Who’s the striker leaving to make that happen? 
Erm… Origi? 
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We’re still ok.
Preston in midweek. Hendo should not play in that one imo. No matter how.
Fab might be back at the weekend.
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Let’s wait for some confirmations first.
Fabinho’s sounds like it’s not serious, Jones is back.
Have to hear what’s up with Millie and Keita. Thiago will join team training soon, sounded like he could feature before the next international break, but might not. That might also depend on how we evaluate it.
If we have more issues and our balance starts to suffer, with our 4 main forwards fit, we can switch to the double pivot 4-2-3-1 more often in some games. Especially as long as Hendo and Fabinho are fit, our two main CM starters.
I think Morton might get a start against Preston. Will certainly be involved.
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No point in risking Alcantara but I’m really concerned about his fitness record, just as he was coming into his own and getting to grips with the league and Klopp’s style of football. If he returns (hopefully fully fit) right after the international break, it will have been two whole months that he missed through this particular injury. We could do with him announcing international retirement, it’s not like he’s a key player there, quite the opposite.
Milner and Keita most likely won’t be able to play before the international break as well, so the onus will be on keeping Fabinho, Henderson and Jones fit. Maybe Minamino will step in for Keita at Preston?
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A few youth midfielders will lineup vs Preston.
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I want to see Joel play at least one game in midfield for us at some point. Roll back the years to his early Schalke days, he’d have walked rings around those twats today.
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Definitely need a new durable and physically strong workman midfielder to replace Gini.
And, another Hendo successor. And no, neither Jones nor Elliott are Hendo successor, they are too much AMs not CMs.
One of them probably should be an English player to directly replace Ox - most likely Bellingham as Hendo successor - I mean, one of the main reason why Ox is still around is the home-grown quota.
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That isn’t what Gini was, he was more the player who picked up second balls and was phenomenally good at holding the ball once he had it. This is what Thiago had started to do but we haven’t really another that hovers around to recuperate those second balls. Hendo, Jones and Ox created many second balls that B&HA pounced on.
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He was also physical strong and durable, unlike Thiago.
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Oh yes the duracell. 
Milner is picking up more injuries now too.
Put Karius in the middle of the park?
This last week felt like an hommage to Rafa’s days. Beat one of the big teams, then drop points to a midtable side. Midfield was a no-show yesterday and it will be like that if the players continue dropping like flies. Fabinho is a key player but still off his consistent best, which might have something to do with him starting to play games for Brazil and generally not being the most injury-resistant player out there. Henderson’s blowing hot and cold this season. Alcantara is as injury prone as ever. AOC is finished. Keita is the new Sturridge/Aurelio, so he’s likely finished, too. Jones is inconsistent and unable to regain full fitness because some idiot in England’s setup decided to play him when he was injured. Elliott won’t be back for months.
This feels like a curse that only moved from defence to midfield and it will probably cost the team a proper shot at the title. Six points have already been dropped in the league from the winning positions because the midfield was unable to get a hold of those games. Four more points could have been dropped in CL for similar reasons. Team should be better off than last season but I think they will still finish comfortably behind Chelsea and Man City, who have improved defensively and whose players have much better fitness records than Klopp’s.
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How many games have City lost this season?
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How many have they drawn? 
I think those bastards have more than enough for another strong season, who knows what would have happened had they managed to get a proper striker.
Agreed and there is zero chance they don’t sign a striker in January.
I agree with the assessment of the midfield options. It’s a sorry tale but completely predictable (bar the injury to Elliott). Maybe we could loan Gini back from PSG in Jan? Although I doubt we can afford his wages. I also agree that all things being equal we should finish well behind Chelsea and City this season. The gap in resourcing is massive. If Klopp wins the league we’ll have to name the ground after him. It’s not a fair fight.
That said we don’t make things easy for ourselves tactically. We are scoring a ton of goals but we can’t close games down. Even at 2-0 yesterday the warning lights were flashing. We were still being expansive and aggressive, leaving gaps all over the place. Every game is a basketball game. It’s made no difference this season who’s played in the midfield. Fabinho is easily our best defensive midfielder but he played against Brentford, played against Milan when we conceded a two goal lead and played against City. Decent teams with good technical players are playing right through us. Beat the first press and you’re in on goal. It’s crazy. We will slaughter plenty of teams playing this way but there’s no chance we win the league.
We didn’t do this 2 seasons ago. When we wanted to close games down we dropped off. Got behind the ball and played on the counter. Regardless of the midfield options available it shouldn’t be beyond us to defend a two goal lead. We need to be more pragmatic and a lot duller.
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We are having what happened with defence now happen with midfield. Its not luck.
For years we’ve been underfunded as a side whether that’s FSG not wanting to commit to spending till the money is made after being stung a little a few times in their early years, Klopp preferring to build slowly with minimal changes to a settled side along with a smaller side who all get to play if worthy therefore not spending what’s available or a combination of both factors (my guess being 70% FSG and 30% Klopp but Klopp knowing this was what FSG were wanting, even if not quite as severe as its been).
So what happens is we end up with a very stretched squad. If we are lucky with availability and form it’s fine. But one unlucky injury in the wrong area (like VvD last year and unexpectedly Elliott this year) and it puts too much strain on the remaining parts. Some of which are injury prone like Gomez/Matip last year and Keita/Thiago/Ox/Hendo this year. That means even players with good availability like Fabinho end up ran into the ground and eventually will be injury riddled themselves.
We don’t need a vast horde of wealth thrown at us each year like City. We don’t need unlimited funds and the latest star players. But what we do need is just a little more ruthlessness in moving players on and bringing carefully scouted and selected players in.
We’ve been running the risks with our attack season after season with what is currently happening with CM and happened last year at CB. There was some slight easing of those risks when we improved our options with Jota but then AFCON could still be a major spanner in the works. We still don’t know exactly how long Salah and Mane will miss and I’m just not comfortable on our momentum not being completely fucked if it turns out to be more than a couple of league games.
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Yesterday we had 4 CMs + Minamino available.
That’s far from what we had last season with CBs.
Maybe Ox and Jones disappointed a bit and Keita got injured again but the players who were rested in midweek disappointed even more.
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