Ex-Player: Takumi MINAMINO

We’ve done very well to get to about 80/20 in our favour.

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I know Edwards has been excellent but at the end of the day I think the success over football is more like 50/50 or even worse if I remember.

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I hope he goes to Germany. He will be a good fit for the leading clubs and will be less awkward since he speaks German.

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Nice build-up to Taki’s goal.

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His goal-to-game ratio is pretty good for NT. Well, does play against the likes of Mongolia, Myanmar, etc. :wink:

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The often quoted truism in football is that half your transfers fail. Klopp and Edwards have a record much, much better than that. Keita to this point looks to be their only real failure. Minamino, Karius, Davies and Grujic look to be speculative punts, and 3/4 of them will probably turn a profit.

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Regardless if they make the money back they still failed.

And if we look across the PL I would still say that truism holds sway.

Depends on what criteria they are being judged though surely? There is a difference between ‘we want this player to nail down a first team place’ and ‘this lad only cost 5m and might be useful around the squad, and if not we can flip him for a profit’?

Undoubtedly. We’re pulling the average up, but Everton are dragging it right down.

What about United??? You know, they still got Mata in their books.

Peach of a goal that. Taki!

Maybe I want to keep him. :pleading_face:

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It’s Asian qualifiers. The gulf in class between Japan, Australia, S Korea and the rest is huge. I wouldn’t put too much stock. Also internationals. Even relatively mediocre players (not that he is one) come alive on international duty.

But yes I hope we sort his future out like gentlemen. Everyone has good things to say about him and he’s in the prime of his career. Despite my early hope I can’t see him nailing down a starting spot with us so I hope we do right by him.

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Yeah, there’s probably just 10 consistently good teams in Asia. Since they get to play each other only at the final stages (WC qualifiers, Asia Cup, etc.) the stats are pretty hocum.

An Indian striker has just surpassed Messi in terms of NT goals. :rofl:

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I feel for Taki but he wont be here next season.
We were prepared to send him out on loan when we had injuries to midfield and we lost Jota.
If he couldnt get in then he never will.
Probably sell him for £12-15m and make a small profit.

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It was odd how he disappeared after the Palace 7 - 0 because he was OK in that game. I suspect the loan may have been linked to the need to cover at least some of the costs of bringing in Kabak. Didn’t make much sense otherwise unless JK simply doesn’t fancy him.

I’m surprised Southampton want him because he didn’t play much there. I was never convinced by him. First touch poor. Headless chicken like at times but the chance to see what he was really capable of was to give him a run on the back of that Palace game and it never happened.

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We were using all 17 senior non-homegrown squad options and needed one out so we could bring one in. Probably a combination of someone wanting him and Klopp thinking he was most “sacrificial” option due to feeling unable to use him due to lack of height and physicality.

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? Couldn’t we have just dropped Matip or VVD from the squad?

There was still chances of being able to use either or both I think before season ended. Especially VvD. And didn’t the Minamino loan out happen before we confirmed Matip was out for the season? But yeah we could have.

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No idea, still what ever all the reasons I think it was the ‘correct’ move. Mainly because it offered more chance to play AOC, Jones, Keita and Jota whilst giving an opportunity to Mina to get game time in EPL as well.
Also I’m pretty sure both the club and player wanted this loan.

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Kabak was 20 years old. Doesn’t count towards the 17 non-homegrown?

He does on the UEFA competition list. Under 21s can only be added to the B list if they’ve been at your club at least two seasons. Otherwise they either have to be in the 4 + homegrown spots or the maximum of 17 non-homegrown players.