Yes, absolutely. But that’s a footballing decision not a ownership one.
I don’t have a problem with criticising the club, but I do have a problem with people deciding who they hate and the retconning everything that goes wrong on their shoulders.
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Last summer yes, but I though we were talking about our approach to targeting Jude. Even last summer it was not because that is our strategy for going after our targets, but because it reflected an opinion that we were ok and didnt need to do business.
Yes we can pull apart what we think we should have done given we might have personally had a different opinion of what our team needed. But the issue here is that too many people are trying understand what did happen by imposing their own opinion of what should have happened. It requires either inserting bad motivations on the people involved (Klopp is being screwed by FSG who don’t care about the club) or requiring they approached their decision with the most naïve perspective of thinking there was one player and one player alone who could solve our problem. None of that is necessary. It is all explainable by simply accepting what Klopp said over and over again, and only seemingly came to accept was wrong on the very final days of the window after accumulating injuries to all of who might have been his starting midfield - he was more than happy with what he already had and preferred to wait to make changes in the midfield.
FInally, I don’t think you can reasonably point to any examples of us employing a “him or no one” strategy on areas we wanted to upgrade as the only cases people can point to were cases where we got the “him” in question. Our lack of need to look elsewhere in some particular deal doesn’t demonstrate an unwillingness or inability to drum up alternatives, especially when we all know the numerous cases we have seen of having a good pipeline of options.
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Quite.
Díaz
Gakpo
Konate
And Nunez arrived in that time.
I know they don’t go overboard but it’s not like we haven’t spent money, throw in Jota that’s three forwards in that space of time.
That’s not the problem. The problem is the transfer market isn’t being governed the way it should be.
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If James Pearce was even a semi-competent journalist he’d know that a bung from the owners is not the only way to fund transfers.
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100% this.
i think criticism is deserved for both Klopp and FSG. the pressure that is on Klopp is the budget. He has a limited one and because of that he cannot afford to make mistakes in recruitment. Pep can make a 70-80 million quid mistake, and easily get rid of player. Klopp has never had that luxury as any transfer mistake cannot easily be written off because of monetary constraints. FSG will not spend any of their own money which was great when the team was doing well
This is exactly why the issues over Keita and Ox.
Technically they were top level spending at that time and two players that you would have adjudged would have been around for another 3-4 years. Say one or both had delivered on the promise then we’d be looking potentially at one CM.
With the drop off of Fabinho and Hendo and the injury records of others it could easily be 3. When we sort of need a CB as well.
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Whose money are they spending?
The man many people hold as the gospel on transfers Fabrizo is disputing the line we have dropped out.
Its a lazy statement the net spenders love to pedal.
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We will only know in September if we have done the deals required and only next summer will we know they were the right signings.
I’ll wait and see.
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I agree @rab on your point, but these are the rules of the market weather we like them or not… Greed will guarantee they are never changed to a cap system or anything to allow non-state owned teams to compete. The issue is how to best navigate this? If FSG will not spend their own money, then maybe sell to someone who will??
The issue is more to do with taking an imbalanced approach to transfer windows…we go 2 years without signing any senior players and then the next 2 windows signing a limited number of players & now we’re at a point where 7-8 players of this squad will need replacing in the next 12 months.
Gakpo and Nunez were both needed, we lost 3 forwards in the summer and we knew Diaz was out for the majority of the season.
Why were we not able to sign a midfielder in Jan despite the arrival of Gakpo is what I wanna know.
whatever is generated by the club as per their self-sustaining model…
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Of course. It is impossible to fall from the heights we hit last year to the shambles of this season without there being a big blob of blame to assign, and in all likelihood there are numerous owners. We have now had a 2-3 year spell of failing to move on players whose impact on the pitch was very limited and who found themselves on the very fringes of the squad, coupled with choosing to spend the money we had in different departments of the side.
You may argue that FSG’s ownership model gave us harder decisions to make at each fork, but it is always someone else, someone who has been critical to the success we’ve had in this period, who made the decisions at these forks.
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out of the forward players we signed, I have Gakpo and lucho making the most impact. i love the way Gakpo plays and his versatility, he will get better and better with a good midfield. Lucho is lucho…
I think what has been a core ethos of our transfer strategy over the last few years has been ‘opportunism’. There are loads of players we like. We don’t go into windows thinking along the lines of needing a midfielder or a forward or whatever, but prefer to react when one of our targets becomes available. Diaz, Gakpo, Thiago, Nunez all fall into this category. They became available - we went and got them.
I think you are spot on in your view that the assessment within the club is that the squad is generally sound, and that has meant we can just sit tight and wait. What’s this? Porto are in financial difficulty and need to sell Diaz? Bang. Benfica are selling Nunez to Utd? Get him.
I think the midfield issue are largely that we have generally thought it’s fine, while we haven’t had that moment where a target becomes suddenly available and we swoop. Nearly did with Tchoumeni, but he went to Real. Just like Diaz could have gone to Spurs, and Gakpo and Nunez could have gone to United.
Because there wasn’t one available that we liked.
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Sorry, think we’re getting confused somewhere here. It’s probably me not being clear.
It was Mascot who said we were waiting for Bellingham in relation to prices going up post the stupid fee Chelsea paid for Fernandez. I pointed out the “wait for the one” example most people point to is Virgil which was quite a different scenario and one of the few times we’ve actually waited for the player we want.
The comment I made about Tchouameni being “this one or no one” was more specifically about the midfield issues and our business last summer. I was quite vocal about us needing a midfielder last summer and was disappointed to see that after he went to Madrid we seemed to drop the idea of addressing that area of the pitch in that window. There’s the suggestion that we simply shifted focus to making a deal for Jude this summer and would manage without for a season which I thought was a mistake.
We’re obviously not in a position to take the stance of “Jude or no one” this summer. If anything it’s now “we need more than Jude” that is the driving force behind what we do.