In his exclusive column for CaughtOffside, former Liverpool attacker Stan Collymore discusses some of football’s biggest talking points, including why a move for Harry Kane suits all parties, Liverpool’s lukewarm transfer window, why David Moyes is likely to be sacked by West Ham, why Man United must listen to all sides before making a decision on Mason Greenwood, plus much more.

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Harry Kane’s Bayern switch is best for everyone

I think it’s a cracking move, a really good move for all parties. For Tottenham Hotspur PLC – they get £100m or thereabouts for a player that’s in the last year of his contract. For Ange Postecoglou – because he doesn’t have to go through a season answering questions about Harry Kane; Will he stay? Will he go? Is he happy? Is he not happy? It’s really a great narrative and a good space for him if he backs his own ability. For Harry Kane himself, as a player, it’s a great move. 

So many people have disrespected Bayern and I heard somebody talk nonsense about it. They do realise that Bayern Munich is one of a handful of clubs which, if you plucked out and said who are legitimate European royalty, it’s Real Madrid, Liverpool, Bayern Munich, AC Milan and then you’d be spiralling down after that… Barcelona and more. With the organisation of Bayern Munich, I wouldn’t be at all surprised in two years time if Harry Kane doesn’t say it’s the best experience that he’s had as a professional footballer. 

Everything is catered for. Everything is geared to success. Everything is an experience of the highest quality. Everything is done for Bayern players. Yes, they play in the Bundesliga, which is not the Premier League, but I think that with Harry Kane now up front, I can’t think of many teams that would want to play them if they got to the quarters or the semi finals in the Champions League. And you know, if he joins and gets registered today, he can play the German Super Cup and that will be his first trophy – on day one. That kind of alludes to the fact that he can fill his boots both with goals and with trophies. Everything is possible there and it wouldn’t have sat well with me to see a guy still scoring 30 goals a season and not getting the tangible rewards for it. 

He did his time at Spurs and I think it’s difficult for him, but I think that the time is right and the club is right. In two, three, four years hence when he’s doing maybe the Sky bit and he retires and talks about the legacy of his career he’ll say ‘my experience of Bayern Munich was the best experience of my career.’ Such are the expectations within, and the efforts and the lengths that the club go to to make sure players are catered for. 

Spurs fans will say, ‘well what does it say about us as a football club if we can’t keep our best players,’ but let’s be perfectly honest, they finished like last year with 31 Harry Kane goals. He’s not going to score 60 goals this season to try and get them into fourth and they’re not a much better team than last years, save for the fact that they’ve got a new manager and a new impetus. For me it’s that natural end point which very rarely happens now. It’s positive for everyone and a no brainer for Harry Kane.

I think Daniel Levy knows by Kane’s body language that he would quite happily have stayed and not kicked up a fuss, but ultimately I see a chairman’s first responsibility has to be to that football club. When people say well £100 million gets your a Declan Rice or a Caicedo – not massively proven – but huge amounts of potential, and we get £100m on the table that can be then invested into a new manager, keep him sweet and he goes and spends it well – and you’re not going to get asked every five minutes about Harry Kane – I think that that makes Ange Postecoglou’s position a lot happier. 

The clean break gives everybody an opportunity to work well. Yes, you can argue that Harry Kane is worth a billion to them in terms of the legacy, the Premier League recognition and how that may dissipate somewhat now, because when you think of Premier League players, you think of Harry Kane as a byproduct of Spurs, but nothing lasts forever. I think that with £100m and also his wages off the ledger sheet, Spurs can have a clean break and say; ‘you know what, if we finish eighth this year, that will be better than in April because last year was with Harry Kane.’ In the same way that Jack Grealish was at Aston Villa all of his life and had as much success as Harry in terms of hitting personal benchmarks, Villa fans were like ‘oh my god, this is the end of the world. What are we going to do?’ He goes to Man City Villa for £100m, Villa spend it relatively well-ish… the club moves on. Tottenham moved on from Jimmy Greaves, they moved on from Glenn Hoddle, it’s time to move on from Harry Kane.

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Liverpool have a scattergun approach and had an average window so far

When I went to Liverpool, Everton were interested as well. I met both Liverpool and Everton. Roy Evans, the Liverpool manager, flew back from Barbados for literally eight hours to chat to me in London’s Heathrow Airport Hotel. I met Joe Royal, the Everton manager, in a hotel in in Cheshire. They both set out their football stall. I think that’s the most important thing when you move to a football club. More often than not when players move for the extra 50 grand, 100 grand a week, it doesn’t massively pay off. If they sit down with the technical staff, they get the feel for who they’re going to be working with day in and day out, meeting the manager or head coach and it will be just about football. No money is discussed because that’s when you go in a separate room with your agent, whoever’s negotiating the deal, and entrust the agent to deal with the financial side. The most important meeting a player will ever have when signing for a club is with the head coach because they look you in the eye and they say ‘we want you to play here. We want you to do this. We’re really excited. You’re going to be a huge part of the jigsaw.’ Or you might feel as if you’re just another player going to the club. So that’s pretty much how it works. 

From my perspective, all deals that I was involved in, whether it be going to Forest, whether it be going to Villa, Liverpool, for British record transfers… the most important meeting – and I’m sure Declan Rice and Moises Caicedo would agree with this – would be when I would understand how the club were going to utilise me. If you get the right answers and the right feeling, you’re on your way. If you get ‘yeah, well, you’re going to come in and you’re going to be fighting for your place with another guy but we want to pay you a shedload of money’… that’s when the alarm bells should start to ring.

Liverpool’s transfer window has been average. I mean, Mac Allister, very good, eight out of 10 signing. Szoboszlai, one for the future, seven out of 10 – but this is in the context of losing Henderson, Milner, Firmino, Naby Keita… the very least a club like Liverpool should be doing if they’re having a massive clear out, is to have a massive amount of incomings, and I’d say they’ve left themselves maybe two short, three players short. Liverpool’s recruitment department historically has been very good, but for me, looking to break the British transfer record late in the day doesn’t bode well and it comes across as panicking to me.

Liverpool have always been one of those clubs that have been on the starting blocks. You look at City, they want Paqueta, they want Gvardiol, and you could say both of those are late in the day, but you’re adding to a treble-winning squad. Liverpool are adding to try and get back on par with Manchester City, and in terms of Liverpool’s business overall, I’d give them a five or six. If they miraculously got Caicedo plus a couple of other targets, then it starts to look a lot more like a squad. 

Their first choice midfield is not as battle tested as any as the top five or six really, they just don’t know what it will be like under pressure in the Premier League, so I think another midfielder is needed for sure. I’m a little bit concerned that Liverpool seem to be having a bit of a scattergun approach to anybody that’s available and so it’s a lukewarm window for Liverpool and perhaps an over reliance at the beginning part of the season on a very, very good attacking department.

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Aston Villa need to take advantage of the Conference League just like West Ham did

Monchi has come and people will say ‘well, when he went to Italy, it didn’t work, he’s very much a man from Sevilla.’ He’s worked closely with Unai Emery in the past though so I think you’ll start to see a real Iberian slant on signings. A real due diligence in terms of Aston Villa signing players that have value in the here and now and also potential resale value down the line. 

I think that getting the balance right with the three good signings they have already, and obviously flesh the squad out is imperative. In terms of playing the Conference League, I would expect them, as an English club, to go for it. I’d be disappointed if they didn’t make the latter stages because I think that they’ve got the talent to be able to do it. They’ve still got players like Phil Coutinho at the club, who if you use sparingly in those kinds of games (quarters, semis, finals), you could easily do well in that competition and a lot clubs would feel quite intimidated finding that they’re up against Coutinho et al. Aston Villa’s window has also been a very, very good eight (out of 10) on the back of a very well organised effort from last season.

Newcastle have got the Champions League to deal with, Spurs are going to be better, Chelsea will be better, so it might mean that Villa have to take a step back to then take a step forward, and that might mean settling for where they were last season. Hopefully having a good year and winning the Conference League would mean direct entry into a tournament that, of course, Emery has made his own over the last 10-15 years.

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David Moyes will lose his job; he should’ve left West Ham at the end of last season

David Moyes really should have gone after the elation of the Conference League win, but this is the same rationale as why clubs that go up from the Championship stick with the same players. It’s that kind of loyalty. After the celebration you don’t think in ruthless terms when you’re lifting a trophy, and everybody goes off for their summer holiday.

I think the reality is that their league position last season told you a lot about West Ham really, and that’s from the season before where they were seventh, and then last year where they were sort of scrapping relegation until fairly late… they’re a middle of the table team. I think that the problem is that David Sullivan has brought in the new technical director and they’ll see themselves as a big London club. Big stadium, won a European trophy, qualify for Europe. They need something that is hand in glove with that and I don’t think David Moyes is. From my perspective, I would be stunned if David Moyes isn’t one of the first casualties of the Premier League season, maybe in November or December. 

They’ve obviously lost not just Declan Rice, but Scamacca, Lanzini to varying degrees of who cares – but still lost bodies. Harry Maguire might come in, Paqueta might end up at Manchester City… I don’t know if they’ve fleshed the squad out enough. I think that they will hover around mid-table or just under, and I think that David Moyes will go – that is the power play now. David Moyes and his backroom staff versus the new technical director versus David Sullivan and in the end, David Moyes will lose his job. The best case scenario for West Ham United last season would have been David Moyes lifting the trophy and going ‘I can’t do any better, now I’m leaving it to the next guy,’ but he’ll end up falling on his sword come the dark days of winter.

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Man City will walk the Premier League and Arsenal aren’t a title threat

Man City will be nine to 12 points clear at the end of the season. I think Arsenal will start the season very well and I think that the feel good factor around Arsenal obviously is tangible, but I don’t think they’re a title threat. They may feel because of the strengthening and getting the likes of Havertz and Declan Rice that they’re more capable, but they need goals from a centre forward position, and I think that’s a problem area for them. They should be going out and looking for a proper centre-forward, maybe could have, even should have gone for Hojlund and been in a race with Manchester United.

With Manchester United, how will the likes of Onana do, and Mason Mount? I think they’re good solid signings, but I don’t see them clawing back huge amounts of points on City, who are going to have players looking themselves in the mirror and saying ‘we’ve won a treble can we dare do it again?’ Can we match the great Chicago Bulls teams, the great Liverpool teams of the 80s, the great Manchester United teams in the 90s, can we keep pushing the boundaries and make this five, six, seven, eight Premier Leagues? That for me will be telling. Manchester City are a great team, yes. Best team in the world? Yes. But I still don’t think you can talk of them in the same bracket as the great Liverpool team of the 80s and the great Man United team of the 90s. They were at the top for a decade and I don’t really think City are quite there yet. 

As far as the title race goes, Manchester City will know by Christmas. No World Cup this year, two or three internationals… yes, the Champions League is back and you’ll see how City cope with that. You’ll see what the numbers from their big stars like Grealish, Kevin De Bruyne and Haaland are looking like, and if they’re as consistent as they were last year, then yeah, I’d call it nine to 12 points ahead at the end, if not more. 

Arsenal, Manchester United, Newcastle, Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham are significantly behind Manchester City so I look at the others and I think of them in a group of being good with the ability like Liverpool to be great, or Arsenal in a spell to be greater. United, for example, to have a really good home spell and look really persuasive, but I don’t see any of those clubs, putting the kind of home and away performances in, week in and week out, that Manchester City are capable of.

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Man United must listen to the opinions of all groups before making a decision on Mason Greenwood

I think that now all of the outside noise around Mason Greenwood matters. Famously or infamously, I struck a girlfriend of mine, Ulrika Jonsson. It happened at the time when I was playing for Aston Villa and I trained and played as normal. I think that if I was in that situation now, I would have been more than happy to meet women’s groups and to be able to, hopefully, talk in an erudite fashion. To explain that football is my job and that what goes on outside of football, outside of your working environment – although it should be taken into consideration by supporters, groups and stakeholders – that people should be given a second chance. 

If Manchester United think there is a football reason for keeping him at the club – and they would argue that he’s a bright young talent – then I think that those women’s groups should also be listened to. Football is also a very visible public industry. Imagine those women’s groups go into Tesco’s, go into Oxfam, in other words go and put petrol in their car… we don’t know what the CEO of Tesco, Oxfam or Shell do, because in a lot of cases it’s not public enough. Football is very public, so there’s an argument that Mason Greenwood would be dealt differently to a guy that works for a high profile company, or your corner ship, or your bank or building society CEO, who may have behaved just as appallingly. His behaviour was appalling, as my behaviour was appalling, and I think that what we need to do now is acknowledge everything. 

The reality of football, is that football clubs will keep people on the books if they feel that they are an asset. Do I believe that Mason Greenwood deserves an opportunity to be able to make amends and move forward and make strides in his career and off the pitch to be an advocate for women’s groups? Yes. Do I believe that those women’s groups and men’s groups and all other groups have a voice inside their club? Yes. 

So I actually think in this case, everybody’s needs can be met by sitting down and talking to each other. As long as things like that are talked about, and stakeholders and all of these people have sat around a table, I think that you could get to a very sensible conclusion. What I think shouldn’t happen is that Manchester United should take an arbitrary view just on Mason Greenwood’s ability, because I think that we are an inclusive sport that wants everybody to feel included. 

I don’t think that Mason Greenwood’s career should end because of a mistake that he made. I do believe in the redemption of every single person. That everybody deserves a second chance, and he’s still a very young man that can go on and learn and add significantly as an advocate for the issues that he’s got involved in. Manchester United are a very important, well-respected, national and global organisation that should listen to their supporters. That would be my solution to it. Everybody get around the table, have a conversation and talk honestly and openly and see if a solution can be found.

The post Collymore’s column: Kane move best for all, Liverpool’s scattergun approach, Moyes will go, Man United’s Greenwood conundrum and move appeared first on CaughtOffside.