Oh No, No Zubimendi! Liverpool Will Get Relegated!

Liverpool's exceptional squad don't exist; only new signings count

Martin Zubimendi is a fine player, albeit a slightly late bloomer (Ryan Gravenberch is not as canny, yet, but has a far higher ceiling, in time; while Stefan Bajcetic is miles ahead of where Zubimendi was at 19).

But the best players want to play for your club; and as much as Zubimendi said to Liverpool that he wanted to play for Liverpool (hence the weeks of work on the deal), he changed his mind.

Arsenal found something similar earlier in the summer (and in that case, he just ghosted them, which is remarkable), and it’s a strange dynamic with this player and this club, but this time he seemed really ready to move, courtesy of shared agents and lines of communication.

Until he wasn’t.

That’s his prerogative, but Liverpool can find other players, and improve what they have; Zubimendi remains stuck at a middling club in a league that’s quite dull these days. Again, if that’s where his heart is, that’s fine.

But it would have been worse to sign him, and him then have regrets, as possibly the most indecisive footballer I’ve ever encountered (off the pitch, at least).

This is a unique summer at Liverpool, with lots to assess. New manager. New coaching staff. New director of football. New club structure. Y’know, minor things like that.

Only Chelsea also have a new manager out of the Big Six, and I saw that they’ve made more permanent signings in two years than Liverpool have made since before Jürgen Klopp’s first, in Marko Grujić. They’ve also had as many managers in two years than Liverpool have had in 20.

How have those different approaches worked out, guys, especially in the last 5-6 years?

You can guarantee one thing: Chelsea – like Everton a few years ago – will win the transfer windows, and yet still none of the shit-for-brains on Twitter/X realise football is not just about winning the transfer window (albeit it might be, if you spend all your time online and your identity is wrapped up in winning the bantz, which correlates with severe personality disorders, and why so many people on those platforms get increasingly unhinged and radicalised on any subject).

How do Chelsea treat their homegrown players? “Trevoh Chalobah, who has been barred from their first-team facilities” read one article this week. Nice.

“Piss off to Spain!” seemed to be the message to their player of the year, Conor Gallagher, who seemed one of the few to care. Some may see this as an ambitious club; to me, it’s a soul-sucking game of big-dick swinging and cheque-signing, albeit a lot of it on the never-never. It can’t foster good team spirit, just a mercenary outlook. But the transfer windows must be fun, right?

Normally you want to get players in early, but at Liverpool there was an absolutely massive overhaul of management, coaching and backroom staff this summer, during a bloated Euros and yet another Copa (then the Olympics). There’s never been a summer like it.

And as I noted the other day in the site’s comments, it’s better to the right players a few weeks later than is ideal, rather than the wrong players a couple of months early.

Going back almost 20 years, Liverpool have a superb transfer record in January*, and have pulled some rabbits out of the hat late in both the summer and winter windows.

(* Daniel Agger, Javier Mascherano, Martin Skrtel, Luis Suarez, Daniel Sturridge, Philippe Coutinho, Virgil van Dijk, Luis Díaz, Cody Gakpo, et al; all probably able to succeed as it was not a mass influx, but mostly just one player at a time, to improve the team without destabilising anything.)

Recent late-summer signings include Diogo Jota, Thiago, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Gravenberch, as well as a £111m bid for Moises Caicedo that would have worked but for his preference for an eternal contract at Chelsea (where he went and duly stunk the place out).

The only transfer that has baffled me was the Romeo Lavia affair, overseen by people no longer at the club. The lowball bids seemed a waste of time.

And Liverpool’s best season, 2019/20, saw the title won via a phenomenal first 30 games with no proper summer signings; racing away with the league with the improvements within the existing squad, and the cohesion built up over time.

While winning preseason games against big clubs is not a reason to have bus parades, it seems lost on the lunatic fringe that the football was extremely good, because the transfer window, up to now, has been “lost”. For these nutters, winning the window is all that counts.

Yet Arne Slot may be unique in how he and his staff improve players. Their detailed approach is like nothing I’ve seen before.

And Liverpool have about 30 strong players to work with, and will still, I believe, go for a target like Anthony Gordon, who desperately wants to play for Liverpool.

(But again, Newcastle will have to want to sell; but the more they spend on others, such as may be the case with Marc Guéhi, the more likely they will be to sell Gordon to balance the books – it just may come down to some last minute brinkmanship.)

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