ajams

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This is what I'm starting to think.

That would be another way to put it...

I know, which is why I go on to mention the possibility of a quiet compromise later in the post. I don't know if Rafa is going to insist Xabi makes public and formal his desire to leave - he may want him to do that as a PR thing - but from a financial point of view it isn't necessary. If Xabi's desperate to go he can just agree to forego his perks without making a big fuss about it.

I reckon we will end up agreeing a deal with Real Madrid. Keeping the player to his contract is of course an option, but I don't know if that's really the best solution to this problem. I imagine Xabi will have made it clear to Rafa that he really wants to go. He's been with us 5 years, he has a young family and he has a huge, probably one-off, opportunity in his home country at a crucial point in his career. At the same time I can't see him making a public transfer request, it's just not his style. From our point of view, although his departure would be a big loss, it is something we will have to face either now or in 12 months. Real are rebuilding and if we are to sell to them then now is probably the time. My guess is a quiet compromise could facilitate the move - perhaps a reduction in Xabi's contract settlement/signing on fee/agent's cut etc - with an eventual agreement around £27-28m plus say £5m add-ons, which in my opinion is a realistic market value. Nobody else is likely to offer anywhere near that amount apart from Man City and Chelsea and we obviously wouldn't want to sell to them. That should be enough to buy a high-quality replacement, possibly with a slightly more attacking profile than Xabi - I'm thinking somebody similar to Lucas in style, but a bit more of a heavyweight in terms of ability and stature. It would also hopefully give us a few million on top to put towards another attacking addition. It comes down to whether Rafa feels he can strengthen the team by doing this deal. I think he'll be quietly confident.

Henchoz and Finnan had their less-than-great moments, but have no real place on this list.. Dudek was a strange one - it's easy to forget how good he was in his first season. Not much cop after that, apart from the Champions League final of course.

Sure, that's certainly true of Smith. Thommo is another one who played out just one final season for another club. Anyway, I don't want to be too pedantic about it. It just never occurred to me before how rare it was in Liverpool's history for a player to go through his entire career never playing so much as a game for another club.

Yeah, Carra as well of course. My personal knowledge only goes back to the late 70s, but I can't think of any in that time (unless I'm forgetting someone obvious). Most of our longest serving players - Scott, Neal, Callaghan, Hunt, Lawler, Phil Thompson, Hughes - began or ended their careers at other clubs. I'm no stat expert but the only one I can think of in the post-war era is Billy Liddell and according to Wiki even he made a few 'guest' appearances for other sides - including 5 games for Chelsea during WW2 apparently.

Will undoubtedly go down in history as one of our all-time greats. Can't think of too many other players who have committed their entire careers to the club.

Think it's David Martin - reserve keeper. Could be wrong though.

heskey

No, I think it worked well last season, largely because Alonso was so good. If he goes it's going to be extremely hard to find anyone else to do that job to that level. The fact that Rafa was looking to replace Xabi with Barry last year says to me that he has a slightly different setup in mind if Xabi goes.

We'll see - obviously I hope we get as much as possible. If Alonso goes I think Rafa will use that as an opportunity to rebalance the midfield, so I doubt he'll be looking for another player to do what Xabi does.

My guess is that's probably about 50% more than they're proposing. I think we might be prepared to accept a fair bit less than £35m to be honest.

As mentioned above, Villa were prepared to sell at a certain price. Anyway, who knows - as I said, those are just my thoughts on the matter. I just don't buy this idea of Rafa desperately trying to fend off Real's unwanted advances - he's far too pragmatic not to look at this as a potential opportunity. It seems more plausible to me that all sides are aware of what's going on and are trying to reach an agreement that pleases everyone.

Gold king

This might go against the grain a bit here, but I think Rafa does see this as a potential 'economic opportunity'. As David Hodgson has pointed out, if we really didn't want to sell Alonso we'd have set the price at something completely ridiculous like £50m, as with Mascherano. Instead we've set the price at a level which Perez might meet if he gets another rush of blood to the head. Although that doesn't look likely to happen now, there is still potential for a compromise - we want £35m, they offer £23m, we meet at, say, £30m or £20m plus a decent player. My guess is that Rafa has told Xabi and Real Madrid that a deal is possible. Xabi would like to go, but he will stay if necessary. Real clearly want him, but think he's overpriced - a problem that is exacerbated by their inability to shift their unwanted squad players. Rafa wouldn't mind selling at a high price as I suspect he has a tactical re-jig in mind, which has been on hold since the collapse of the Barry deal last year. If we do sell Xabi I think we will see a bit of a change in the way we set up. Anyway, just speculation on my part, but that's what makes most sense to me from what we know. Hence Valdano's comments about an economic opportunity, Xabi's comments about it being between the clubs as to whether a deal got done, the reported deadline set by Real to get the deal done, the fact that Rafa named a price of £50m for Mascherano but didn't do the same for Xabi. It seems clear the only thing holding this back is the transfer fee. My guess is we'll come to an agreement in the next couple of weeks, but then I thought the same with the Barry deal last summer.