That all makes sense but anyone who would pay £60m for Firmihno hasn’t been paying attention for the last 15 months !
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Happens all the time in football. But as much as the incoming fees would benefit the books even if we didn’t get those fees it’s the room released on the books as the annual cost of the players that actually leads to us being able to bring in at least £150m worth of talent even if my maths are completely shit. And I don’t think that would be the limit of what we could get off the books, although most of what is to come off the books has very little value/cost per year. The big hitters are VvD, Alisson, Fabinho, Keita and Ox who have never extended their deals (except Ox 2 years in). Get the ones we want to keep to extend dragging their annual cost right down and the ones we don’t off the books even if we don’t make much “profit” over what they’ve got left to pay. So Keita has £22m roughly left to pay but its better getting that off the books for £20-25m and “breaking even” to free up around £11m per year which could secure a CB and a Wijnaldum (final cost of £5m per year) replacement for instance. £16m per year for them two freed up is the same as £80m worth of fees if the players sign 5 year deals. The cashflow/profits could then come from players with virtually no value left on the books like Matip, Origi, Shaqiri, Minamino, even at rubbish fees individually they sort out the books as its nearly completely profit.
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Ok that’s fine then - let’s continue using our best midfielder at centre back, and our worst forward at 9, and continue to have loads of ball without creating a chance, then concede just one goal and lose the match.
Let’s continue to do everything exactly the same, two months on from when we started losing, and when we do occasionally win by doing something different, let’s abandon it the next match.
But of course it works in training, so why on earth doesn’t it work in competitive matches?
This thread is titled how do we fix it, not how long will it take to come right if we change nothing.
My point remains that we are better than our PL results, and whilst other factors have played huge parts, our usage of the players we have is now the key issue.
Even Rodgers had the tactical acumen to change something when we just couldn’t get a result. He went 352 until eventually it got worked out, but by then at least we’d won some matches.
How about we try Phillips and Kabak at centre back, Fab at DM, a forward line without Bobby, and see what happens.
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And on top of that he got a trophy while injured.
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But might have maybe scored? We have been playing as shadows of ourselves since the first lockdown. And as has been mentioned, VVD played against Villa when they hit 7. The injuries have been savage but something is broken and the worrying thing is that it seems to be getting worse.
However, a draw or win tomorrow could utterly transform our season. I think we’re one good performance from snapping out of our malaise and charging on again.
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We weren’t complaining when we were winning why start complaining now? 
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(And @RedForever )
I know it’s a stupid thing to be saying on a forum in which we’ve come together to talk about the footy, but I don’t think there is a revelation or change we can suggest that Klopp and his staff aren’t aware of, have considered and weighed up the pros and cons of.
Klopp, up to now, is seeing something that has made him want to play Fabinho at centre back. Whether that’s training, something the data or wherever, that had made him to this point want to put Fab there and sacrifice what he brings to the midfield.
He put him in midfield on Sunday, so perhaps something has changed - perhaps Kabak is getting to grips with what is needed? Perhaps
Phillips is doing enough in training to be trusted?
Perhaps Gini is running on empty and that swings the equation back the other way?
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All these things are possible. A collective loss of confidence and form is possible. It’s possible that (as I think you’ve suggested but I might be wrong) we’re mentally burned out from last season. You know my thoughts on this or I suspect can guess.
I know we often have customers at work asking why we don’t to X or Y to improve things. I remember being in a pub on Boxing Day (big building, sold alcohol and food indoors) and there were 2 staff behind the small bar with a big queue. I asked why they didn’t have more staff, answer was that 2 good staff could work and achieve as much as was possible given the size of the bar. But to everybody who didn’t work there, they just didn’t have the staff.
Nobody knows the inner workings of a business / team unless they’re there. I’m sure Klopp’s having sleepless nights about it and it’s driving him mad. This MATTERS to him, we can see it. But whilst the problems continue, so will the questions and the naive points of view. He’s never coming out complaining of not enough staff, the wrong staff, issues with FSG etc. So all we can do is speculate in the darkness.
Fundamentally (IMHO) Henderson is and has been our fulcrum for a while. Playing him at CB was a mistake, now he’s injured, we’re dreadful. Remember him missing those last few matches under BR when we came so close?
But down the other trouser leg of time, we signed Bruno Fernandez and United signed Thiago. We’re joint top and they’re in 14th. So it goes. Gives us something to discuss at least 
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You can always be too close to the problem. Human nature.
I think one thing that’s disappointing me is we’ve always had a meritocracy under Klopp but it doesn’t feel like it this year. Players who have been doing rubbish on the pitch still keep getting played. Other players have come in and done OK then never get on the pitch again.
I think with the limiting of training time Klopp has doubled down on picking players he feels he can most trust based on qualities he knows they have over how they’ve performed in recent games. Hence Origi regularly being used as an impact sub and Firmino playing week in week out despite both being awful recently whilst on the pitch. Guys like Minamino played, did well and then didn’t get seen again till he went on loan.
In the league I’d seriously consider an attacking mid behind two forwards giving an extra player deeper. The front 3 with pace/threat wide and a false 9 is running flat and listless against the defensive set ups in the league. Jones feeding Salah and Jota. With Shaqiri and Firmino alternatives to Jones and Mane and Origi the back ups to Salah and Jota.
Thought we were going to see that against Fulham but Shaqiri got pushed wide when he doesn’t have the pace for it, Salah was isolated without support and Jota too far away so they could concentrate on Mo whilst Jota was too far away from goal.
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We scored two against Villa, that would be fine enough if we were scoring two on average for the last 3 months.
Adrian was abysmal and we also missed Hendo plus half of their goals had a deflection, yes it was awful result but it was a anomaly, bar City we haven’t had another result like that in this period.
Yes we haven’t been our best since Watford but there is a massive chasm between the form between restart and December and the form now, plenty of games to choose in which we dominated and created and scored goals. Since Palace our creation has been steadily dropping to the point where one of the halves last week we were at 0.07 expected goals.
Using Villa as a point to why we’ve been shit for more than 12 months ignores the fact we were top by 4 points on Christmas Day.
This is not patchy form which I kind of expected this season, this is drop off the cliff type form.
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It is a cliff drop, can’t be argued. The reasons why seem to elude our best manager in recent memory. Says a lot that. The guy who turned us from doubters to believers, won number 6 and put us firmly back at the pinnacle of English football (a monumental achievement) seems to be at a loss. Deep shit.
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Limp through to the international break, and take stock from there.
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Lick the asses of PGMOL, PL, FA etc. so that they take mercy on us and stop screwing. Alternatively, we can break few kneecaps to address the issue.
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Give the players a proper rest. The key players have been defying physical and mental boundaries for three seasons and they are just knackered at the moment.
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Get some proper backups. Most of the workload in last three seasons has been shouldered by a group of 14-15 players. The rest (for whatever reasons) have been little more than fringe players.
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Add a bit of tactical diversity. Buy someone who can bring something different to the table.
My two (or four) pennies…but not this Penny though
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You answered it In the other thread
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It used to be Jim then it was Bob.
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Fabinho in midfield seems to have helped.
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Good article, but there are some problems
- An unspoken truth about Klopp’s title-winning Liverpool is that they don’t contain many obviously great individuals
Horseshit. Absolute horseshit. Of our first team at the time we won the league about 7 or 8 of them were genuinely in a conversation about being the best in the world in their position.
- It makes a leap from the cavalier run to our first final to winning the league, suggesting that this mad football couldn’t last. In truth Liverpool haven’t done the ‘heavy metal football’ thing for at least two years.
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I too found problems with the comment about not having many great individuals. But it does underscore the extent to which some of our players are underrated.
For instance Mane. And I’m reminded by no less a person than Messi’s comments about him wrt WPOY…
Then there’s Gini Wjinaldum, who in last 2yrs has consistently been one of the top 3 CMs in the world; next to Kimmich and Thiago…
Then Firminho in that specialist central attacking playmaking role, in which IMO, only Benzema is probably better.
Its a disappointing side of what was probably the first insightful article I’ve seen on the LFC situation…
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We had five players in the PFA team of the year, last year, and were arguably robbed.
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