I thought the same about the font… but felt it a bit petty to post! Thanks for allowing my inner calligrapher out.
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Yes Klopp seems like the type to stall a players career just so he can buy someone else…
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I don’t think Keita needs any help stalling his career. Sadly.
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We are not desperate. We would just like some movement. Klopp might not be over joyed however he won’t sulk, I think he’s even be happy to work with Shaq and Origi another year.
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Yes, desperate is probably the wrong word.
What I mean is that everyone knows we can’t sign anyone until we’ve shifted some foreign fringe lads. That’s going to be used as leverage in a negotiation, and it probably means we’re going to be moving late for our targets.
I fucking hate this time of year for football. It’s so unpleasant. I miss the days you’d play cricket in summer, and find out you’d signed a player in the paper. I saw a thread on Facebook moaning about another summer without any signings and what bastards FSG are for making Klopp cope another season without new player. They’d all literally forgotten about Konate, not to mention the three we brought in last year.
Yes, even so the biggest problem seems to be the market, which is really strange imo. ‘Top’ targets are going for top money however lesser players are just sat around. It’s been going ob in France for a while (clubs even releasing players on frees) now it seems, probably compounded by covid, that squad players aren’t valued at all. The pyramid isn’t working.
it’s limbo time where patience is needed or another distraction. Thankfully I have my son’s wedding coming up so busy with silly dresses and shoes. 
Pretty sure we signed Jota last year when the Anfield Wrap were having kittens about the exact same issue. It’s overblown.
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That’s gender fluidity for you.
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Tell the kids this today and they won’t believe you.
I’d never heard of that before so had to google it, I’m still confused but have grasped a vague idea of what it is.
I am sure my son is being told by his to be wife how to prepare. I’m all set (except I threw my best suit away years ago (it was wool and mites got to it 
). All the dresses and shoes stuff is for my daughter (maid of honor stuff) and I have lots of time as the transfer window is in limbo. 
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There is nothing stopping us from signing a non-homegrown player today. We don’t need to shift some foreign lads first. This only matters when it comes to actually registering the squad.
Right now, clubs probably think if they hang on, there’s a chance we’ll blink first and lower our demands or maybe even a loan would be possible closer to the end of the window. But if we buy someone now and then we have to leave an Origi or Sahqiri out the squad registration then we’ll only get peanuts for them.
So you can understand why they want to wait for a couple to go first before they move to incomings but if it gets to the crunch and Klopp really wants player x, we’ll probably make the move and let someone go on loan if absolutely necessary.
The easy way to cope in the silly season is not to get too invested in anything that is nothing more than a rumour. We’ll get linked to dozens of guys but unless it comes from someone with a decent track record, take it with a massive pinch of salt and don’t buy into the hype.
No matter what the club does, someone on the internet will moan. We’ll not have spent enough, not bought enough players, not bought the player they want, spent too much on a player we did buy or should have bought player x who went to a different club. People will judge our transfer activity at the end of the window rather than the end of the season because they care more about what the club spends than what they do on the pitch.
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Alternatively, this approach provides the player who is not part of our plans a reason to bide his time, reject all offers that come in for him and stick around to fight for his place. If we just do the deal we want it does send a signal to teams to come and get him, but it also lights a fire under the arse of the player and his agent to find a deal that is suitable to everyone or face the alternative of sitting out a season.
It is an issue we need to address, but it is not a serious impediment to actually doing the deals we want to do.
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I do wonder if we simply don’t have the wage flexibility to have Origi and Shaqiri both with minimal involvement again. That’s what around £120k a week betwen them? Which would more than cover 1 signing, maybe even 2.
The amount in wages we paid to some players to be on the fringe or injured (not long term injuries) was huge. Matip, Keita, Origi, Shaqiri, Oxlade all didn’t contribute enough.
Well it’s only 12 days to go until kick off. Can’t wait. It really feels like a long break this time.
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Shaq interview on LFC offal -
Very much doesn’t read as if he’s being sold, but then the quotes from last month suggest he did want off.
Unlikely he’d say anything else to the in-house media team.
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I think he probably does want off, but like Origi, he wont accept just any offer and his happy to see out his time here until he gets an offer he likes more.
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To be fair, it doesn’t preclude a move either. As it stands right now, he’s a Liverpool player, and there may not be any concrete offers on the table for him so those goals make perfect sense. If a team he wants to play for comes in with an offer, I don’t think we would say no unless it was an insultingly low offer.
That said, I don’t think we’re desperate to offload any players at the moment. We probably need to soon, but it’s mainly in the context of team renewal rather than immediate need. We essentially have improved our squad since winning the league, especially if you consider Thiago to be at least on par on level with Wijnaldum. The key issues are simply around AFCON and the Arab Cup. I’m guessing the club might be confident in at least Jota and Minamino providing enough depth in that area to not make it a crisis. Otherwise, Jones has also come on into the team, meaning he can provide useful midfield minutes, even if he might not be at the top level yet. I don’t think the club will bring in players with that specific worry in mind.
It genuinely is silly season when we make too much of what other clubs are doing, rather than what we’re doing and what we need to do. City will always be spending a ludicrous amount, Chelsea will always be chasing that shiny new toy, as will United. While Chelsea does make that work more often than not, United doesn’t have quite as a good a track record in that regard.
I think our biggest improvements would actually come from work in training. Injuries have been the main problem, and I think if we could work some magic and get someone like Keïta back to the injury-free record he had before joining us, and get Gomez and Virgil back into pre-injury shape, we should be fine. I think we would then be able to work more of the other squad players in. They would be a drop in quality, but if we do it judiciously, the team ought to be able to cope. For me, games like the Everton one in December 2019 exhibit what this would look like. Give some of the vital players a much needed break, and yet still maintain the overall quality of the team as a whole.
I’d expect that Shaqiri will stay or leave depending on whatever offers he gets, and the manager won’t be too fussed either way. For someone like Origi, it probably is a question of who we could get in, at what price, and whether Origi himself is comfortable just taking on the squad role he’s had. All indications are that the latter at least, for the past couple of seasons seems to be true. He was even threatened with losing a place at the Euros (which he did) if he didn’t make a move during the past January window, and yet he stayed. Moving on to pure speculation, I would suggest that Woodburn might even play a small role this season. He’s conveniently homegrown, and might even qualify as club-trained (I’m not sure on the rules), the latter of which we currently have space for. Crucially for him, he’s still 21, whereas the club tends to move players on at maybe a couple of years older than he is right now.
In contrast to the doom and gloom from some, I think the management team would probably see us as in a relatively favourable position squad-wise. Just need to sort out the contract lengths and succession planning and we’ll be perfectly fine.