There’s no debate to be had. We were repeatedly cheated by the officials last season.
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And yet some will never see it that way.
Naive fools.
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So our season’s hopes now would appear to lie with the unlikely transformation of either Curtis Jones or Ryan Gravenberch into a top notch defensive midfielder , or with the young lad Bajectic shrugging off a year long injury and claiming the role.
So , Endo it is then !
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We aren’t after a Defensive midfielder we are after a controller at the base of midfield to work in tandem with our other midfielder, these are a lot rarer than a DM
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Endo, for all of his virtues, is a stop-gap solution. He’s nice, hard-working, likeable but also limited in terms of natural ability at the end of the day and not a good fit for football that this team is trying to play. Otherwise, club wouldn’t be looking to buy an upgrade on him less than a year after his arrival.
We did go for the same players as Real Madrid, only to be snubbed. I’m also not sure that Arsenal and Bayern are fundamentally that different from Liverpool in terms of who they are looking to sign. Arsenal identified their biggest weakness and went all in on rectifying it.
We actually did something similar with our central midfield last summer to a varying degree of success but at least we were quick about it. Not finding a defensive midfielder for two successive summer windows, going on third? Now, that’s just reckless.
I know exactly what kind of player we’re looking for but I always name the position, not the role, because I can’t be arsed. We needed one last summer, yet our transfer department went for two players who are not of that type and then bought a third, who was a stop-gap and also not of the required type.
It’s not like there is just one DM every summer who fits our bill, that’s what’s been getting on my nerves.
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The issue is that Mac will need a break. He was knackered towards the end of last season
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are there any teams in recent history thats been rejected by so many players.
club have a few weeks to sort this. Didnt think we could have a worse summer window than the one after we won the league but boy the club have excelled theirselves here,
New manager, new staff but same shambolic mess above them.
Im not talking just about Zubi (this lad was a near impossible deal as arsenal and bayer found out) but our lack of signings in general.
Now the window is coming to a close top players are harder to get and they become more expensive. LFC arent the type of club who will react by going to say Newcastle and offer what they want for Bruno…theyll just keep purse closed and say ah well we tried but theres no one out there.
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This was said endlessly two summers ago. We wasted another season with players riddled with injury and obviously on the decline only to buy four players better than what we had the following summer.
Signing players is no perfect science or as easy as some people might like to think but this excuse just doesn’t wash. We could have bought Endo a year earlier and improved on Fabinho but didn’t because apparently there was no one out there who could improve us that was available. Patently not true was it and it hardly took a world beater.
It’s a nonsense excuse.
thought he looked fucked on Sunday
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And yet, he still managed to help us have a good season, and was rarely if ever the problem preventing us from winning games. I can buy the style observation, since I have not watched us that keenly to be able to comment. I am wary though of it just becoming an echo chamber rather than something that actually represents reality.
He’s 31. It’s not too difficult to see why. That argument is akin to saying that we would not have been looking for players to supplement Thiago.
To flip it around, perhaps given how relaxed we seem to be about the situation, we don’t really view it as a priority, despite all the circle-jerking by the media and fans?
When it made sense. I’m sure the equivalent Madrid fans would also be asking themselves, would City or Liverpool be signing the likes of Joselu? Or Bayern fans questioning why Eric Dier? Equally, I’m sure the whole world was after Grealish.
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Who were the flavours last summer according to twitterati etc, Ugarte, Kone & Thuram where are they what have they done?
It isn’t easy getting the right player and who could step in that can do a better job than what we have got?
We don’t have the infinite resources to waste $50m or more every year as do Man city on FB’s
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And were these 4 players available that summer? Had they hit the performance levels that convinced us to sign them?
Except that I’m not sure we would have signed anyone if we didn’t get £40m for Fabinho early on. Perhaps we would have made the same attempts, but I think that it’s amply clear that we don’t care that much ultimately.
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However in the big games Aresenal’s $100m midfielder is overlooked in favour of Jorginho as the controller
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No but that goes against the narrative!
I WANT MY BIG MONEY TRANSFER I WANT TO WIN THE TRANSFER WINDOW
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Well in the long run it might actually take pressure off the team, as pundits seem to be already writing our season off. We are always better as an underdog.
The coaching staff at the time never thought that Fab & Hendo’s form would fall off a cliff, although I personally had thought Fab had also looked poor towards the end of the previous season.
Endo has done admirably and there are better players that could possibly be available that would be better at what he currently offers, unfortunately, that style isn’t what we need.
We need a Rodri or Jorginho type and those types seem to be a rarity.
Do you have any possible solutions, I am at a loss, although I do like Adam Wharton at Palace but he has only has had 16 Appearances for Palace
You think we couldn’t have got Endo had we wanted? What exactly did he do season before last that finally convinced them he could play?
Didn’t Mac and Szobo have release clauses? If not do you think Brighton and Leipzig wouldn’t have been teams we could negotiate with? Granted, Gravenberch went to Bayern that summer but did we really try for him?
We did nothing in midfield one summer but then magically just a year later there were at least five midfielders we thought could improve us? Give over.
So, we buy a defensive midfielder who’s already 30, after buying another who was almost 30 but of completely different type, and then use that basis to start a succession plan for them? I think it’s just poor planning (even though I was and still am amazed by Alcantara’s ability and can understand such an opportunistic transfer).
When I read the articles from the journalists I respect, I’m not getting the same feeling, to be honest… And our build-up last year had me pulling out my hair, I wrote about it many times. I’m getting the impression that Slot recognised that immediately and went about taking care of it. Aside from our build-up, we also conceded quite a few big chances last year and I think that having that controlling type of defensive midfielder would got a long way towards reducing that number.
True about Joselu, I wouldn’t want him anywhere near our team but you go back a few years and you’ll notice that we made a few stop-gap transfers. Kabak, Davies, Arthur, Endo… For me, they are a symptom of an illness that we haven’t cured yet.
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