Adam P

No, it failed

Its been confirmed by every journalist writing about it that 'keep Isak' was our strategy.

I think you see the flaw in your own argument, Villa gambled again overspent and its fucked them. Highlight of their window was selling us Ramsey. My point saying its a bit harsh was in relationship to strategy. You refer to pre-season without articulating what that information would mean to you. There were only 2 choices: try everything you can to keep him or sell him early and then you can implement the fuller squad overhaul. The issues we had in recruitment versus the cartel still exist by the way, there are no guarantees and now we look like a selling club to Tonali, Tino, Bruno etc. The cost of our strategy was high but it was highest stakes summer we have ever experienced. Given the surprising resignation of the DoF that was not expected, i feel that 2 gaps left in a decent squad is a vast improvement.

That was the club's strategy, Jamie and Yasir re-arranged their lives to implement one final tactic for that strategy. It failed as we had not antiipated the extent of his cuntishness. Your strategy, with Isak in the reserves / not playing (he insisted at that meeting he would sit it out till January), would have left us without Wissa.

Bit harsh.

Walk us throught the summer from the moment you realise that Isak is a cunt (Korea trip) to now and explain the alternative handling which isnt 'getting schooled'? Genuinely interested, i have put the 4 alternatives, as i saw them strategically, down on here and the only scenario where we dont, is sell early in a bidding war. I think.

We werent planning for a PSR injection, our strategy was to keep him as we evaluated the probability of him turning into the world's biggest cunt as quite small. Its also a rolling 3 year framework, so maybe the targets evaluated as available this window were felt to likely be surpassed by new targets in the coming windows. We are a CM / LB light but the cost / risk / reward of filling those spots last minute must have been tough to evaluate.

The Telegraph ranked us 16th in the window. Apparently only Fulham, Brentford, Burnley and Wolves had a worse window.

We failed in our strategy to keep Isak to be fair, which i think has been clearly documented now. From that perspective, i think its a 6 or 7 out of 10. Starting from the point of 'you're best player is going to do everything in his power to disrupt your window and you'll only truly understand that by August' then its a 8 out of 10. The only way to have made that bigger would have been to have chosen a different strategy, one which said we were a selling club. That would have signalled an earlier sale of Isak, perhaps with a bidding war for 150m and perhaps an overall lower net spend. Not obvious to me that should have been the strategy.

For PSR compliance, its better to sell regularly not all at once. 30m next summer for Osula would pay next year's (thrilling) installment of amortized costs of Wissa, Woltemade and Elamga.

I can’t believe that arsehole was calling out our statement for not thanking Isak, who has acted like a cunt, whilst the Isak statement was on the screen with no mention of any thanks to the club.

30m extra in the account tomorrow instead of in January or next summer makes no real differece financially, so unless the move was right for us there is little immediate financial upside if a sale can happen in future. I am happy to have a 3rd striker on the books with AFCON and a massive amount of games this season.

I think it was.

I am when its used to frame how much time somone like him has to waste going to visit Isak last week for what would be no reason and insane for someone as busy as him. Its useful hyperbole.

So you'd have put 'sell him' as 1. Eddie and club had keep him as 1. That was our strategy and all the events of the last week confirm it.

Yasir and Jamie, two of the worlds busiest and important people, pop round to Isak's for a cup of tea?

There were 4 options and they were in order of preference: 1. Keep Isak 2. Sell Isak with no preseason at the highest price possible 3. Sell Isak, give him a preseason, price offer of 110m the only one on table in that timeframe 4. Let him rot. We absolutely mullered strategy 1 all summer and when Yasir and Jamie fell in the last roll of the dice, we pivoted to 2. I cant fault that.

How could the Isak situation have been handled better? We wanted him to stay and tried to keep him. You think we should have sold him earlier for 110m? Or at the last minute, with proper replacements in for 130m? Or not sold him? Those were the options, right?

What wasnt Woltemade? They found this all out last Tuesday, then did the deal? Fantasy land if you think thats how these deals work.

Sounds a bit far fetched given that we were linked with him months ago and that Woltemade referred to multiple conversations with the club. He just suddenly decided that he fancied Newcasle massively coincidentally 24 hours after Yasir visits Isak's house?

My read of the summer is this, keeping Isak was the strategy all along and we only folded after the bosses went to visit him. After that meeting, the Woltemade and Wissa deals were signed off. The fact that we were able to move on Woltemade so soon after they resigned themselves / decided to let Isak go, does strongly suggest previous bids for other targets were not what they appeared. I dont think Yasir and Reuben go to his house unless the absolute desire of everyone at the club was for him to stay. The whole summer seems to have finally hinged on that event, which we rightly pused to the very last minute. Primarily as we explored ways to resolve it with him staying and then latterly as it minimises any work Liverpool can do with the player with no pre-season. Given Woltemade, i am still a bit baffled by the Sesko and Ekitike bids (the two with similar profiles). Why not just go for Woltemade 6 weeks ago and avoid all this? It has to be because the strategy was to keep Isak and therefore logically, the strategy cant have been at that time 'find a replacement'. The alternative is that we knew he was going and it took us until last week to realise that Woltemade might be available (otherwise why not pivot to him when Ekitike fails? Why compete with Liverpool and Man U for their known targets?). Which makes no sense given the chat in Germany and Bayern has been constant all summer. He was available.

The Woltemade deal made me believe this a little bit more. Certainly some of our bids earlier in the season didnt fit with having Woltemade as an option. Our interest was low key known months ago too apparently. As for the window, we were dealt a tricky hand and other players had a bigger bankroll but we came out evens, if not a little up.

On the fee, is it stated anywhere what is upfront and what is addons?

Funnily enough, you can also frame this the opposite way. A PSR purchase with sell on value doesnt neccessarily mean high contributions in the 25/26 season. Wissa should help the club do well this season meaninng the possibilty of Europe, success on the pitch and continued financial momentum.

And the Yohan Cabaye one.