14 Jul 2024 22:51:44
There is talk niko Williams is being courted by ourselves, if Hughes pulls that one off he is a miracle worker.
14 Jul 2024 23:28:57
The one from Notts Forest?
Well, as Sir Gareth will tell you: you can't have too many right backs.
14 Jul 2024 23:36:01
Not going to happen. Apparently he only wants to go Barca.
14 Jul 2024 23:53:35
Being so certain over an ‘apparently’ ??♂️.
14 Jul 2024 23:58:45
But Barcelona have no money.
We might end up with both N Williams and we are in need of another right back and another left winger.
We should sign Venus, Serena and Robbie while we're at it.
15 Jul 2024 00:01:30
Very dangerous player. 100% Think Barcelona would prefer this kid than Diaz and if so, I reckon he’ll stay with us.
15 Jul 2024 00:39:53
Great post Rigsby, I still live in hope, us Williams are a formidable clan ?.
15 Jul 2024 03:05:42
I think his wage demands might be a bit too rich for us to consider him personally, even if he doesn't end up at Barca. High fee and high wages don't make for a very attractive package. To be fair though, he's outperformed all expectations at the Euros, that performance will probably bump the fee up even more. He does seem to want to go to Barcelona and Laporta talks about him openly to the press, so.
15 Jul 2024 05:48:29
We won’t be singing another attacker before we offload Diaz. I won’t be surprised if Diaz is still here after the window.
15 Jul 2024 08:08:05
Well Thunderbird, you can be guaranteed that he won’t be playing for us next season, or the season after that or in fact ever. Just like Bellingham, Tchouameni, et al.
Javier Tebas is on record as saying Barcelona can afford to sign him within Spanish fair play regulations, so I’d say that’s him sorted.
15 Jul 2024 08:53:15
Well Victor, Bellingham was very much interested to play for us. We did not had the money to bring him in. That’s not the case with Williams or Touchemani. You are right he won’t play for us.
15 Jul 2024 08:59:48
In the grand scheme of Elite football and the table the club sit at i don't think Williams fee is that high.
I believe he would cost less than what we paid for Alison, Nunez, Kieta, Szob, VVD and Diaz as its being reported its 49 mill.
If Williams is after 200k a week then that's roughly 10 mill a year so couldn't the club off set that with a bigish signing on fee for him to keep his wages down.
Williams at 49 mill and 50 mill (bare in mind some were happy to buy Gordon for 70 with no wages) wages over 5 years is a gamble but its around 20 mill a season an the likelihood is you're buying world class that could demand a far higher fee to sell in the future than it is to buy.
So even just having him for 4 years you're going to have a world class player that you could sell at possibly a higher amount than what you paid.
If Diaz goes for 60 Mill then Williams comes in for exact same fee or less.
15 Jul 2024 10:04:33
JK23, I read on here from Ed002 that Williams wants 350k Euro a week plus a significant signing on fee. So 200k with potential to negotiate that down with a signing on fee is way wide of the mark if Ed's sources are accurate.
With that in mind (and also his rumoured desire to play for Barcelona one day) I just don't think it's sensible. We'd smash up our wage structure if we signed him in my opinion. Which might be worth it if we'd get 8-10 years of world class performances out of him but odds are Barcelona will come calling once their financial issues are under control and then we'd have another Suarez/ Mascherano/ Countinho/ Reina situation where someone at the club is forcing their way out to get a move to Barcelona. Then what are we left with? Probably a good profit on the 50m euro we'd pay for him sure, but also probably a inflated salary budget because it drove up the wages of everyone in the squad when it came to contract negotiations.
We just don't give that kind of money to young players who still have 3 or 4 contract renewals to go in their career. United, Barcelona, City and Madrid might be able to afford that through whatever means they're using (selling off future earnings, selling lots of CR7 pencil cases, inflating sponsorship deals etc) . However we're just not a club that pays those sorts of salaries.
Williams is 22 years old and has and scored 11 goals in 103 La Liga games, so it's not even really up for debate, he quite simply hasn't done anything in his career yet to justify 350k a week. The 50m euro transfer fee is for his potential so that is fine, but the wages should reflect what he offers in the here and now. Therefore I'd much rather sign Gordon who is himself only 23, will have significantly lower salary expectations, most likely won't swan off to Barcelona in a few years given he's a Liverpool fan, counts towards the HG quota (hence the extra 20m on his price tag) and has a slightly better record of 19 goals in 116 Premier League games despite half of them games being for relegation fodder.
Williams therefore, makes very little sense financially or from a squad harmony perspective. At least not to me, but everyone is entitled to their view and transfer debate is all based on hypotheticals and assumptions anyway so nobody has the authority to claim dominion over what is right or wrong in such a subjective debate. I'd just prefer Gordon.
15 Jul 2024 10:23:18
MK i hadn't seen ED002's comment on that mate so i was just plucking numbers out of the air. I'll be truthful that was the first time last night that i have seen Spain and therefor Williams in the tournament.
I've not even looked at his stats so that's quite surprising they are that low. I've clearly got match of the day fever which is similar to Youtube fever except you only watch the game once.
15 Jul 2024 10:33:32
In my opinion at isn’t such a big deal that a player wants to go to real or Barcelona at some point in their career. It turned out fine for Manchester United with Cristiano Ronaldo and for us with coutinho. Also apparently Salah wanted to go to real ever since he got to Liverpool and he’s still with us. As for the qualities of Nico Williams, I have no idea, I haven’t watched any games of him before these euros and international football is a lousy way to judge a player.
15 Jul 2024 11:38:31
Cracking young player but very raw - young, so to be expected lads to be honest
Looks very dangerous on the left wing and always seems to be one of the players likely to make something happen for a very good Spain side - definitely a good player as it is and one with cracking potential too
That being said, the wages rumoured seem high - think that is due to the club policy though of attracting Spanish and Basque only players perhaps so maybe just pay them well?
Talk is though he only wants Barcelona, but then the talk was Bellingham wanted us so who knows - who knows if Barcelona can actually afford him either.
Saw links between us and Kravadona over the weekend too so shaping up to be the usual summer lol.
15 Jul 2024 12:39:17
JK23, I'm similar to you mate. I'd never seen him play before these Euro's and I've only watched him 3 times in the this tournament as well.
When I was looking at his record, I also noticed that he has never scored or assisted a goal in a La Liga game against Madrid or Barcelona in his 3 seasons so far. Not to mention that 9 of his 19 La Liga assists in the last 3 seasons came in games where his team scored 4 goals against cannon fodder. So is he a flat track bully? I'd need to watch him at club level to put some context to his goal/ assist record before I could make an informed decision. On the face of it, he doesn't jump out as a significantly better player than Gordon but he still has 11 goals and 19 assists in a strong league by 22 years old.
Gordon scored 7 of his 11 goals last season against Liverpool, Arsenal, Man City, Man United x2, Chelsea and Spurs. However, 8 of his 10 assists last season came in games where Newcastle scored 4+ goals. So although you can make a case that he is a big game player in terms of his goals, he does also love racking up the assists in games where Newcastle are running riot.
I don't think there is a right or wrong answer mate so I wouldn't be harsh on yourself with the "MOTD fever" stuff, as he did have a very good game and the way some people have been talking about him you would be forgiven for thinking he scored 30 goals last season! Williams and Gordon are probably at a very similar level and one is a higher cost up front with his fee and the other is a higher cost long term with his wages. So I'd pick Gordon off the back of him wanting to play for us and also being less of an issue to renewing the contracts of others in future.
15 Jul 2024 13:24:16
MK cheers for the insight and very interesting read.
I quite like Gordon and only used him as an example as the outlay fee would be significant and then throw in his wages.
I agree that when looking at all the factors the fact Williams wants to go to Barcelona and Gordon wants to come to us is huge, plus one is premier league proven.
Gordon can play across the 3 so in a dream scenario we would bring both in buts its probably more likely that we will bring in neither over the likelihood of 1.
15 Jul 2024 17:57:31
It was Ed001 that mentioned his wages and he is already on 350k a week as Bilbao pay high wages to their better players as they don't spend money on transfers like other clubs.
If he doesn't want to accept a pay cut then he won't be playing for Liverpool regardless of Barca’s financials.
15 Jul 2024 19:54:58
Forget the 350K he is asking for, I'd question the sanity of any team ready to pay him even the 200K per week at the age of 21 for a record of only 20 goals in 130 senior club games and 7 goals in 29 games for Spain.
Don't get me wrong. He's wonderful to watch. Fast, tricky, a dribbler and exciting like we all like young footballers to be. But a goal every 6 games for those kind of wages? Pay him more than Gakpo and Diaz? What for? (For reference, Endrick the Brazilian wonderkid joining Real Madrid, is slated to be on 40K per week and Lamine Yamal of Barcelona is on 100K per week) .
16 Jul 2024 05:51:02
Williams according to the internet is on 170k a week currently.