Signing the likes of Beardsley and Barnes didn't do untold damage long term.

What did untold damage was when they stopped signing the best players, and as their ageing greats left they were replaced by guys like Saunders, Walters, Thomas, Stewart, Ruddock and Nigel Clough. These were all players who were decent but not in the top tier, so Liverpool became a club that was decent but not top tier.

History would have been different if Liverpool had been in for guys like Gascoigne, Pallister, Ian Wright, Keane, Shearer etc.

I think there is an art in timing when it comes to signing the best players around. You have to spot who is about to become really good, and sign then them: Alex Ferguson is a master at this, and Wenger in his early years at Arsenal. Players who are already galacticos don't always have the same success when they move clubs. Chelsea got burned with Shevchenko and Torres and I wouldn't be surprised if the same happens with Rooney.

They are still expensive though because the price of a player is based on his future value over time (including resale value), so a young player showing a lot of promise will be expensive.

To bring this back to rugby, we did well with guys like Briers, Westwood and Bridge, getting them when they were just potential with question marks over how good they will be, and they turned out to be great investments.

Tony Smith has gone for guys like Atkins, Myler and Ratchford but we had to pay good money for Myler and Ratchford especially. Still they could turn out to be good investments over time.

It's like investing in any asset, only rarely will you get someone picking up an asset for nothing that nobody knows about (eg Dougie Laughton finding Offiah in lower division RU), on the whole the market has a fair bit of information about what is likely to be a good investment, but you need the means and the business sense to know when to strike out and take a risk.

Obviously if you produce assets like that in your own Academy its an advantage but even there risky decisions need to be taken to shift out experienced players and take a punt on the younger guy, Daryl Powell did a lot of path clearing before TS arrived at Leeds, and Ferguson did it at the end of the 94/95 season at United to open the door for his kids. But the kids have to be good enough. Wenger did it in the late 2000s with Arsenal but they dropped in standard and then everyone says you need to sign experience.

Right, so you 'spot the players that are going to be really good and sign them', which by definition other managers have not twigged and are therefore not expensive. But then you say they are expensive, because ' the price of a player is based on his future value, so a young player will be expensive'.

Call me picky, but you seem to be contradicting yourself here. Are these players that are going to be top class, expensive, or cheap ?

And do we need Bobby to help explain how all this fits into the infrastructure ?

They are likely to be expensive. I'm not talking about spotting unknowns when they are 17.

I mean signing the top players, when they are on the way up and not yet reached their peak. To use Alex Ferguson as an example, think Pallister, Ince, Keane, Cole, Ferdinand, Ronaldo, Vidic. Some of those players cost big money, but they were all players that still had lots of improvement in them, which would take place at United. The only time really he tried to sign a galactico at his peak was Veron who didn't quite fit in. You could use examples from Wenger at Arsenal too with Henry, Pires, Ljungberg, Campbell, all players of high potential but at the time they signed they were not the greats they would become in the next few years.

Similar to Leeds signing Harris from us - he won them the Challenge Cup and lifted them to the next level, and Saints signing Sculthorpe from us who went on to be the best player in SL for many years.

This started off by me saying if you want to be successful you have to sign the best and then Uncle Rico pointed out that just signing Galacticos doesn't work, so I was saying thats the signing strategy you need.

Salford, as a club with 'new money' will probably start off by doing the opposite, signing former top players on their way down as these are the players most likely to go there. Young and hungry players will see it as a gamble to join a club that might not live up to the hype and they could waste an important point of their careers not competing for trophies (like Martin Gleeson did with us). Older players will sense a chance to get big money. Salford will still gain though, because having Morley and a load of ex Saints players running around will be a big improvement on the garbage they have had in recent seasons. But they won't be competing for trophies with these guys.

If you want to discuss that Swiss-bankathon, corrupt, money-laundering, sexist apology for a 'sport' that is Wendyball have the decency to do so on the 'other sports' thread and leave us to talk on here about rugby.

And why should anyone take any notice of you? Most of your posts seem to have the childish reference to "wendyball" in them.

Why is it called wendyball?

Assuming asguardian doesn't like the sexism involved in football what is the issue with it being a sport more suited to females?

Of course a real mans sport like rugby league wouldn't get wendys playing it.

Don't expect you to read all my posts but I think you'll find that very few of them discuss Wendyball. Several forum mods have cut short even fleeting references by me to other sports with an admonishment to go to the 'other sports' forum. Hijacking a 'short turnround' thread to go on at length about Premier League soccer ( if you prefer another term ) is well out of order.

It's a reference to 'Wendyhouse': an artificial structure surprisingly popular and amazingly durable though in reality likely to collapse at any moment. As for sexist: Sepp Blatter - I rest my case.

It's doing a bloody good job of tempting fate, though! Sepp makes RL officials look like saints.

Quote: sally cinnamon "Football is not likely to collapse at any moment, it has a fan base and appeal across the world. Fair point about Sepp Blatter though. I wish the football governing bodies would get rid of these type of officials and appoint someone like Nigel Wood or Maurice Lindsay to stamp corruption out of the game.'" You are right about Maurice. He is a very moral, warm hearted man that would never allow money to get in the way of doing the right thing. Remember the compassionate way he dealt with our own Mike Gregory when he was coaching. news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_l ... 826386.stm

Quote: sally cinnamon "Football is not likely to collapse at any moment, it has a fan base and appeal across the world. Fair point about Sepp Blatter though. I wish the football governing bodies would get rid of these type of officials and appoint someone like Nigel Wood or Maurice Lindsay to stamp corruption out of the game.'" You are right about Maurice. He is a very moral, warm hearted man that would never allow money to get in the way of doing the right thing. Remember the compassionate way he dealt with our own Mike Gregory when he was coaching. news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_l ... 826386.stm

Reading that BBC article again made me notice the fact that I had missed the very clever quote in the box at middle page;

"We honoured every penny of our contractual obligations"


Just about sums it up really. Mike died around 18 months later.

I do try and read all of your posts (post joining) as I prefer to get a balanced view on things. Indeed, I can sometimes be swayed by a decent argument to change my view. In short, I would like to think tnat I am open minded.

Sometimes when conducting an argument it is useful to draw parallels with 'other sports' and football as a popular professional sport can provide decent material when talking about league systems, financial rewards, sponsorship TV rights, club v country to name but a few off the top of my head. It is hardly hijacking IMO.

Now if someone started a thread on a large transfer bid for say Rangi Chase and a poster leapt in immediately with never mind that Rooney to Chelsea for £40m is proper transfer deal then that would clearly be gainst the spirit of the forum and IMO the forum to some extent like our mixed crowds, is better served by a bit of common sense and self regulation.