PIF helped 'humiliate' Newcastle with £46m Reds sale

PIF simply aren’t bothered about Newcastle United and helped fund Alexander Isak’s move to Liverpool.

Also, did Oliver Glasner even try to sign a Marc Guehi replacement?

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PIF revenge

Alexander seems to think that PIF are coming for Liverpool and Isak. If they indeed are humiliated by the whole saga of a club making a bid, having it rejected, making a higher bid and having it accepted they are probably in the wrong game.

Also the guy within the PIF family who sanctioned a big wad of cash for Nunez to help Liverpool fund this egregious humiliation should really be sweating.

Problem Newcastle have is not that they are being bullied by the big bad boys of the PL, it is that PIF don’t appear to be overly fussed about them. What PIF has shown is that if they are interested in something they chuck cash at it and generally bend it to their will. Football globally has shown they are more than happy to take their cash and bend the process and rules for them.

PIF just don’t appear that arsed about Newcastle, players don’t appear that arsed to go there, it seems odd as it looks like a club with a lot of upside and it’s a nice city.

Mel – Dublin, Berlin, Athlone Town

A question for Glasner fans

Both Tony and Ed in this morning’s mailbox seem to have resolved Oliver Glasner of all blame for the Marc Guehi fiasco. I’d like to ask them why, when needing at least one new CB (more than likely two, once the Liverpool ball started rolling), their manager was scrambling around on deadline day?

He’d had weeks to sort this out, but sat on his hands, seemingly waiting on someone who would ultimately reject them, and a 19 year old with limited experience.

Is the reason “Palace couldn’t get a suitable replacement for him (Guehi)” simply that they didn’t even try?

DF

Transfer window fallout

Been keeping my powder dry over the last 48 hours, whilst having a good chuckle at the mailbox’s “Isak could be Andy Carroll” and “Isak is a d*ck” and “Liverpool MUST win stuff now” bag of revels. Salt levels: maximum.

A few things.

1. Newcastle fans. I told you about 3 weeks ago your club would fold. They did. It was the only logical course of action. They could and should have done it earlier, but no, they chose posturing over being proactive. Sign of a really poorly run club, reactive, on the back foot. You need proper people running the place. Eddie Howe will tire of this, eventually.

2. This will be remembered as the summer of hypocrisy. How dare Liverpool unsettle Isak! said Newcastle, whilst unsettling Wissa and Strand Larsen. How dare players behave like this! said every rent a gob on Sky, Talksport etc, whilst Marc Guehi remained thoroughly professional and decent and willing to play right up to deadline day, only to get shafted by his club at the eleventh hour whilst actually wearing a Liverpool tracksuit. The moral of the tale – clubs still retain the power, players are just pieces of meat to them, they treat them like s**t when it suits them but they don’t like it when the worm turns and fights back.

3. It evidently grips a lot of people’s s**t that Liverpool have invested so heavily in stellar talent this window (usually these same people don’t like to discuss outgoings or the concept of net spend). The reason it grips their s**t? Because that wasn’t meant to happen, only Chelsea and City are supposed to spend like that, it’s not fair, waah waah waah. They don’t like it, because it forces every other club and its fans to reflect on how they are run, and it forces other clubs to think about actually “saving up” over several years like Liverpool did, instead of just buying everything on tick every year and then complaining about PSR or FFP. Liverpool are the best run club in the country, and that’s just too much for some to accept.

Andy H, Swansea.

Liverpool screwed them both…

Interesting take that Guehi was screwed by being the nice guy. But Liverpool didn’t make a bid until the last day.

They had one bid for Isak rejected and didn’t come back even though they knew Isak was desperate for them to.

Both could have looked more reasonable in publicly stating their desire to leave had Liverpool put in reasonable bids. Instead they waited and hoped the players would force their way out to save them some £££.

Newcastle did at least make a couple of bids for Wissa and he wouldn’t be alone in thinking £35m for a 29 year old striker with one year left was a ‘reasonable’ bid. Brentford squeezed a chunk more out and well done but possibly have a bigger gap than if they’d shopped around earlier.

Ah well, at least it’s over for now and we can look forward to the excitement of a home game against Andorra.

Phil, Newcastle

…Jesus, I thought that the transfer window closing would be an end to all this Isak whinging in the mailbox, but it seems as though many Newcastle fans are struggling with their team’s place in the pecking order.

At the top, there is Real Madrid. If there is whinging to be done, then it should be about how they always seem to be able to do what they want and that they always have the money to do it, but someone has to be at the top of the chain, and it is undoubtedly them. All they need to do is bat their eyelashes at any given player anywhere, and if they want him, they will get him. Barcelona used to be in the same category, but their finances mean that these days they try to hoover up misfits like Rashford.

Then you have a smattering of clubs – Man City, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal, Bayern Munich, PSG to name the obvious ones – who have enough pull to appeal to anyone who isn’t wanted at Madrid. Some people have suggested that Isak might be trying to force a move there in a couple of years time, and yes, that is a distinct possibility. And when that happens, Liverpool will try to get an exorbitant fee and suck it up, like they always have (with varying results).

And so on and so on. A club like Newcastle might be in a third tier there with Spurs, Dortmund, Aston Villa, those kind of clubs. And maybe that’s where Man Utd are right now, and that’s why they got their new players from teams like Wolves and Brentford, like Newcastle did.

There is a fluidity to this pecking order, but every single team out there slots in somewhere, and in doing so, they are at the mercy of a higher tiered club coming in and taking any given player.

Isn’t all this obvious, and it isn’t it also obvious why Isak wouldn’t want to leave a team challenging for fourth with the current league champions and one of the favourites for the champions’ league?

Liverpool have been up and down this pecking order over the years, and that’s why they lost players like Suarez, Coutinho, Alexander-Arnold, Alonso, Mascherano, Owen, whilst signing replacements like Ricky Lambert and Mario Balotelli. Right now, they are flying, they are one of the most revered teams in the world, and they can turn the heads of 99% of players should they choose to. Fifteen years ago they were on the verge of bankruptcy, had Roy Evans for a manager and signed Paul Koncheski.

All that Newcastle can do is use the exorbitant fee that they got for Isak in the same way that Liverpool used the exorbitant fee for Coutinho. Keep building, keep getting better and hope to move up in the pecking order so that they don’t have to go shopping at Brentford next time around.

Football is cyclical. Liverpool’s star will dim at some point. It’s up to Newcastle to step up and be the club that unsettles the Isaks of this world.

Mat (Wirtz will come good)

The Gresham (Guehi) Dynamic

There’s a law in economics called Gresham’s Law which states that bad money drives out good. It also has implications that can be applied to business practices. If cheaters gain a competitive advantage and are allowed to go unpunished then bad ethics will drive good ethics out of the marketplace.

Remember the good old days when Chelsea, Mourinho and Ashely Cole were fined over ‘Tapping Up’? It’s now the norm. If you don’t do it you’re going to be outmanoeuvred by the clubs that do. So not only does everybody do it everybody has to do it to keep up. That’s the Gresham Dynamic.

This transfer window has also shone the Gresham Dynamic spotlight on player behaviour as well as club. Isak, Wissa, Gyokeres (off the top of my head, there’s probably more) behaved unethically and got rewarded. Marc Guehi on the other hand acted like a model pro and didn’t.

What incentive is there for any footballer that finds himself in a similar situation next summer to follow Guehi’s example? Why wouldn’t any player looking to engineer a move pull an Isak? As Gresham says bad ethics will drive good ethics out of the marketplace. The Guehi Dynamic anyone?

Conor Malone, Donegal.

…Lee, a player is free to work anywhere they want according to all the laws of the land. However, a player is not allowed to play football for any team for which they aren’t registered with FIFA. When a player moves between clubs, the selling club deregisters the player and the buying club registers them with the appropriate governing bodies. Those organisations do not allow the unilateral registration of an already registered player. The transfer fee is compensation for the registration of the player, not for the player or their contract.

Howard Jones, nobody really has a problem with Liverpool over the Isak saga but, as demonstrated in your email, it was the entitled princess nonsense spouted by Liverpool fans that pissed everyone off.

Newcastle and Palace didn’t put enough effort into selling their best players to Liverpool? Blimey, that’s a new level of entitlement. Both Newcastle and Palace played a blinder, Newcastle got the price they were asking for plus a replacement striker and Palace got to keep their excellent manager. Maybe if Liverpool had negotiated earlier than deadline day they’d have ended up with both players for less money?

Lastly, the concept of net spend is utter, utter tosh and anyone who talks about it like it means anything is an idiot. Why does it matter where the transfer spend money comes from? Is £100m in player sales somehow better than £500m in merchandise sales? Money earned is money earned and money spent is money spent.

SC, Belfast

Moral dilemma

What’s worse, a player going on strike demanding a transfer; a player running down his contract for two years whilst learning Spanish, thereby denying his team a reasonable transfer fee; or a manager threatening to resign if a player is sold, thereby denying a young man his dream?

Rob

Solution to the Isak saga

Looking at the Isak issue. I believe the real problem here is the length of player contracts. I understand that a six year contract for a player has its pros and cons for both player and club.

For Player

Pro. You are guaranteed a negotiated wage for the duration of your contract. If a player stops performing or is injured for a length of time he still gets paid his wages. The Club cannot “go on strike” and refuse to pay.

Con. You are tied into a long contract which you cannot get out of unless with the agreement of the club.

For the Club

Pro. You can plan ahead. You have stability and you preserve value of the player for many years

Con. You are compelled to pay the player no matter what his performance level or injury. Also, if you need to shift him it may be difficult especially if he is on high wages.

I however think it more likely for the sagas we saw involving Isak and Wissa will become more common place if the current situation remains.

My Solution

Make all contracts a maximum of 3 years with a sell on after the 3 years of 25% of the fee paid for the player at the start of the contract. Player sales can be negotiated after two years in the normal way

For the club. This has the effect of:

Making sure players are less likely to want to go on strike to break contracts.

Club is not tied to paying wages to unwanted or injured players

Club has certainty for at least three years

They get some money back for any high fees paid to secure the payer. So, if they bought a player for £100m, they get £25m back and they have only spent £25m for each year of his service. The exception being if they can reach an agreement with player and another club to sell for more after year one or two.

Journeyman players have the incentive to play well in those 3 years as they have a need to be attractive for a new contract after three years. The players of Isaks ability on the other hand will always have a market.

For the Player:

They can move freely after at most 3 years

They have security for those three years

They get the opportunity to experience playing for other clubs

Simples

Michael O, Chingford

Van Persie to United vibes?

If by Isak’s transfer having RvP-to-United vibes, you mean to say that Liverpool will win the title this year followed by the manager exiting stage left and then the club having a sustained descent into mediocrity for the next 12+ years to the point that the board seriously gave 200M to a 15th place manager to spend, then yes fellow Man United supporter I’m waiting more eagerly for this than a Dibu Martinez waiting for Ratcliffe to call.

Gaurav MUFC Amsterdam (Nan Unsighted made me laugh, hats off)

…Just on the point Alexander made about PIF vs. FSG, going off the reports of FSG being key to talks between Liv Golf and the PGA it seems the relationship is pretty rosy. A few million on a player is little to nothing compared to the billions these gents all deal in.

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