Well said. They put their bodies on the line for the team. It’s their great misfortune that they are doomed to not be able to apply their obvious talents on the pitch for us. But it’s not for the want of trying
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Our midfield has lots of youngsters and over-30 players, but totally lacks reliable prime age players.
Midfielders within the 21-28 age range includes:
- Fabinho
- Jones
- Keita
- AOC
- Arthur
Only one of them is reliable and is good enough to start at any time: Fabinho.
yeah well…id love to have a decent retort…but the only thing i can think of is that Fabinho isnt that releable at the moment…so thats not helping either…
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Another thread? Dear lord.
Excuse me but when has Jones been injured and unavailable in the past?
Arthur hasn’t been at the club a month yet.
So your post is stretching facts a little. An agenda maybe?
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I do agree with this actually re ages
Young players generally are wildly overrated, they get judged on performances “for their age” rather than actual quality. Keita for example is much better than Elliot but his performances, on the odd ocasion he’s fit, attract far more criticism.
Ideally we’d sign at least one player in their mid 20s. Bellingham and Caicedo would be exciting and a big improvement but those issues still remain.
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Remarkably often, unfortunately. Or should I day, unemarkably often, if I may put it that way, as it seems to go under the radar a bit as he’s not first choice and someone we look for in the starting lineup more often than not.
Not according to this
I agree but our issues are severely hampered simply by a lack of numbers.
I’ve no doubt Klopp and staff will have factored in injuries to players when building the squad. Trouble is they’re all injured together at the same time and that includes players that you wouldn’t normally consider “injury prone”. It ultimately comes back to that risk calculation but when you consider the risk of Keita, Ox, Thiago and Henderson all being injured at the same time when only three of them play at any one time then that’s pretty small.
The flaw in my logic is the timing of Ox’s injury. There may be a case that we could have signalled for some intervention.
Worth noting, that given the choice I’d have taken a new midfielder into the squad. But what I dont have is the actual data (performance, fitness, pace, etc etc.) that justified (to Klopp and co.) that we didn’t need one.
Arthur’s injury history at Juventus can potentially rival Keita.
Jones is frankly just a squad player for any big title contender in terms of level. If we have to use Jones as the main LCM other than Milner, then we have already kissed the UCL/PL title races goodbye.
It’s going to take a miracle to mount a serious challenge for either the way we’ve started, very difficult to see that happening after yet another stale summer.
To get points on the board you need to be able to win games, to be able to win games you need to be functioning as a team, to function as a team players need to know what they’re doing & when they’re supposed to do it, something we’ve seen in 1 game this season against the worst team in the league. Our players are all over the place on that pitch, there’s zero coordination.
That miracle of course lies with Klopp. He pulled it out the bag a few years ago when we down to the bare bones, this time could prove to be a step too far.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure I remember a groin injury as well some sort of knock that’s not in there as well as an illness or two.
And yet you’re busy slating Milner I suspect. Again the issue here is not so much the ag of players but who and how many are injured at the same time. In a similar way to the Centre Back problems we had this is again crazy and its forcing us into team set ups we wouldn’t normally consider.
Somehow that’s FSG’s fault right?
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I am talking about Jones actually. What I mean is that Curtis is not good enough to start in any PL or UCL title contender or even Top 4 contender, certainly not PSG/Barca/Chelsea/Tottenham, not even Arsenal.
In your opinion. And yet Klopp, the man who’s pinion does matter stated he was happy with our midfield players at the start of the season. He was happy, despite the well known problems with Ox, Keita, Thiago AND with both Jones AND Milner in the squad. A man that sees these guys every day and knows everything about their footballing data there is to know.
Concerns on midfield balance are fair enough but lets be honest that this has only been heightened due to the mad situation we find ourselves in again. It has a bit of a opportunistic “I told you so” thing about it enhanced with a heap of hindsight.
We may well have made a mistake in not looking at a midfield option this Summer but we haven’t a smidge of the information that Klopp and co. do when making the decision not to. So I think we should be a little cautious in what we say when we’re only looking with the benefit of hindsight.
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What is more concerning:
1, The state of the UK
2, The state of our midfield
?
One happened over 7-8 decades and two happened over 7-8 months…
No amount of money will fix one but two, can be - possibly…
- The state of our forum
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Speak for yourself 
I think the Queen thing seems to have upset some of the woke snowflakes. Luckily they have a ready made King replacement!