How do we fix it?

The Albert
61

How do we fix it? Lots of angles to explore.

Personnel
Attack needs a new focal point. We have small players, fast, busy, but with defenders sitting deep, and Prem refereeing allowing defenders to grab, hold, pull, push, lean on our strikers at will, we need a change. Do everything we can to buy Haaland. Give it a new focal point. Preferably to add to what we have, but if necessary, I’d sacrifice something up front to get this man in. With Haaland, we can now go toe to toe in a congested and hard fought area, and the lack of space for our little players isn’t as much a concern. If they sit deep, with Haaland we will kill them anyway. If they come out to play, we will do what we’ve done for the past 2-3 yrs.

Stay Calm
We have to keep working, and try to play our way through this, but the main need is to stay calm and be patient. VVD and Gomez/other, with Fabinho and Hendo in that midfield, plus other, and all of a sudden the team has authority again. There’s a sense in which we have to be patient, and no one likes doing that, especially when having a bad run, so crucially, we have to stay calm.

Rest
Ultimately some rest, which we’ve not had, will do the world of good. Not sure how much we will get in the summer, but we need it. Fresh bodies, with some reinforcements, in the form of a new signing or two, and players returning from injury, will do the world of good.

And right now?
You have to make the best of any situation in life. Lots of things have gone wrong, but we can’t wallow in that, or it gets worse. So… defence isn’t the issue, so much. Play two central defenders for the rest of the season… possible caveat CL, where I might go Fabinho. But in the Prem, play two central defenders for the duration, Kabak, Philipps, Davies, Williams… two of them.

Get Fabinho in the midfield to add a bit of tackling, steel, physical presence. We are too pretty but getting outmuscled, and I hate to see it.

Play a midfield diamond four, and drop from three to two strikers. Not necessarily less attacking, but with teams sitting deep, we need a bit more creativity and also strikers need to be a bit fresher.

Expectations?
Top four has not gone yet. If a switch is flicked - gets harder with each defeat - but if a switch is flicked and something sparks, we might yet put enough of a run together to finish top four. Obviously we are slipping further way from that and the games are running out, but it is still there to be won.

Champions League? There are a few teams at a higher level, so I don’t expect to win it. However, this competition gives us some joy and respite from the shitty Prem - shitty officiating, shitty VAR lines, shitty unambitious teams, shitty rules enforcement that allowed Man City to buy dominance, unhindered, with Chelsea now following suit.

But you never say never. Still not through against Leipzig, as there’s a game to navigate there, but we are in the driving seat. Get through, last eight, little wind in our sails, let’s see…

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Is there one? I wasn’t aware of this.

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We are competeing, 80% possession, at times some really nice plays and movement. The problem is we aren’t scoring even when we create great chances. For example Mané in the last 2 games has had heading chances that he has just over applied on and scoffed into the grouns. We are tense and nervous those chances in normal condirtions you just stick your head in opposition to the flight of the ball yet Mané over does it trying to insure he scores and ends up wasting a golden opportunity.
We need to relax but are in a situation where we can not relax. We have catch 22 situations like this all over the pitch at the moment and the only way out is to score more than the opposition regularly yet that is becomeing increasingly more difficult.
It’s not that we are digging a hole it’s more that the ground is falling from our feet and that ever since that Everton derby.

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International break combined with the move forward of the Chelsea match.

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Luckily with the International break coming up either our players won’t be allowed to go (Portugal / Africa / S America) or are in such poor form then hopefully they won’t be picked. Should give Klopp and the coaches plenty of time to sort and also to give them some rest, mentaly and physically.

Agree with others, we really need a Haaland type forward this summer if at all possible to give us a different type of option and at least someone who will be in the box. Often there seems to be no-one there.

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67

I think you are viewing this way too simplistically. Defence is not a discreet part of the team that operates independently of everywhere else.

Play shit centre backs, and that affects how attacking the full backs can be, how safe it is for the midfield to bomb on, and how much risk everyone can take trying the high reward stuff from a fear of being countered.

If we play Nat and Rhys (which appeared to be the only two yesterday) but play as we do with Joe and Virgil, we’d have lost by more than one goal.

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There’s a builder called Bob and he fixes things,we should give him a call.

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We’ve lost nearly every match since Xmas, with or without Fabinho in defence, but not once have we used him in midfield (except for the last minutes yesterday).

My argument is that we’re allowing every department to be compromised by using Fab in defence, and trying to play the press from the front using Bobby.

My point is that a side without Bobby, with Fab in midfield, with Salah at 9, two from Phillips/Kabak/Davies at centre back, and four from Mane, Jota, Thiago, Gini, Milner, Jones, Keita, would be better than what we’ve seen.

We need Fab in midfield, and we need Bobby out of the side. And we need to not see Shaqiri, Oxlade, or Origi in the starting line up.

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I can’t blame Klopp for looking at Nat Phillips and Rhys Williams, considering all the compromises necessary in other position to avoid a bloodbath, and think ‘Fuck sake - I’ve got to put Fabinho there’. I just can’t.

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I think we have been spending too long and too much energy protecting the CBs and its still not really done us any good. What’s the point on nullifying ourselves to make sure we only concede one in a one nil loss? I’d actually prefer to go for it and lose 3-2 than play within ourselves and lose 1-0. We’ve tried the cautious way with our dodgy defence and it’s doing fuck all for us. Maybe we need to look at Rodgers when we came 2nd, can’t do anything about a shit defence? Fine score enough so it doesn’t matter.

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We certainly need to find a way to not have TAA having that extra task of covering in the center of our defense and Fabinho (or Henderson if/when fit) seem to me to be the obvious answer to that coming in from DM.
I would include Rhys in options for CB he is much better than Phillips at picking out a long pass, nothing wrong with the limited short passes Phillips offers but at the moment we need more than that.
Noway would I play Salah at CF unless partnered so Mané alongside him with Jota doing some grafting in behind might be better. Then again that’s looking very 442 diamondish which wouldn’t help our defensive weaknesses.
I’d just add that our lads are really trying to put in shifts at the moment perhaps trying too much anything that could reduce that pressure would be welcome I think.

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I suspect Klopp would love to go out and turn matches into a basketball game, but there are two problems.

  1. Our forwards are horribly out of form. It’s no good going for a we’ll score one more than you strategy if we can’t score one.

  2. Other teams have to be committed to attacking as well. The pattern we’ve seen is that teams are sitting in, trying to nick one and sitting back in again.

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This yes, the confidence boost from actually scoring for me is of paramout importance.

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Probably because we have other options in midfield and crap :poop: in defence.

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Well we aren’t going to get them scoring by doing what we’ve been doing either.

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Long term…

Start putting a lot more emphasis on injury records of players we are looking to sign or when we are extending contracts (Matip, Gomez, Ox, Keita, Shaq).

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Tsimikas had never been injured before we signed him. :smiley:

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There is something seriously wrong . I do not believe that this is down to injuries, loss of form, fatigue or the absence of supporters.
A significant number of the squad are no longer able to support the Klopp method/plan.
Either because of age, the distraction of a future elsewhere, disillusionment due to lack of opportunity or temperament.
This being football eventually there will be calls for the manager to go.
Let’s be original and keep the manager and sack the players who are no longer willing, able or focussed on delivering Klopps plan.
This will mean FSG funding a Summer of comings and goings and Klopp being ruthless in disposing of some of his favourites.

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The first part isn’t actually as much of a problem as most seem to think.

Even if many are going on minimal fees most of those fees will be “profit” on the books and give the club accounts a much needed bounce. So take Keita, we signed him for about £54m in 2018 on a 5 year deal. This year he’ll have 2 years left and has already cost us about £33m at £11m a year. Even if he only goes for £22m he’s saving £11m per year on the books. If we could sign say Sancho (as an example) on a 6 year deal for £66m his annual cost is the exact same on the profit and loss as Keita is. If we get anymore than £22m for Keita it’s profit to help negate any financial losses.

Actually selling players is good from a business view, their incoming fees have a bounce on the books now and their annual cost gone off the books creates room for new players to come in. Guys like Matip that have zero cost on the books, Minamino/Shaqiri who would be minimal on the books and even Mane/Firmino who would go for much more than their value on the books would all dramatically increase profits coming in to do new deals with. Guys like Ox and Keita who have high annual values on the books are good to just get off to make room for incomings to add their annual costs. Then take high purchase price Guys like Alisson, VvD and Fabinho and, if possible get them signing contract extensions to spread their annual cost further.

So say as a working example we sell Firmino for £60m, Keita for £25m, Ox for £20m and Minamino for £25m. We also extend Alisson by 5 years and VvD by 4 years on their deals. Firmino makes a profit of £54m, Keita £3m, Ox about £12m, Minamino about £20.5m so just shy of 90 million quid to help settle the books, match day revenue is around £100m a year.

Those players annual costs plus the reduced costs on Alisson and VvD it also clears off an annual cost of around £34m off the books each year. All extremely rough figures. That creates enough room on the books for £204m worth of fees if everyone bought is young enough to talk into 6 year deals £170m on our usual 5 year deals.

The business side it’d be the perfect remedy to have a proper good clear out.

As for Klopp, he must be so frustrated, he knows he only has so much room to operate each season and the recruitment has been a long term plan to finally get a squad together where most of the components are assembled but the squad won’t get to roll out this year, we’ve never had all the working parts in place and good to go all at the same time and because of the ridiculous condensed nature of this season and our injuries we’ve been forced to rely too much on imperfect back up parts just don’t cut it or break down with injury too often.

He won’t want a rebuild he’ll want to see what this squad can finally do now its assembled but despite what he says during the season where the players can hear him even he must know a rebuild is now inevitable.

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Tbh as long as the answer isn’t Jim, I think we’ll be ok.

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