Danny Ward - Leicester Sign Liverpool Keeper for £12.5m

[Burning Gold]

Never really got a chance at Liverpool for whatever reason, but was apparently highly regarded at Aberdeen and Huddersfield. Obviously there's not much room for him at Liverpool with Alisson apparently about to be added to Karius and Mignolet.

£12m according to other sources

[Dave]

He's done really well on loan. I'm surprised he hasn't joined a club like Swansea where he would get first team football and really establish himself.

[LFCMike]

Not seen enough of him to know how good he is. Think it's telling though that even with all our keeper problems over the last 4-5 years, he's only had the odd cup game and meaningless league games during that Europa League run.

[Stan]

Can't see him replacing Schmeichel right now as we won't sell this summer - perhaps a replacement for when Kasper may leave next summer. 

[Dr. Gonzo]

Michael Edwards is a genius getting £12m for our 3rd choice keeper.

[Dan+]

Ridiculous fee for someone who has played two games at this level at the age of 25. Piss poor negotiating on our part. Liverpool fan mate of mine says he was expecting nearer a third of that.

It's a strange one. Reliable sources say that he's going to be an understudy to Schmeichel but in the knows at Leicester are saying Schmeichel doesn't like Puel and it's possible that he leaves. It's a gamble as his replacement if that's the case and it's a very expensive back-up if not.

I'm not against him joining us but can't quite put my finger on this one.

[Redcanuck]

Adds more fire to the Schmeichel to Chelsea rumours.

[Smiley Culture]

Schmeichel’s replacing Alisson at Roma, isn’t he? I’m sure I read he’s been linked in the Italian papers. 

[Dr. Gonzo]

1 minute ago, Smiley Culture said:

Schmeichel’s replacing Alisson at Roma, isn’t he? I’m sure I read he’s been linked in the Italian papers. 

They're being linked with Areola from PSG a lot.

[Dr. Gonzo]

You know this fee is a good deal for Wrexham & the 20% sell on clause they have with him. They're fan owned and a lot of the fans now are talking about whether they should use this money to buy their stadium. Right now they're leasing the stadium for 99 years at £100k a year. If they can outright buy it now with these funds, that saves them £100k a year. Game changer for a non-league club that's fan owned.

[Dan+]

I do wonder if now is the right time to sell Schmeichel. He's 31*, has interest from both Roma & Chelsea, and apparently doesn't get on with the manager. While I think Puel's done well to hold onto his job after the way we fell to bits late last season, I cannot get behind anything where the players are ruling the roost. It will all come toppling down. I get the impression that they are, and Schmeichel's one of the main ones behind this.

* Regarding his age. I did think "that's not too bad for a keeper" but my mate made a good point to me earlier about the age of keepers being a bit of a myth and it's true. How many old keepers are there playing at a good level now?

The flip side here is that Ward is a very big gamble as our number one next season if you ask me.

[Redcanuck]

6 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

You know this fee is a good deal for Wrexham & the 20% sell on clause they have with him. They're fan owned and a lot of the fans now are talking about whether they should use this money to buy their stadium. Right now they're leasing the stadium for 99 years at £100k a year. If they can outright buy it now with these funds, that saves them £100k a year. Game changer for a non-league club that's fan owned.

That is really great Wrexham, good to hear to hear things like that.

[Dr. Gonzo]

3 minutes ago, Dan said:

I do wonder if now is the right time to sell Schmeichel. He's 31*, has interest from both Roma & Chelsea, and apparently doesn't get on with the manager. While I think Puel's done well to hold onto his job after the way we fell to bits late last season, I cannot get behind anything where the players are ruling the roost. It will all come toppling down. I get the impression that they are, and Schmeichel's one of the main ones behind this.

* Regarding his age. I did think "that's not too bad for a keeper" but my mate made a good point to me earlier about the age of keepers being a bit of a myth and it's true. How many old keepers are there playing at a good level now?

The flip side here is that Ward is a very big gamble as our number one next season if you ask me.

I honestly have no idea how good Ward is. Just last week Klopp said he was being considered as our new no.1, then he didn't play him in a friendly & is now being sold to you... so that's unusual. But he got rave reviews in Scotland and was considered alright by Huddersfield fans, until promotion playoffs when he played out of his skin. Wagner wanted to bring him on loan or sign him for their first season up... so that is an encouraging sign about his quality.

He's the same age as Karius and Allison... but with a lot less experience.

But if you are going to sell Schmeichel because he's causing problems in the dressing room re: how he feels about the manager & because there's clubs that have money to spend on a keeper (Roma and Chelsea are now the 2 most obvious candidates here, as you just said) - if you can get a big fee, I think selling him might be worth it. Between the Mahrez money and the money you'd get from him you could make some serious improvements to the side. And Ward is a big gamble, but his price in this market is essentially the new £3-5m range like Shaqiri was - ultimately not that big of a risk when the market is as ridiculous as it is right now. I think a bigger risk would be selling him before bringing in some new players though - you don't want selling clubs seeing you've had 2 massive transfers and trying to price gouge you. That's happened a lot to us until pretty recently tbh, whereas now FSG are more in the mindset of "this is a top target? okay pay the insane fee."

[Stan]

Given how we spent when we won the league, I don't fully trust our recruitment team without Steve Walsh to make 'serious improvements to the side'  

[Dr. Gonzo]

39 minutes ago, Stan said:

Given how we spent when we won the league, I don't fully trust our recruitment team without Steve Walsh to make 'serious improvements to the side'  

Weird how good he was for you and how awful he was for Everton.

I really hope you sign Jahanbahksh though.

[RandoEFC+]

Walsh is a spesh. Must have had a quality team around him at Leicester or just got really lucky. You'll have to counter with a literally incredible argument against that because the levels of ineptitude he demonstrated with us on several levels was astonishing.

[Dr. Gonzo]

7 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

Walsh is a spesh. Must have had a quality team around him at Leicester or just got really lucky. You'll have to counter with a literally incredible argument against that because the levels of ineptitude he demonstrated with us on several levels was astonishing.

"Everton need to improve, I better go sign as many #10s as possible." At some point though the board or Koeman should have been like "why the fuck are we signing all of these similar players, shouldn't we replace Lukaku? Find us a striker you dumb cunt."

[Stan]

24 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

Weird how good he was for you and how awful he was for Everton.

I really hope you sign Jahanbahksh though.

Me too. Not seen too much of him but from what Iranian fans have said on FT and people who have watched more of him, they think he'd fit in to the squad quite well.

2 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

Walsh is a spesh. Must have had a quality team around him at Leicester or just got really lucky. You'll have to counter with a literally incredible argument against that because the levels of ineptitude he demonstrated with us on several levels was astonishing.

Well he was responsible for finding and bringing to the club Vardy, Kante and Mahrez which I think is more than an incredible argument when you consider how well they've done since coming being signed  

Walsh was also heavily responsible for bringing in Cambiasso as well - scouted him for about 12-18 months. Obviously when it comes to scouting it's more than just watching him play cos everyone knows how he can play football. 

And that's not to mention the record at Chelsea where he brought in Drogba I believe. And look at the impact he had. Not to mention other players Chelsea signed in that time in the 00s where they began to dominate.

I'm guessing Walsh faltered at Everton perhaps because he wasn't in full control of transfers there? Going out on a whim here cos I don't know for sure obviously but I'd hazard a guess there were disputes about who wanted who and who should actually have some effort put in to being signed. Similar happened with Ranieri. Walsh had to properly force through the Kante signing as Ranieri didn't originally want him. 

Ultimately, I don't think you get 'really lucky' at Chelsea and Leicester over the years and then suddenly become inept at Everton. I'd say there were problems at Everton as opposed to being lucky in the previous jobs. Worth adding that Pearson and Walsh got on like a house on fire which obviously helped. Maybe he didn't have that kind of relationship with Everton staff/heirarchy.

[RandoEFC+]

13 minutes ago, Stan said:

Me too. Not seen too much of him but from what Iranian fans have said on FT and people who have watched more of him, they think he'd fit in to the squad quite well.

Well he was responsible for finding and bringing to the club Vardy, Kante and Mahrez which I think is more than an incredible argument when you consider how well they've done since coming being signed  

Walsh was also heavily responsible for bringing in Cambiasso as well - scouted him for about 12-18 months. Obviously when it comes to scouting it's more than just watching him play cos everyone knows how he can play football. 

And that's not to mention the record at Chelsea where he brought in Drogba I believe. And look at the impact he had. Not to mention other players Chelsea signed in that time in the 00s where they began to dominate.

I'm guessing Walsh faltered at Everton perhaps because he wasn't in full control of transfers there? Going out on a whim here cos I don't know for sure obviously but I'd hazard a guess there were disputes about who wanted who and who should actually have some effort put in to being signed. Similar happened with Ranieri. Walsh had to properly force through the Kante signing as Ranieri didn't originally want him. 

Ultimately, I don't think you get 'really lucky' at Chelsea and Leicester over the years and then suddenly become inept at Everton. I'd say there were problems at Everton as opposed to being lucky in the previous jobs. Worth adding that Pearson and Walsh got on like a house on fire which obviously helped. Maybe he didn't have that kind of relationship with Everton staff/heirarchy.

He also stood up at our AGM and said we didn't need to replace Lukaku because if you took away his goals from each match that he scored in the season before we wouldn't have dropped enough points to affect our league position. Perhaps he had a stroke or something when he signed for us?

[Stan]

2 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

He also stood up at our AGM and said we didn't need to replace Lukaku because if you took away his goals from each match that he scored in the season before we wouldn't have dropped enough points to affect our league position. Perhaps he had a stroke or something when he signed for us?

I didn't know that. 

Maybe he never really wanted to leave us. Didn't wanna downgrade so much  

[Dan+]

3 hours ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

I honestly have no idea how good Ward is. Just last week Klopp said he was being considered as our new no.1, then he didn't play him in a friendly & is now being sold to you... so that's unusual. But he got rave reviews in Scotland and was considered alright by Huddersfield fans, until promotion playoffs when he played out of his skin. Wagner wanted to bring him on loan or sign him for their first season up... so that is an encouraging sign about his quality.

He's the same age as Karius and Allison... but with a lot less experience.

But if you are going to sell Schmeichel because he's causing problems in the dressing room re: how he feels about the manager & because there's clubs that have money to spend on a keeper (Roma and Chelsea are now the 2 most obvious candidates here, as you just said) - if you can get a big fee, I think selling him might be worth it. Between the Mahrez money and the money you'd get from him you could make some serious improvements to the side. And Ward is a big gamble, but his price in this market is essentially the new £3-5m range like Shaqiri was - ultimately not that big of a risk when the market is as ridiculous as it is right now. I think a bigger risk would be selling him before bringing in some new players though - you don't want selling clubs seeing you've had 2 massive transfers and trying to price gouge you. That's happened a lot to us until pretty recently tbh, whereas now FSG are more in the mindset of "this is a top target? okay pay the insane fee."

That's precisely my issue - you don't know, nor do most Liverpool fans I've come across. I just don't get how this justifies £10/12million which is what has been reported from different sources (take whichever one Sky said and use the other). Huddersfield fans from what I've seen weren't hugely keen - didn't think he was rubbish but didn't think he was anything special either and much prefer Lossl. For a couple of million as a back-up I'd take him, but he fits neither the category of being good enough to replace Schmeichel or being cheap enough to have as your second choice keeper. I just don't really get the logic behind it. He's somewhere in the middle.

I think selling Schmeichel may be worth it too and I think the league title is possibly a burden, daft as it may sound, in that some of these players will feel that they're untouchable, that they can't be dropped or replaced from the team. Morgan's selection last year was the best evidence I've seen of this yet. If this is a problem, which I think it probably is, then we need to get rid of whoever we can because we will go nowhere if the players rule the roost. 

Regarding Ward's price, again, I think even in today's market that kind of fee is exorbitant for someone of such limited experience. He's effectively an unknown. He's a gamble of a signing for me, not someone you throw eight figures at.

I want to be wrong but this just screams money wasted to me and I've seen enough of that happen here in the last couple of years. We got ourselves into the best position we have ever been in in our entire history and we've effectively bought ourselves straight back out of it.

This summer so far I've been content with, three good signings, but I'm very unconvinced by this one I'm afraid.

 

1 hour ago, RandoEFC said:

Walsh is a spesh. Must have had a quality team around him at Leicester or just got really lucky. You'll have to counter with a literally incredible argument against that because the levels of ineptitude he demonstrated with us on several levels was astonishing.

I've said it before but the only conclusion I can come to is that the two jobs were very different. Here he had to find bargains whilst in the Championship and at Everton he was given massive money with completely different expectations. It doesn't however explain the complete imbalance that your squad ended up with.

[LFCMike]

Latest on Ward

 

[Dan+]

fucking hell.

I hope he's worth it but I'm massively unconvinced by this. They must really rate him if they're happy to pay that much. I accept the market's gone mad but for someone who is likely to be an understudy you can pay a fraction of that.

[RandoEFC+]

Seems unlikely that Leicester are spending that money unless Schmeichel is on his way out. Not sure though, you'd also expect if they were preempting Schmeichels departure by getting a replacement in that they'd be shopping higher up in the market. This is a weird one between what you'd say is a definite number two and a replacement number one.

[Dr. Gonzo]

52 minutes ago, Dan said:

fucking hell.

I hope he's worth it but I'm massively unconvinced by this. They must really rate him if they're happy to pay that much. I accept the market's gone mad but for someone who is likely to be an understudy you can pay a fraction of that.

An Aberdeen fan has told some of us we’re mental for paying that much for Allison and Ward is top notch. I’d take that with more than a pinch of salt. Maybe a handful. But that’s probably encouraging.

I’ve heard mixed things on his time at Huddersfield - like he was either great sometimes and shite sometimes, and some who think he’s great and wish they’d signed him. So I have no idea what that means. Some good games and some bad games sounds fairly fucking standard and you’d probably want a keeper that’s better.

He was good enough for Klopp to not want to sell last season, instead he wanted a loan. That’s also a good sign. But not good enough apparently in training to merit starting over Migs or Karius, which could be concerning to you. But Karius’s form before the final after his return to the side wasn’t bad - you normally don’t see a keeper dropped in that kind of form.