So today Liverpool – according to every press source under the sun – have upped their bid for Sunderland’s Jordan Henderson. Apparently, the reported initial bid of £13 million wasn’t enough so the club went back in with a £15-16 million bid. Again, they were rebuffed. Today, we’ve moved again with a bid in the region of £18.5 million.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m as pleased as punch that we are able to table bids of this sum for players, it shows that we’re not short of a bit of money anymore. But what we’re talking about here is a player who has spent his entire professional career (one spell at Coventry apart) with a bottom 10 club. In two full seasons at Sunderland, he has played 77 games and scored just 5 goals. He is a midfielder and an attacking one – that can also play out wide – and he has scored just 5 goals over two seasons. We have tabled – reportedly – an £18.5 million bid for this player, who also has one England cap. He has never played in Europe and has not yet even made an impression when playing against one of the big sides.
Contrast this with a player reportedly on offer for £500,000 less, Valencia’s Juan Mata, and you can see why I’m a little concerned about the amount we’re prepared to pay. Mata, by contrast, is barely 3 years older than Henderson, has played over 170 times for Valencia with 46 goals to his name. He has also played 11 times for the best national side in the world, scoring 4 goals. He has played a further 38 games for Spain at various youth levels, scoring 21 times. Now if anybody believes (and can also prove) that the Englishman is greater value for money then I will happily retract my statement and eat my hat.
Similarly, I have read today via the official LFC site that Ipswich have refused an £8 million bid for their young striker Connor Wickham. They believe that they are entitled to about £2 million more and I can see why, after all he has scored an intimidating 15 goals in 72 appearances for Ipswich. In the Championship. Now, I appreciate that I may sound overly harsh, he is after all only 18 years old and it’s impressive in the sense that he’s playing regularly in the Championship and has been since he was 16. But £10 million? For an 18 year old that has scored 15 goals in his whole career so far? I’m sorry but British or not; ‘home-grown’ or from the Isle of Sandwich, that fee is positively extortionate. In January, we spent just over double that on a proven Uruguayan international that had scored over 140 goals in his career by the age of 24 – Luis Suarez.
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Maybe the more established players we have been linked with like Leighton Baines, Ashley Young are more interested in playing for clubs that are in the champion league. So they are buying the young talents now. But as you rightly said they are too much overprice and honestly I would have loved to see the likes of Mata, Downing Young and Baines playing for us now and if we have cash in reserve we can buy one or two young prospects.
So what if we spend. £18M for Michael Carrick. £18M for Anderson. £30M for Berbatov. They still won the league. Let Henry worry about the money and let Kenny worry about the quality. Carroll isn’t worth £35M clearly, but the fact that we bought him is a great thing. The fact that buying him and Suarez only resulted in a £2M outlay is excellent business. The fact that both Ferguson and Kenny rate Henderson tells me that, in time, he might be worth every penny. But moaning about perceived overspending when we theoretically might not have had a club to support this time last year is ridiculous. Small club mentality.
The had already won the league when they bought those players. The already had a brilliant squad when they bought those players. Its like having an Aston Martin and spending a fat wedge getting it Works modified.
LFC spending in the same way is like getting a Robin Reliant Works modified.
We should be bringing in players for today before buying expensive overpriced crap for tomorrow
joe your comments are awful. lfc is no robin reliant and the players being targeted are not crap. if you are old enough to remember, i recall man utd being relegated with ‘a brilliant squad’. We need a balanced team, an efficient machine, not a list of big names from yr shopping list.
Why are you calling them crap? Overpriced maybe, but crap? The bottom line is that, as Kenny and Steve Clarke showed, tactics, hunger as well as player ability is crucial for success. Who heard of Alonso before he joined? Torres was a 10-15 goal a season penalty taker before we bought him. Henderson was earmarked by Ferguson. Who cares if it’s £5M over? Do you think City fans care that most of their players were £5-10M over the top? With Gerrard, Suarez and Carroll firing and add Mata or Johnson and we’ll be contenders no question. And if we pay over the odds for a couple of players so what? No one will care if they create the nucleus of a team that dominates for years to come. In the immediate period Gerrard, Suarez, Carroll and hopefully Mata or Johnson are good enough to cause damage to any defence.
i agree with the fact tht these players are being overpriced (especialy after the carrol saga). carrol cant be judged atleast 2-3 games into the next season as long as he has a good pre-season.
i think these players are good or else kenny wont be interested, but we have no confirmation from his side. like he said, people will find out when we sign a player when he’s presented at anfield.
plus there may be no point in signing some of these players as we have some good players in the youth and reserve e.g coady, morgan, suso, kelly etc.
hope the pacheco saga finishes soon too!
20 mil is too much money there are better and cheaper players out there,first caroll 35 mil,and now this ur good Kenny but u are too fare with this
Not our money so who cares???!!!
Exactly. Now if we were paying £15M for Carlton Cole as our lead striker (as Woy wanted) then I’ld be worried. But my concentration is on quality and not cost. Henderson is quality and will only get better. £20M for possibly 10 years service could become a bargain. With hindsight how much would you have paid for West Ham’s Fat Frank Lampard a good few years back?
What about how much we paid for Johnson?About 18 mil because he’s British was he worth it?
Yes. With skilled management courtesy of Steve Clarke he is the best right back in the world.
”English players are overpriced”.Thats a fact.
A lot of potential young talent neva made it, so 18.5m for henderson, only time will tell if its justified.
Finally, I pray n hope KK gets it right with transfers, bcos if he does’nt, the unbelieveable could happen afterwards.
I think you need to look at the bigger picture. All of the players we are looking to sign are young and hungry. They are well established in their respective teams and can only get better. I remember people saying the same thing when Kennny signed a young uncapped striker who didn’t have a brilliant goalscoring record for 3.5mill for Blackburn………….What a player Alan Shearer turned out to be. Kenny can mould these players into great Liverpool players. Remember all the stick Lucas got, the fee was too high, he was too young, with the right manager he has matured into a stalwart of our team. Don’t be negative, get behind Kenny and the players he signs YNWA!
True!
kennys a born winner the players like mata sanchez and aguero hazard won’t come to liverpool were not even in the uefa cup and shearer was goal shy at the saints b4 kenny got him at rovers any fool who talks crap about kenny is making the club and yourself look like a tit most ov them only judge players on football manager liverpool fc should be like a passport if you your parents/grandparents were born in liverpool or ireland fine but i don’t take wools/cockneys as fans ov lfc anyway so do 1 and me norris green born and breed laaaaaaaaaa
Let us please take the figures published for what it is, speculation.
In Kenny we trust, and if he value Henderson to 200 million, who are we to question him?
Have faith, the King is after all just that- the King.
Everyone seems to think we need stars when we don’t. We need a good team! If King Kenny thinks these are the players to make the difference then who are we to argue. We’ve got Pepe, Carra, Stevie and Suarez, all established stars already so if the King wants to add young players to build a team around the star players we’ve already got then so be it. As for the Kun Aguero argument we’ve got Luis an they’re similar players who play in the same position, we don’t need him so paying 30 to 40 million for him would be a waste of money. Sanchez is going to barca an I much as it pains me to say it we can’t compete with them. Ashley Young is going to sit on the mancs bench for most of the season an again they have champions league to offer. These are young hungry players who in Hendersons case are showing the desire to wear the red shirt. As for this “never done anything in his career” nonsense, not everyone is a messi or ronaldo (fat one) who lights up the world at 19. Keep the faith people! In Kenny we trust
top comment. ynwa
When are liverpool going to learn?Is this sudden obsession with overpriced english players the result of our owners refusing to allow foreign transfers because of the past controversies over where exactly the money ended up.Does JOHN HENRY trust Comolli in these foreign transfers.Is this why we are now obsessed with overpriced garbage english players?No superstar is coming because we are not in CL.The club is starting to look like there is no actual transfer policy.JUDGING BY THE LARGE AMOUNT OF POSTS ON HERE FAN ANGER IS MOUNTING BY THE HOUR.
Must be a joke post. The transfer policy has always been for the best young English players peppered with quality foreign players where necessary (i.e. Suarez). If you don’t like it support someone else or stick to Championship Manager.
There has been no clear transfer policy at Liverpool. The club is simply wasting sacks of money on overrated and overpriced British players like Wilson, Carroll and now Henderson. Kenny Dalglish and Comolli are clueless and cannot look beyond England. There are cheaper and better alternatives out there but all they can do is pay over the odds for average British guys.
JUDGING BY THE LARGE AMOUNT OF POSTS ON HERE FAN ANGER IS MOUNTING BY THE HOUR
Yeah that’s the problem with the net you create a bunch of experts playing football manager games on their psp’s or X boxes. I trust Mr Kenny Dalglish to have a clue unlike some of the muppets who constantly moan and don’t have a clue what they’re on about.
I am absolutely sure KK will have us going back to basics, it will probably take a couple of seasons to be challenging for PL and until then whether we like it or not we will HAVE to pay through the nose to get half decent players in, Whiskey Nose & all his puppets are seeing to that. Unfortunately there are far too many of them in the PL!!
We more than held our own since January , saw the amazing impact Suarez had which will only get better etc etc. As a unit we are not as bad as a lot of other clubs would like us to believe.
WE MUST SELL THE DEADWOOD ( would probably raise 30-40mil ) , that money alone could buy us a couple of decent players.
It would also be very interesting to see how much money the owners are prepared to put into the transfer market backing KK.
Remember our directors refused to pay 3mil for ” a certain thirty year old ” T Sheringham, unfortunately he went onto manure and was the main architect helping them win their second CL and also the FA cup in their treble winning year. I alone would have had us pay that money for him not to have gone there!!!!! Or, we could have had C Ronaldo before manure, only to see him as no more than a potential Coca Cola Ad trick artist!!!
KK has been there & done it over & again, none of us has, so we should ALL get behind him & our team.
Have faith, our time will come again.
We have to ensure players will bend backwards wishing they could play for LFC & we will.
YNWA
English teams inflate the price of “talented” kids and you could say we pay the future price of what the player is worth, but that means that its taken for granted that the player will become as talented as expected.
But the truth of the matter is that british kids arent grafters and arent as ambitious as say.. african and spanish.
They grow up looking at papers wanting to have their money and cars and birds. but other poorer countries with more humble upbringings like africa, argentina, brazil are different they want to be the best.
most British only develop half of the potential they have, some of them make it, owen, shearer, beckham, wilshere etc but a lot of them havnt even rooney, rooney hasnt and never will develop his full potential.
I dunno, im sure kenny has done his research, and if kenny thinks this is a player with the first and foremost skill – to become a winner and wants to be the best in the world, then hes worth it
True cos Carragher, Gerrard, Wilshire, Terry, Rooney, Beckham, Scholes etc aren’t grafters. However Adebayor, Kanu and Berbatov definitely are. Clown.
Its simple all the players bought now maybe be overpriced but therer resale value if they leave will be the same it makes sense why but a established foreigner who has to come over settle in which can take a season to perform, these players know the premiership in kenny we trust
Does it really matter how much they cost? Unfortunately young ENGLISH players cost this much in this market!
Henderson-£18m
Jones-£15m
Cattermole-£6m
Wickham-£10
Total-£49m
Keane-£20m
Babel-£12m
Aquilani-£20m
Voronin-£7m
Total-£59m
Which four would you rather have!? And for those of you who don’t rate Henderson, obviously haven’t seen many Sunderland games! His deliveries are world-class! Jones is already playing at a level equal or above SCOTT DANN, so imagine how good he’ll become! Cattermole a solid performer with room to develop and Wickham, possibly the hottest young property in England, coming to Liverpool, yes please!
20mil cheap hes guna be better then gerrard cum next season
Henderson is promising but he is no way worth 18m or even 15m. The English players you mentioned are all overpriced, overrated and over hyped by the media. There are better and cheaper alternatives in foreign leagues but sadly Kenny and Comolli can no look further than rubbish England.
Voronin £7 million, get a grip he was a bosman we made money on him, somehow!
we need make team like barcelona and we have to make sure do right thing for the club come on LFC
http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11669_6970088,00.html?
It’s done, and Ngog going the other way
Look people the fact is nobody knows for definit who is coming In r who is going out until the club announces it !!!!! That’s the way club does it again !!!
Click the link above…
buying henderson for 20 million well lets wait and see, gets rid of ngog to sunderland though, but left back should be and as so needed still is pushed to one side, do not under stand this as we lack cover every season……