Thiago missed 10 league matches last year after the Everton match.
He’s missed 5 league matches already this season and it would have been 6 if not for the October Intl Break.
This is not an indictment on Thiago, I love the player. But st some point he has to be considered a luxury player.
He’s 30 years old playing in the most rugged and physical league in the world. He isn’t suddenly going to get more durable.
At one point we had Gomez and Matip (along with Phillips, Williams and other youth options) fit + Fabinho. Play with 2 CBs and 3 CMs I don’t see how the situation we are in at CM is different than when we lost VVD. It’s putting too much pressure on others, some of which are very unreliable when it comes to availability or youth players breaking into the side.
We’ve been much worse at CB at the end of last season. VvD, Matip, Gomez, Kabak injured long term.
Compared to that we are still good at CM atm.
Elliott is our only long term injury atm.
… and I thought I was negative.
Wtf, FFS get a grip.
Our major problem is how we lose possession trying to force attacks that just don’t exist. Some times when a striker or Firmino calls for the ball the midfield have just got to ignore it.
Hendo, Jones and Ox are just fine imo.
Hendo seemed to lose concentration, granted, and pushed up and forced things a bit however it’s mainly TAA and Robbo who are doing the forcing and above all gave the ball to Firmino who just could not work anything agaist B&HA. TAA is often forced balls to Salah (which Salah doesn’t attack so opposition defenses just pick it off).
Brentford and B&HA have midfields composed of championship quality Hendo’s their 1st touch is a pass to a team mate and it moves fast. Were just not set up against that it’s a tactical problem not a player problem. It’s not like this these types of teams haven’t done it to us before (even when Gini was here for those that keep mentionning him). VVD and Alisson settled us for a while but they were just covering up the cracks then again they can do that again.
really all we need is a DM who covers for TAA, Robbo and our other 2 CMs slotting in with VVD and other when necessary. Hendo was doing that for 20 mins against B&HA then he just seemed to want to do something else.
I still say we should have a serious look at Declan Rice or someone similar to increase our DM options.
Err exactly. We’re still at the start of the season.
By being stretched to the bare minimum (which includes players with bad injury histories) you’re actually relying on good luck. How long did we go before VvD finally missed a game due to injury?
In CM we have the right numbers but all of Henderson, Thiago, Ox and Keita have had issues with injuries over the years. How often are we going to rely on at least one or two of that group and get the good luck of them being available.
Two years ago (and for a couple of seasons before actually) at least one of Matip, Lovren, Gomez should have been replaced with a solidly available player (or two ideally). That didn’t happen and it put paid to us retaining the title because we rode our luck one too many times and eventually good luck didn’t fall our way and we had to cope without VvD. When we did too much pressure was put on Gomez and Matip needing to be ever available, and Fabinho and Henderson eventually too, and that led to all of them (including the previously reliable Fabinho) all missing games.
Now we are at the start of another season when Keita and Ox really should have been traded in for more durable option/options. We are already starting to look ropey and haven’t really even had anything you’d think of as particularly bad luck yet. Even the injury to Elliott (bad as it was unfortunately these things do happen) we are actually looking like we will be lucky with his recovery time frame when it initially looked like it could be this season over.
We’ve been incredibly lucky with the availability of our most important players and even when they have been out we usually get lucky that the patchy availability of the back ups has lined up so we can usually get by. Only time we have really come unstuck so far under Klopp is CB last season.
I would pick Kalvin Phillips over Rice, Phillips is also a passive midfielder and at the same time has better passing and ball control than Rice, while being cheaper.
Karius has been in the middle for a long time now…albeit the middle of nowhere.
I think I said it before when Gini is leaving is that it would be ridiculous to think that Klopp and the club is not thinking about the CM positions and the pipeline or reinforcements. The reason why we had not bought a replacement for Gini, as with our other positions and reinforcements, firstly the solutions we have amongst the squad in the immediate time frame and also the value for money for the right player available in the market now.
Rice is the better player and more suited to DM imo.
I love Rice, especially when it’s fried Chinese style
You cannot put Rice and Fabinho on the field at the same time, and spending £80-100m for a “Fabinho understudy” is not sensible - Fabinho is in his prime age unlike Hendo so he will be a default starter for the next several years. You can play Phillips and Fabinho at the same time, though. He is closer to Gini than Rice, who is a DM.
Also, with £80-100m, I would rather spend the money on Bellingham, who is an actually all-round CM like Hendo.
We started this season with a lot of midfielders on paper, but any kind of deeper analysis would have pointed to the fact that high numbers did not equal high quality.
The players were Hendo, Fab, Thiago, Milly, Naby, Ox, Curtis and Harvey.
Curtis and Harvey are young players at the beginning of their careers and should not be relied on. They should be allowed to develop at their own pace and any contribution should be a bonus.
Milly is great to have around the squad, is valuable in certain circumstances, but has his limitations.
Naby is injury prone. All the potential in the world doesn’t mask that. He’s been at the club long enough for us to know what to expect.
Ox is still trading on his pre injury form. He has been struggling ever since he got back and there’s no sign he’ll ever get back to his former self.
Thiago is a great player, but also prone to injury. A luxury to have in the squad, but not reliable.
That leaves two high quality reliable midfielders.
Who thinks that is sufficient to mount a serious challenge in the PL and CL?
Said it far better than me. I’d say we have gone into yet another season with our attack balanced in the same way too. No major injuries to essential players “it’s fine, what was everyone worried about?”! Luck doesn’t fall our way though and it’s a season written off like last year when only the pure excellence of Klopp can salvage anything for us (CL places last year).
Great the FSGOut brigade is back, been silent whilst we were doing well… 1 bad performance and back posting shite again.
It’s total rubbish to believe you can build a squad based on some of the freak circumstances we’ve encountered… I.e. Jones getting concussion then played whilst not fit by England and getting an injury, alongside Elliot snapping his ankle.
Say for arguements sake you replace Gini going with a similar player, you’ve just taken all the minutes Jones and Elliot would have been getting. It’s like people don’t know Klopp at all.
The one arguement is letting Oxlade go in the summer and replacing him with someone who fits and is durable, but again it’s a complete assumption based on zero information.
If you are referring to me, I’m not an FSG out advocate at all, but surely criticism is allowed.
I’m not just coming out with these concerns now, I stated the same thing before the season started.
It didn’t look like a good strategy then, and it doesn’t look like a good strategy now.
No mate, you’ve had a balanced view for awhile.
ARD has come back and his first post is how shite FSG is and have fucked over Klopp.
Funny I used to be called an FSG PR plant possibly by the same people.
For the record I’m not “FSG out” I’m “FSG change your bloody strategy back to what it was before we won the Champions League before its too bloody late”!
It’s going to cost us creating a dynasty under Klopp which we can. We aren’t spending anywhere near what we can based off what we’ve made minus infrastructure and academy costs (which aren’t counted towards FFP) and the profits. Yet the entity FSG own (us) has increased in so much value whilst owning us that FSG themselves have made almost all the money back they’ve ever spent on us by selling minor stakes.
At the moment FSG are having their cake and eating it and able to be lazy and let Klopps excellence drag them out of any fires. Zero risk and incredibly high reward right now. Never committing future money (which is mostly all but guaranteed) till its already arrived into the bank. By which time its too late to use it to secure trophies which is all I actually care about.
Just not true, what do you call the new contracts for Henderson, Trent, Virgil, Fabinho, Alisson and Robbo?
I’d suggest you go and read the Swiss Ramble breakdown of our finances
Standard operating procedure for all football clubs that don’t want to lose multi million pound assets for free?
I have. As I said for years we have operated WELL within the confines of FFP ESPECIALLY when academy and infrastructure costs are stripped off the books. The value of the club which FSG owns has increased exponentially and therefore FSG have made money back on owning us that equals or possibly even exceeds what buying and running us has cost them. They’ve ran us smart and well and both us and them have benefited from this.
But up till we won the CL our spending was dramatically different to our spending since. There’ll be practically zero transfer debt left on the books now, just a couple of years ago we had over £300m set to be paid out over future years. How we used to operate is standard operating everywhere else BTW, we did it up till we started winning stuff.
These changes in strategy pr-edate the covid pandemic BTW. Even during the pandemic we took out a credit facility to make sure we could operate well. Would cost maybe couple of million a year to keep it. Paid it off in full within the same year to seemingly save that couple of million per year when that £50m could have been a CB or forward to help us through last year.
We are making decisions to tighten our belts, they’re not all covid related if any are at all. And they seem at odds with the massive paydays FSG are creaming in due to owning us and the limited time frame when we can truly achieve great things in an era with Prime Salah and Klopp at Anfield.