no surprise that performances improved once we restored Fab to his usual position. Ideally you need 5 top quality CBs in your squad for the season as injuries and suspensions are going to deprive you of at least one during the course of the season. It is also important that the CB pairing work together on the field so you need to the squad to be able to rotate combinations without impacting on the defensive line. The team that won the league so decisively last season is still largely intact and arguably improved by the addition of Thiago and Jota offset against the loss of Gini. The key is keeping that team fit and having the squad to cope with injuries and loss of form. I think Chelsea are a bit of a curate's egg. They have spent a lot of money on talented young players but seem incredibly disjointed. I am not sure that their squad is one that their manager would want going forward. I expect them to be as inconsistent next season. Brendan Rogers proved yet again that his a a very good manager but not one who has the ability to take a group of players to the summit of a tough challenge. His strength is in man management but I think his biggest weakness remains in improving an existing team by identifying potential in the transfer market and then exploiting it. This is where Klopp excels. United are very like Chelsea, they have spent a lot of money on an orchestra but don't seem to have either the conductor or even the ability to decide what tune to play.

Absolutely brilliant signing and played a crucial part in the European Cup and Title winning teams. His goals against Barcelona will always entitle him to be seen as a club legend and I think the time is right for him to move on. He is one of those players who, like Firmino and Henderson proved that a team can be more than just the sum of its parts. This season was not his best because of the absence of his regular partners in midfield and the emergence of Thiago in the role that he used to play. He has anchored the midfield when Fab was drafted into Defence despite this not being his strongest game. I think he was probably one of the hardest players to get the ball off when he was playing in his normal position and was effectively the launch pad for Robbo and Trent to run the wings. Our style of play this season has not suited him and at times I have felt that he has been caught in two minds as to what to do with the ball bur he has got on with the job without complaint and I think he deserves the send off on Sunday. I expect he will be captain even if Milner plays because he has earned it. I hope, like Xabi before him, he will always be welcome at Anfield and gets the reception he deserves on Sunday.

Fat Sam cannot take any criticism of his style of play. His time at West Ham was littered with accusations that he was a long ball merchant and the fans hated him for it. The same thing happened at Everton and Newcastle fans could not wait to get rid of him when he managed them. His response to the Antonio remark about playing long balls just shows how easy it is to wind him up.

He has done well but you need to look at it objectively. This season is probably the peak for him in terms of improvement. He does not have any real pace and that means he has to compensate by sitting deeper and letting the opposition come on to him rather than hold the high defensive line we play when Virgil is leading the back line. Gomez and Matip have the pace to recover if they get turned, Nat does not. Ultimately it really depends on what he is looking for in terms of his career and I am sure that this is the conversation that Klopp will have with him.

Gini and Fab are barely moving and far too deep. So are our centre backs and we are just inviting the long ball to the edge of our area. The front three are isolated and Robbo and Trent are far too casual.

Given that most United fans don't seem to live in Manchester anyway, how is that going to stop a protest outside a neutral ground and the teams' hotels? They are better off sorting security at Old Trafford if it was that easy to get in and onto the pitch. At least they now know the weak spots in their security and can make adjustments rather than having no knowledge of where those weak spots might be in a neutral ground. Moving it to a neutral ground and re-scheduling the West Brom game to earlier in the week (which seems to be the only way it can be done) also potentially presents us with a lot of travel on top of a shortened recovery period before the re-arranged game. As we might still be in with a shout of a CL place and West Brom may still be trying to avoid relegation, it is hardly fair that we, through no fault of our own, should be made to adjust our preparation for the run-in or have to rest players who would otherwise have played against West Brom in order to be ready for the United game. I am sure any team that gets relegated as a result of West Brom getting a good result against us will also be unhappy.

I don't thing FFP is the answer to any of the problems. All FFP does is maintain the status quo for those clubs who historically have benefited from the unregulated spending of the past. It creates a similar closed shop in practice to that of the proposed ESL. FFP is designed to stop new entrants buying their way into the top table in the way that PSG, City, Chelsea and a few others have done. Had FFP been properly implemented, the likes of Chelsea, City and PSG would not have been able to use their new found wealth to compete with the established clubs such as ourselves and United.

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I am struggling to understand the reasons for the protest unless it was seen as an opportunity to highlight the wishes of what I suspect is a small minority of United's fanbase that would like to return to the good old days of fans owning shares in the club and/or resent someone else from using what belongs to them to make money. My difficulty stems from the fact that it was United's exploitation of the increased revenue from the Premier League that is the root cause of the current situation. By exploiting the increased revenue that came from television rights, United secured a dominant position financially over every other club in the Premier League. This dominant position was at the expense of the League clubs who up until then had enjoyed the benefit of a share of the television revenue on a far more equitable basis across the Football League. United have always had a slight financial advantage as Old Trafford was and remains bigger in capacity than the rest of the clubs but this advantage did not prevent other clubs from competing for the best players. From 1992 onwards, things changed. No longer could a club compete with United in the transfer market for the signing of a player and more importantly, United could afford to entice players away from their rivals thus cementing their dominance not only financially but also on the field. In the end, the only way to compete with United in the long term was to match their spending power which saw the rise of external investment in Premier League clubs. This usually came at the expense of the fans since many of these clubs, like ourselves, were limited companies with shareholders who were also fans of the club. The primary interest of the shareholders was not to make a profit (very few clubs did) but to have a stake in the club they loved. This often applied to the majority owner/owners who saw the investment in the football club more as supporting the local community than a means of making money. The Premier League destroyed all of this and whilst we probably held out for too long, it became increasingly obvious that you could not compete on the field unless you could compete with United's spending power. The only way of doing so was to bring in money from people who do not have the same interest as the fans in investing in the team. They are either investing for a financial return e.g. us with FSG and United with the Glazers or for some other non-football related reason for example City are being used to promote Abu Dhabi interests and businesses and Chelsea were one of two clubs being looked at by Abramovich in 2003 and had they not beaten us on the last day of the season, he probably would not have bought them. When you sell your shares in a business, you always run the risk that a new owner will use the business for its own purposes either by asset stripping or for personal enrichment. We saw it with H and G. I think United got what they deserved when the owners of the club sold out to the Glazers and quite frankly the protest yesterday seems to me to be at least 15 years too late. They were even too late for the protest about the ESL. I am all for turning the clock back to the situation that existed in 1992 but you cannot ignore the fact that United were the biggest beneficiaries of the change from fan/local ownership to the corporate and commercial entities that all of the Premier League clubs have now become.

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I think they knew there was going to be an adverse reaction from UEFA and possibly other teams in the CL but I don't think they anticipated the reaction from players and fans of teams that were actually supposed to benefit from the ESL. I am sure they thought we would all be happy with the prospect of our club being permanently at the top table and having regular games against the other top sides in Europe in midweek whilst still being able to play the weekend games in the Premier League. They probably also thought that the Premier League might actually see the advantage of having at least 6 teams each year in the competition particularly given that in the last 20 years of the Champions League 77 of the 79 places taken by English Clubs in the group stages of the Champions League were by one of the six ESL members and it is inconceivable that if a team outside the 6 won the Premier League that they would not be invited to join the ESL the following season.

I think the problem was that they were effectively seeking to replace the champions league with their own closed shop competition rather than forming a new competition. I think if they had been talking about forming an european league and not essentially the hybrid mini-league and cup competition that the Champions League has become, the position might have been very different. The Football League was founded for the exact same reason in 1888 by the 12 founding members who sought regular fixtures against each other each year rather than rely upon arranging as hoc games and the FA Cup. Obviously scheduling would make it impossible for the founding members of the European League to compete in the UEFA Champions League in its present format but if the competition reverted to their original formats as knockout cup competitions then both could in theory be accommodated. There would invariably be opposition to it from UEFA as it would lose its monopoly on European competition but the potential benefits are: (1) If the European League imposed a salary cap on its members that limited spending to a specified percentage of annual revenue, that salary cap would also apply to those members in the their own domestic leagues and would not only level the playing field for the new European League but would also the domestic leagues where non-members of the European League could be potentially able to pay a higher percentage to compete with the EL clubs. The problems with FFP would therefore be resolved as it simply won't be possible for an owner to pump in money to pay the inflated wages and transfer fees as happened with Chelsea, City and PSG in the past. (2) The combined revenue generated from the European League and any UEFA organised competition is almost certainly to be higher than at present simply because the CL cannot hope to match the number of regular premium games that a european league could offer and the UEFA competitions will still be attractive (particularly if they still involve EL members). The distribution of this revenue accross football (even on current rates) should therefore be higher and would benefit the game as a whole (3) UEFA could set up their own league competition amongst non-members of the EL with the prize being an invitation to play in the EL in the following season. This could offset the loss of the group stages of the champions league and would also address the closed shop objection by effectively creating a second tier much in the same way that the Premier League and the EFL currently operate but without the automatic promotion or relegation. A structured invitation system rather than leaving it to the discretion of the founding members would also be an advantage. I am not advocating this as a way forward and it would need a change in attitude from both the PL and UEFA to get off the ground. However, I do think that history has shown that now money has become the driving force, an european league is eventually going to be established.

I tend to agree. The real motivation (at least from our side) seems to be to try and create some form of level playing field through a salary cap that was not linked to past overspending and to replace UEFA as the organisers of European club competition. The failure of UEFA to come up with a workable alternative to FFP and the fact that the new format of the Champions League is, in my view, another step down the road to the creation of a European league that will be far more damaging to the domestic game than the ESL proposal. It was UEFA's failure to reign in the likes of Chelsea, City and PSG whilst at the same time forcing clubs which generate their income through mass appeal to share a proportion of the income attributable to their presence in the competition with other clubs that probably prompted the plan to create the ESL. The plan was rubbish but the problem still remains and the crowing coming from UEFA is particularly nauseating. I think John Barnes on the BBC this morning made the point that had the ESL involved the other 14 members of the Premier League, they too would have signed up and would not have given a damn about any of the other leagues.

The Premier League and FA need to look at their own track record before they start throwing stones (as does Gary Neville). The Premier League came about as a result of precisely this type of arrangement except the 5 clubs behind the breakaway were Man U, Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham and Everton. The FA then backed the idea of a breakaway league which effectively forced the Football League to accept the new breakaway "premier league". Sound familiar? This is essentially the same think except for the Football League we are looking at UEFA's Champions League (which itself was created for the very same reasons that are now so abhorent). The idea may not be a good one (I don't think granting a team a guaranteed permanent place purely on the basis of being rich or being a founder member or both is likely to work in the long term as ultimately it needs to attract fans in order to work and this won't happen if it is a closed shop). I think there might be some advantage in certain teams with a track record in European football having a permanent invite but otherwise if you exclude the top teams in each of the major leagues from the Super League otherwise than on merit, the "Super" League becomes anything but. The problem is that UEFA's current proposal for the Champions League is effectively to create its own league except that the teams that generate the most interest and help sell the viewing rights across the world end up with a smaller benefit because of the manner in which revenue is shared amongst participants. UEFA's own greed is as bad as the accusations being laid at the table of those clubs that want change. UEFA opened pandora's box when they created the Champions League, they can hardly complain about the evils it unleashed. I cannot see the Premier League. La Liga or Serie A wanting to sanction the very clubs that draw in the most revenue in terms of tv rights etc. All it will do is trigger the same local breakaway that led to the foundation of the Premier League. The threat is there to prevent it happening. If it does go ahead, the ESL will not lead to the expulsion of teams from domestic leagues and UEFA will be forced to look at its own competitions in the same way that the Football League was forced to do so in 1992.

The problem is that the front three are not getting the quick ball to run onto and are having to try and thread a pass through a massed defence. A midfield of Jones, Gini and Thiago was completely wrong as it had no drive to support the front three in the opposition half. Curtis is a great prospect but he has a lot still to learn. He is too hesitant on the ball and too right footed to play on the left. There was one example when Thiago played the ball into to him into space where he should have taken it down the line and drawn the Chelsea defence away from the centre. Instead he cut inside onto his right straight into a tackle. He provided absolutely no support for the front three and should have been subbed at half-time. Gini was as bad and there is no point having Thiago in midfield if there are no runners coming from midfield for him to slot a ball to feet. Trent was all over the place. Fab should have been in midfield in place of Gini but I am not sure whether this was forced upon us by the absence of Nat. I can understand the calls for Bobby to be dropped but I am struggling to see how we play without him. We simply do not have a centre forward who can hold the line and stand up to the opposition centre backs (don't get me started on Divock...) and Bobby is better as a false 9. Chelsea were good tonight. They had done their homework and targeted Curtis and Gini for their press knowing that these two players like to take an extra touch. I would have been tempted in the second half to have pushed Fab into midfield and leave Kabak at the back as basically they were sitting back and looking to counter and Fab is brilliant at cutting this out in midfield. We could still play the high line and Werner is not the sort of forward that requires two centre backs to mark him. I would have kept Salah on and brought Jota on for Curtis to stretch their back 3 and take advantage of the lack of pace in their midfield two.

Of the three in midfield yesterday, he was the only one who seemed to be trying to keep a quick tempo to our attacks. Curtis and Gini were both guilty of taking too many touches or holding on to the ball for a split second longer than was necessary which in turn led to the mistiming of runs by others. The problem we have at the moment is that our midfield is misfunctioning both in terms of winning the ball back quickly and the rapid distribution of the ball to our attacking threats. He is primarily the key player for the latter but is having to do much more of the former due to the absence of both Henderson and Fab from midfield. The role he is having to take on at the moment was not the reason we signed him so it is hardly surprising some people think he is not a good fit as there are obviously better substitutes for the role played by either Henderson or Fabinho in the team. The set-up that served us so well in the last two seasons was not built overnight but was an evolutionary process. Therefore to expect a team which has had its heart ripped out by injury to instantly gel or continue playing to the same standard is unrealistic. It would be fair to judge him if the team was largely the same as started the current campaign but less so if the other key components in our system are missing. It took time for us to adjust to the loss of Coutinho so I think it is only fair to give it time now.

The point about asking the ref to look at the monitor is that the VAR has formed the view that the decision of the on-field referee is wrong and wants him to look at again. Previously, VAR would have simply overruled the original decision and advised the on-field ref but this was changed mid-season after too many controversial decisions by VAR. Kavanagh did not even bother to look which negates the whole purpose of VAR. The incident was really no different to the previous incidents where Salah was held and Mane pushed since there was contact in all three instances. If Kavanagh was being consistent, he should not have awarded the penalty (which is presumably why the VAR asked him to look at it again) or at least it would have given him some insight as to how to differentiate between the three incidents. I think it would help if we were given a detailed explanation from both the VAR and the referee as to why the matter was referred back to the referee and why the referee still upheld the decision. Of course we won't get it because they are afraid of admitting that the referee has made a mistake and penalise any player or manager who has the temerity to suggest otherwise. This will only lead to a further decline in public confidence of the impartiality and competence of referees in general and this referee in particular.