You’re assuming there is a gap that can be narrowed, as opposed to luck, plain and simple.
Unless I’m much mistaken, Arsenal had essentially no injury worries for most of the season, and @cynicaloldgit will tell you that until you get the referees out of the pocket of City there’s no beating them.
I don’t follow football per se, I just keep track of what our club is doing, so I wouldn’t have any idea what the status of City or Arsenal’s squads are. But I’m going to bet that if we have fewer injuries than last season, that’s already much progress.
Genuinely, what can the club do? I’d like to know what you think the solution is. Unless it’s just throwing more money at the player. Also, I’d be wary of contracts for the other two. Henderson and Fabinho fell off a cliff, there’s no reason to believe that Virgil and Salah will taper off rather than have a massive drop-off. There will be serious thoughts about where the club wants to go from here.
For Alexander-Arnold, the story is different, but I’m sure someone else has already posted somewhere on this issue, that perhaps, with the virtual wholesale change of the decision-making structure in the club, it takes some time to get everything dealt with.
You mean like City did in 2019? Let me refresh your memory:
I seem to remember the storming to the league title that season, winning 32 games. A streak of 26 wins interrupted only by one draw. Oh wait, that wasn’t them.
Refs are bent - can’t take off Rodri’s handball against Everton which is blatant penalty but VAR dismissed it.
As far as injuries ya you are right. We were unlucky with injuries last 3 seasons.
Last season City missed Rodri for 3 games if I am not wrong and they lost points in all the 3.
Arsenal have strengthened a lot. Riccardo Calafiori and Merino from Sociedad (imminent)
City- Gundagoan is back. I thought we might have moved for him temporarily on a 1 year contract as he was free but with Pep wanting him not a chance.
Let’s hope for the best mate.
As far as contracts are concerned we think 30 is the end of the world. With Saudi in frame why can’t we tie up Salah, Van Dyk on a 3 year deals with top wages they deserve and not let them go on free. It’s like we are weakening our team with no tranfer money. Trent deserves atleast a 5 year deal last year when Klopp was here. We arent proactive in my opinion. If we have no idea to renew Salah’s contract we could have sold him last season for 200 million which was on offer from Saudi clubs as per multiple reports. Coming back to City - They signed Rodri for 65 million and in that City squad that’s a statement signing and has been instrumental in all their title challenges. We signed Sepp for the youth team and that’s it !!!
Ya. Damning fact. It has hurt us for past 3 seasons. Injuries at crucial stages and Thiago/Bajcetic long term injuries were detrimental last season. Couple of seasons back we had to play Fab as CB!! It’s like multiple players in the same position got injured at the same time. Terrible.
It’s been pointed out elsewhere that they’ve largely stopped spending. In any case you’re assuming either of them want to go there.
Because you want to use contracts to improve your team, not reward for past performance. It may well be that we think that for their next contracts they would have to accept a paycut.
Again, assuming he wants to go there. He’s been quite obvious in talking about how he wants to compete at the top level.
Players we signed after winning the title. One failed to pay off injury-wise, the other two helped reinforce our left-back and provide a starting forward. You’re thinking of the wrong season (and in any case ignoring Elliott’s existence).
It’s not “like”, it was. We had 6 centre-backs out to injury for a few games and still qualified for the Champions League in 2020-21.
It’s forgotten a lot now, but we lost so many midfielders that we had to play an inexperienced 19-year-old Morton against Spurs, and still managed to nearly win the league in 2021-22.
In 2022-23 we only signed Arthur because at that point we’d somehow contrived to lose so many midfielders we were playing Bajcetic and Clark, while having two goalkeepers on the bench, one of whom was a U21 goalkeeper. At that point, we had the following players injured: Jones, Keïta, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Thiago.
That was just the start of the season.
Then in the middle of the season, we were out of forwards, having to play Oxlade-Chamberlain as a winger, and Gakpo up front. That means Diaz, Firmino, Jota, Núñez not available, with only Gakpo and Salah as recognised forwards.
Your thoughts are based on a false premise: that the club expect to win the title this season. But no, they want to qualify for the CL, and that is largely feasable with this squad without any new signings. To expect the title from a new young coach without PL experience in his first season with us, and also a wholly new coaching team, would be preposterous. They aren’t that stupid, they are not Todd Boehly.
I’m not sure they expected a title even from Jürgen Klopp. I think it’s more that the minimum standard (just for the sustainability of future performance) is indeed Champions League qualification, but we would always target winning the title if we were already in a good position to do so, but it would never been an expectation.
Some transfers are going to fail, even ‘Plan A’ ones. My point was simply that the way the club is run, if there is a meeting where people are saying ‘we need a left fullback! Who is the best we can get?’ and then working down a list, something has already gone badly wrong. We did not bid for Zubamendi because there was no one to fill that role or a similar one this season - we bid for him because there was a belief that he could improve the side and be a part of the midfield for the next 5 years. There might be others in that same group, but Zubamendi was the one that appeared available. It did not work out. We are not going to rush around and find someone else to wear that shirt.
If Slot looks at our bench and says he really wants more depth at centre back, maybe there is someone who becomes a longterm target - but equally likely it is another Endo type signing.
It was actually 2 guys. His number 2 came with him as did the fitness guy. There was another we tried to bring for the video analysis but he had work permit issues. But there were 3 or 4 more positions that were vacated at the end of last season that needed to be filled outside of those he brought with him.
I think he only two brought two with him as well, but the two most important for preparing the first team. My point though wasnt that Slot has been left isolated, but to point out how many coaching exits there were this summer besides Klopp and across how broad a scope of the organization, which was work Hughes had to get to as a priority to address before the players showed back up. At minimum it was 3 in the first team, 2 in fitness and preparation, Matos, and 2 who worked with the goalies and there could be additional less well known ones.
Just not seeing that division, seems about the same as it has been year after year. Lots of people outraged, lots of people saying ‘trust the system’, business as usual.
It is a weird year, very slow market in general, and while our squad has some significant long-term requirements, there are no absolutely burning needs. A lot of the most urgent are really ‘what ifs’. What ifs that make perfect sense in light of what we have seen in recent years, but what ifs nonetheless.
It is evident that the club is not targeting anything beyond top 4 this year, and is being careful not to overload Slot’s first year with expectations. On balance, we probably have the squad to do that. I’d like to see a little more depth in some places, I’d like to see some younger talent brought in to be understudies for a season, but I just don’t see a crisis here.
While I wasn’t disagreeing with your overall point, I was just pointing out that we’ve done so well with transfers over the years, the only thing one can really say about them is that we’ve signed too many players who had their careers derailed by injury, not because they weren’t good or otherwise worth their price.
Pretty much only Minamino comes close to being a “failure”, but even then he was instrumental in a League Cup win, and didn’t lose us any money.
I still don’t get why people think the owners are heavily involved in transfers, as if they’re sat in Boston saying we can’t buy a centre back or we have to sell Carvalho.
Even how much we spend is somewhat limited by factors outside their control. But day to day transfer business isn’t going to be dictated by them.
