DMAA

19 minutes ago, Rousseau said:

I'm bemused by the criticism of Ojo. it seems to have come out of nowhere, and is completely over the top, IMO.

 

He's a young player that's come in to help out. Okay--he's raw, and often doesn't make the best decisions at times, but he doesn't hide. I thought he was poor against Legia last week, but he was always in the game trying things. 

 

He's played 9 games for us, scoring 4 and assisting 3. That's superb. He's halfway towards Kent's tally for the whole of last season, in less than a quarter of the games!

 

I'm not saying he should be a guaranteed starter -- he's not consistent enough, IMO -- but I'm more than pleased with his contribution thus far, and he can improve. 

 

Good player. 

I hope my comments aren't being misinterpreted. I've defended him from the start saying he at least scores and assists even if his general play isn't always great. I didn't think the OF game was suited to his style and I found his Legia performances particularly poor. However he clearly has plenty to offer and can learn during his spell here. He can learn from Kent's work rate and from how he gets stuck into the opposition. The Ibrox crowd doesn't take well to players who seem to be going into challenges half hearted.

17 minutes ago, der Berliner said:

GK - McGregor, Foderingham

 

RB - Tavernier, Polster

CH - Goldson, Edmundson

CH - Katic, Helander

LB - Barisic, Flanagan, Halliday

 

RCM - Jack, King

CM -  Davis, Kamara 

LCM - Aribo, Docherty

 

RAM - Arfield, Ojo, Stewart,

LAM - Kent, Jones, Barker, Murphy, Grezda

 

ST - Defoe, Morelos 

Converted to a 4-3-2-1 it would look like this, I've removed duplicates for clarity and struck out injured players. It's a huge squad. I really thought Grezda would find a move but the only transfer windows still open are Israel and Czech Republic.

6 minutes ago, ranger_syntax said:

That's not really divisive though.

 

Guys like Kenny Miller and Josh Windass were divisive because plenty of supporters actually disliked them.

Maybe not the best word

4 minutes ago, ranger_syntax said:

Only one is true.

The additional payments might never happen.

Well they are described as "achieveable" so they are both true in a sense which explains why different fees are being reported

33 minutes ago, ranger_syntax said:

See here: https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/ryan-kent-liverpool-transfer-news-16854500

 

 

That's makes sense, both £6.5m and £7.5m are true hence why both figures are being used. 

57 minutes ago, Gaffer said:

Would you rather we paid higher amounts for Morelos, Aribo, etc?

Tannochside Bear's point was that it was that we were paying a finished product price for a player who was work in progress last season and he needed to be consistent now. You responded saying essentially you can't get that for £6-7m and I just pointed out that we have up until now. I think the problem is probably that we don't agree on how "inconsistent" or "work in progress" he was in comparison to our other players last season. 

57 minutes ago, Gaffer said:

Divisive?  Really?

I'd say so. There aren't many players who you can get such varied opinions on. On the one hand you've got lots of fans who were crying out for us to spend our full budget on him and how we would sell him on for £20m to the EPL. I haven't heard so much exaggeration about a Rangers player before tbh. A good minority have always decried his poor end product and most comments on here from the regulars a month or so ago were along those lines. He's our player now so we move on but I think it's been clear from early on that people have always responded very differently to his contribution. Edit: before I get misinterpreted he is a good player and improves the current team

57 minutes ago, Gaffer said:

And when you say "he's only returned the starting 11 to where it was last season" ..... you mean when we went on an extended run of being unbeaten including the games against Celtic?  Excellent!

I hope it's enough. It's the same team with a stronger bench and one good addition to the 11. But we always knew that those 6-7 games couldn't be taken too seriously and we would need more to do the same over the course of a full season. I hope the depth provides that but I'm definitely a bit nervous about it.

11 minutes ago, lenny3k said:

McGregor

 

Tavernier Goldson Katic Barisic

 

Jack Davis Aribo

 

Arfield Kent

 

Morelos

 

Personally wouldn't have Ojo near the first team, i'm not a fan, don't know why, just really not a fan

That's the starting 11 for me, surprised anyone is replacing Arfield with Ojo! I thought at the end of last season that we needed quality over quantity and that 3 quality signings who walk into the first 11 would take us where we needed to be. We went for quantity and only have 1 new player in the our starting 11 which I find quite worrying. I hope it's enough.

12 minutes ago, Gaffer said:

If Kent was the finished product and delivering 9/10 performances every week he'd have cost us £65m, not £6.5m

Hmm, I don't think so. To put the transfer fee in perspective it's more than the rest of our starting 11 combined. In fact if you put Edmundson on the bench instead of Helander it would be more than the rest of the 16 man squad combined by my count. So we have signed a lot of good players for not very much up until now. The fees reported have been £7m and £7.5m I haven't heard £6.5m. There are a lot of positives from this signing and he will give us a boost on the field but a fee like that was always going to cause a bit of concern for some of us given he's a pretty divisive player and has only returned the starting 11 to exactly where it was last season except maybe Aribo stepping in for Kamara ?

6 minutes ago, ranger_syntax said:

 

20% of any profit made on a transfer fee.

 

Who says we will ever sell him anyway?

Where did you see that? It was only an article I got the 25% from so not an authoritative source but a sell on fee of some kind has been widely reported. 

It’s on the homepage but when you go to the Scottish Premiership page there’s no word of the Kent deal. Very strange that it is the only one missing. 

8 hours ago, cooponthewing said:

Ouch! However, if that’s what it took? Even if he goes for £16 m in a year or two it’s a good deal?

£7.5m plus 25%, if that’s where the negotiations ended then where on earth did they start. I thought Liverpool’s negotiating position had weakened since there hadn’t been the interest they hoped in Kent but I’m wondering now if our negotiating position had weakened too because we looked desperate at the last minute and they knew we had more money than before

25% sell on clause ? 

16 minutes ago, Rousseau said:

Exactly.

 

I think we're the only ones who think he was played out of position.

I’ve mentioned Aribo playing in that position before but as a matter of curiosity, an experiment. It was some time to try it out ? he’ll still be a huge player for us this season

32 minutes ago, ranger_syntax said:

Safe to say I don't have any doubts about that.

He is low risk in terms of settling in and the British style of football. I wonder if Gerrard’s decided he couldn’t afford another risk this season. 

4 minutes ago, ranger_syntax said:

Given that we know a lot about him I think that the only risk remaining is that he becomes injury prone.

The risk is that he doesn't prove to be good value for money. £5-7m is a huge sum of money for us and he needs to prove he can improve his end product to live up to such a bank breaking fee. 

2 hours ago, Rousseau said:

What is it with our fans--players are shite when they have a slight dip in form, then become superstars when they're out of the team for a while. 

Aribo was played out of position in the toughest game of the season and suddenly he's Ejaria. 

57 minutes ago, Waltersgotstyle said:

People need to realise it is 2019 not 2009 - £7m in not a lot of money for a player who is highly rated down south.

The point is that it is a lot of money to us. In fact you can go back 25-30 years and the fees involved haven't really changed much if an EPL club aren't involved. £4m for Duncan Ferguson from Dundee United in 1993, £2.6m for David McPherson and £2m for McLaren from Hearts. More than a decade later we picked up Kris Boyd for 500k and Naismith, Whittaker etc for pretty modest fees too. Another 12 years later and Celtic are signing a young Scottish International from Kilmarnock just now for a similar fee, about £2m. For our whole league the total transfer fee ins and outs are down since the 90s despite inflation (bar the odd big sale like Tierney). In fact the ins and outs are pretty much zero for most clubs but were in the millions for many in the 90s. The English Championship also doesn't have nearly as much money as people up here think, most have a very low net spend and lots actually have a minus net spend due to sales to the EPL. If £7m wasn't much in today's money I think someone would have taken a punt on him but it's still a lot of money to anyone outside the EPL in the UK and certainly for us.

4 minutes ago, the gunslinger said:

CAN HE PLAY IN EUROPE?

He will be able to yeh

8 minutes ago, stewarty said:

No news on Grezda departing?  If we could recover the £2m spent on him, that would help re the fee for Kent.

Gerrard said a few weeks ago that we'd only had loan offers for him and they weren't acceptable to the club. To me that means they weren't willing to pay enough of his wages. I really hope he doesn't miss out on a move because if so the club have misjudged this one because he can only rebuild his reputation (and value) by playing games.

18 minutes ago, Rousseau said:

Sky Sports News reporting that Rangers have terminated the contract of Graham Dorrans.

You'd hope Dorrans wouldn't hold out for full payment of his contract. He's a wealthy man and a Rangers fan so hopefully this has saved us a bit of money.

Great news for us and him

I'm relieved that we're adding an attacking midfield despite not being Kent's biggest fan. If we're paying something in the region of £6m-£7m I don't think that is value for money at all. However if this goes through I'm going to try not to think about that and be glad that we've strengthened the squad in an area of the team we needed strengthening.

14 minutes ago, Thinker said:

If the board are okay with spending this amount of money on Kent, I wish they'd done it last week. Kent could have made a big difference if he'd played yesterday.

We’ve come into money only a few days ago obviously. But Liverpool also had no incentive at all to sell before the last day. Barker got injured last week too. 

3 minutes ago, ian1964 said:

 

Ooft. This on top of the other reliable journalists reporting it more or less confirms it. That is one way to make the fans forget about yesterday. 

Sorry for the bombardment just thought I'd share the official twitter accounts reporting on this. I'm surprised if the fee is correct. After counting up the injuries in the winger department and Hastie leaving I did think surely we'll move for someone but this would be a big surprise for me.