While I don’t think transfers for transfers’ sake make a great deal of sense, if there is a negative lesson from Klopp’s thinking on transfers, it is that he stuck with players too long. If there is a positive lesson, it is that he disliked trying to make disruptive mass changes. A lot of our difficulties last year were down the former compelling the latter in the midfield.
Every summer window is an opportunity to make incremental changes, even if the intention is not to bring in a team-changing starter, it will be a loss if we don’t use this window to some degree to continue to refresh the side.
A loan would be perfect for Bajcetic, but it would have to be a Prem/La Liga loan.
He’s played like 3 games (90 in none) in 18 months, looked rusty as hell in pre-season. Needs solid game time but most importantly to find that rhythm…for this reason alone I’d say Morton is ahead of him. Keep Endo for the next season or 2 while Baj comes back like Morton has this summer, with 80-90 games under his belt.
And yet fans could see he wasn’t up to the same level the season before.
Are you joking? How long did we spend trying to sort a deal for Lavia? We then chucked in a world record bid for Caicedo and ended up with Endo less than a week later. Definition of messing about. And you can’t just say he flopped there so he’d have flopped here, that isn’t how these things work.
Made clear by whom? We literally have a type and were forced to go outside of that because we failed to bring in the players we clearly wanted more. Hardly smacks of good planning and process that.
I’m not really sure we’re going to get anywhere continuing this. Proof will be in the pudding come May. Let’s hope it’s not like that season we went into with gaping holes in the back line or that other season where we had clear issues in midfield and hoped for better luck with injuries.
I don’t think that’s true. He got injured in the run to the CL final, and he was playing well before that.
His fall off the cliff was alarming. I remember a spell in the season before last where he genuinely looked like he’d forgotten how to play football.
There were rumours about Fabinho being older than his declared age. I considered that to be nonsense, but I’ve wondered in hindsight if there might have been something in it.
What it appears to me the move was designed to address was helping us improve our ability to make that first short pass out of the back into a crowded midfield into a player who has the ability to make himself available, the confidence to receive the pass in a crowded space and the skill to play out of it. Slot seems to value this as a way of coaxing a team onto you and then outplaying them. Obviously you need a CB confident on the ball to be able to ping those passes into feet with pace and accuracy, but if the midfielders aren’t capable of showing in the right spaces and playing in them once he gets the ball then it doesn’t matter whether or not you have the CBs able to make the pass or not.
Like I have said, I don’t think we are completely lacking the players who can do this, but I think there is development required for all them
The season we were chasing a quadruple and played virtually every single game possible? Where all the players were visibly completely knackered by the end of that season?
We quite clearly didn’t fancy Lavia as much as he went for in the end. Not sure what your point there was. We made an offer, we were outbid. Caicedo was an opportunity that came up, but then because of the shenanigans going around that transfer, we didn’t complete it in the end. Not sure how that’s messing about.
No, that isn’t how things work. Nor is it a guaranteed that given how most big money signings have flopped completely, he would have flopped too. All I’m saying is, had we done that, and he flopped as bad as he has, then the recruitment team would be blamed anyway.
Every single interview around his transfer? How is it a failure of good planning and process if the primary targets didn’t want us and we managed to sign what you view as a secondary target days after? Do you think it’s just a matter of clicking “confirm” and a transfer gets completed, just like that? No legwork, no negotiations, no scouting?
I’m sure that comes into their decision making process, you’d like to think we’d be capable of selling them our vision even if there isn’t a huge influx of transfers though.
Hopefully, I’m not overly worried about Trent but Virgil’s comments the other day didn’t sit quite right with me. It’s hard to say with Mo as that Saudi carrot has been dangled, looks like he means business again though and if he signed for another two years it wouldn’t be a shock.
Yes, he played nearly every game possible that season because we had no other option at DM.
My point is we decided what we thought he was worth and left our bid on the table. Then we got gazumped and our alternative plan was to try and gazump our gazumpers for a different player. When neither of those things came off we bought a stop-gap. It’s hardly slick work is it?
So we bought a stop gap. Fine, better than nothing right? But now we don’t fancy him anymore so we try and get someone we do like, that goes tits up and now we’re back to a stop-gap or nothing.
If you think this is what well run looks like I’d love to know what you think a mess is. We’re approaching United levels of incompetence with sorting out a number six.
And we didn’t have any virtually every single season he was here.
It’s what you deal with when you aren’t running a club with unlimited resources. Again, why would we have given Endo a 4 year contract if he was meant to be a simple stop gap? Why not just 3? You’re assuming he was a stop-gap and not a less interesting alternative because of his age (and thus presumed remaining career longevity).
Are we? Aren’t so many people like yourself spitting out their dummies because the “journalists” are now claiming we’re not intending to sign any alternative? The assumption is that “we don’t fancy him anymore” as opposed to “we have an opportunity to get a player who would fit well here and upgrade our team”, precisely the very single thing you’ve been arguing for all this while.
Looks like the club and it transfer gurus can’t find the right defensive nmidfielder for Liverpool for two consecutive summers. Now we read the usual crap in the media - we will wait for the right player, next summer…
Like we waited for Bellingham and last season after Lavia and Caicedo rejected us it was obvios that we need a quality in that postion.
For example the 2 best teams at the moment in the league are Arsenal and &ity and it is not a coiuncidence that the have the best defensive midfielders in England - Rice and Rodry. But suddenly people think that we will fight with them for the title with Endo or Gravenberch playing in a specific position… Or we will waste Maca’s talent, playing him in a more defensive role.
Hopefully, after the sales of Carvalho and the extra money from Grabara, Alberto and Solanke and the extra wage space from the departues of Thiago, Marip and Adrians those generous guys from FSG have several pennies left to renew the contracts of TAA, VvD or Salah. Because it does not look good at the moment - no new signings and no new contracts for 3 of our top players.
But the selling shop is widely open :). Just wait for next summer, then we will surely spend big, patience and trust inthe owners, right
P.S. I am still waiting for a top defensive midfielder /for example there are still good players around, you just need ambition, money and someone to convince the players, the last one looks really hard at the moment - Hjulmand, Ederson, Bruno, Joao Gomes etc./, right wing that can rival Salah and a left back. If the club decide to sell Sepp - central defender will also be needed.
I agree with you but there are only so many of those midfielders who are also defensively competent and good enough in other areas of their game to fit in at a top club. Maybe there are one or two more options hiding out there but its a tough role to fill.
If there aren’t perfect options then we will either proceed with the imperfect ones we have and hope to develop them, or look for a different solution. Maybe one way would be to have CBs who are confident to step past the midfielder, sometimes at least, to eliminate the pass into midfield - not saying this would work but I think these are questions Slot will be thinking about.
Is it so outlandish, considering we’ve already done so (except for playing Gravenberch there) and could have won it if not for the usual story of injuries taking their toll and bizarre (calm down @cynicaloldgit) refereeing decisions?
Yeah those penny pinchers spending £60m+ on each of Núñez and Szoboszlai. Can’t afford to keep the lights on, let alone Salah, Alexander-Arnold, or Virgil, two of whom we may well have reasons to not want to renew the contracts of, considering how many people are so upset we gave “obvious crocks” long contracts.
Rice played most of his football last season (almost all of it) as an 8. If you’re looking for pointers to take from Arsenal I’d say it is the value of Jorginho, the man who played 6 for most of their big games for why Slot seemingly was targeting a creative player like Zubi and puts into context the value of playing players like Grav and Mac there.
Beyond that though I dont know why we’d only look at one position. Do we get to say that its not coincidence Arsenal didnt win the league because they lacked a goal scorer of the caliber that we had? Or a goalie? Or is it only perceived deficiencies vs them we’re allowed to raise when comparing the qualities of the sides and prospects for this season?
