The OFFICIAL Liverpool Supporters thread

[Dinny Breen]

I doubt if Liverpool lost any money on Robbie other than his wages below is an article on the Defoe transfer which gives you an insight into how these things work...

Paper trail leads back to the Lane
Ciaran Cronin
Jermain Defoe's return to Tottenham Hotspur, where just £3m switched hands, highlights the increasing complexity of modern-day transfers
Willing Defoe: the striker is back with Spurs after a one-year sojourn with Portsmouth

When Jermaine Defoe walked out on the White Hart Lane pitch on Tuesday night and gave a little wave before Tottenham's Carling Cup semi-final against Burnley, the striker not only proved in wearing a Dickensian winter outfit that money cannot buy taste, the story behind his return to north London also established that modern football's transfer market is an increasingly complicated place. An oversimplified picture – put in a bid, get the selling club to accept, agree terms with the player and then get him to pass a routine medical – is often painted as the normal sequence of events in the transfer of a player from one club to another but the details of Defoe's move back to Tottenham reveals a market where motives are less straightforward.

When Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy sat down with Portsmouth chief executive Peter Storrie to work out a deal, the pair had a number of issues to consider on account of the widespread practice of clubs paying for players in instalments. Portsmouth agreed a fee of £9m with Tottenham for Defoe last January, with half the amount being paid up front and half due this month. Therefore, Levy was straight away able to knock £4.5m off his cash outlay and then the pair would have spoken about the money due to Tottenham in the next 12 months from Portsmouth in the form of instalment payments for Younes Kaboul and Pedro Mendes.

That, along with the Defoe money, meant Tottenham were due about £9m from Portsmouth but there was one further complication before a deal could be struck. Tottenham had inserted a sell-on clause in the sale of Defoe's contract which entitled them to a reported 20 per cent of his sell-on value, also deducted from Tottenham's final bill. A fee of around £15m was agreed upon which meant, all told, Levy only paid about £3m for Defoe.

"Instalments are the only way in which most clubs can buy a player over the price of £5m," says one football agent, "and Portsmouth have done this for most of the guys they've got in over the past few years. In this case, I would suggest that the transfer would not have gone ahead had Portsmouth not been due to pay Tottenham so much money in the next few months. If you think about the situation rationally, with Portsmouth short on cash and them owing Tottenham so much, Harry Redknapp really had the pick of Portsmouth's players in this transfer window."

One trend to look out for, then, is that if you sell a player to another club and accept payment in instalments, the chances of you buying one of their players before the second instalment is due are quite high. "The sales of Robbie Keane and Dimitar Berbatov this summer will mean that it is highly likely that Spurs will get who they want, within reason, from Liverpool or United over the next one or two years," says the agent. "The finance men at clubs love writing off money that might be due in the future and in most cases, the buying club are willing to write off more than a player might be worth in order to ensure the deal goes through."

Another point to consider is that by buying players in instalments rather than buying them outright, clubs are really participating in a kind of calculated gambling. Think about it. When Portsmouth bought Defoe, they only handed over £4.5m to Tottenham. By having the player on their books, they gambled that they would earn enough success to pay the other half of the deal the following year. In this case their gamble pays off, Portsmouth enjoyed a degree of success while the player's value increased. However, if Portsmouth had flopped last season and Defoe played poorly, they would have been stuck with a £4.5m bill to Tottenham for a player who might be worth just half that. It's exactly what happened to Leeds.

There are other factors to consider, too, in the world of footballing hire-purchase. Tottenham, who are the best example of a lot of what is going on because of their recent frenetic transfer activity, are believed to have struck deals for Luka Modric and Roman Pavlyuchenko this summer in Euro and agreed to pay in instalments.

Now, with the British pound having fallen in value against the Euro, the club find that the second instalments they pay for the players will be significantly higher than what they would have expected. So where the fees for the Croatian and Russian were agreed at £15.8m and £14m respectively in the summer, the pair will end up costing a couple of million pounds more by the final instalment. Manchester City, on the other hand, won't be caught in such a pickle by the signing of Robinho as the club's Arab owners paid the entire £32.5m up front to Real Madrid.

Sometimes, in this complex world, paying more can actually work out as less.

[Goats Do Shave]

The fee paid for Keane by Spurs is less than £10 million. Apparently Spus would have to announce any fee's over that margin to the stock exchange!

[corn02]

The fee paid for Keane by Spurs is less than £10 million. Apparently Spus would have to announce any fee's over that margin to the stock exchange!

That is worng. It was £12 million initially, that has been reported widely.

[Hound]

Will his loan spell be cut short......
Is he on his way back .....

[isourboydownyet]

i wouldnt joke about it

[isourboydownyet]

Outspoken Voronin targets Liverpool return as he's too big for Berlin
By WILLIAM STEWART

Ukranian striker Andriy Voronin has revealed he dreams of returning to Liverpool after being farmed out on loan to German side Hertha Berlin.
The outspoken striker, who earlier this year launched an attack on Britain and Liverpool, claims being a big star in Berlin is not enough and he wants to link up with Steven Gerrard again at Anfield.
He told Pro Sport magazine in Russia: 'It's an absolutely different level of football.
'I'm a leader at Hertha and feel their fans love me but I would like to be a leader in a team which is always fighting to win the Premier League, the Champions League and which have such people playing for them as Steven Gerrard who is a symbol of the city like the Beatles.
'I see no sense in staying in Berlin saying to myself: 'OK, everyone loves me here, why do I need to play for Livepool?'   
'I'd really like a new start there. I have a contract with them for two more years. When I joined Liverpool I knew I could play at such a high level and think I proved it. The rotation of the squad by Benitez really enraged me, but he told me from the start about that and I should have been prepared for it.'
Voronin's claims, after several months at Hertha on loan, are in stark contrast to comments he made in April, when he savaged Liverpool and life in Britain.
Back then he condemned the UK as a cultural backwater with poor health care and high crime rate.
Although his 24-year-old wife Yulia was named the worst-dressed soccer WAG after wearing a leopard-print velour tracksuit, he said Britain was far less sophisticated than Germany.

Voronin, who moved to Liverpool from Bayer Leverkusen in Germany at the beginning of the season, said: 'Compared with Germany, England is far behind in terms of comfort and culture.
'Five out of the seven houses near us are occupied by footballers.
'Steve Gerrard was burgled recently so a police patrol car comes into our compound fairly often. We hear police sirens all the time. Leverkusen, by contrast, was so much quieter.'
He continued: 'The medical services here are poor. When I was in Germany, there were lots of good clinics and doctors.
'It is nothing like that here - when our child had a skin allergy we waited hours for the doctor to see him. When we finally got to see a doctor, he said he didn't know how to treat children and told us to try rubbing in this ointment.
'That was it. I was stunned. As a result my wife had to go back to Odessa with him and took a full set of tests there.'
He added: 'English isn't the main problem. The main thing is to learn to understand the local players like Gerrard and Carragher.
'They speak with some peculiar local accent and sometimes I have absolutely no clue what the guys are saying. Many foreign players have the same problem.'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1083332/Outspoken-Voronin-targets-Liverpool-return-hes-big-Berlin.html

[Goats Do Shave]

The fee paid for Keane by Spurs is less than £10 million. Apparently Spus would have to announce any fee's over that margin to the stock exchange!

That is worng. It was £12 million initially, that has been reported widely.

Why is it wrong? - The press claim that The transfer 6 months ago was £20.3 million - was it not?

Is it inconceivable that part of this tranfsfer is also based on add ons also?

[anportmorforjfc]

Are you Liverpool fans glad he is gone?

[Minder]

Are you Liverpool fans glad he is gone?

I would have preffered a replacement in case Torres hamstring goes again. In fairness he was pretty p*sh in his time at Anfield.

[brokencrossbar1]

To call a spade a spade, he was a failure.  Maybe he didn't get the opportunities he would have liked, but he played a lot of game time.  Some of his misses were inconceivable they were so bad.  People point to him being dropped after scoring a few goals on the trot, but before that he had missed double the amount he had scored.  I would have liked to have seen him succeed but for a variety of reasons he didn't, book closed, move on.  A replacement should have been bought but wasn't so it is time to make do with what there is there.  Can they win the League, doubtful but I don't think that Keane or any replacement would be the difference in winning or losing it.

[isourboydownyet]

is it a definate that nobody is coming in?report saying deals could still be done if a player has to come from overseas due to the travel delays due to the weather

[nrico2006]

As I said yesterday its shocking that Benitez has sold Keane without getting a replacement, does he not want to challenge for the league?

[gawa316]

Can't believe I'm even writing this but can vorinin be recalled from his loan? I would have more faith in him than Ngog

[Hound]

Can't believe I'm even writing this but can vorinin be recalled from his loan? I would have more faith in him than Ngog

There isn't any question but he's a better player than Ngog, although he's not an out and out striker.

Many loan deals have clauses wherby the player can be recalled, but whether they bothered putting one into Voronin's contract is anyone's guess. Anyway my hunch is Rafa wouldnt want him, even if Torres did pick up an injury.

[brokencrossbar1]

Lads, pray that Torres stays fit, he should be fresh if he doesn't get injured as he has played feck all.  Gerard has a drive which you rarely see in soccer players. 

Let's look to the future, do we want a win against the Bitters or would going out of the up free up time for a serious challenge in the run in for the Premier?