All the Coates That’s Fit to Print, and Other Wednesday Notes

By: Noel | August 30th, 2011

Deadline day’ has arrived, and it doesn’t especially matter that Liverpool seems to have largely wrapped up their summer dealings. Because deadline day has arrived. Which means that if you haven’t stocked up on bottled water and tins of beans already, you’re pretty much out of luck for when the insanity kicks off in a couple of hours and the country grinds to a halt, staring rapt, fixated on Sky Sports’ scrolling ticker. Waiting for an update on the location of the Babelcopter that’s carrying Neymar to Melwood…

* For now, however, almost all the talk is about Liverpool’s signing of Sebastian Coates. News of his acquisition seemed as good as settled last Wednesday, less then 24 hours after serious rumours linking him to Liverpool first surfaced, and by most reports he was in Liverpool as early as Friday with the fee agreed and the player taking his medical—which was when we decided it was safe to treat his signing as fact. The club’s official website, on the other hand, has been sitting on the story for most of the past week. Which means they’ve had nearly a week to work on Coates-related content for you to dig through as Wednesday kicks off.

There’s the typically terse official statement to let you know that Coates’ official signing has in fact been made official. There’s the expected pictures of Coates posing for photos with Damien Comolli and in the bootroom that gave us an opening to make Human Centipede jokes on Twitter¹.

Then there are the more interesting tidbits that come from having had a week to work on content, like an in-depth player profile full of tidbits to supplement the now common knowledge of the player having won young player of the tournament at the Copa America and multiple defender of the year awards with his club Nacional:

Coates joined the Nacional academy at 11 and went on to break into the first-team seven years later, making his senior debut against Bella Vista in 2009. Such was his impact, he was crowned man of the match by Spanish newspaper El Pais afterwards.

Coates is nicknamed ‘Luganito’ by Uruguay fans as he’s seen as the natural successor to the current captain of the national team, Diego Lugano.
Indeed, Lugano himself has previously spoken of his belief that Liverpool’s new defender will go on to skipper his country.

There’s also room for entire articles dedicated to the player talking about the influence of Suarez in his arrival at the club, about learning of its history from his Uruguayan teammate, and of his first experience at Anfield when he watched Liverpool overwhelm Bolton from the director’s box on the weekend. Not to mention lists for trivia fans who didn’t know they were dying to know Coates is now tied as second tallest Liverpool player of all time with Sami Hyypia, trailing only Peter Crouch; that he was born on October 7th, the same as Hyypia; and that in Uruguay he once scored against Liverpool Fútbol Club. Plus there are a handful of truly insightful revelations from Damien Comolli about the scouting of Liverpool’s newest player:

Myself and my scouting staff have been tracking him for over two years now, since the Copa America U20 tournament in Venezuela. Then he went to the U20 World Cup in Egypt in 2009 and we kept an eye on him during the season, playing for his club Nacional where he was the captain, and then our scout went to the Copa America this summer just for confirmation of what we were thinking about him.

And so now you officially know more about Sebastian Coates than you have about any previous new signing at Liverpool Football Club. Plus more than you know about half the established players, too.

* Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that Liverpool do not expect Chelsea to return with an improved offer for Raul Meireles after the club made it clear they had no intention to sell unless faced with an offer that really was too good to be true. Welcome to following a club that is very much no longer a selling club. Now let that sink in—it should help with the urge to wildly panic on any day that’s transfer deadline day. Like today.

* And over on the Anfield Wrap, there’s room for a fairly in-depth look at a concept the reviled Christian Purslow may actually have introduced to the club’s followers back in the dark days of Hicks and Gillett: Total player cost. It seemed a bit of a slippery concept to many at the time, but in the end it has turned out to be a key tenant of the approach Henry and FSG are taking, even if the term moneyball so often thrown around accompanying it is loaded with misconceptions and confusion. Namely: “It ain’t about what you pay, but that the value attained ultimately exceeds cost.”

Home grown talent such as Steven Gerrard or Ryan Giggs may pleasingly show up as a nil net transfer fee cost, but the growth in the size of their pay packets down the years tells a different story. Let’s guestimate that Stevie G’s new 5 year contract of 2009 cost the club a further £60k a week, to bring him into line with his well paid England colleagues at clubs like Chelsea. The cost of that deal, then, is akin to LFC paying a transfer fee of £15m (£3m per year x 5 years) just to retain one of their own players…

Downing will cost LFC about £18m (plus add ons) and about £17m in wages over the life of his 5 year contract – a total package cost of £35m… Mata is on the verge of joining Chelsea for about £25m we hear. If his wages attract the premium that big inter European deals seem to these days we could safely estimate that a 5 year wage deal for Mata could set Chelsea back about £25m. Therefore whilst Mata is costing a total of about £50m (transfer fee and wages added together), Downing looks a lot cheaper option at £35m all in.

It’s an idea that still doesn’t exactly make the likes of Downing—or perhaps even moreso Jordan Henderson and Andy Carroll—especially cheap, but it’s a concept that does suggest many pundits are stuck in the past when they rely too heavily on transfer fees and only transfer fees to determine how much a player is costing his club or whether he’s living up to that cost.

Well, there you have it: Everything you ever wanted to know about Coates but were afraid to ask. Plus some other interesting stuff to pass the meantime with before the final day of the summer window leads to meteor showers and tidal waves (and swearing²)…

¹ You probably don’t want to look it up at work. But you already knew that.
² So you probably don’t want to watch the video at work, either. But you already knew that, too.

Some Related Liverpool Posts:

Category: Team News

« Official: Sebastian Coates Signs, Christian Poulsen Departs | Home | Joe Cole Loan to Lille Confirmed »

Justin

Anyone care to explain to me why Bellamy and/or Benayoun back to Liverpool has any semblance of sense in it?
Latortillablanca

i thnk it cud be done, but i wont be the one to do it. one thing is true accross all professional sports - you can never go back. Bellamy will do his thing, but he's an injury crisis stop-gap at best...
Ed

Love that the Meireles news is buried at the bottom and earns about ten words just a day after all we heard was "Liverpool brace for catastrophically irresistible bid for tackle-shirking tattooed out-of-favor-cause-he's-injured Portuguese midfielder Raul Meireles."

Today's the best!
CheekyFellow

You mean he's not leaving?
JPR

Great to see we're not a selling club and we fans don't have to worry about losing our best players to City and Chelsea for $$$.

What happened at the Arsenal (Fabregas and Nasri) will never happen here anymore. So we will not get the sickness like Gunners fans have now, with wee Henry watching the store.

It's also attributable to Henry's personal philosophy, he wants a winner, European football, and really wants a world class team that can truly compete for EPL and CL titles. Yes, and we fans want more.

And it all fits nicely with what is probably his "business judgement". The best way to maximize his financial return (ROI) and the market value of the club is to build a world class team. The "discounted cash flow financial" models for determining market value used by finance guys (like Henry), is probably not the best judgement in a Liverpool FC situation.
JPR

Yes, and I even have faith that Henry will be able to fend off the Barca's and Real's should they come snooping around. His personal philosophy of winning, the comfortable and contented environment created in the camp, and his business judgement with players will give even those prom queens the boot.
Suarez from the car park...

This is the big thing about Suarez isnt it, that in 2 years or so the top spenders like Citeh or Barca / Madrid come hunting for his signature.

We'll have come on strongly by then judging by progress so far, and will compete with the best teams going but it may still be a reality that has to be dealt with.
Latortillablanca

henry, kk, and comolli all understand that no one is bigger than the club. in a transfer sense that means if u have a cesc/nasri situation, u play ball and get the most return u can. wenger's problem is he held on too long - those same transfer fees done early in the window with replacements lined up and a summer to negotiate for them wudnt of done the damage they have done. i hope it never happens, but if suarez gets his head turned by a barca or real, u gotta be smart bout it...
Suarez from the car park...

we'll just have to make sure our standard is so high that it's a non-issue!
JPR

!!!!
JPR

Sure, Henry will deal with it Intelligently if and when it occurs.

Also, Fabregas took a pay cut to go to Barca. He could see that Arsenal were not committed to winning titles. They were happy with playing attractive football and trying to remain in CL spots. The board would never allow Wenger to do what is needed to win titles. Salaries not competitive and Arsenal will always take big money transfer $. Fabregas may have stayed if he could envision titles.

I think the commitment to winning is much greater with Henry. He will do whatever it takes within reason. And he will be sure to have an Intelligent plan whose main objective is winning. Develop "the plan", then Execute the plan".
Latortillablanca

assuming there's no last minute dealing to both sell and replace egg nog, comolli, in 2 transfer windows has:

-swapped torres for suarez + carroll and sold babel (basically a wash financially)
-brought in hendo, adam, downing, coates, doni and enrique (at MOST mid-60m all told, prolly closer to 50 and then rising depending appearances/trophies, etc)
-sold on or loaned at either zero or half wages: el zhar, mavinga, aquilani, jovanovic, poulsen, cole, pacheco, insua, darby, hansens & gulacsi.
-hopefully, on verge of degen to qpr or some random european team, never to be heard from on this blog again...

Ole boy has straight put in some WORK. I would argue at this point he's been almost as influencial as kenny and ownership in turnin this ish around. What did we need from a director of football 6 months ago? a.)jives with the hc (check), b.) demonstrates an ability to identify and land primary transfer targets that can be readily identified as "liverpool players" (other than p. jones, check), c.) offload the dead-weight leftover from the penny pinching rafa and disasterously inept uncle woy regimes (check), d.) double down the focus on finding and developing local and continental talent for the youth academy (check), e.) demonstrate a deft touch in transfer dealings, a la wenger, in particular when scouring talent from much lower leagues (check), and finally, but no less importantly f.) bring back the liverpool way of doing business - no transfer rumour milling, no name dropping, no disclosing transfer dealings in general.

My favorites so far have to be coates & enrique for a wenger-esque 13m and permanently offloading jova and poulsen, neither of whom were worthy of holding carra's sweaty jockstrap, much less pullin on the red strip... The aquaman and cole transfers may not seem great cos they're loans, but Milan is a class organization (as opposed to juve and their playboy front office) and if they've got a purchase clause in the loan contract, u can be sure they'll honor it. No one was gonna buy cole outright, and if this helps win the Hazard Sweepstakes next summer, joe cole may well be remembered as one of the most important ex-players in liverpool history...

Comolli has demonstrated that he is as good as, if not better than, most execs in the game, and he hasn't even been around for a full year yet...
JPR

Excellent summary of player transfers, loans and associated $. And you did it in less than 5 pages which is impressive. Easy to understand the huge impact Comolli has had in the turnaround magic.

Let me just mention that it was Henry who created the position and identified Comolli to fill it. No Henry, no Comolli. And Henry actually allows Comolli to do his Job without the continuous meddling and undermining of his work. Ole boy can work a plan.
NotTooXabi

Love that Carra just sent a tweet asking Liverpool not to sign more defenders...great sense of humor that man. Agger, Skrtel, Coates, Wilson, (Kelly?), Wisdom...a touch of steel mixed with ball-playing grooves and a dash of raw energy. I'd buy that for a dollar.

It's an odd feeling...like Man United (and in this instance, this isn't a bad thing) we've wrapped up business and will lurk around for a cherry-on-top signing. Congrats to the FO team for doing it proper with out the Babelcopter.

Afellay would be fun, but I'd rather see Suso, Sterling, and the young bucks get a shot this fall. We're strong enough to let it play out until the January window where a breath of fresh air could be a difference maker.
Tropics Reds

http://www.losc.fr/actualite-f...
Tropics Reds

Sorry - Cole a done deal.
Tropics Reds

"As we approach the closing of the summer transfer window, the LOSC, Liverpool and Joe Cole (29) have agreed to the loan of the England striker. The latter was committed to the team for one season."
Tropics Reds

Right off to bed - fingers crossed there's some more good news when I wake up!
Noel

After a night of being drunk and belligerent, Cole gone's pretty solid to wake up to. So I should probably post something about it.
Smitty_w

tea and cig's any one
Tropics Reds

End of transfer deadline wish list:

Right winger that can double up as a striker - in the mould of Hulk
Attacking mid that can play wide or winger that can play centrally - in the mould of Eden Hazard

Cole, Poulson and Degen find new homes.

N'Gog, Wilson & Shelvey find somewhere to go on loan for the season where they'll get regular games.
Suarez from the car park...

might get Bellamy as stand in winger/striker. We do need cover for Downing as the wings are clearly important to Kenny.
Tropics Reds

1 down 2 to go.
dtw.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/foot...
"French media saying #lfc want option on Hazard to be in the loan deal for Joe Cole to Lille."

More than we could dream to hope for.
Suarez from the car park...

Doesnt mean much unless the player wants to come to you rather than elsewhere.
dtw.

True, true. But, if it was a first refusal option at the end of the season, and this years Premiership campaign has gone a lot better (at least better than Arsenal's who did look like the obvious destination for him) it could be of some value. As long as someone like Real don't come in to price the Reds out the market.
lfc80uk

At least the Babel Copter can be kept firmly in its hangar this transfer window....
BarneyWalsh

welcome Ralph
tGryffin

Thanks to Hurricane Irene, my school decided to start Thursday instead of Tuesday. Thank you mother nature, now I get to watch Sky all night, all day, and read soccer feed's. Best Deadline Day ever.
Ismael Jawad

That's the most selfish and inconsiderate comment I've read in a while.
tGryffin

I wasn't thinking about it like that. I am sorry.
poorscouserbobby

ROFLMAO!
CheekyFellow

A Tool song - the bromance with the Liverpool Offside continues. Though, this video would have been better suited when we wanted to flush Hodgson, Purslow, and the yanks away.
Noel

I actually wanted to use Tool before—specifically Ticks & Leeches—but that they have no worthwhile live video got in the way. Seemed a fitting match for the end of the transfer window, though.
CheekyFellow

True, I already forgot about the dead weight!