Thinking about it, I think where we are now and the midfield problems we have I’d be looking at the Thiago signing as the root cause. Thiago is a worldclass player don’t get me wrong, he is one of the best passers of the ball I’ve seen in my lifetime of watching football…
The problem is he arrived at 29 and is what I’d consider injury prone i.e. He misses a lot of games per season.
This also was the first real time FSG ignored their own strategy and brought in a player outside of the normal age range, on a very high salary.
You combine all that with us re-designing our entire tactical structure to allow for Thiago (i.e. moving away from a workhorse, industrious midfield and our fullbacks as the creative force) to a more possesion based one (not saying this evolution), we have backed ourself into a corner.
- When Thiago doesn’t play our structure looks lost, we play turgid no direction football and Thiago is available for around 50/60% of our games. This is a huge problem, the drop off to any other player is huge in terms of ability and team performance.
- We didn’t invest in a player who would be hitting their peak around now (so signed at 22-24) so when Henderson started his decline we don’t have a midfield of 31, 32, 28 as first choice in a midfield which is meant to be our engine.
Why post this in the Klopp thread? It could be in a number, FSG especially.
I think the Thiago signing, Milner and Henderson extending (if you read reports this caused a huge rift between Edwards who said he should be let go and Klopp who wanted him to stay)… Klopp’s loyalty has been a big factor in our decline, this is highlighted again with Klopp retaining loyalty in his midfield 8 (including Keita/Ox) and being very prickly about reinforcing the midfield the summer just gone when we sat on our hands again.
You could argue if Mane hadn’t pushed to leave, would we have the same issues in an attack which hasn’t been refreshed?
We should never be out ran by any team, ignoring this is pretty stupid. 11km Leeds ran more, thats like playing with an extra man for 90 minutes… We’ve also been out sprinted 11 times this season. It’s a shocking decline, whatever the reason - Fatigue/Burn out or lack of effort again how has our much aclaimed sports science team had this happen on their watch? Top to bottom our club has allowed us to sleep walk to this point where it’s hitting crisis and only signnificant investment fixes it… I worry FSG don’t have that in them.
Now before the pile on about how dare I question Klopp, I love the man and all the joy he has brought me and others. His staunch loyalty is a double edged sword and has been key to our success, so he needs other strong personalities to point out when it’s going the other way. He is 100% the man to lead us out of this dark place, but he also isn’t without fault and reflection needed.
Hopefully yesterday was a watershed moment and we are making firm plans to refresh the midfield, the problem now is we need 3 players, rather than 2 if we’d been proactive the summer just gone.
I understand it’s not just easy to sell players like Ox / Keita, but other clubs do it without sentiment… That’s what was needed, even at a price we didn’t want… There is a collective need for ruthlessness, pragmatism and willingness to spend over the next two windows.
