05 May 2025 16:27:37
I remember watching an episode of the Overlap near the beginning of the season which had Scholes on it. They were discussing Trent being taken off and his reaction. Scholes said if you look at how the manager was reacting on the sidelines during the game I don't think he fancies him you know. Perhaps Slot wanted someone new anyway and it will be interesting who we go for in the summer.
05 May 2025 17:41:59
Not sure about not fancying him. Even Trent himself has said that Slot has worked with him on his game this season. He was having a stinker of a first half with his passing at OT if I recall. Was much better second half.
I suspect Slot is pretty dispassionate about it. It's an opportunity to reconfigure the team structure a bit.
05 May 2025 18:02:28
What the world and its sister knew would happen, has happened. LFC have had a year to plan for this, good luck to him, my only gripe is that there is no fee. But you only have to luck at the way City have discarded KDB, possibly their greatest ever player at the end of his contract, to know that football is hard nosed business. TAA has left at the end of his contract, he didn’t push to leave while contracted, fair does to him.
But, I am not totally confident he will be the success he hopes at RM. They are a fickle club, with fickle fans who can turn on their team if they lose.
As for LFC, hopefully the loss of TAA’s offensive input can be offset by a new creative midfielder. We can already see that the team has shifted from the 3 work horse midfield of 2019 to a more creative one in 2024. A few upgrades in the summer, Bradley to remain injury free, and a win against RM with Cody scoring a hatrick from the left wing, all will be forgiven and forgotten.
05 May 2025 18:12:27
LFC have emphatically told him his true worth by preferring to re-sign a soon to be 34 year old VVD (08 July) and a soon to be 33 year old MO (15 June) .
Fancy supposing to be a 26 year old in the prime of your career and LFC have re-signed two near mid thirty year olds instead, take the hint Trent.
05 May 2025 18:22:13
I very much doubt there was any reluctance on LFCs part to give TAA a new contract. I’ve read that the churn behind the scene meant that contract negotiations lost their impetus, but it is fair to assume that when Edwards/ Ward/ Hughes were appointed, their focus must have been on TAA.
I’ve been an LFC fan since the early 70s, this is no where near as significant as Keegan, Souness, Dalglish (retiring), Rush, McManamen, Owen, Torres (I know he was in decline), Suarez, Coutinho etc leaving.
05 May 2025 18:32:31
Personally don’t think we’ll bring a replacement in, Bradley gets the role with Gomez and Quansah as back up, it’ll be a minimalist summer with striker and maybe a left back at most, wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t bring a left back and Beck is given a chance with Robertson as back up in fairness to Beck he’s been pretty decent at Blackburn.
05 May 2025 18:33:44
I hope they sign a player to compete with Bradley rather than sign a sure thing starter. I see Bradley doing great things in the future, he has all the attributes to be an outstanding player. It would be a shame to slap him down and consign him to the bench. I hope the club give him competition, but i also hope that he gets the opportunity to nail the position down as his own.
05 May 2025 18:39:16
007 what on earth are you talking about? Liverpool clearly tried to get Trent to sign a new contract but unlike Mo and Virgil he wasn’t interested. Some reports say we offered more money than he will get at Madrid but again not enough as “it is my dream to play for Real Madrid” he says. Mo and VVD always indicated they’re wanting to stay but it seems Trent made his mind up last summer and no matter what we offered it would make no difference. LFC didn’t leave Trent until after the others it’s easier to sort out a contract if the player is interested in signing it.
05 May 2025 18:49:23
007. I think you know neither deal had anything to do with trent’s deal. He decided what he decided- i’m not thrilled and for the reasons we say- it might not be the best deal for him- but it had nothing to do with what else was happening.
05 May 2025 18:55:17
007
We started negotiating in April 24
He is vice Captain and third highest paid. That’s not enough.
You’ve no clue what he was offered and when.
As much as you want to have a moan, he wanted to go to Madrid.
There is bugger all a club can do if a player runs a contract down.
05 May 2025 19:13:58
It really seems fanciful to me that in an organisation valued in the billions, nobody took control of Trent's contract situation early. I know there were changes at high level in the club, but could no one above that level say "oh hang on here, we need to get this sorted. " rather than seemingly just shrugging their shoulders and leaving it to the role that was nominally responsible? Even though there either wasn't someone in that role, or the person who was in it was on a short contract and not in a position to deal with it? Am I mad to think that? It feels like there was a certain element of complacency. "Ah sure, Trent is a local lad, we don't need to make him feel wanted. He won't leave on a free. "
Now maybe it wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference, but at least we could've said "well we did our best and he couldn't be persuaded. " rather than leaving it until only about 15 months until his deal was up to open negotiations.
Nonetheless, all that said, Liverpool FC is bigger than Trent Alexander-Arnold. We will continue on just fine without him. I hope he enjoys playing for a soulless husk of a football club.
05 May 2025 19:47:55
Did he actually say he'd rather win the Balon D'Or than another League Title or was that a poster on here making that up?
05 May 2025 20:39:03
I don't understand this need to blame someone and I don't understand this obsession with how much we're getting paid when a talent like Trent leaves. Would you be happy if he left for 20 mill in January or 80 mill at beginning of the season? would you feel less betrayed? No matter when and how the contract was offered to him, the reality is he didn't want it, and he wants to go Madrid. It's as simple as that for me, no subliminal context behind it. Will I hang his jersey on my wall after he left? No, Will I like it if he is booed when he gets to play at Anfield for RM? NO, Will I remember his quick cross to Origi for a long time? yes that poster stays on my wall.
hope they get another right back and not just leave it for Connor to replace Trent. And hopefully someone like Frimpong, who can also be used as a cover for Salah.
05 May 2025 20:41:06
As Ed02 would remind us if he were here to type it would be that Trent is a transient employee. We’ve lost better players and come back stronger. I’m sure we will again. Keep the faith. We only want players who want to play for the club. YNWA.
05 May 2025 21:37:57
Let’s be honest. Trent is a great passer of the ball but a complete liability in defence. He will get hammered by the RM fans once he has to defend. I wish him well but I don’t think it will go well for him.
05 May 2025 22:09:54
@MickLiver, does it really need to be explained to you why a player of TAAs calibre, and market value, leaving for nothing might be an issue for the club and fans?
Suffice to say, £80m is better than zero in any man’s money.
By the way, I don’t feel betrayed in any sense of the word, he played a significant part in this season’s title win, so he goes out on the ultimate high for me as I think the Premiership trumps the champions league every time.
05 May 2025 22:48:25
McGoveb
It was a piece with Harriet Pryor.
He had to select one of four options: win the World Cup, win the Champions League with Liverpool, be Liverpools captain, win the Balon D’Or
He chose the Balon D’Or- no hesitation. Said he’d already been Liverpool captain.
As to the, “no one spoke to Trent, isn’t that crazy”.
Yes it is, agents and clubs talk all the time. They’ll have been assured “ o rush, dead keen” - that’s how that works. Looking to blame someone is daft.
He wanted to go to Madrid. He went to Madrid. Carragher summed this up neatly tonight. You can’t force players to leave.
06 May 2025 05:42:55
@D-day the title is worth a lot more than £80m in mine. If Salah didn’t sign a contract, would you say we should have sold him for £150 mill to the saudis?
06 May 2025 07:35:46
I know people are upset we didn't get a fee for Trent but RM don't pay fees, they get players to run down their contract. This has no doubt been in Trents head since Bellingham went there.
06 May 2025 08:16:05
@D-day, how is the club not getting a transfer fee for anybody an issue for fans? Where you expecting some of the cash?
06 May 2025 08:28:55
No issue at all West,1st 11 players walkin out the door to direct rivals for nowt goes hand in hand with trying to build a trophy winning squad.
06 May 2025 08:31:23
Good luck to Trent, he has been fantastic for us, he helped re-invent the full-back role and always wore the red shirt with pride. He will be missed, but i also think he will miss LFC. YNWA.
06 May 2025 07:09:22
@MickLiver, you answered your own question there.
Salah and TAA are completely different cases, with different considerations. Without Salah there was no chance LFC are champions, could the same be said for TAA? Also there is the age of both players, if the Saudis come in again with 100m next summer, absolutely I would take it.
I don’t know about you, but I always got the sense it was only about the details with Mo and VVD, whereas I didn’t ever think TAA would re-sign. What do I base that on? Media articles and TV interviews.
06 May 2025 10:51:08
Yes West Derby Wanderer, the issue is that each fan expected a dividend from the club to be paid into their bank account when a player is sold, or, and maybe I’m taking a bit of a flier on this, the disappointment is due to the fact that any fee recieved for a valuable player could be used to buy other player (s), a case in point being the money from Coutinho being used with great effect.
06 May 2025 13:23:47
@Florian, would you accept the argument that someone who doesn’t want to be here anymore, for whatever reason, would be better off leaving and being replaced by someone who wants to play for us?
@D-day, of the three players who were heading for the end of their contracts, the two we have retained were the two most important - the club captain, who holds the defence together and is arguably the best player in his position in world football and the attacker who breaks records for fun and who seemingly cannot be replaced - like for like - by anybody in world football.
Whilst nobody is irreplaceable, the two we have retained come close. Trent is very, very good but from a playing perspective isn’t as big a loss as either of the other two.
Whilst finance is just too hard for us mere mortals - unless you are chief accountant for a multi-billion global enterprise by any chance? - it is probably a bit more than mere coincidence that we were able to stump up additional cash for VVD and Mo’s contracts when Trent informed the club that he didn’t want to renew his contract.
If that is the case you could argue that a very good player leaving allowed us to keep two world class players. I don’t, for a moment, think it is that simple but I do think that all things are connected, even if we can’t see all the connections all of the time.
If you continue on the line of thought though (and as Slot alluded to in a recent pre-match presser), by keeping VVD and Mo we can focus on spending on improvements for the squad, rather than needing to spend what money we have on replacements for the two who, in reality, can’t be replaced like for like.
So if you follow the line of reasoning and start with Trent leaving, we retained two world class players and we have the cash to improve the squad. I could argue that we should be thanking Trent for setting the chain of events in motion.
Again, Liverpool is just one of the assets in the FSG business portfolio and it is exceptionally naive, given the size of the organisation and the amount of business transactions executed in a financial year, to think the simplistic logic above is accurate but I do think that there is a grain of truth in there. You also need to factor in a lot of other variables - did the club know that Trent was leaving last year? If they did I’m sure they adjusted their short term financial planning accordingly. Did the club expect the club to make as much money from the CL as we did? If not they will have recouped the projected shortfall on Trent not bringing in a transfer fee with the CL qualifying rounds’ revenue streams.
Finally, of course, Trent fulfilled his contractual obligations and played his part in ensuring we regained our spot on our perch. He hasn’t done anything wrong and has done a lot of good for the club for a number of years. Time to put a pair of big lad’s trousers on and accept, like the man said, ‘It ain’t personal, it’s just business’.
06 May 2025 07:09:22
@MickLiver, you answered your own question there.
Salah and TAA are completely different cases, with different considerations. Without Salah there was no chance LFC are champions, could the same be said for TAA? Also there is the age of both players, if the Saudis come in again with 100m next summer, absolutely I would take it.
I don’t know about you, but I always got the sense it was only about the details with Mo and VVD, whereas I didn’t ever think TAA would re-sign. What do I base that on? Media articles and TV interviews.