And don’t forget Matip was a part of the pre-VVD defense which was a living meme at that time.
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l take your point. My comment was only in relation to City. We’ve a brilliant first 11 like you say, but I don’t think we’d have got close to City without Klopp.
There’s also the question of whether the top players would have come to us without Klopp. Or if others would be as good as they are without him (Mane, Robbo, Trent, Fab etc)
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Didn’t realise Bowen shares the same agent as Robbo and Trent…
You’re obviously right mate, and I’m certainly not trying to downplay Klopp’s importance, far from it.
But all the important parts of this team have been in place for 3/4 seasons and performing at the highest level most of that time so he’s not ‘performing miracles’ anymore. He’s working with one of the most talented squads in world football and doing a great job.
You can’t just forget how good our side is now because rivals sign good players. He turned the water into wine once, it doesn’t just change back again cos Grealish goes for £100mill.
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So who has John Terry shagged this time?
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Matip was one of Klopp’s first signings, he made a point that he had scouted him personally… So I think lumping him in with the likes of Lovren etc. Is a bit silly.
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Sorry guys I’ve got to learn to quote posts properly.
What I’m trying to say is that the main core of this squad is good enough to win the league regardless of what City do because they’re world class. Klopp’s done that and we absolutely have him to thank but that’s what they are now.
Beating city to the title next year wouldn’t be a shock, I don’t think, under any circumstance let alone a miracle.
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I think you’re failing to realise how great a job Klopp is currently doing keeping a side great despite almost no net spend. No other manager has done that.
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Give it a rest for fucks sake.
We’ve just given Trent a new contract worth around £200k a week… Nearly triple his last one.
I’d much prefer we did that than buy a new shiny fucking toy every summer to appease twitterites like you.
Learn that not everything is about fucking transfers fee’s, and our success is built on the total money we spend to retain the world class squad we’ve built and let Klopp develop.
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Have we actually? As much as I rate him, surely that’s got to be at the top level of what contracts we’ve given out?
It’s great that we do good on contracts and wages. It still doesn’t change the fact that USUALLY when the transfer funds stop OTHER managers don’t still manage to keep their teams competitive. Klopp is both world class and unique.
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So are some of our players in our squad, I think that’s the point. TAA for example.
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He is potentially the best player in the world in his position. I wouldn’t be surprised if he is getting that much now and been a major part of our success the last few years.
https://twitter.com/JamesPearceLFC/status/1421138422765441034?s=20
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While Klopp is a phenomenal manager, it’s disrespectful to everyone in the team around him to suggest that bridging the gap to city is entirely down to his genius. I’m pretty sure he’d agree with me on that.
I saw earlier today that the Grealish deal was looking likely, reflecting on the inevitable, tedious response from LFC Twitter, and thinking back to what I wanted when FSG first took over LFC
We can’t get into a situation where we’re trading blows with city. It’s not a fair fight. They are backed by a nation state, and until they get a long overdue slap for cheating, we have to live with this. You can’t outpunch a puncher
We can’t be richer than them. But we can be cleverer. We can be better across all aspects of the game other than money.
At the arse end of Hicks and Gillette, I remember a thread on TIA talking about what we wanted from new owners. For me it was never about money. I’d seen a succession of managers waste so much of the limited money we did have on signings that clearly didn’t fit, or cast off on players that could have improved, or ignore promising kids altogether.
Paul Tompkins had a thing about spending, where he worked out that half all transfer spend is generally wasted. While Tompkins law was primarily about defending Rafa, it also revealed another truth. In that thread I remember writing that before I wanted more money for transfers, I wanted the new owners to be clever enough to look at that 50% hit rate and leverage every possible area across the club to drive that up to more like an 85-90% success. Because, in my opinion, if we’re not wilfully flushing half our budget down the toilet then we can compete.
That’s what FSG have done. They’ve transformed the academy, the analytics, the scouting, and the coaching to drive that hit rate to the point where we rarely put a foot wrong in the market. The people they’ve brought in the run the football are the best in the game.
Let Guardiola burn through players. Let him spend £60m a season on full backs, let him cry poverty, the deranged, paranoid, narcissist he is (and high time the media held him to account on this bullshit - Klopp still gets dragged over the coals for the comment he made about £80m footballers).
We must be patient and accept that we have to be incredibly cautious and diligent with money. We might do nothing, because in line with the philosophy that has brought us success, nothing, at that point in time, is the right thing to do. But when we do move it’s because the best minds in the game are sure that they’ve got a player who improves us.
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Yes it’s reported everywhere he’s joined the top bracket which is around that mark.
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Charles Ellis wrote a book called winning the losers game. I can’t remember where the original research came from, but its about investing and basically says to win you have to make the fewest mistakes. When investors have a high turnover in their portfolio over a short space of time the trading costs add up and increase how much you have to win each trade by in order to beat the market’s return. The more you trade, the harder it becomes to achieve that.
I think a similar approach is what we see with successful football teams and in particular with our clubs current strategy.
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I remember sitting in Kiev airport after the final and reading an article where Klopp was saying that the way Real Madrid had had their continued success was perfect. A really strong team, kept together year after year. He did his usual bit where he has a little pop at everyone wanting transfers all the time too.
You’ll know better than me how many players Madrid added over those years, it’s probably more than I realise, but equally last summer we added a lad many were saying was the best midfielder in Europe and a forward who had a great first season. Now we’ve signed a centre half everyone raves about. All on top of a side that absolutely walked the league.
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Also one of the sneaky realities is that while both Alison and Virgil were enormous signings who I would never claim did not in fact massively improve us, the early part of the 17-18 season before Virgil arrived we’d actually showed signs of fixing the defense already.
Im not going to check the stats for specific figures, but I remember we had a ton of clean sheets that season (around 20) and had more of them prior to virgil arriving than we did in the games he played in. Overall it was a very good GA record for the season, especially the first half tarnished only by 2 aberrational results (City and Spurs).
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Yes it is, and I’m not disputing that. But FIFA doesn’t include it in its calendar of International “A” Matches. As such, according to FIFA’s own rules, I don’t think clubs are obliged to release their players to play in it.
The competing nations come from a subset of two different confederations, the Confederation of African Football and the Asian Football Confederation. It is in effect a by invitation only competition. As the competition is not open to every nation from either confederation, I can’t see how it might to conform to the requirements of International “A” Matches.
Anyway, I eagerly await @Kopstar’s unbiased verdict on the matter. I have already emailed him in this regard offering to transfer £5 million dollars from the account of the ex-president of the Central Bank of Nigeria, just as soon as he forwards his personal bank details and pin numbers, and pays the nominal fee of fee of £90 for stamp duty / courier fees /shipment charges. 
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