According to rumours.
The comments about using Fabinho there came later, after the Thiago transfer. The âof course I want a 4th CBâ comments came after the Lovren departure much earlier.
Klopp literally said earlier in the January that heâd recommended we need a CB but it wasnât his decision. The move for Caleta-Car didnât happen till after Matip got injured. I donât understand how anybody can believe other than the obvious. He wanted a CB, wasnât given the go ahead to get one till all of his senior CBs were injured. If Matip didnât pick up his injury till 2nd of Feb we wouldnât have even brought in Kabak.
Hope youâre wrong about Gomez as I really like him and he counts towards our club developed slots in the squad but I am worried.
Didnât player and club confirm it?
Youâve been told countless times this is not true, yet you continue to peddle this line.
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I canât find those comments with a very brief look. From what does come up it seemed to suggest he was quite relaxed about the situation but we all know managers get asked a lot of questions in the summer about transfers and their opinions do change so not saying youâre not right.
If it was Thiago or a centre back then so be it. The money stops somewhere. Given that choice I bet a lot of us would have picked Thiago. Clearly there was some money available to do something in January so maybe he did want Konate all along, was told we couldnât afford him that window and so we went without instead of buying someone else. I imagine weâll never know.
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Because people have to make up context that could be the case as for why it wasnât true.
Klopp himself at the end of summer 2020 transfer window;
"Itâs not that we donât think we cannot improve, even on a transfer basis. We just do what is possible for us and what we are able to do.
âOther teams, if they invest then maybe they know more about the future, I donât know."
Klopp himself in 22nd January 2021;
âWe discuss the situation pretty much on a daily basis, and I make recommendations. But I cannot spend the money. I donât make these decisions. There are people who are responsible for the whole thing, and I cannot make their decisions.â
Matip injury 28th January 2021.
Klopp himself on 29th of Jan on if they would now buy a CB;
âI donât know, but we will try,â
And just over a year later it was in the accounts that during that financial year we took out a credit facility of around ÂŁ50m to deal with any cash flow issues but paid it back in full within that year. A decision was made not to follow the recommendations of Klopp and to save money.
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But we voluntarily paid back a ÂŁ50m credit facility we didnât have to within that financial year. Despite Klopp recommending we needed a CB.
You keep banging on and on about us signing centre-backs at the last minute because of the injury to Matip.
Firstly, itâs already been established that Matip had been carrying the injury for months and was just playing through it.
Secondly, the deals werenât done at the last minute, just because Matip got injured. They were in the pipeline for a while, our interest in Kabak wasnât new. It only happened at the last moment because Schalke managed to get Mustafi in, otherwise we might not even have been able to sign him.
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Iâm not really following the need for the forensics on the timing of the cb deal. It looked like we took a calculated gamble on the position, fell short due to an abnormal amount of significant injuries in that area, got a last minute stop gap in Kabak - as well as used Philipps and Williams and discovered what they could do, put a good run in to finish third, and then later we put it right and strengthened the position with signing Konate.
Alls well that ends well.
Gomez going forward is an interesting one. He currently seems like fourth choice. Is that just unfortunate timing? Bad injury and in the meantime, Matip gets fit and Konate comes along? And now that Gomez is fit again, his opportunities to play are diminished, as giving him time to get up to speed is hard to come by, with the presence of VVD, Matip and Konate ahead of him.
OR is there any niggling long term ramification of his injury that we are not aware of?
Either way, I think Gomez is potentially vulnerable to a sale. Aston Villa? West Ham? We will see.
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The point Iâm making is that we were certain that going into the season, we were fine. Only 2 ridiculous incidents caused us to be weakened considerably in that position. We therefore looked to do whatever business we could to secure someone to reinforce the team, but did not leave it to the last minute as is being suggested, nor was it a move resulting from panic. The only reason why it happened so late in the window was that our valuation was achieved only when other extraneous circumstances changed.
At no point were we hamstrung because of a supposed reluctance by the owners to spend. Our long-term targets were simply not available, and not at the valuations that we had for them, period.
Iâd like to think heâs just being eased back very gently, but Iâm not sure either.
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Right, but thatâs money they borrowed when Covid rocked up right? It was âshit the football has stopped but we still have massive overheads to coverâ money.
Not âanother centre back would be goodâ money. You probably donât want to spend that if you donât have to and you really donât want to spend it for a purpose it wasnât intended in case you need it again at a later date.
All moot though, opinions may differ but weâll never know for sure.
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I go along with all that too.
When his injury was diagnosed I predicted it would be a longer road to full recovery for him than it would be for Virgil. Itâs not just an issue with the structural integrity of the joint like an ACL is, it affects how the muscles are able to operate the joint. Far more potential for loss of speed, explosiveness and overall robustness (more recovery between exertions).
No idea if that IS what is happening, but itâs not that unexpected for him to be taking more time to get up to speed, or even worse having permanently lost a step.
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Except according to the section of the fan base who ALWAYS demand one more player. And then even when you get one more player you still need one more player after that. And then again. And again.
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We took it out so we had cash reserves for operating the club, insurance policy if you like. Then when we hadnât used it and projections started looking good again we paid it back in full, earlier than we needed to. We didnât keep it for anything else going wrong. The only thing in that financial year that did go wrong and nearly cost us up to ÂŁ100m in revenues lost (if Chelsea and Leicester hadnât fallen apart which was outside our ability to influence) was the CB situation. That was the rainy day you save your money for. We didnât follow the recommendations of Klopp until more had gone wrong. By then itâd been paid back and if we had successfully signed Caleta-Car or someone it would have meant more of a loss that year. Sorry but they just simply got it wrong.
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But youâve taken his quote out of context to fit your narrative. He doesnât say he recommended another centre back, just that he makes recommendations and other people do deciding and spending. Thatâs not exactly ground breaking or confirmation of anything.
And whilst we could have missed out on CL, we didnât. We couldnât control what Chelsea or Leicester did and all the ifs and buts youâve highlighted but we also canât control an unprecedented injury crisis. Thatâs like me saying if we hadnât had three long term injuries none of this would have mattered. It did though and thatâs how the cards fell.
Despite the fact I agree it was a mistake, it ultimately didnât cost us CL and signing someone would have unlikely been the difference between finishing third and first. Not sure why the need to use it to dig at the owners 18 months on.
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We were top of the league not long before that. Iâm not sure how you can believe us not signing a CB of real quality at the start of the season may not have made a difference? OK by winter it was simply trying to make sure we at least made Champions League spots, at least in the league. But if weâd had another CB maybe Gomez and Matip wouldnât have played as much and not got the injuries they did, thatâs what rotation is for, to avoid injuries. Matip, Fabinho and Henderson were all ran into the ground at various points as more and more players got overplayed and picked up injuries. If weâd had that extra CB maybe 3rd wouldnât have been as good as we could do? Even if you ignore the impact of the summer signing of a CB and just focus on the winter acquisition maybe we get past United in the cup (Virg had an instant impact in the cups on his arrival) or a little later we might have made it past Real Madrid? Iâm a fan I want to see us win games and lift trophies. Iâm not going to be sitting around the pub as an old man waxing lyrical about how financially prudent FSG were or how LFC would have recorded ten years of pre tax profits despite stadium improvements if it hadnât been for that damn pandemic. Iâm going to be trying to convince people that despite a low tally of trophies Klopp and his Liverpool side were as good as it gets.
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Did we not sign Kabak in the winter and still these things happened? And now we have Konate and all our CBs back and weâre still behind City by a similar total to this time last year. We might have got closer but we werenât winning by about match week 20.
Itâs all what ifâs and buts with you. I could equally say what if we signed someone and they also got injured or they turned out to be crap. What if weâd bought Caleta-Car but that meant we didnât buy Konate and he goes on to be one of the best in the world?
It doesnât really matter. Itâs been and gone and we still made CL so that calculated risk paid off to some degree. And weâve gone and bought what looks to be the heir to VVD. Enjoy the here and now, stop lamenting a past youâve decided to be true when you canât know it to be.
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Itâs funny how people remember last season, incidentally.
We were still top of the table at New Yearâs, although we started to lose some ground in January. It was February and March that was really the horror show period of the season, so well after the transfer window. It was a combination of new players, the tactical adjustments we made to compensate for their relative inexperience in our defence, and the absolute shitshow that was our finishing that resulted in these issues.
Not any lack of transfers.
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Thank you. This is a brilliant post and gives some much needed clarity here.
Klopp even said it himself a couple months ago. He said he learned a lot in that period. Probably shouldâve played the true center backs sooner rather than ripping apart the spine of the team and moving players around.
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