Paulo Bernardo

We could spend £40m and not touch the money in the bank or the Champions League cash. Just spend the money we receive.

 

O'Riley's replacement shouldn't be coming out of that budget; it should be coming from reinvesting part of the fee we get for O'Riley. Bernardo is not O'Riley's replacement.

I think you're reading too much into Iwata getting more game time towards the end. Some of that was due to McGregor's injury and there have been plenty of times Rodgers called on Bernardo too. Iwata and Bernardo are totally different players, so it's more a matter of what role Rodgers needs to fill than Iwata being somehow ahead of Bernardo. If McGregor is injured or Rodgers wants him further forward, Iwata can play that pivot role (IMO rather poorly) and Bernardo can't.

I also think you are being unfair in calling him ineffective. Being solid and safe in the CL and two asssists and a goal in the derbies that defined our season are quite a good return for someone who was 21 until January and is only 22 now. Iwata, on the other hand, is in his prime and I think he's been shocking.

 

O'Rileys replacement won't come out of that, though. For whatever reason, we don't work like that. I don't really want to go into the finances again but we could spend £40m this summer and not touch the money in the bank or the impending fortune we get from the Champions League. We simply won't do that, though.

With the sale of O'Riley, the Frimpong sell on and a clutch of other squad players that we could move on, you are talking £40m in sales ALONE. We don't do that, though so there's no point moaning about it. What we need to do is invest the budget we do have wisely. Everyone on here will be in an agreement that we should spend more money. The reality is, we won't.

I'm not comparing Iwata and Bernardo. I know they're different players. When Hatate came back, Bernardo was a bit part player and Iwata was the preferred person to bring on. We weren't changing tactics or our shape. We were pushing McGregor further forward and playing Iwata deeper, instead of bringing Bernardo on in the position. That speaks volumes for me. I like Bernardo, I've said this before that I think he's a tidy footballer who has some very good attributes but he has been largely ineffective this season. We can all see he has talent, we can all see he has a lot to his game. For the price of £6m, I'd be wanting to see more consistency and a bit more involvement. That may come with age, it may come with more maturity, more comfort with the style of play. Or, it might be he's just an inconsistent player. No one knows. What a club has to do is weigh up everything together, the price, the wages, the risk and reward. At £6m, it was too much of a risk for me, especially when Benfica were also going to profit nearly 30% of the his next sale price.

When you actually look at the whoscored form table, Bernardo is rated at 6.62. Which isn't great. Granted, that's just in the SPFL. You can't always go off stats, I get that but the simple fact is, loads of clubs do. Pretty sure Brighton work off loads of analytic form tables and they're one of the best recruiters in the world. Iwata, is on 6.52. Only 0.1 of a difference so you can see, you think Iwata was "shocking" but think Bernardo was worth every penny of £6m. They played a similar amount of games (Bernardo 27, Iwata 24), similar minutes(Bernardo 1450, Iwata 1200).... that doesn't add up for me.

I think when you take the initial price of £6m, I see players in and around Europe who would be similar ages, with far more experience/ability that you could pick up for around that fee so I'm against that because when you take the limited budget, the amount of first team players we need to sign urgently (GK, LB, CB, CM, ST) spending a very large sum of money and a large percentage of your budget on one area, for a player who started less than a 3rd of our overall games, I just think it was too much. Especially when the person playing in his position, Hatate, was out for large parts of the season. Remember, Turnbull was getting games before Bernardo in the league as well, before he left in January.

 

@Celtic_Daft1888: I actually think your point about Turnbull strengthens my point rather than weakens it. Given that we sold Turnbull and Rodgers seems to want Bernardo back, I'd say that shows exactly what I was saying about not reading too much into these things. The only thing I read into the experiment of pushing McGregor forward and playing Iwata in the pivot is that we were struggling for creativity and that McGregor is a better player than Bernardo (which we all knew); I don't think it tells us anything about the pecking order between Bernardo and Iwata.

I'll put my money where my mouth is and say that (barring an injury to McGregor), I don't think Iwata will play much next season.

Yes, I do think Iwata was shocking in spite of the similar scores, because he's in his prime. If Iwata was 21 at the start of the season like Bernardo, I'd be a lot less hard on him. I'd talk about how I like how tidy he is on the ball and how he has good passing and ball control but that he needs to improve his awareness and defending and massively improve his movement to create passing options for teammates. I would say, however, that he definitely had potential and that we should be looking to keep him and hope that Rodgers can develop him.

None of that actually applies to Iwata, though. He's in his prime and isn't likely to develop much. It does apply to Bernardo, though.

 

The point I was making with regards to Turnbull playing more than Bernardo wasn't anything other than me pointing out that there have been multiple players who have been played ahead of Bernardo all season. There are other factors with that, too. Turnbull had 6 months left on his contract and wasn't going to sign a new deal because he wanted to play more games and he knew he was going to be back on the bench as soon as Hatate was back fit. We had a very good offer on the table from Cardiff for £2m. In that sense, it was a no brainer to accept that deal. The issue was we didn't replace him and if we had, Bernardo would likely have had even less time.

Rodgers obviously doesn't think Bernardo is worth the £6m, either. He's actively trying to negotiate the fee down. I think Bernardo is a better player than Turnbull but there is no doubt that Turnbull was significantly more active in front of goal. He had the same amount of goal contributions as Bernardo for the season and he was sold in January. They played the same position.

Again, I'm not necessarily comparing Bernardo and Iwata/Turnbull. I think Bernardo is better than both of them. I'm simply saying I don't think he was worth the £6m outlay for a variety of different reasons and I would prefer we scouted properly to find a better player. I've highlighted the reasons before, so I won't go back into it. Iwata was £1.5m. He was literally a quarter of the initial fee and he was brought in to play a very limited defensive role at the base of midfield. All I'm saying is, we would be paying a £6m fee for someone who was a bit part player last season and if you are paying that sort of fee, he's coming in to play in the first team and it's likely to be in O'Rileys place. That makes us weaker in midfield.

I see Bernardo as a squad player, not as a first team regular. That may develop, as has been pointed out on here. He's still young enough to progress but I don't think he's that young where his progression is going to be off the charts. I might be wrong, he might be a late bloomer but I've always erred on the side of caution when it comes to signing players based on their potential and especially at £6m. Given what he produced for us and the money we have spent on certain players, he's not worth £6m on his performances alone. We are paying for what may come in the future.

 

My point about Turnbull was that it's another instance of why you shouldn't read too much into these things unless they are direct equivalents. Bernardo and Turnbull are, as you say, totally different players. Turnbull's role is more like O'Riley's (a poor man's O'Riley!) than Bernardo's.

It is true that at various times, Rodgers has chosen other options instead of Bernardo; but as I keep saying, he has chosen Bernardo ahead of other options at times too. Some of those latter times have been pretty important games, like CL games or derbies.

I don't know whether Bernardo will be a first team player or still a squad player next year; but I think you are looking at this in much too static a way, mate. We're not just paying for what he can do now but also for the potential he has. I would balk at £6 million too if he was even 25 let alone Iwata's age, because if his current level is his level, he's not worth £6 million. However, I've seen enough to think that he can become a really good player worth a lot more than £6million.

I don't think Rodgers is actively involved in negotiating Bernardo's fee down, he seems to be on holiday and I'm 100% sure that there are other things that his attention is needed for. I'd bet the proverbial house I don't have that that the negotiations are down to Lawwell. For all his faults. Lawwell is very good at that and I'm obviously not against him getting a better deal. I hope he can; but I would personally still be in favour of paying the £6 million even if it wasn't possible to negotiate that down.

 

Of course Rodgers is involved. If Rodgers wanted to pay the £6m, we’d be paying the £6m for him. It’s clear that there’s an understanding between the board and the manager that the fee is too big a risk for what might come in the future. As has been suggested, I think he will improve but but I don’t think his progression is going to be off the charts, like it was with O’Riley. He’s never going to be a £25m player for me.

We are probably going round in circles. I don’t think we should pay the £6m fee but I’m glad to see we have halved that and I think he is worth the risk at £3m. I see that I’m probably in the minority with that line of thought, though. Most people want to pay the money regardless, I don’t. I think it’s right we got the fee down and that means we have more cash to spend on other areas of the pitch.

As crazy as it sounds, because I am going on about the fee of one specific player, I don’t actually think it matters how much a player is. In isolation, I don’t think we should pay the money because I don’t think he’s worth it and I’m not sure he will ever be worth it but in terms of where our money goes, I want to see us picking up the best talents from across the world, who are excelling in their leagues. Whether they cost £1.5m like O’Riley or £5m like Kyogo, it doesn’t matter to me.

Our scouting needs to be drastically improved. Whoever is in charge of the recruitment at Antwerp or USG, we should be signing them to head up our recruitment team. That’s where we should be focussing our attention on.

 

Get him in and stop penny pinching Peter, learn from your past penny pinching tactics.

 

The board got lucky this season it was nearly a major * up with bringing in £2 million signings instead of bringing in better quality and just as well the zombies were pish and didn't have the bottle.
There's no excuse next season for the board and we all know there's well over £120 million plus coming into the club with sales of players and champions league money and season tickets and if we build for Europe next season the league next season should be far easier to win and it all comes down to how ambitious this board is .

 

Negotiations don't work like that.

 

Did this big handsome * sign yet?

 

Still on his holidays

 

Cheeky * what

 

Sammy's never coming back, mate. It's time to make your peace with that.

 

My understanding is that this was a loan with an option to buy at a set fee. If we haven't got any indication of movement ten days into the window, it seems likely the club are no longer interested in the player. If we valued him at anything close to £6m, we wouldn't risk the deal by waiting until the exclusivity clause and agreed fee times out and trying to negotiate a mil or so off it. The most likely conclusion is that we're no longer interested in the player.

 

We didn't sign Jota until about 4 weeks after the season ended

 

They literally do if we have a buy option in place.

 

The exclusivity period will usually end about a month after the window opens, so we likely left it to the last moment to avoid paying a month of wages. I just would be sceptical as to whether "it's a done-deal at £3.5m" doesn't turn out to be speculation based on our inital lack of movement. Why would Benefica agree to that when there's a £6m deal in place and where they might get a better deal than £3.5m once the exclusivity clause wears off? If we're serious about it, we'll pay the £6m. No word from our side about at least our intent I think is probably a sign we're happy to pass this one up.

 

Another sexy *

 

Multiple reasons.

Benfica probably realise he’s not worth the £6m and no one else is paying £6m for him. They want to continue to grow the relationship between us and them, knowing it can lead to future profit when they hold percentages of the next sale. Bernardo has made it clear, at least that’s the consensus, that he wants to return here.