I assume our last CM with decent assists would be Coutinho.
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Doctor Millie in 17/18.
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7-0 against man utd and 9-0 against Bournemouth.
Remove those. Just saying that those two outlier matches shouldn’t get people excited on our attack. It is promising and will do better come the next season.
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The thing is Man City have also racked up wins like that.
Even taking off those 2 games we still have more goals scored than utd.
Newcastle got a couple of big wins too,5&6 goals.
united isn’t our benchmark. city is
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No they’re not,neither of them are .
Wonder if those who voted Darwin would still do so.
Cody gave me young Lewandowski vibes from very early on.
Would be happy to be proved wrong but I doubt Darwin will ever live up the the money we paid to bring him in.
There is clearly a 20+ goals attacker in him but it’s on Jürgen to find out how.
So 5 more than last season.
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For every season he stays with us - I’d be happy with that.
Darwin reminds me a dancer trying to learn new steps… Their feet just won’t do what the brain tells it… Until, enough practice/training has been put into it, and thought of doing the steps in their head has been repeated a zillion times… Then all of a sudden, CLICK… everything comes together…
When Rush was bearing down on the keeper, or the ball bounced about in the box and he was lurking… you could bet 99/100 he would slot it home… and yet he was never like that when he first came into the side…!
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He always reminds me of a discombobulated dog I used to have. Lightening fast but marshmallow for brains.
I think he needs an understanding of where his teammates are and what they are trying to do. At the moment he always looks surprised when he gets the ball. That can only come from match practice. I’m hoping that the Europa League games will give a few of our players room to develop.
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Díaz, Diogo, Darwin, Cody - they all easily have 20+ goals in them if they stay healthy. Can’t tell whose the best out of them. All on the same level.
Mo stands above them. Surely for another year. Maybe even two.
Happy with our attack but it’s a bit ‘unbalanced’.
Mo for the right.
Diaz on the left.
The other three can play central and from the left.
Early days but maybe next year we sell Jota and bring in another attacker for the right hand side.
Would prefer a more direct, speedy winger compared to Mo. Moussa Diaby or St. Maximin type.
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It’s the concept of inverted wingers now. People able to cut in and shoot from left foot (ala Mo) in case of RW. You won’t find many good ones as a backup to Mo that easily.
Mane offered that from the left. The ability to cut in and take a shot with the right foot. As does Diaz to a degree.
Don’t see either of the other three giving us that (gakpo/Nunez/jota)
All three are right footed players who in theory should be able to cut in and shoot from the left. But they don’t do that with as much regularity as Mane.
Apart from Salah, only Jota managed 20+ goals from our remaining forwards.
Some need a bit more time to prove they can do it of course. Diaz had a promising start, but then got injured for a long time. He still has work to do.
Gakpo made a decent transition to the false #9 role and Nunez will have to work his way in.
I still see it as basically 3 relatively new players and now we need to find the best possible combination out of the 5 (read: 4, because Mo is surely in) that first defends much better from the front than we did last season. And then one that can also link up the best and pose the best threat going forward.
Klopp said for the final part of last season that the ticket to get into this team is pressing and counter-pressing. Might be similar in pre-season.
I don’t regard Jota as our “least good forward”, “next to be sold” or whatever. That’s more recency bias towards other players. He could very easily win a first 11 spot for the start of next season.
What happens later, next season, next summer, who leaves (if anyone) and what type of player we want next, that’s impossible to know right now.
In terms of being a direct player and top goalscorer from a wide forward position, Salah himself has been one of the very best in last years.
Salah’s future replacement on his side might not even need to be a “Salah” type of player. That will also depend what type of evolution is made in the other two positions. Especially linked to what happens with Nunez and Gakpo.
Diaz…Nunez…Salah
…Jota…Gakpo…
…Mac Allister…
Robbo,VVD,Konate,Trent
Played like that every game.Don’t have to worry about which forwards to pick.Defense sorts itself out.
Gakpo got 19 goals and 18 assists when combined with his PSV stats for last season - I think we can expect him to continue to improve and hopefully hit those kinds of numbers again.
Regarding a future replacement for Mo, I’m looking forward to seeing Doak in the squad again. Think he has something about him, but clearly at 17, he’s going to need to be managed carefully. Caide Gordon was looking pretty exciting too about 18 months ago before his progress was curtailed by injuries.
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There was a good piece by Pearce recently in the Athletic with Inglethorpe and his comments about Gordon should temper expectations. They are clearly aware of how much his development has been set back with his injuries and so now are giving him room to just get fit and confident in his body again without any expectations of kicking on beyond the youth team. Unless he significantly overperforms expectations I wouldnt expect to see him pushing for minutes with the first team. Especially as you’d think a lot of the opportunities (with the Europa) might come earlier in the season.
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Yeah i dont expect either doak or gordon to be getting much playing time in the first team this upcoming season. But i dont think we are desperate to have that right sided attacker in at this time either. Salah can be subbed off through games and others can fill in.