Enrique to Liverpool (finally). Pieters the alleged replacement.

Posted on August 11th, 2011 | 38 Comments |

Jose Enrique's transfer to Liverpool looks to be nearing completion.
Finally, the saga looks to be ending
Newcastle United left-back Jose Enrique will move to Liverpool this week and Newcastle already have a replacement lined up.

No surprises on this one. It appears that Jose Enrique has passed a medical at Anfield and is leaving for either £5.5m or £6m depending upon which press report you believe, although there is also some suggestion that a further £2m could be payable if he reaches certain performance-related targets.

He joined us from Villareal in 2008 for a £6.3m fee and played 129 games for us scoring his only goal against Nottingham Forest in March 2010, but the Enrique saga has been dragging on for months and I’m glad it’s coming to a close.

Allegedly Newcastle have Erik Pieters lined up to replace him (we reported on Toon interest in Pieters a few days ago), although I’m not sure how close we are to making any sort of signing. I would presume we’re fairly close if we’re finally letting Enrique go.

Personally I rated Enrique highly and he partnered particularly well with Jonas Gutierrez on the left where the pair carved out a lot of our attacking options. I think he was a quality player who will be difficult to replace, but let’s hope someone such as Pieters is up to the job.

I’m a little disappointed with Enrique in that all the rubbish he said about wanting to join a Champions League side seems to have gone out of the window. No doubt he’d argue that Liverpool are looking like getting there next season and that, in any case, they stand more chance of doing so than Newcastle, but with Chelsea, Man Utd, Arsenal, Man City and Spurs also in contention (on paper at least) Liverpool’s position as a Champions League team is far from certain.

Clearly Liverpool have a different sort of financial plan for their club than we do for ours as they’ve spent over £100m since Kenny Dalglish took over as manager, whereas we’ve made over £40m since Alan Pardew joined as it stands, although we’ll have to pay for Pieters (if we get him) and this fabled new striker out of that. Mind you, we have frittered away a lot of money on agents’ fees apparently.

Still, I actually think the club are right to get shot of him if they couldn’t tie him down to a new contract. It makes it a bit clearer regarding what needs to be done with the squad.

I guess we can now await Enrique’s Twitter revelations (although it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s been gagged by Ashley as a condition of exit).

NUFCBlog Author: Hugh de Payen I'm a baby-boomer of the punk rock persuasion, currently exiled in Somerset for crimes committed in a previous life where locals keep trying to poison me with something called 'scrumpy'. Hates sprouts, coat-hangers, Cilla Black, ornaments, Steven Seagull movies and 50 Cent (he's not worth 10). Hugh de Payen has written 634 articles on this blog.

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38 Responses

  5. Agree with you Hugh. If he doesnt want to play for us, there is little point keeping him.

  8. newcastle is a great club, we are liverpool but respect must go to newcastle, that owner you have is close to a hicks and gillett so we know how you lot in newcastle feel!!!!

    Just get out ashley your a gimp of a man and are never good enough to own let alone wear a black and white shirt.

    Please get out and stop draining a great club like newcastle, its a disgrace and we know whats its like to have con men in charge at the club, just look at what nearly happened to our liverpool!!!!

    youll never walk alone newcastle….. good luck for the year ahead, buy the way that ranger could be a handful and that tiote looks great also, not to mention you have jones, colloicini at the back and the new french winger and etc, you should be ok….

  9. I hope he joins them & they fial to qualify for Europe all together, is that silly of me or just deserts for a player who wouldn’t sign for us & wanted to play CL footie… the fact is, he’s obviously not good enough for a CL team to cough any dosh up for or they’d have done it way before now & the fact we’re selling him so cheap, I hope we have a sell-on clause in his contract too, cause knowing out luck, he’ll blossem at Cessepool & be sold for 5 times as much as we let him go for…

  10. Putting things into perspective.

    Enrique had two good seasons with us, one of which was in a lower league. He is not an international

    If we get Pieters, and all the indications point that way, then we get a full international.

    Being a pal of our Tim I would think that Pieters knows all there is to know about the club and will be coming to us totally committed.

  11. pointless keeping a guy whos heart isnt with the club.
    i say we’ve had our years out of him. pity his best years are ahead of him.
    im just sick of liverpool wanting everyone we want.
    but anyways. i wish the guy best of luck!

  12. Sam @ 8, Liverpool have pulled off one of the best moves in recent years in getting rid of Torres and signing Suarez and Carroll for just a further £7m outlay. An outstanding bit of business. Just a shame we couldn’t do the same with the Carroll money.

    Enique is a fantastic player and I’m really pee’d off to see him leave. It’s not big suprise as it’s been on the cards for a while, but I’m still not happy. He’ll be brilliant at Liverpool.

    Our club has no ambition what so ever. This is echoed by the players, which is why they are leaving in droves.

    But not to worry, we have a French revolution going on at Barrack road, we’ll be ok with a load of people who have never played in the PL before and will need half a season to settle. By that time we will be hovering just above the bottom 3 and ready for a 11th place push.

  13. Newcastle… a great feeder team.
    Keep´em coming lads. The cheaper, the better.
    We might send you a couple of under 18s to mature, while we´re at it, as soon as you get rid of cigar blinding Barton… on a freebie, of course.

  14. I’ll just be glad to see the back of him & all the pathetic press mongery trying to engineer his move for us, for about the last 3 months.
    Jerks!
    Oh! They were sooo on it, weren’t they, well done.
    :)

  17. clint,it’s all well and good having a laugh at enrique leaving,but will he be replaced?
    experience of this regime would suggest not,like i’ve been saying since a****y turned up,it’s only a good deal if he’s replaced.

  18. Aye mate agreed,
    i just don’t like the manner in which enrique has gone about this, especially his climb down to a non champs league, nasty place to live team like liverpoop.
    Leaves a nasty taste.
    I’ll worry about a replacement if/when we don’t get one.
    For now we don’t know if that’s a fact or not, we can speculate, project or whatever, but right now, who knows?
    My chagrin is with/at enrique for now.

  20. Trojan,
    i was having a laugh at the press mate.
    I’m pissed with enrique, he should slung his hook weeks ago.

  21. Clint, we spent 107 mil on half a team of young good players and recouped 57 (on just torres + babel).
    So we spent 50 mil on six players (23m Suarez, 35 m Carroll, 7m Adam, 20m Downing, 16m Henderson and 6m Enrique).
    You got 41 mil just from us. How many players have you bought with that money? It´s not about buying success, it´s just about buying anyone, hopefully better. Too bad Ashley don´t see it that way, and with that I can empathize. Hope you guys get a better owner… and still feed us your best players. :)

  22. clint, i’m just worried they will do their usual s**t,by putting all their eggs into one basket with pieters.
    true to form with these idiots,something will happen,either a derogatory bid,which gets the knock back,or the lad wont want to come.
    it’s like a stuck record with ashley and co,we’ll get the usual “there wasn’t enough time,to get a replacement” or “all of that money will stay in the club”.you cannot blame fans for being cynical with this ownership,we’ve been here many times before.

  25. @ 21 – aye but we’ve got undersoil heating at the training ground – bet you’s haven’t.

  26. the psv coach is already saying he does not want pieters to leave.you can see from a mile off,how all this will unfold.
    shola amoebi on 30 grand a week and he’s nearly thirty,and he gets a new deal,f**kin’ unbelievable.

  27. CB @ 21

    We don’t expect to qualify for the Champions League and therefore won’t be disappointed if we finish 10th or thereabouts whereas Liverpool and especially its Yank owner will be mightly cheesed off if they don’t finish in the top four. It will be seen as a failure given the lavish (and to many outside Liverpool) foolish expenditure.

    Fat Freddie tried it with us using borrowed money and it failed miserably and saddled the club with a massive debt, similar to Leeds who did one better and imploded.

    To buy your way to success you need to spend a lot more money. Chelsea and Man City are the best examples of buying success. If you can compete with them financially you have a good chance of sitting at the top table. If you can’t your American owners will pull the plug. American owners have only so much patience (and money). Martin O’Neil found that out.

    Dalglish is a legend at Liverpool as was Keegan at Newcastle but there is no guarantee it will translate into trophies, as we found out.

    Best luck for the season, I will watch with interest how you get on.

  29. Still not sure why we didn’t put a bigger price tag on him. We know Liverpool have money and are willing to spend it. We know they have been after Enrique for ages, so why not hold out for more dosh?
    We could have held out for more, like we alledgedly did for Carroll.

    Quite fancy Liverpool to take Arsenal’s 4th place from them if they can get Caroll off the injury table.

  30. divvent knaa off hand roy,but you can bet your bottom dollar,come the end of the window,he’ll be in clover again.
    i suppose young ferguson will now become fullback,as ashley will max out his limited resources as per usual.

  32. First time comment.
    Well, Phil “the beak” Thompson revealed all on Norwegian TV all those months ago: as far as he knew it was a “done deal”. But Newcastle hadn’t received an offer.
    How come.
    Suppose (allegedly) that Liverpool contacted Enrique and/or his agent all those months ago. Told him how much he could get playing for them, told him to just shut up and NOT sign a new contract. And that they would then come in for him late in the window. Enrique seems to have done just that – apart from a twitter outburst a few weeks ago (account later deleted).
    Seems familiar – the local papers in newcastle on the last day of the winter trasnfer period quoting one my a carrol about how proud he was playing 1t no 9 and how he was looking forward to the second half of the season playing for his boyhood heros the black and whites. 5 hours later hes asking for a new contract and 8 hours later Liverpools in with an offer.
    Is it legal to contact players and/or their agents behind the back of the club they’re contracted too?
    I used to respect liverpool but NOT now.

  34. Paul@32, it’s called Tapping up and it’s something that is usually something that the people in charge usually don’t take too kindly too.
    Perhaps in our case the club knew about it and were just waiting to get cover before we let him go?
    Carroll was slightly different though. He wasn’t tapped up. Liverpool spoke to NUFC, said how much? Ashley said £35m should do it. Deal!!!

  35. What happened to Champions League football then Jose? The only thing you are guaranteed to get at Liverpool is burgled.

  36. Agree completely with paul@32 and whilst it’ll come over as sour grapes, I think Enrique is entirely to blame. I don’t know but I suspect he was on around 55k\week and I’m sure I read somewhere he’s going for 60k to the bin dippers…he says it’s lack of ambition at the Toon and to some extent he may be right…Liverpool are certainly spending some ambitious amounts of cash although I’m convinced they’re paying well over the odds for most of them [time will tell]. Enrique could have stayed here, the signings we’ve made seem pretty good to me…he’s guaranteed nothing at liverpool so I’m not sure his ‘ambition’ argument holds much water

  37. good luck jose top player and a top man!

    hes gone as much as i dont like it to a club on the move and trying to push up the league!

    cant really blame him the way the nufc is going im not surprised hes away

    the fee is what you get when a player has so little time left on the contract

    lets get that peteres lad in sharpish and move on

  38. I can se why Jose left, hecwants to play for Spain as they have no first choice left back at the present and he will never get selected if he’s playin at the toon. Just look at the Barton/Nolan case last season, England scouts/manager wouldnt even watch them play, never mind spain coming to watch Jose.

    I think that he could of left earlier and put his intentions out there in June as opposed to a day or two before our first game.

    And the fans who think our back up plan should be in full swing – At least give it a couple of days to get going nothing in football is ever that easy and it’s not as if our new left-back is gonna play against Arsenal?!