BobbyD wrote:
Barca are redefining 'trouble', as it stands their squad already took a significant pay decrease last year, they've signed Kun and Depay, but can't register them, and for every euro they save off the wage bill they are allowed to reinvest 25 cents. Oh, and if you think Messi is upset apparently Aguero isn't too happy, and he's injured...
Mismanagement on an epic scale even Ed Woodward couldn't better, and De Gea's £375,000 a week contract still has 2 years to run!
Well as a Liverpool fan, Messi's impending move to PSG and back into an alliance with Neymar has a ring of circularity to it that echoes so sweetly into Liverpool's fantastic recent achievements, and is perhaps the end of a long-running tale that goes some way to explain many of the issues at the heart of Barcelona too...
As you'll know, it was Neymar's initial shock move to PSG from Barcelona in 2017 that forced the top Spanish club into a transfer market devoid of suitable replacements, and they eventually settled on prising Coutinho from Liverpool in an attempt to plug the huge Neymar-shaped hole in their squad, paying around 160 million Euros at the time for the want-away Liverpool player, with initial fees and follow-ons, and a rumoured weekly wage of around £250,000....
It was a drawn out and acrimonious split for Coutinho, but Liverpool went on to use that Barcelona money to break the world transfer records at that time for both a goalkeeper, in Alisson Becker, and again for a defender - Virgil van Dijk, and those two Countinho-funded signings absolutely transformed Liverpool from being a wanna-be challenger and into a world class team, with Liverpool winning the Champions League just one season after Barcelona bought Coutinho, and then also going on to win their first ever Premier League title just a season later....
After such an expensive signing for Barcelona, Countinho only actually made around 90 appearances for the Spanish club, often as a substitute, before being loaned out to Bayern Munich - he simply failed to deliver for a club who were so desperate to have him at such a huge cost, and one that he was so desperate to join...
So it's all a little bitter-sweet for me, when I see Barcelona struggling like this - they've over-extended themselves for many years, but if they hadn't in recent years, then the club I support would likely not have had much of the recent success that it has, and certainly wouldn't have such a brilliant defensive backbone, funded as it was by Barcelona's glorious final years of excess....
Cheers,
Itsallaguess