I think that would have more bearing if Origi was making the bench and not playing when the was crying out of for him. His absence from the bench is a clear indication that right now he is not in favour, but in it doesnt lend itself to the conclusion thatr we need to buy to replace him. Surely the correct target of that is to look at whomever is making the bench instead of him. Right now that looks like Minamino. The jury is clearly still out on him, but there were mitigating circumstances last year about why he was so overlooked.
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But he was dropped.
They never come back to buy him even after losing Ings.
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Phillips signing new deal to be 5th choice is the most bizarre signing of the summer.
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Looks like Jones is stayingā¦but another one whose not made last 2 squads.
Doesnāt that basically show we have really good depth?
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Maybe youāre right. Maybe JK is happy with his forward options. We donāt know. I just thought it was telling that when we were desperate for goals last season Origi didnāt get a look in. Jota out injured for two months and Minamino gets loaned out. After the Palace game where he scored and looked quite good he never got another game until he went to Southampton. Itās an odd thing to do if you rate a player as a genuine option.
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True but last season was a freak.
I look at it this way, if you say our best team over what the last 20 years was the one who won the league in 19/20 yeah?
Alisson, Trent, Robbo, Van Dijk, Matip, Lovren, Gomez, Fabinho, Milner, Gini, Henderson, Keita, Firmino, Mane, Salah, Origi, Oxlade, Lallana, Shaqiri, Minamino (players who played over 10 games)
Weāve lost from that group - Gini and Lallana, Milner has declined. No other player is on a decline.
Weāve added to that group - Thiago, Jota, Konate, Jones, Elliot
I honestly donāt get how we are not organically growing the squad year on year? We have a better team now, we have better depthā¦ Yes if we could sell Origi and bring in a better 5th choice forward amazing but very very hard to name even 5 players who that could be, and the fact Origi hasnāt had many suitors.
p.s. That summer (before we won the league) this was our transfer dealingsā¦
Transfers in
Entry date Position No. Player From club Fee Ref.
1 July 2019 DF 72 Netherlands Sepp van den Berg Netherlands PEC Zwolle Ā£1,300,000[A] [31]
28 July 2019 MF 67 England Harvey Elliott England Fulham Ā£1,700,000[B] [32]
5 August 2019 GK 13 Spain AdriƔn England West Ham United Free [33]
12 August 2019 GK 22 England Andy Lonergan England Middlesbrough Free [34]
1 January 2020 FW 18 Japan Takumi Minamino Austria Red Bull Salzburg Ā£7,250,000 [35]
I remember the fume thenā¦
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Yes, but that has no bearing on anything you said in the post I was replying to.
What were they saying? I thankfully opted out of transfer season silliness that summer, so I canāt remember anything about that. The only thing I know is that there was much chat about Thiago replacing Wijnaldum and a lot of people being happy about that. I do remember being excited about Jota though, because he was a player putting up some solid numbers.
Havenāt most of their injuries come from impacts rather than anything else, especially Gomez? I would consider him unlucky more than injury-prone.
No real No 9 option because we donāt play with that kind of striker. Otherwise Origi would have been playing that role, which he did do decently for us in 2015-16, and weād probably have kept Sturridge. Thatās why our alternatives for Firmino are mainly Jota and Minamino, because they are highly mobile players capable of scoring, being direct, but also linking up the play well.
Again, most people seemed to have been happy to replace Thiago with Wijnaldum way back then, so from that perspective weāve actually gained an extra season of Wijnaldum grinding away for us getting us to the Champions League again.
We would have been fine if we had a normal season. This is such a fallacious argument. We signed 2 centre-backs in the January window, and still had to play Williams and Phillips at the end of the season anyway. By that point, they would have effectively been our 7th and 8th choice.
No. Not until we lost Gomez long-term as well did we have a serious problem.
The only solution to this is really to sell ManĆ© and buy a replacement, with the way youāve framed it.
Iām not arguing with you personally, Iām arguing with that mentality that we needed transfers.
No oneās pretending that, because it is true. United brought in Ronaldo, Varane, and Sancho. Of which, only Sancho is a player that I would really be impressed by. Varane is 28, and when he should be at the peak of his career, Real Madrid is content to sell him. Ronaldo is 37, and as professional as he is, as much of a physical freak he is, by all accounts heās not as physically up to it anymore.
And thatās many peopleās standard of a good window.
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But thatās modern football fans for you.
Iām not talking about here but more generally online and especially on social media. Itās not about signing the right player for your squad and teamās progression, itās merely about how much you spend and getting the bIg NaMeZ!!!11!!!11111!!!
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Does this thread get locked when the window closes? Asking for a friend 
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I donāt understand the idea that Oxlade-Chamberlain, Origi or Jones not making the squad means that theyāre bad or on their way out. It just means that we have ridiculous depth. It might be them one week, Minamino another, or KeĆÆta. Itās a great problem to have!
We were desperate for goals, during a time when Salah, Firmino, and ManĆ© were all fit and available. Who would have wanted to drop any of them? Furthermore, as has been repeated all across the forums, and has been true for any one of Shaqiri, Minamino, and Origi, who would have wanted to destabilise the team further by introducing more players when we needed to be protecting our defence? JĆ¼rgen has already made this point with reference to Oxlade-Chamberlain and KeĆÆta.
Someone had to go to get a centre-back in. We literally couldnāt register any new player.
The entire shitshow of a season can be viewed from the perspective of protecting our defence as much as we could thanks to our multiple long-term injuries, that donāt normally occur together in a season.
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In theory we could have unregistered Virgil.
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In theory, but I think the hope was that he might have been able to make it back before the end of the season?
From Andy Heaton (he is on private)
So, letās distil this into a straight choiceā¦
After renewing
Trent
Fabinho
Robertson
Henderson
Van Dijk
Alisson
And signing Konate
Roughly a Ā£320/350m commitment
Youāve got Ā£65m left, do you?
Renew Salah or sign someone?
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Good post overall, just wanted to comment on this part.
Last season Gini played 3300 Prem minutes.
Last season Fabinho and Henderson played 2700 Prem minutes in defence.
It is entirely reasonable to say Fabinho and Hendo will not be needed in central defense this season, given the depth we now have in the position. So their minutes, if they match their output of last season, will ALL be deployed in midfield.
All of a sudden, instead of needing to replace 3300 midfield minutes, it is now only 600 or so, and Harvey Elliott looks well capable of handling that himself, to say nothing of the emergence of Curtis Jones who will probably want to play more than last seasonā¦ and now letās imagine whether Ox or Keita will offer more than last season, etc.
The point being, Giniās midfield minutes of last season are well covered by the current squad, and then some.
Edit:
I made this point a while ago, canāt find it now, so I am doing the numbers from memory, in case we have any stats people who actually look it up. But the numbers arenāt far off, from memory, and the point is solidā¦ the bulk of Giniās minutes will be taken up by seasoned midfielders who do not have to play in central defence.
The hole for me is another striker, whether wide or central - a player like David, Doku, or Sarr, who could come and offer more depth right now, and in time perhaps be a decent bet to replace one of the current strikers as they age out.
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