This could be doing every club outside the top 6 a big favour.
As we know the playing field ain’t level…it’s sloping heavily in favour of the mega-monied top 6 and the TV and Football authorities suck up to them at every turn.
If we stand a chance of maximising the advantage of buying well and retaining our best to compete in a cut-throat Premier League, we need Clubs who flout the regulations to be made a very public example
The club should definitely pursue it if they have evidence and can prove it. I am sure a lot of clubs outside the so called big clubs will support us. Some thing needs to be done and Liverpool need to be made an example of.
Obviously Klopp ,Virgil and his agent will all be punished and I hope Liverpool get a transfer ban which will deter others from acting in the same way.
I am very dissapointed in Virgil I thought he was better than that.I don’t think that anyone will pay 60 to 70 million for him so he needs to get his head down next season and then get his big move.Sulking and not making an effort is not very professional and would put a lot of clubs off.
The anti-establishment/elite sentiment in me agrees with you. Fuck 'em.
That said, as with anything, there will no doubt be consequences. It would all depend on exactly how we went about it and who we implicate.
If we did become a whistleblowing club then it would certainly make other clubs more wary of targeting our players in future. I must admit, up until now we have (from the outside looking in at least) come across as a bit of a soft touch and easy target when it comes to these issues. Hopefully making a stand will draw a line under that perception of us.
On the basis that we very rarely buy established players from the top six (Bertrand and Romeu aside. Maybe we should leave Chelsea out of this given that they have about 40 decent youngsters floating around Eurpoe on loan at present and we may end up picking out a gem from that lot) I don’t think that would hurt us too much in that regard.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not naive enough to think that we don’t make covert approaches to players without the consent of their club, however what I do know is that you VERY RARELY see tabloid stories about us and players kicking up a shit storm in order to force a move. Perhaps that is because we mainly deal with foreign clubs and it doesn’t get reported in our media? I don’t know.
Look at how under the radar the Charlie Austin signing was. Literally the first I had heard about it was when Sky sources reported it as a done deal, about an hour before the official site announced it. Shane Long was similar. That shows that we go about it a little more respectfully than the the likes of Liverpool and Tottenham who use the media as a weapon.
I really despise the blatant way in which the ‘top clubs’ use the media to turn players heads and deliberately unsettle them. If I had a quid for everytime I read a story about one of our players being targeted by a club who we JUST SO HAPPEN to be playing that next weekend. We had it during our League Cup run and games against the scousers and Mancs. It is just a deliberate attempt to distract and gain psychological advantage. I find it all tedious and a little boring.
Koeman was the last hope I had for nice and honourable men in football. After his conduct and record of always honouring contracts was broken, so was my faith in (footballing) humanity. To see how blatantly and easily corruptable he was just spoke volumes.
VVD has always come across well and a pretty chilled guy. As does Ryan Bertrand who also speaks a good game about being on the wrong side of being on the books of a top club. But if the rumours are true, he is angling for a move and City are his likely destination. The same Manchester City who have a long history a roadblocking English players careers (Delph, Sinclair etc).
Of course that is speculation but at the end of the day… we have been here before.
This “putting our own house in order” before launching into a campaign to clean up the transfer system is a big concern but if we’ve thought of that, you can be sure the club has too.
Unless the board thought we were pretty well bomb-proof I don’t think we’d have embarked on this move. If it is going to be taken up by the Premier League/FA there’s going to be a lot of shit flying around and a lot of clubs will be nervously looking over their shoulders this morning.
Only if we’re confident that our own house is in order. As has been said plenty of times, everyone does it and if we decide to take the moral high ground and persue this, it’ll open ourselves up for scrutiny. So we better be sure we don’t have any skeletons of our own, waiting to bite us in the arse.
Personally I think pushing the FA to take action, whilst it would be satisfying, wouldn’t really achieve much. A million pound fine (peanuts) and a transfer embargo (suspended) if they’re found guilty, I expect. It wouldn’t really change the way they go about things, it would just make them sneakier.
We’ve made our stand and we won. We’ve come out of it a bit more repected and looking pretty cool. So I’d leave it at that and enjoy the smugness.
Mmm well sort of … they’ve apologised for any ‘misunderstanding’ which doesn’t quite go as far as admitting guilt in legal terms but I know what you mean. You’re right they should be sanctioned, as anyone should be, I just think it should be the FA taking this on not us.
We’ve got enough on our plate at the moment, without leading crusades on behalf of the little man, when our battle has been won already.
Just my opinion … but I’m not really confrontational by nature anyway
Agree entirely. We should stick with our complaint to the PL, regardless of LFC’s apology. At which point it’ll be down to them to deal with it. This doesn’t constitute a crusade to clean up the transfer system, but if LFC do get shat on by the PL (which they very clearly should do) then it will certainly have a knock-on effect.
I very much doubt that we’d have anything to worry about if there were to be a wider-ranging enquiry. Any rumours about our potential incoming transfers seem to be either pure speculation or to have come from agents etc. We’ve only once in recent years taken on a manager from another club, and that was in League One days.
The Liverpool Echo up here on Merseyside makes for great reading today. They lead on this story with the banner headline,“A complete and utter shambles”. Pages of comments, some of them hysterical, from disgruntled Red Shite fans. All of them blaming everyone but Klippety Klopp, they are in complete denial. But Klippety was the one doing the tapping up. VVD was flown to Blackpool on a private plane where he met Klopp in secret. I understand journalists have evidence of this. But they can’t bring themselved to admit that Klopp is the guilty party, most of them are blaming everyone else but him. The most hysterical post was from someone who pointed out that Liverpool’s new sporting director was born in Southampton, and that is proof he is secretly working for The Saints to undermine Liverpool! As i said, hysterical. More than a few are actually blaming Southampton FC, saying it is all their fault, Liverpool are the victims here!
The fact of the matter is that Liverpool are clearly in breech of the rules, caught bang to rights. Of course this should be pursued, otherwise what is the point in having rules? If liverpool apologizing means it is the end of the matter what sort of precedent does that set? Any club can do it providing they apologise afterwards? An absolute nonsense. The scousers are all terrified of receiving a ban on transfers, after all theyare currently serving a youth ban after tapping up a lad at Stoke. Some reports too of other Premiership clubs coming out in support of Southampton, which could force the issue. If it were up to me i would hit them with a hard sanction, if only to set an example and make other so called ‘big clubs’, who lets face it, seem to think they are set apart from the rest of us, think twice before doing it. No point in a fine, meaningless unless they make it 50 million or so, transfer ban at the minimum, 12 point deduction from the start of the season! Harsh, but i bet that would stop it overnight!
Yeah I don’t see it as incumbent on ourselves to persure this…just not to let them off the hook on the receipt of an apology. This isn’t for us to decide the outcome…we’re not the “policeman”
I do wonder if behind the scenes we have ‘settled out of court’ as it were. Have we said to Liverpool to fuck off and leave us and our players alone for a fixed period of time, otherwise we will pursue the complaint and screw them?
I doubt it but I would like to think this could be an option. Time will tell I guess.
