Turns out TAA masked a lot of our CMs’ deficiencies. The moment he left, Szobo and Gravenberch were found wanting…
Hughes then further compounded that misery for us by nearly doubling Gravenberch’s salary in a 6 years contract in Jan 2026 despite seeing Gravenberch’s obvious limitations for a good 6 months. This move essentially make LFC very unlikely to secure a healthy transfer fee within that 6 years and further reduces the spread of clubs that we can market the player to due to the player’s wages demand.
Hughes then doubled down on Szobo. The Szobo 5 years contract extension in July 2026 is even more puzzling despite his limitations being shown in full HD for one whole season. And we raised his weekly salary to 250K GBP per week, leading to the same thing we will have with Gravenberch…
Alex Scott. Can pass well, but at the same time is ready to take on defensive responsibilities including playing as a makeshift No.6.
Wharton is great at passing and distribution, but he will require the same special protection enjoyed by TAA in the past. Our 2013/2014 setup can give us some hints if we are to buy him, but in these days we will need 2 Jordan Henderson for that setup to work.
Then, on the other hand, you have people moaning (not that they’re right by default about it) about some of our players leaving on a free…
Gakpo almost left for a very important fee (what would’ve been our second highest ever sale), a year after his contract renewal and a below standard season. It can happen.
Our contracts are also very structured, nobody knows all the details how much players earn compared to how much they play, what’s the team’s and their individual success.
What we calculate with is a basic number from often not really accurate sites.
And it was to one of the richest club in world football, Man City…We also saw Gakpo’s value at LW as well with his eye for a killer pass which Man City is eyeing as well…
Yeah well, there aren’t a million clubs who can do these type of deals. We’re both part of that group at the top of football’s food chain.
Will we get an €85m offer next time? Maybe yes, maybe not. The market and what clubs need dictate that to a certain extent.
We did see both Gravenberch and Szoboszlai play relatively successfuly (especially in the former’s case) in a team that won the title.
Gakpo and Szoboszlai are both also successful international players, Gakpo especially seems to often play really well for the Netherlands. Gravenberch is lately just starting to establish himself alongside Frenkie.
They all have important market value and would attract certain interest. There is no guarantee over who merits new contracts, also because things change in football. But new contracts don’t mean that we are ‘blocked’ with those players.
You mean the same Gravenberch who ended the world cup tournament with 2 assists against a Japanese midfield and 1 successful tackle for the 4 games played at the world cup?
That is pretty shocking given Dom is not even trying a lot of risky forward vertical passes or switches at all…It can only mean he largely lost it during possession…
He tries an enormous amount of very risky passes back to our central defenders. More often than not after having been facing the ‘correct’ direction with many options, ignoring them to turn and play a backward pass directly to the opposition player blocking the passing lane to our CB.
You can not be more predictable and our predictability is ‘killing’ us, unfortunately.
I don´t know if that includes crosses and set pieces. He does put a lot of balls into the box, which have a low success rate.
Otherwise he usually passes sideways to the full backs, back to the CBs, or he likes a fairly long crossfield pass. I suspect he´s better at mass and move when he´s running. So basically he´s running into their box, and interplay around that, rather than being the guy who is deeper and has to start the move going. I´d call him an auxillary midfield. Henderson was the same, but he had good long passing and some other traits that made up for it to a degree.
I think he´s an alternative to Wirtz and won´t complement him ever. Thrives with two more midfielders who can do the more midfieldy stuff, and Szobo runs forward to shoot or cross. Wirtz is the same but instead of just shooting, he wants to be creating chances and occasionally shooting.
I don’t understand it at all…He is a professional footballer, surely he looks up and scans his surroundings more often so that he can determine his passing channels?
In Slot’s first season, I seen him go up and down at CAM, sometimes even going so far back to the DM position to get the ball back. He wasn’t that creative at CAM but it was alright as we had TAA and Salah to do all that. What he offered was the desire to win the ball at all cost and drive the ball forward.
However, I don’t see that hunger to win the ball back at all costs during Slot’s second season and even right now. I wonder what changed mentally for him.
Granted that he is limited in terms of vision and passing execution, surely that will not affect the defensive part of his game???
He did not look like he was enjoying himself at all on Saturday. He’s been asked to play a position he doesn’t normally play. And with a partner who is equally feeling uneasy.
