Spurs and Arsenal are in their current position on the back of spending £150m+ and £100m+ respectively. Arsenal I think have been doing that for a few years. They also had periods where they didn’t spend big. Because no normal club can afford to do that. They may be able to compete for a bit, then they’ll drop off. This is the cyclical nature of a normal club. You can’t stay at the top for an indefinite amount of time. Unless of course you are funded by a nation state.
Anybody thinking our current plight is down purely to lack of spending are not paying attention. We are 9th. Arsenal are 11 points ahead of us. Brighton are 4 points in front. We are at 1.4ppg at now. This is absolutely not normal Liverpool. Even for the season before last when we had our most important players out for very long periods of time. Right now the team have little individual confidence, the team morale is absolutely shot. We are in a very bad way. By far the worst we’ve been under Klopp. That confidence and morale is surely only part of the story as well though. We’ve seen the minutes played by some of our players over the last 12 months has been ridiculous. IMO Salah looks burnt out. Could Klopp have done better at rotating players like Salah last season? IMO yes, although with Firmino’s injuries last year that took away some of our options.
IMO making 1,2,3 signings next season isn’t going to help, unless we solve our current issues. We’ve seen previously that we get out of these troughs ourselves eventually but we have no idea how long that will be, and whether we will even have a chance of top 4 (which is the best we can hope for at this stage).
I (and others) have been poo-pooed for asking for more signings for 12 months - we need to be replacing at least 3 first teamers every season. The failure to do this repeatedly has cost us and sorry for being down on last season but ultimately we came up short in the ‘two games from greatbess’ that actually mattered and this has fucked us mentally. Klopp and others should have seen this, they certainly have now, and ultimately the failure to refresh like cheaty means the entire squad needs to be overhauled.
Yes, I was one of the more skeptical people about the move, but even I wasn’t questioning whether he’d score goals. My question was how much City would have to adapt to make it happen and whether the net effect would be a value add for them given how easily they’ve scored goals in the past.
Two things have struck me. One is how repeatable so many of their goals have been. De Buryne overlapping and setting up goals with simple crosses and pull backs fromt he right side of the box. Two is the the type of goals Halaand is scoring - despite assumptions about his strengths given his size and athleticism, attacking crosses had been considered a relative weakness of his game. He’s started at City as if he’s desperate to counter that criticism.
Diaz, Nunez and a top midfielder would have been three excellent first teamers to refresh. We were a top midfielder short in the summer.
(We also added Carvalho and Ramsey, and we’ve already seen the former see some action, and in time hopefully the latter can give Trent a break and even put pressure on him).
The quantity of midfielders on our books who are not giving value for money must be a concern for the owners. We are paying a lot of wages that is not being translated into action on the pitch.
A midfield reset is coming, and in the meantime, it has the look of a transitional season. The key is going to be to regroup sufficiently to make top four and not slip too far back.
The point is well made about the mental side too, after going so close to perfection last time.
It’s quite staggering actually, our midfield situation. Other than Thiago and maybe Fab at a push every one of them should be seen out the door in the summer if not sooner.
Top 4 won’t be a problem, despite all our issues we still are a better side than Spurs Utd & Arsenal but we have to concede that City are way out of our league.
There are, I think, loads of problems with this post.
You can’t - and this doesn’t just go for you - start doing the ‘I said we should have…’ stuff after a few years in which we have won absolutely everything, and done so against a club owned by a nation state. That’s totally counter intuitive?
What’s the argument here? That if we’d invested more we’d have won more. Perhaps. But it’s equally likely that had we bought three new first teamers after winning the CL we wouldn’t have won the league. We flew out of the blocks that season and crushed the opposition. The reason we end up running away with it is that City just give up. That may not happen if we drop early points bedding in new players.
The model for us in the first era of Klopp was Real Madrid, who won four CLs on the spin without signing anyone. Klopp has always placed a value on continuity and stability. He wanted to build a team and keep it together for several years, seeing that as the way to success. It’s hard to argue with that, even if the wheels are falling off now (and that’s not a sure thing).
There is also the problem that Liverpool fans have been lulled into believing that we can get every signing right. The recruitment has been amazing, but the biggest reason for that has been that we don’t just churn players. We invest when we need to and we don’t just buy players for the sake of it. There is a paradox in fans using this successful strategy, based on being extremely discerning, and using it to justify more signings.
And this is where it loops round to your point about refreshing like City. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they are funded by a nation state, as a means of sports washing their disgraceful human rights regime. They artificially inflate their income by sham sponsorship deals with companies linked to the owner. And you want us to adopt the same approach to transfers as them? Really?
City would love nothing more than teams trying to out transfer them. That really would lead to them dominating the game.
Finally the whole squad needs to be overhauled? This is hyperbole.
When Klopp started the squad needed overhauling. When we won the CL there was very few left that he inherited.
I don’t think we’re at overhaul point. Alisson is in his Prime, and non of the defenders need moving on. The attack has had Nunez and Diaz added to it in the last two windows, and looks Fine for a couple of years.
In midfield, we’re short of a couple and we’re probably suffering from some misplaced faith in a couple of them, but aside from that, Fabinho is theoretically in his prime, Elliot, Jones, and Carvalho are world class in the making, Hendo is transitioning into the Milner role but can still contribute, and Thiago might be the best midfielder in the league when he can stay fit.
So yeah, we need to add to midfield, possibly an attacker depending on Bobby, but the idea we need root and branching is fanciful.
We have to show, this season, that we are better than Arsenal, Man Utd and Spurs. Man Utd beat us, and Arsenal look to have more about them than before, and are sitting in top place.
Don’t get me wrong, if we start to play as I know we can, we will climb the table rapidly, and should finish comfortably in the top four.
But the more weeks that go by where we struggle and drop points, it gives me some cause for concern on top four.
Still early days though, and hopefully we start to click asap.
There is also the reality that since the end of the 19-20 season, where we won the league and City’s challenge faltered indicating they had some rebuilding to do, we’ve actually added more or less the same number of first team players as they have.
This is not a side that got good and stood still. We have added plenty. It’s not even that the lads we’ve brought in havent worked (although the jury is still out on a couple). The main issue is too many of our hold overs have fallen off a cliff and City’s are still as good as ever. Is the issue that our squad now too reliant on players who cannot contribute enough or are no longer at the required level on the recruitment side or a reflection of Klopp’s judgement? I know these things don’t operate in isolation, and Klopp is making decisions in the context of how much money we have to spend, but I think it’s clear it that the players whose form has fallen of a cliff this season are players he was happy to have in key roles. Also when you’re looking for explanations for what has happened to those players, that is far more in the domain of Klopp’s responsibilities than Ward’s or the ownership.
To me this is looking very much like 80-81. We remember it fondly because of the win over Real Madrid, but it was season of watching a side that had become collectively old and couldnt compete at the same levels consistently anymore. Bob fixed it, and Im sure that if not pressured into over reactions Klopp will as well.
Shall we take the Klopp era as since we reached the final of the European cup for the first time?
18/19
Naby Keita
Xherdan Shaqiri
Fabinho
Alisson Becker.
19/20
Sepp Van Den Berg
Harvey Elliot
Adrian
Takumi Minamino
20/21
Kostas Tsimikas
Thiago Alcantara
Diogo Jota
21/22
Ibrahima Konate
Luis Diaz
22/23
Darwin Nunez
Fabio Carvalho
Calvin Ramsey
So I reckon, not including youth signing or short term loans, that’s four players, one player (possibly two), two players, and three players. Which isn’t that far off @PaulRoJo’s demands of three players a season.
That’s why we’re going to bring them down a few pegs, you don’t really see them keeping their momentum going while we keep our slump going do you? They’ve played no one, the 1 time they did they got smashed.
They’re going to meet their match on Sunday and we are going to finish them. 1 injury to Jesus and they’re done for.
Basically this is a summary of how the game plays out, ready?
Whistle blows for kick off…
We smash them all over the pitch.
Whistle blows for full time.
