January ‘18 Transfer Window

JayMags71

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coremiller

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I also wonder if the guaranteed money is all upfront, or if it's structured as a series of installments.
 

Mighty Joe Young

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Definitely a key point.

Southampton is getting paid in £17m installments: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/football-notebook-virgil-van-dijk-fee-will-not-lead-southampton-to-spend-big-ph85g7bln

If LFC clear a huge payment, it makes sense they might make a second splash this window (Lemar, please?).
From everything I've read the guarenteed money is all up front. There were rumours concerning interest in Mahrez - and a counter rumour (thank god) shooting it down.

http://www.empireofthekop.com/2018/01/06/bizarre-twist-in-liverpools-riyad-mahrez-pursuit-is-revealed/

. He's a decent player .. but certainly not worth the 75+ It would take to sign him. I think Lemar is the main target - and Klopp will probably wait for the summer if they have to. There is also reported interest in a couple of world class keepers.
 

67YAZ

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Good piece of business, having brought in Coutinho for £11.3m just 4 years ago.

Barca is infamous for complicated payment structures and numerous clauses that total up to a massive headline fee, but are designed to fit within the clubs messy finances. Given FSG’s track record and how long this one took, I suspect that a lot of the negotiating was around structure.

Lemar is going to cost around £90m, and that’s if Monaco want to sell mid-year. If anything, that’s a deal that’s ill go down to the wire as Monaco will try to spark a bidding war.
 

PedroSpecialK

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Nabil Fekir would be an outstanding replacement, but it'd take a ransom to get him out of Lyon given their league position for that second auto-qualifying CL spot.
 

SoxFanInCali

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I don't get why Barca wanted to pay the January premium when they can't play him in the Champions League and they have a pretty comfortable lead in the league already, but what's done is done. At least Liverpool got a good fee and have most of the window left to look at reinforcements.

I'm sure City is happy that it happened before next weekend's game considering his scoring record against them.
 

SocrManiac

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All the opinion I’ve read says it’s to buy Iniesta rest for the CL. I don’t think they’re that similar in style, though that might change once he’s surrounded by that talent.

If there’s no additional move by LFC at this point, it’s going to be a long second half. The memory of even their current inability to break down 11 men will fade and the loss of Coutinho’s lethal 25 yard strike will be lamented.
 

Mighty Joe Young

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Rumors that mahrez is heading to Anfield. That would suck.
Bein Sports (via Empire of the Kop) was reporting they have a medical set for tomorrow. 49m fee.

He's a good player , but not sure where he's going to fit in. Right sided attacking mid .. maybe they move Salah into the striker role , Mahrez to the right and Firmino into the #10 role.

Edit: and ruled out by multiple sources:
https://www.thisisanfield.com/2018/01/liverpool-move-riyad-mahrez-ruled-multiple-sources/
 
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OCST

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Barkley to Chelsea for a pretty reasonable £15m
Half what he was tagged for in August (although the injury was legit).

I could make the pro-forma observations about his career, but I couldn't top what the Guardian said today:

a nearly man, a player who stayed too young too long, never quite fulfilling his potential or showing he can dominate, rather than decorate, matches
A "nearly man." Oof. Brutal.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2018/jan/06/ross-barkley-seize-chance-chelsea-antonio-conte
 

SocrManiac

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I don’t know where I wrote it, but I said that the worst part about Coutiho with FCB would be Ray Hudson.

I wasn’t wrong.
Hudson is so unspeakably awful. He’s polluted the play of the best players of this generation with his attempts to make their play his somehow. I am so sick of his bullshit.
 

67YAZ

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Looks like a straight Sanchez-Mkhitarayn swap is getting close to the finish line with Sanchez pocketing £500k/week. Of course, Mino Raiola is negotiating for Mkhitarayan, so things could still get bumpy.

Will be interested to see where and how Mkhitarayan plays for Wenger. If anything, he's best suited for Wilshere's position, but with a different skillset. Mkhitarayn will work harder defensively and show off better range of passing. He won't dribble as much or try to get intricate in box; Henrikh is best straight bombing in late. But I'm sure Wenger has a plan...
 

Cellar-Door

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Joao Mario getting a medical today. Moving from Inter to West Ham on a loan with an option to buy.
 

Mighty Joe Young

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Looks like a straight Sanchez-Mkhitarayn swap is getting close to the finish line with Sanchez pocketing £500k/week. Of course, Mino Raiola is negotiating for Mkhitarayan, so things could still get bumpy.

Will be interested to see where and how Mkhitarayan plays for Wenger. If anything, he's best suited for Wilshere's position, but with a different skillset. Mkhitarayn will work harder defensively and show off better range of passing. He won't dribble as much or try to get intricate in box; Henrikh is best straight bombing in late. But I'm sure Wenger has a plan...
Quick question as I’ve not seen any info on this. Has Sanchez signed a multi year deal with Man U?
 

swiftaw

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Quick question as I’ve not seen any info on this. Has Sanchez signed a multi year deal with Man U?
Yes. Unlike US sports, contracts don't transfer over when a player changes clubs, they always have to negotiate a new contract with the new club. Sanchez's new contract is for 4.5 years.
 

67YAZ

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Yes. Unlike US sports, contracts don't transfer over when a player changes clubs, they always have to negotiate a new contract with the new club. Sanchez's new contract is for 4.5 years.
As a follow up, read that the contract is a baseline £300k/week with escalators and incentives that could bring it to £500k/week in the last year.
 

Zomp

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City sign 23 year old Aymeric Laporte. Haven't seen much of him but he's supposed to be the real deal and if he and Stones can play together you have a formidable partnership for years to come.
 

Zososoxfan

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Not sure if this belongs in here, but Billy Haisley over at Deadspin wrote a reaction piece to the Laporte-MCFC transfer. Here is the interesting part to me:

Fees have ballooned so dramatically over the past few years precisely because clubs like City and PSG and Chelsea—clubs not beholden to the regular economic pressures of the market and instead reliant on nothing else than the whims of their super rich owners to determine how much of their personal, ill-gotten funds to reroute into their preferred vanity projects—have distorted things by paying what no one else could pay. This effect has further exaggerated the already chasmic distances between the haves and the have-nots in European soccer, which threatens to erode the foundation of a game built on unpredictability, history, and community. Microstates coming in and fundamentally altering things with their bottomless coffers often stuffed with money earned in deeply immoral fashion poisons the well for everyone. Laporte might prove worth every cent to Manchester City, but it’s not clear if Manchester City’s money is worth it to the sport.
I think this is why people are drawn to the WC in part. Rather than expound though, I'm curious if people are interested in the discussion of money's impact on the sport first.
 

coremiller

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Petrodollar infusion is only a partial explanation for fee inflation. Many of the largest fees have been paid by Man Utd, Barcelona, and Real Madrid, and they're not funded with petrodollars. Some of those deals are recycling petrodollars (e.g. Barca spending the Neymar funds on Dembele and Coutinho, Liverpool then spending the Coutinho funds on Van Dijk), but many are not -- e.g. Man Utd buying Pogba and Lukaku and Di Maria, Madrid buying Bale and James and Ronaldo, Barca buying Neymar and Saurez). Of the 20 largest transfers on record (in Euros), only 7 are linked to petrodollars.
 

wonderland

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That’s the 10th transfer over $20 for City since Pep took over. Looks like the 11th is soon to come. I was excited to see Pep compete in a more balanced league but it looks like they are just going to spend a bunch of money. Good for him, I guess.

I would like to see him win a title with a team like the 12-13 United squad before I have to read another Pep is a genius story.
 

Zomp

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Meh. Pep is an all time great. Not his fault clubs with money want him. City and PSG have a far bigger margin for error than any other clubs with their transfers, but I don't think you can say City bought the league. I think its more of his philosophy working better in its second year with more players.
 

Morgan's Magic Snowplow

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I think this is why people are drawn to the WC in part. Rather than expound though, I'm curious if people are interested in the discussion of money's impact on the sport first.
As coremiller says, petrodollars are really just one (small) part of the forces driving price escalation. Its really mainly about the growth in actual revenue of the top clubs, which is linked to cable tv packages domestically and, perhaps even more so, the internationalization of commercial and broadcast deals.

All that said, I do think that allowing members of the ruling family in states like Qatar and UAE to buy clubs was a massive mistake and not some kind of inevitability. It would never ever have been allowed by leagues like the NFL and MLB, for example, and for good reason. Having a government back a team is a fundamentally different kind of proposition than a private individual or set of individual. And these governments are repressive autocracies. Don't let the glitz fool you - these are extremely bad people, on a whole different level than somebody like Roman Abramovitch, who is just a two bit thug.
 

wonderland

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This year they’ve spent $45, $49, $35, $43, $57 and $26.5 on players. That’s actually in pounds. With $50 more looking to happen. Yeah, you need to compete and certainly nothing is guaranteed but they started on second base. With the recent additions moved it to closer to third.
 

Kliq

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Not sure if this belongs in here, but Billy Haisley over at Deadspin wrote a reaction piece to the Laporte-MCFC transfer. Here is the interesting part to me:



I think this is why people are drawn to the WC in part. Rather than expound though, I'm curious if people are interested in the discussion of money's impact on the sport first.
As others have mentioned, petrodollars are only a part of the growing chasm, one that existed before these microstates became involved. I actually think it is a good thing in some respects, because now instead of there being 3-4 clubs in the world in the penthouse, there are 6-7, which creates a more level playing field at the very top. I don't think there is that big of a difference between Man City competing for the world's most elite players because someone wants to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into the franchise, and Real Madrid competing for the world's most elite players because they have hundreds of millions of dollars due to being a blue-blood that benefits from a TV rights system that massively favors themselves and a select few other clubs to the detriment of all the other clubs in Europe. To me, I think a lot of the flack for petrofootball just comes off as sour grapes from Man U/Barca/Real fans that are mad that other teams can now compete and outbid them for the world's top players.

I get what MMSP is saying about the difference between allowing a state effectively own a football club, but I think the idea that PSG or whoever's money is immoral is kind of pathetic. If we are going to make a list of sports owners who have made money through exploitative practices it is going to be a long one. I wouldn't argue about whose billions of dollars are greener.
 

Cellar-Door

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West ham sign Patrice Evra on a free
Now have the best fullback pairing 2010 has to offer
 
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