No, absolutely not, but it’s plausable, maybe even probable, that the football department have identified a need, identified a player, and the club have decided it’s not going to pursue for financial reasons.
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Posters keep on going on about £50m players we don’t need that. There are CBs out there in the £15-35m range who would be real good options for us. Some possibly even on loans first with options to buy.
It’s like those arguing on FSGs behalf seem to think only a VvD style deal would have an impact. It’s not true.
A lot of football is psychological bringing in a new CB would be a morale booster, Henderson going back into Midfield introduces more energy and drive there allowing the likes of Thiago more freedom to impact higher. A more solid back line allows Klopp to give more attacking instructions to the full backs currently out of form and with instructions to help more at the back than usual. The whole squad feeling a bounce and having their faith restored that this is a great club from the bottom up with a world class manager backed by a great recruitment team that will fix the problems he’s faced with. Alternatively posters can keep imagining that areas of the pitch happen in isolation and it doesn’t matter to forwards what is happening in defence and midfield they’ll perform the same regardless.
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Someone better than Williams or Phillips would release Hendo to play in midfield if either Matip or Fab are missing.
I’d bite your hand off to have Lovren still here right now.
And this issue might well be the difference between top four or not.
Ultimately, I do understand the issue in getting someone. But I do think the centre back situation is a huge worry, and should have been looked at before, particularly as I never agreed with you that Gomez is that good. For me Matip is much much better but never fit, though Gomez is another sicknote.
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Go on then. Who?
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Or you can conclude he has someone else who sorts the Finance element of transfer deals… Like a Sporting Director.
Does anywhere says he’s been told hes not got the money? Just someone tells him if its available or not.
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But if someone tells him it’s not available isn’t that the same thing as being told he hasn’t got the money?
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You are misinterpreting my words.
He says someone else tells him if there is money available or not, I’ve yet to see a quote from him saying he’s been categorically told there is no money available.
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Too much ‘we’re not gonna make top 4’ talk in here.
Say I told you so if it happens. Until then, do one.
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There is nothing significant about that press conference at all,he’s not moaning about anything,he was asked a question about transfers and simply answered it in a normal manner,also confirming that he’s never been incharge of money or what gets spent (which i assumed we all new that anyway).
Also by being told he can’t have a CB,he’s not going to act like a 5 year old who can’t have his own way and start crying,regarding the situation with FSG/Transfers he said everything is on the table and clear,we just have to work on the football stuff,which is exactly the normal calm Klopp reponse.
I dunno what interview you watched but it’s funny how we interprited it in total polar opposites.
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Is this season over already and have the Champions League places for next season been decided in January? Last time I looked we still had 19 games to play. It appears some people have given up on this team and are writing them off.
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I don’t know that I’ve seen that here, but on social media unfortunately is a small but very vocal cluster of petulance.
All that said, this year the top 4 is such a fight and the margins are so razor thin that literally anything can happen.
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I don’t think they do. The reason why the midfield works really well with Virgil and Gomez/Matip is because they are the best around, and the midfield is fine to push on, in the knowledge that any of those three defenders are fine left alone on a counter attack. They’ll deal with it. Unless you can get someone who the midfield have similar confidence in, I doubt you’ll see much difference. If you want that lad, in this window you’re looking at 50m +. If we’re shopping 10-15m, then we’re not going to get much of an improvement.
Anyway, I think we’ll see a Matip-Hendo partnership with Fabinho in midfield as Klopp’s next move. That’s something Klopp obviously has in mind, with swapping Hendo and Fabinho in the Utd game.
You say that, but when ever we needed Lovren in the last couple of years he’d always manage to be sick or injured. The problem I had with Lovren even as fourth choice was that he was never available when we needed him. Fit as a fiddle when we didn’t.
I don’t think you do, and that’s not a slight, because none of us do. We’re not privy to that information, and we don’t know what state the finances are in. I can’t imagine they are very good.
What I’d argue, in defence of FSG, is that they have a lot on their plate over the next year. They’ve just done Kirkby and are committed to the Annie Road. We’re carrying the second highest wage bill in the league already, and have a lot of first eleven players entering that last two years of their contracts that need sorting out.
And as we head towards this, the absolute arse has dropped out of football finances. Even without a pandemic, there are a lot of expenses there to think about.
What I think you do have a point about is the injury record of a lot of our players, and this is something that needs to be looked at. It’s not just the defenders, it’s through the whole squad.
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I’m sure after 5 years of him in charge,you’d have realised by now that he wont waste money on players he doesn’t want if he can’t get the funds to buy THE right player he needs.It’s not about the CB needing to be VVD,it’s about getting the right player with the skillset and temprament for our team and within our budget,he’s obviously asked FSG for said player which was X amount,which FSG wouldn’t sanction till probably the summer.
VVD is the perfect example of how Klopp and FSG work,i can guarentee that if we bought any CB that summer,once the VVD deal was off,then we bought a £30mill+ CB instead,VVD would not be at LFC right now and we’d have a lesser quality CB in our defence.
With our transfer funds totally fucked,you still don’t seem to grasp that FSG wont carry on robbing peter to pay paul and jeopardise the clubs future financial security,when it’s already under financial pressure.The losses and what we owe are staggering.
FSG run the club on what it earns and any profits go back into the club to buy players,in a season and a bit we’ve lost over £100mill in match day income,we owe £100mill in tv rights and training ground,probably around £100mill on the main stand,£60mill for last summers transfers and still have to work out a budget for the summer window,with no real insight as to what next season will hold,so saying to just pay another £15-35mill on any old CB (that Klopp obviously doesn’t want) from future earnings is easier said than done.
Anyway!!! i’m done with the CB transfer and club finances,we are going around in circles,even though it’s come straight from the horses mouth that we aren’t getting one this winter and funds for the right CB aren’t there atm.
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Maybe ‘moan’ is the wrong word but it’s disingenuous to suggest that everything is completely normal and there is nothing to see here. When JK says he’s not going to cry like a baby cos he can’t get what he wants he is telling us that he is not getting what he wants. When he says he’s made recommendations and a central defender would help he is telling us he has asked for one and it’s looking like he can’t have one. That is significant.
Of course, JK is used to this. For all the guff written on here and the old TIA about him being the limiting factor on transfers with FSG happy to give him whatever he wants, the reality is they run a very tight financial ship. Nothing wrong with that and JK and Edwards have done wonders on a relatively tight budget. In the past JK has always talked about this in general terms and clearly he’s got no problem with it under normal circumstances, but this is different. Everyone knows we have a crisis situation in a specialist position in the squad. We can carry on pretending that he’s OK with defending a league title with one recognised CB for the rest of the season but I’m guessing he probably isn’t.
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He isn’t happy of course. It would be shocking if anyone is with the current situation we are in as a club and what the general environment has impacted us. But being unhappy with the situation does not mean he is not happy with the owners, neither does it mean he cannot be unhappy but at the same time, face the realities of the times and focus on what can be done.
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I’m really perplexed that you should choose to play semantics.
The boss has said that under normal circumstances he would want to buy a centre back. But these are not normal circumstances; because of the pandemic there are no crowds and TV moneys are reduced.
Consequently the club has no money to spend.
This from the Echo:
If Klopp’s response was hinting of financial constraints, the Liverpool manager hammered that same nail shortly after.
And it is not that I say ‘by the way, a centre-half would be really nice’ and they say 'wow, a centre half, really, why?
So it is not not like this. It is all clear. It is all on the table. We work on that, you can imagine.
But it is the situation and on top of that we have January and it is not the easiest transfer window.
On top of that it is not having the money exactly as you want."
I don’t see how you can draw any other conclusion than the club doesn’t have the money to spend.
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The reason I’m talking semantics goes back to my original point…
I agree there probably isn’t money available, but my huge problem with the reporting is the complete twisting of words and ignoring all the other variables.
It’s gutter journalism for clicks and has started this wave of anti-FSG hysteria which is completely misplaced and the complete opposite of what we as a club need right now. We need unity, we need to pull together and stop feeling sorry for ourselves, cut out moaning about what we dont have but concentrate on what we do… Which is probably the 2nd best team in England.
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Listen, I believe in the players we have and in Klopp.
The issue though, is that as we sit here in January, with the transfer window open, we have one senior centre back and two central midfielders who can play there.
IF all three are available most of the time until May, I think we can fight for the title, and will almost certainly finish top four.
However we all know that there’s a big chance that at least one of them will be missing for enough time to dent our performances and results. Where we end up will depend on how many matches are missed and by how many of the three.
Fabinho is going to serve a suspension soon, and he’ll almost certainly get to 10 bookings and miss three matches during the run in. That’s a fifth of our remaining PL matches, without any injuries. As to Matip, his record over the last months has been something like a few matches in and half a dozen out. Even Hendo is known to miss games every month.
We saw in recent matches the limitations of Phillips and Williams, so for me there remains a strong case for getting another body in.
I do not believe we can’t get a loan signing somewhere between the level of those two and our senior centre backs, and that would make a material difference.
The club’s finances might well be tight just now, with match revenue decimated for the forseeable, but TV and prize money is at stake. If we fall away in the title race we might end up on TV less during the run in, and prize money will suffer. If we go out of the CL early, that’s what £5m a round? If we don’t qualify for next season’s CL, that’s another £50m.
FSG are money men, they’ll know all this, and it’s their call. I’m grateful to them for how well the club has been run. But they are rich men, they know how to finance things, they have different assets, interest rates are rock bottom. I think it’s reasonable for a question to be asked as to why they wouldn’t make some emergency funding available to the club from other sources, to sort a very worrying issue.
I repeat, I respect FSG as owners, but I can ask the above question without being an unreasonable and unrealistic supporter.
As to Lovren, he was injury prone too, but he made a massive contribution when fit. He played a run of games during our title win that helped us win the title. He got us through the CL QF 2nd leg at City on the run to Kiev.
As to Gomez, we will have to agree to disagree. IMO he is not the best in the business in his position. He is good, but is prone to mistakes, he often gets caught out of position outside the area and wrong sided in the area. Matip and Fabinho are way better, Gomez only looked good when on form because he has recovery pace and had VVD alongside him.
In fact, further evidence of Gomez’s level is that the defence with him in it and VVD out looks flappy, in fact he and VVD were the centre backs for the Villa debacle and that wasn’t down to VVD.
Once injuries take Gomez’s pace he’ll not be even the level he is now.
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People keep saying this, but who? Generally we know who is available for loan.
The only centre back I’ve heard available is Sokratis. Would you have him? I think he’s shite.
The problem is that any player clubs are willing to release mid-season is probably crap, and anyone good enough is not going to be cheap.
Ultimately you can view this in good faith or bad. If there was a loan available that could improve us, then I think it gets done. The conclusion I draw is that there is nothing out there. You might want to conclude that the club just can’t be arsed getting its finger out, but I think that’s unfair.
I think Gomez is a top quality centre back. Madly underrated by our own fans. We’ll have to disagree on this one.
But I am really concerned that he isn’t coming back from this latest injury. It’s the third time he’s properly fucked his knee.
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