I get the line of reasoning and this made lot of sense when we had a really bad luck with our CB situation two seasons back. That was totally unforeseen with injuries to VVD, etc. mid season who we expect to remain fit for most of the season. However, our midfielders haven’t been struggling with injuries starting this or last season. And since we have faced this couple of seasons back with CBs situation, which seemed something we could have anticipated from.
I don’t think it’s a little bit of bad luck that has compounded; rather it felt it was bound to compound when we were going with the same set of players including Keita and Ox and expecting both to remain fit for majority of the season, while the rest of the team having played every single game possible in the previous season with the key ones being on the wrong side of 30s.
There are problems; I wouldn’t say it’s the owners or Klopp or players or coaching/ medical staff but it is a collective decision making that seems to have gone wrong, for whatever reason.
I think it goes back to that second paragraph. What fans seem to consider as injury-prone are probably viewed otherwise by our medical team.
Take Oxlade-Chamberlain for example, he’s had 3 major injuries with us, but otherwise has missed a few days at most. Notably, he wasn’t injured at all last season, and did feature sporadically for us, notably either as a Firmino replacement or a Salah replacement at times. He fell out of the squad towards the end of the season, but so many people did. When we have a 25-member squad, it’s inevitable that some would not get much gametime at a point in a season where having a settled, small squad is more important.
By contrast, Keïta had that one injury in 2018-19 that he never seemed to recover from, until we kept him out for some time to work on it. I definitely seem to recall Jürgen mentioning it at one point. This is the one that the then Guinea national team manager is often cited to have aggravated. He’s also been out due to COVID, but I’m not sure that’s an inherent characteristic of his body.
So I’m not surprised if the medical and coaching team thought we could count on them. When we reached a point when it looked like several of our players might be out for the long term, we also acted upon it and brought in someone who could be an option as a permanent addition, but also gave us room to manoeuver should better opportunities come up elsewhere in the summer. I’m less sure about Arthur’s history, but I don’t think we should pass such hasty judgment.
It’s the 3 major injuries which are the problem… 90 games missed over 5 season is a huge amount, especially when you factor in the time it takes for a player to regain fitness (usually around a month i.e. another 5+ games) fully.
He was consistently injured for Arsenal as well.
No bias here when I say he is now an injury prone player, not through anyones fault mind, just that horror tackle v’s Roma.
Weren’t they different injuries? I’m not too well-acquainted with his time at Arsenal, but apart from the horror injuries with us, I don’t think he’s actually been injured much, which is the point I’m trying to make.
What’s likely to happen now, if 2020-21 to last season is anything to go by, is that we’re going to renew his contract and Keïta’s, and next season they’ll both be indestructible (along with the rest of our midfield), while the forward line falls apart.
All jokes aside, just look at last season, we effectively didn’t really have to use Gomez at all, apart from resting Alexander-Arnold. Matip went a full season uninjured, Phillips and Williams were out on loan. This season however, we’re back to worrying about playing Phillips again.
It could well be that after the World Cup, everyone will be fit and healthy again, and we’ll have fans complaining that some players are too shit to even make the bench, while Jürgen points out that there’s no way you can squeeze 25 players into a matchday squad and keep everyone happy (well, now you can, since we can put 20 people in altogether). Or it could be that everyone’s permanently crocked and we get relegated (not likely).
The trouble here is we can’t really know whether our pre-season was ill-judged or not. It may well have been that things would have been a lot worse without the things we did in pre-season. It could have been that the naysayers are right and that our medical team made the catastrophe happen. We have no way of figuring out. Yet people are too quick to categorically state one way or another what’s happened.
The fun part, by the way, is that Oxlade-Chamberlain still managed to make a lot of contributions to our title winning season despite his 3 injuries.
Some players who can sign pre contracts (free) in 2 months:
Youri Tielemans
Konrad Laimer
Marco Asensio
Ngolo
Leandro Trossard
Evan Ndicka
Soyuncu
Memphis
Ale Grimaldo
Marcus Thuram
Jefferson Lerma
Todd Cantwell
Paulinho
Moussa Dembele
Houssem Aouar.
FGS model no longer works as no one is paying big for our players with the exception of Alisson.
Virg and Salah are wrong side of 30 so their value isnt what it was.
This is the problem with their model - what happens when no one is paying £148m for your players?
Liverpool are admirers of Jude Bellingham although it appears unlikely that they would be willing to pay Dortmund’s asking price, which is set to be more than £100 million. [The Times]
We’ll have to wait and see. Being priced out of moves has always been a factor even when we sold players for big fees though. It’s the ability to identify quality alternatives that we can afford and land them that’s important.
They are primarily muscle injuries, since he started 1st team football for Arsenal and then onto his time with us he’s missed 171 games through injuries from 12/13 to 21/22, so over 9 seasons he’s missed on average 19 games a season. That for me is the very definition of someone who is prone to injuries, i.e. Someone who is not available for around 40-50% of your season.
Compare that to Salah who has missed 15 games in 9 seasons since he started at Basel in 12/13 or 1.6 games per season. That for me is the definition of a none injury prone player and someone you can rely on.
Keita/Thiago have very similar levels of “missing games” to Oxlade, it’s my view we need more players who are robust ala Salah.
No we don’t know what happened in pre-season, but we can explore it as the potential for how and why our season isn’t going well. You are the one using words like catagorically, I’ve just offered opinion based on a few factors;
Reading people like Simon hughes (who is a very good Liverpool writer) and his insight into the ever revolving door in our medical team since 2020
The performances witnessed, I don’t think anyone can argue the majority of the team is showing signs of fatigue and our normal pressing/energy levels are down.
The amount of injuries sustained to date (19 different 1st team players being injured is exceptional levels).
My view on Oxlade isn’t a negative one, he was a huge part of our original success, the injury he sustained v’s Roma robbed him of a great career. However with the margins for error being so small in football there is no room for sentiment and my view is he cannot be relied on as an ever present member of the team at the level we need, so would like he was replaced.
With hindsight (easy to say this obviously) I believe it was an error to rely on 3 players who are consistently only available for around 50/60% of games a season in Keita, Ox and Thiago. We should have replaced one of them and this may have had a positive effect on our team.
It’s again my opinion we have evolved our game to beat low block teams based around Thiago’s passing game but the problem with this is again his availability and the drop off when he isn’t playing seems huge based on the performances witnessed.
It could be just rotten luck that our Thiago rotation was Keita and Jones, and Keita aside Jones has had a chronic run of bad luck.
I’m actually in favour of not spending that kind of money on a single player full stop, sure we need to spend in the summer but not to the point where we’d be seen as another City.
Tomorrow if the hierarchy at Dortmund wake up feeling rowdy and demand 200m for him, does that mean we should get on the clubs back because they wouldn’t be prepared to pay that? No. There comes a point where you have to see it for what it is…absurdity.
Fab Jota Ibou Mane Salah Diaz - all 35-45m players, this is what we need to be doing + the occasional Robbo/Kostas/Matip for pennies.
