I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s completely knackered. Think he’s missed something like 11 games with injury but other than that he’s played continuously either as CB or in midfield, even in games that were relatively unimportant because we were so short on numbers. One of the many drawbacks of having a player in one key position covering another as a back up. He never gets a rest. Done a great job in the circumstances. His return to the midfield was a major turning point in the season.
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If I am figuring correctly, we only dropped 7 points with Fabinho playing at DM: 11W - 2D - 1L
That’s a 95 point season extrapolated over 38 games. Mostly with kids as CBs. A good reminder of what this team is capable of?
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Or a stern reminder to Klopp? 
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I think it’s harsh to criticise Klopp for using Fab and Hendo in defence and waiting before turning to Phillips and especially Rhys.
He obviously felt he couldn’t drop them straight in and needed to work on the training pitch before they were ready.
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Phillips is not a kid either, inexperienced maybe.
Yes, absolutely. The same reason why he didn’t give Tsimikas and Neco any significant pitch time.
Regarding Fabinho, he is a vital cog, in the midfield; and squad should be built and managed that way.
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Klopp said exactly this, they have basically had to spend any training time available drilling Kabak, Phillips and Williams since Jan…
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Unbelievably harsh for anyone to criticise JK for using Fabinho as a CB this season. That was always the plan from the moment we decided not to replace Lovren and the general consensus was that it made sense, even though there were some obvious risks attached. No one was calling for Williams or Phillips to be 4th choice CB.
Ultimately it’s been a triumph for the coaching team that those lads (and Kabak) could come in, do a good job and allow Fabinho to do what he does best.
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I feel compelled to clarify my point a little bit:
I don’t mean it as a criticism. As you say, it’s very likely that behind-the-scenes work was responsible for our strong end to the season, and it wasn’t quite so straightforward as just playing Phillips from around the halfway point.
My point is rather that, between our mostly good opening matches (before disaster struck over and over) and the return of round pegs to round holes to close out the season (allowing the side overall to return closer to “normal”, the best proxy for which is Fabinho getting back into midfield), we were able to perform to a level that, conservatively, indicates that we would have been title challengers again.
The materials at our disposal are still among the best.
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The way some of the media are crowing about Man Utd missing Maguire if you took a similar approach to us we would be lauded for top 4.
Injuries all over the park just led to a complete imbalance and no reliant players from the bench led to the approach Klopp had to take. There was a period in which we were creating absolutely nothing, our results got a little better once we escaped that but were still poor until we fully implemented Phillips/Kabak and Williams in.
In fact that injury to Kabak knocked us back a bit
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Did it?
Did it knock us back as much as pushing Kabak straight into the starting lineup despite him not having trained with us?
Yes, it’s debateable however we should be careful of false narratives. It’s evident my narrative is very different to yours over this. Oh! and Ben Davies?
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