TRon

"Brought the club to the place it truly belongs" It belongs one place above Liverpool you slag, hopefully that will happen while you are still wearing their colours.

The author was probably sat in his Mo Salah replica jersey while he was writing it.

PIF are clearly not very good at overseeing this project as a whole, not surprising since football isn't their forte. But the intent is still on the right path IMO. They are trying to recruit best in class, whether that's directorial staff, coaches or players. They waited almost a year for the new stats guy, which while it might be painful short term, long term it should pay off. Eales and his Red Bull associate turned out to be a bad appointment, but again, the intent was genuine. They just need to get these appointments right.

Slightly different scenarios though. Owen never wanted to be here, he wanted to go back to Liverpool, so he saw this as a step down. Isak saw it as a step up initially, once he became a worldwide name, he then wanted to move up a rung on the ladder. So he was happy enough here for two years, then lost interest as soon as he saw a bigger pay check on the horizon.

Levy is the perfect example of an owner who only spends within his budget. When they were paying for their stadium there was barely any signings. Isak not getting a new contract was also along those lines as he had 4 years left on his contract and Mitchell was counting the pennies. At the end of the day due to PSR, you have to budget otherwise it catches up with you like it did with the sale of Anderson and Minteh.

Can't wait to see Wissa in black and white this season. Ignore his age, he's going to be a legend here, I think his finishing is top notch. In a month's time we'll be over Isak and congratulating ourselves on replacing him with 2 for the price of 1.

If we are honest he was always like that. I've said plenty of times in this thread that he's a cold detached type, and that probably shows in his clinical finishing. I've never felt he's bought in 100% in the same way others do, it's not a flaw, it's just his personality. Liverpool are just another club to him, same as we were. It didn't make me admire him any less, he's one of the best strikers I've seen in our shirt. But he's gone now, so would rather see him break a leg than lift silverware at Liverpool, partly because of the way he did it, and partly because it's THEM.

Missed the cup final against Liverpool by getting sent off before that. Missed the second half of our Isak derby by actually getting sent off against his boyhood team. Now this. He really does give plenty of ammo to the conspiracy theorists.

Don't really care who won the window. We've got a squad hungry for success and a manager who knows how to lead them. Just look at PSG since they got rid of their superstars to see how far that can take you.

Tbf, our success always seems to come as an unwelcome surprise to these cartel mouthpieces every season. This will probably happen again this time round.

I argued all summer that we should hold firm and not sell. But if he really had downed tools like Callum Wilson says, then the club probably just bit the bullet and got rid while we could still get good money for him. Still don't agree with it personally, as it meant we had to overpay on Wissa to get a proven striker in, but I can imagine that we wanted rid of the bad smell at the club and needed to get hungry players back in the club.

I'm reading plenty of similar guff from sportswriters though. That Liverpool won the transfer window and are virtually unstoppable now. Doesn't help that they scored late winners against us and Arsenal either giving them 9 points instead of 5.

A £14m profit on a striker who can't get in the side ahead of a winger playing out of position.

Supposedly we pulled out not Frankfurt. Inexcusable IMO. You can't complain about PSR then make stupid decisions like this.

Downgrading my vote from 8 to 6.5 I think we've had a good window but in a world of PSR to look a gift horse in the mouth is inexcusable. We won't get ever get that opportunity again.

Come on lads chins up. Won't it be nice not having to rely on just one striker this season?

They'll probably break into his pad and steal his G-Wagon.

Just using my own reasoning tbh. It does seem ludicrous that Frankfurt would spend £30m on a player we'd probably happily let go for half that. But I hope my instincts are wrong on this one for sure.

It's hard to judge harshly in those cases since we are always going to come off second best going up against the cartel, so I don't think we can hold the club responsible for losing out there. I suppose you could argue we shouldn't be pitching for those players in the first place, but tbh, we seem to have recovered the window quite well given it looked like it could be a disaster at one point.

Would be funny as fuck to hear that rolling down from the stands.

It sounded ludicrous in the first place. I don't know why people make this shit up without at least checking with some reputable sources.

PSR doesn't have an impact on paying players double what they can get elsewhere?

Well the ugly truth is it worked for Isak and Wissa. Doing it the nice way didn't work for Larsen.

That's the thing with having high class players, the two goals which won their last two games were worldies. If they are winning when they are playing badly then they aren't going to complain. But the best individuals don't always make the best team. Maybe they have bought themselves out of winning trophies? We can always dream.

PSR is the real reason we are losing players. From Minteh and Anderson, to Pedro and Isak. As long as we are prevented from buying the best players and paying them the best wages, there is always the danger someone else will. I just don't think enough of the football media or establishment care enough as long as their beloved big 5 or 6 clubs are the winners.