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F00king horrible negotiators, we are. Ashley should hire me...I'll do the job for 40K a year and a season ticket. They key is convincing the other side of negotiations that you're willing to walk away from the table. Apparently, everyone knows MA can't/won't do that if he has any bid at all on offer for high earner.

Let me get this straight:

-Manchester United buy a young player from a French team for 3M. This player-all pejoratives aside-fails to break into the team there, making only 4 starts and 14 appearances in two seasons. We come in for him, pay the exact same 3M and sign him on a new contract to boot.

-Newcastle United buy a young player from a Spanish team for 6.5M. This player establishes himself in the first team, by consensus one of our best players and one of the better LBs in the league. He plays 36 of 38 games (starting most) in our first season in the PL after being player of the season in the ccc. LFC come in for him and get him for .5-1M less than we paid for him-in the same summer they spend nearly 50M on Henderson, Adam and Downing, none of whom are any better at their position than Enrique.

Pfft.

Agree there mate. After f00king paying 8 million for a fat Adam when they have an abundance of CM it is a joke to get 6 mill for him.

After how many goals they have leaked this pre season it was obvious they needed defenders. Add to that that good left sided players dont grow on trees then we should have held out for more. Even if we sold him after the first couple of games.

I hope they have an addition clause added but I wont hold my breath.

Im sure length of contracts comes into play. Enrique at villareal may have been on a long term contract and we bought for 6.5 got a good few years out of him and sold for 6 on his last year (not bad business).

Obertan may have been on his last year at bordeaux and isnt now at united.

Purely going on possible reasons havent got the facts.
One thing I will say about Obertan is with the training he will have recieved at United you can garauntee he will have improved.

Jose was in the last year of his contract, we demand more money at this stage Liverpool walk away and then come back in for him in january and offer at best 3 million, which we either accept or lose him 6 months later for nothing! Alternatively we could have walked away from the negotiations and Liverpool come back on the 31st August with an improved offer and we had no time to replace him!

I honestly cant see how you can say its bad negotiations!

With Obertan we are buying an player who only played a handful of games due to the world class players who were ahead of him in the squad, we paid 1 million more for him than we sold Routledge for and Obertan is 10times the player Routledge has ever been!

As DaraghL says a players value is dependant on how long their contract is, why do you think we are signing players on 5 year deals.

Henderson, Downing and Adam are all British and as everyone knows you pay a premium for british players especially ones who have a few years left on their contracts! After this season Adam had 1 year left on his contract, had he been on a 5 year deal you could quite easily have added an extra 2 million onto the deal.

Jose is a player who has failed to break into his national squad, flopped in his first 2 seasons in the EPL, had a good season in the championship and half a good season back in the EPL, his contract was due to expire in less than a year so he's not a player who you can expect a premium for.

It's terrible negotiating. LFC are over a barrel-there is intense pressure on them to get back in the CL this season. @#$%& is going to hit the fan there and austerity will be imposed if they spend 100M on transfers in 6 months and the Europa League is their reward. Their glaring problem is defense. I'm not saying the 12M was ever going to happen, but 6? You have to be shitting me.

On the other hand, given what was done with Barton, we can obviously punt on a few million pounds-when it suits our owner...so why don't we just walk away from the table, noting that if he helps us stay up in a tight PL it's probably worth a handful of millions anyway?

If you want to play with the big boys, be ready to play hardball. If LFC lowballs, you go and make Enrique a contract offer you know he can't refuse and force people's hands. FFS, this is some timid, timid, ambitionless @#$%&.

How can anyone know how good Obertan is? Are you going to claim to have watched him in Manchester United reserve games? Or were you watching him at Bordeaux and L'Orient? Even if he is better than Routledge, that doesn't justify paying the same fee that was paid for him 2 years ago when he's done FA since and has turned in a transfer request!! Once again, amateur hour in this club's front office. What I expect from Obertan is a Guthrie/Simpson-like contribution: solid, justifies his fee and is a good servant but rarely if ever excites. This opinion is admittedly based on the few times I saw him play for United and I'm totally down to be proven wrong...

Liverpool may well of been over a barrel but so were we as i said we could sell him now or play hard ball and lose him for free, we would have a player who didn't want to be here and wouldn't give 100% on the pitch as we saw in the second half of last season! We made him an offer which reflected his ability if we then went on to make him an offer " that he couldn't refuse" and he signed it he'd be staying purely for the money and as you have said on many occasions these aren't the players we want here anymore!

As for the fee Jose never asked for a transfer therefore would be due a couple of million in fee's which i would imagine were waived and then there's the bonus had he stayed till his contract expired which would have been about the same so the club have got 6million for him and then saved approx 2 million so its not that bad a deal!

As for Obertan, he hasn't had a fair crack at the whip to show anyone what he can do in the premier league, he's spent the last couple of seasons training with world class players and being trained by world class coaches!

We sold Routledge for more than we bought him for and what has he done since our season in the championship, he has shown that he cant cut it in the premier league, i think whoever negotiated that deal did a pretty good job just like our negotiators got a good deal for Tiote and also they managed to negotiate a pretty good deal for a striker who had managed half a good season in the premier league and who couldn't keep himself out of trouble

The reason we were over a barrel with JE is this ownership's penny pinching and the fact that we therefore could not credibly claim that maybe we'll just keep him. This is a counterproductive policy, as this transfer proves. How the f00k did we manage to lose money on Enrique? Was Adam going to stay at Blackpool in the Championship? Not a f00king chance. They still paid 8M for him-no more proven in the PL than JE and Adam plays in a spot where LFC have Meireles, Acquilani, Lucas, Gerrard, Spearing, Henderson, and Poulsen. Adam, while good, never gets mentioned in conversations of the very best CMs in the PL. Jose comes up in every conversation about the best LBs.

The reason Obertan hasn't had a fair crack of the whip is because SAF has decided a parade of players were all better than him. Can't really fault a guy for finding himself behind Nani (though many on here go on about how they don't rate him) and Valencia. But when your manager would rather play Anderson or Park, maybe there are some legitimate questions to ask. Again, I hope SAF and I are wrong.

Enrique is spoken about because there are so few Lb in the premier league is he ever included in discussions regarding the top lb throughout the world or even europe?

there's only one of those midfielders you listed ever mentioned when discussing the top midfielders in the PL and he is going to miss most of the first half of the season, therefore Adam is going to be Liverpool's main cm until Gerrard is back!

Park is probably one of the most wanted players in the premier league and every EPl manager would give their right bollock to have him in their squad!

Quote:

mentalman
Park is probably one of the most wanted players in the premier league and every EPl manager would give their right bollock to have him in their squad!

Fully agree, always plays in the big games when fit and does a amazing job, he would walk into any team in the premiership

I do agree with Tunyc regarding the fee and that we could have asked for more especially when they paid that much for Adam, yes he got a lot of goals, but if you take away the pens and free kicks which he won't take when Gerrard is fully fit he will get nowhere near that amount.

I suppose though that everybody knows what the club is like, so when people see a player with 1 year left and offer 6 million to us then there was a chance he would crack. I think the problem was is that nobody else seemed interested in him and unless we took it to the deadline day we were never going to get big money.