We survived and got better. Even after Klopp that we didn’t think possible.
Would love to have Mo 24/25 level to last another few seasons but I will go as far as to say he has peaked and the 300+ mooted is way overs.
Virg is a bigger out if he goes.
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Because acting like Salah single-handedly carries this club is ridiculous nonsense.
If Salah leaves this summer, expecting someone to have a similar output is nonsense, but I also expect that even Salah couldn’t replicate what he’s done this season. But can we improve our attacking overall? Probably yes, even if Salah leaves this summer. At the end of the day, putting all our hope in a 33-year-old, with the Can cup in the middle, to carry the team is the wrong thing to do. We need to find a way to upgrade our attack, with or without Salah. The real question is how to make us better, not how to replace Salah individually.
The truth is, all of Gakpo, Diaz, and Salah have had their best seasons in Slot’s first season, which is a good indicator that Slot knows how to get the best out of the players he has, so I trust him to build a new attacking group. I was fucking nervous when Fabinho left; we still haven’t replaced him one-to-one, but our midfield group now isn’t any worse than before.
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Do you you include stuff that happens on the pitch? Cos you’re awfully quiet when we win actual games of football as opposed to transfer windows.
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You get a winger who can give you the equivalent of what Diaz or Gakpo offer from the left and a centre forward who can score more than five league goals a season like ours have. Then the 10 or so penalties Salah scores get picked up by whoever our new penalty taker is.
They get shared around because no other winger in the world is doing what he is doing.
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Ffs stop talkin sense it is pointless
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To be fair, ours have, consistently, until this season. Firmino also got similar number of goals as the current two did.
He’s a quality player, one that I really envied Man City on because they got him for peanuts, used him well and sold for a massive profit, but I really don’t believe that Man City and Liverpool would trade players just like that. Whether there really is interest from Liverpool now, I don’t know but he’d be extremely expensive. Unless they can sell Nunez for roughly the same amount, eh…
Slot would probably need another striker with stronger physical presence than him, though. He looks more like an upgrade on Jota than Nunez if I’m honest, but he’s proven he can both lead the line on his own or work in a tandem with a more traditionally looking striker.
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Imagine if the post-Salah plan is good old 4-4-2 with a big man/little man combination, Núñez+Alvarez.
That would quite possibly be enough to make the entire fanbase go into meltdown for one reason or another.
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Entire fanbase? Not me.
a) I don’t go into meltdown over anything.
b) I would have confidence that Arne knows what he’s doing.
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No, you have just furthered his point…there are other players out there who help their teams be successful.
Mo will be 33 this summer, is going to see a decline in his numbers at somepoint iand even if he stays, will need replacing sooner or later anyway…and Arne indicated this season that Mo has already started reducing some of the more intensive work he does in training to conserve himself for matches.
I think most of us would like him to stay but understand why that might not happen - particularly with him likely to play at AFCON next winter.
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Well, it’s not like me to be pessi-…
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There’s about 20 guys called Joao Gomes in the top leagues so not sure which one you are talking about - but they say smart players make interceptions, others make tackles. This guy makes a lot of tackles.
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Even if he stays, we should be asking this question as we’re unlikely to see another season anything like this one from him.
Next season is AFCON and the dates are earlier than usual, think it starts 20th December or something, meaning he’ll miss the jam packed Christmas period. I know the ‘second half of the season’ salah stuff is a nonsense but we have seen him drop off after AFCON a couple of times too.
The following season he’ll be 34 at the start of the season.
But yeah as others have said, a number 9 who can contribute close to 20 goals a season and someone else on pens would go some way.
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I’d say he’s already started declining. Yes, he’s added more guile to his play but he’s not as quick as he once was.
I’d still say we should retain him and VVD for 2 year contracts.
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It might work…
Julian even managed to make Haaland look like a good footballer.
I think City miss Alvarez almost as much as they missed Rodri this season.
If we have a chance to go for him , I don’t see much wrong.
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Physically declining, but the output of this season shows he has adapted and continued to improve in other areas. It would be great if he’d kept his speed and acceleration, but sometimes that decline is what forces you to grow mentally as a player and develop other solutions when trying to solve problems.
The problem with youth is it is wasted on the young
With that I am less concerned about replacing Mo’s goals than I am with the goals he has created for others as that really is the new thing he has added to his game this year and is what is making this such a historic season. Replacing his non-penalty goals is challenge but doable. Doing it while also replacing his new found creativity and the overall vibe is going to be much harder. But that is life. As others have said, whether he stays or goes we’re facing a likely reality of having to replace a chunk of that contribution anyway because the thing with historically productive seasons is you tend not to repeat them. Especially when they come late in your career.
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Alvarez to Atletico was one of those rare (at the top level) deals where I thought all sides can be pretty satisfied. Perhaps the slight question was more for the player, whether Atletico was/is what he really wanted. Sometimes you have only the options available. But Atletico got one of the best forwards in the world, the player got a key player role in one of the most competitive sides in two of the best leagues in Europe and City got a fantastic fee for a player who was ultimately behind Haaland, a backup player. They made a mistake last summer of not using that big money from sales, but that’s another discussion.
Anyway, I’m not sure how realistic is this one this summer.
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