No, that’s where I am. I don’t have anything against him as a person, my grudge is against him as a player. I think that two years of patience is more than enough for a player of his calibre and price tag. He’s just not reaching the level of performance he showed at Benfica, let alone progress beyond that.
I do expect him to come good at a different club, whichever that may be, but I ultimately want what’s the best for my club - he’s just not that and I’m not fooling myself into thinking he will become that anymore.
If you have the belief, then you’re a better and more patient person than me. I would definitely like to hear why you think that he will come good for us after not making any significant progress for two years.
Gamble or not, he was amazing that season, I can’t remember many better performances from an opposition player at Anfield - but that’s for another discussion. Regardless of price tag, any player that Liverpool sign will come with a level of expectation from me. If a player doesn’t show any real progress after two seasons at the club, then the probability is high that he won’t be fulfilling his potential there.
I’m aware he had a problem last season. I’m wondering if that has carried on into this season, or whether people are letting last season’s perceptions continue into this season. For what it’s worth regardless, I did not expect to see Díaz so high up the list either. I’m wondering if Jota would have made the list if not for his injuries.
Jota is going to miss at least 10 games this season through injury, barring a miracle, so Slot has no choice but to play Nunez as the central attacker, even if he misses loads of chances. Who else is there?
Just to be clear, I’m wondering how much of this is because of the amount of game time he gets and the number of forward runs he makes, that could make an average offside ratio look particularly bad, and how much of this is because that offside ratio is just simply bad.
Yeah, we’ll have to see who is our “3rd option” in those situations.
Whether we’re moving Gakpo, Salah (though he doesn’t like it) or Chiesa central when we need it.
Or maybe we play two false #9’s/#10’s like Arsenal do (Odegaard and Havertz, now Trossard instead of the injured Odegaard), basically having a box of 4 central players and two very offensive wingers out wide. Flexible and gives options. We could be also good at it.
In the latter case, could be Szobo partnered with the likes of Jones or Elliott.
Hope Danns also gets the chance to impress Slot at least in training, once he gets himself fit (when is that scheduled for?).
Grav wasn’t a big outlay of transfer fee and was almost expected to be a squad member and it’s a pleasant surprise that he’s slotted into this hybrid 6 role so elegantly.
Nunez was a significant cost plus coming on the back of Bobby and Sadio’s departure was expected to pick up the baton and run. The “captain chaos” thing was kind of working and the petered out. And Arne’s system is more methodical. He does seem to be fitting in.
I backed him to the hilt last season and was hoping he’d build on that start from last season and move up a gear but he seems to have gone into his shell. Feel sorry for the lad.
Not the first and not the last time that a (even big) transfer will not work, for various reasons.
You always get a % fans who were still convinced or hopeful that Carroll/Balotelli/Benteke would work. That’s only naming a few, there are others who weren’t such big flops, but still didn’t do what they were brought in for.
Some will be able to turn it around after a certain amount of time, but some will simply fail and leave the club.
They cannot get unlimited amount of chances and patience at this level.
I am possibly connecting dots that should not be, but I think there is maybe part of the answer in what we’ve heard this season from several of the players of being really happy with the clarity of what is being asked of them. There is an unstated but obvious contrast to at least last season with those comments, but to me it’s something we saw for the last two seasons under Klopp. We often looked like a team that tweaked what we were trying to do too often that we’d overcomplicated it and were a bit of a frankenstein monster tactically.
We focus on this, which gives us a weakness here. So if we adjust in this way we can mitigate that, but that gives us a problem here, which we can address by moving this player in this direction…
So what is the connection to Darwin? I think there is a very credible story that can be told about the whole thing revolving around Pep’s desire to keep evolving tactically, or more dismissively “tinkering”, and the leeway he was given for doing so. We clearly set out to do different things knowing there was no like for like replacement for Bobby and so Pep devised a series of tweaks to accommodate that that which in turn opened up the possibility of a player like Darwin who didnt fit what we previously did to now make sense.
I always felt that Jurgen was delegating more and more, giving licence to Pep Lijnders to experiment a touch with tactics etc…
Yes, Jurgen brought the hammer down most of the time, but without innovation being introduced, the team would stand still on the same spot, season after season.
Whatever way we played, whatever positions and roles the players were asked to perform… has now formed a spreadsheet of valuable data, that Arne can peruse with interest for all of our benefit
