Liverpool have reportedly made a £2.5m bid for Luke Young and Martin O’Neill has confirmed the club have received a bid from an unnamed club with Young currently “mulling it over”:-

Martin O’Neill
There has been an offer from a football club, which Luke is mulling over and if it doesn’t materialize then he would also join us [in Portugal] because he needs to play some football soon. We will see how that develops.

My personal opinion is one of slight disappointment, but I won’t lose any sleep over it. I like Luke, always have done, but in the “Tale of the Tape” I put his performance at right back against Carlos Cuellar’s in the same role statistically and showed there wasn’t a whole lot between them. Carlos certainly isn’t anywhere near the appalling right back some insist on portraying him as.

On the more positive side, in the “Inside-out Wingers” I made the case that we need the overlapping forward runs we would associate with Young and Warnock to unlock the real benefits of playing Ashley Young and Steward Downing on the “wrong wing”.

You pays your money, you makes your choice I suppose. It seems overly simplistic, but it’s become a truism that Cuellar offers the stronger defensive options and Young offers more in attack, at least in open play.

I do hold a lot of value in full backs as auxiliary attackers. In fact I tend to think of them primarily from that perspective, but it’s impossible to dismiss the defensive nightmare Young had at Stamford Bridge and the number of times that Cuellar snuffed out any threat down his side of the pitch, it’s become difficult not to imagine that Cuellar helped save more points than Young could have contributed to gaining.

All Things Considered

As The Guardian points out; Luke Young had a horribly unfortunate start to last season. Firstly he was injured when the squad were out in Spain for the Peace Cup and, before he was fit again, he took another knock back with the terrible personal tragedy of his brother’s death.

Rumours about a falling out with Martin O’Neill persisted, but I’ve never seen anything to convince me, frankly. MON rightly or wrongly brought in Warnock, Dunne & Collins since he was also dealing with the fact that Curtis Davies required shoulder surgery at the time and, as far as I’m concerned, once fit, Luke Young fell to 5th choice among the defenders. Yes, it’s true, the way MON operates, that could also be interpreted as “5th favourite”.

Once the foursome of Cuellar, Collins, Dunne & Warnock were thrown together for the first time against Birmingham City, it was clear that we had a rock solid defensive unit. Until Collins picked up a knock a little while later, Young was unable to get his way back in and frequently relied on filling in at left back rather than right.

Young publicly expressed his frustration during the close season at what he saw as not getting a fair crack at playing and I can certainly understand his perspective. However, I take the view that collectively we had one of the best defenses in the league and if it ain’t broke, why fix it? We did struggle for goals somewhat, but you’ll never convince me that was because Luke Young wasn’t playing so, in final analysis, I have to place greater value on Cuellar’s defensive abilities over Young’s attacking qualities.

Show Me The Money

Luke Young is apparently also one of the club’s highest earners, I don’t think I’d be far off the mark if I claimed he was earning £45k/week. That’s over £2m per year and with our wages to revenue ratio being what it is, this has to be viewed pragmatically.

With Carlos Cuellar likely to resume his position as first choice at right back, Eric Lichaj likely to be signing a new contract and making a serious attempt at staking a place in the first team squad, Habib Beye offering a slightly less effective, but probably considerably cheaper version of Luke Young, and Young himself unhappy, it’s an absolute no-brainer that a significant offer would have to be accepted.

By significant offer, I mean a sum that wouldn’t be far from his residual value on the balance sheet, and that’s what we seem to have received from Liverpool. It will be interesting to see how it pans out as Young is no more likely to be first choice ahead of Glen Johnson than he is ahead of Carlos Cuellar, but perhaps he will be happier knowing that to be the case up front and feeling he has a fair chance of competing.

Ultimately, as I said on Twitter when the news broke and received a negative response or two; it’s a shame, while I’ll be saddened to see him go and I do value him as a player, £2m off the wage bill isn’t to be sniffed at, we do have options and we’ll be fine.

If Luke does go, I’ll simply say thanks and best of luck.