It was said actually that Barcola was one of our alternatives, I guess to Ekitike (because Isak was our primary target). Our plan possibly shifted after Jota’s tragedy.
How good is the left side with a new contract for Gakpo until his age of 31 and Barcola for an important fee though, that’s for another topic.
Would that have pleased the ones that say a (left) wide player should’ve been prioritized?
And even more than going back to the Eredivisie, I could see him being a target for clubs like Dortmund, Leverkusen, Leipzig, Roma, Milan, Napoli, Tottenham, Newcastle, Marseille, Lille, Monaco, some Spanish teams.
Not saying right now, but down the line. Regardless what happens at Liverpool soon.
Easily. And probably more that I haven’t mentioned.
I don’t get it why his coaching career would be at such danger that he would only have two options, go back to Eredivisie or never work again. Are we serious?
And Arne finally realizes his vision of Liverpool playing like PSG
Or we finally introduce midfielders who play football.
Maybe Diaz saw what was coming,
and thought to hell with this and didnt want to we part of it
If things don’t work out for Slot and he is sacked by Liverpool at some point this season, he will definitely have more coaching jobs in his future. He did well in the Eredivisie and then he won the Prem at Liverpool. That will get the attention of lots of teams, even if this season hasn’t gone well.
Who knows what the next opportunity might be for him? Could be a stint back in the Eredivisie, or one of the teams mentioned, or something else. He is young and will have years to continue to carve out his career.
I am hoping something sparks for him to turn it around at Liverpool. We are struggling but we are definitely much better than this.
Just read that Isak, Wirtz and Ekitkie have only been on the pitch together 81 minutes.
Thats not helped.
Mostly because of Isak having to do a lot of catching up.
Also, I have no idea how you currently put them together in a starting team.
I do, but a lot of people won’t particularly like it because it would mean dropping Salah and Gakpo - although with both of their forms being pretty poor this season, it may not be a bad thing.
I would go with Isak and Ekitike up front together with Wirtz in the hole pulling the strings for them.
The biggest problem with that idea is depth. If we lose Wirtz - who can come in to cover him? Same with losing 1 of Isak or Ekitike, the back up isn’t there to play 2 up front with acceptable cover
I would too.
That’s what I wanted to say, someone has to drop. And the diamond is not going to happen, I don’t think. I actually feel it could make us look even worse.
Put a gun to my head how do I put them 3 in, I’d probably say Wirtz in the right half-space, more tucked in as the 4th midfielder, Ekitike on the left in a “Salah” role and Isak up top.
We have to recuperate the team, this isn’t about how do we field our most expensive signings in, no matter what.
The shit thing about Isak is that we’re all battling to get him fit and firing.
Michael Cox has been writing some articles for the Athletic on formations and talks about how the diamond formation has largely underperformed as a system and is rarely used - in part because of how football has moved on.
If we had been able to bring in Guehi I wonder if we would have tried a 343/352 set up during our run of poor form (even though Arne I think has usually opted for 433/4231 type set ups throughout his career, I think I read somewhere years ago about the 343 belonging to the family of the 433 system Ajax/ Cruyff/Michels developed?
In hindsight I wish he played the Palace team against Soton in the league cup a round earlier That game has killed us.
Kerkez reminds me of Alberto Moreno, looses his head sometimes just look in his eyes.
Gakpo on the other hand … 
It’s one of the things I wrote about the diamond a few weeks ago. Might go and read his article. I wonder how people imagine we would press and especially defend, if we employed a diamond with the mentioned players?
On the 3 at the back theory, I’d probably say no. If Guehi came, I guess on form he would’ve got the chance very quickly to come in instead of Konate. Then who knows how it would’ve evolved, it also depends how the player does.
And if you want a slightly weird opinion/prediction, Guehi could have possibly even threaten some of our full backs.
A little bit, yeah. That crossed my mind here and there. Though from what I see so far, I’d say Moreno was technically better overall. Kerkez looks to be a better tackler though.
Yeah, that’s what prompted me to read that particular article first over the other ones he had written.
It’s a rare formation and in the cases I can remember in my football following at club and international level, they didn’t last very long.
How often it happened and was a long term success is nothing compared to how often the public (mostly fans) shouts for it to be introduced.
Looks great on paper when you just imagine the luxury of just throwing multiple midfielders and strikers.
But football is not played on paper.
I wonder how much of Kerkez’s performances here are a result of the other issues the team seems to have? He was excellent at Bournemouth.
I also wonder if we were to get Semenyo, who could probably offer something similar to Diaz, whether that would also help us get the best of Kerkez too?