Keita made 10 appearances in the league last year. I can see him doing more than that this year, particularly if he comes back free from injury following international duty…
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I’m not given to drama and flapping about over the owners and what we coulda shoulda done.
I will say it calmly, and I hope reasonably.
I am underwhelmed by the transfer window, especially if we don’t sign another striker. We do look short there, and to my mind we should have signed a young player with good potential to make a contribution now, but also with enough about them to be considered a viable replacement for one of the main forwards as they age out.
That’s it.
Beyond that, we have an excellent squad and I’m filled with hope for the season ahead.
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Exactly. There’s loads of permutations for covering Gini’s minutes, and many more besides, with the current midfielders.
Fabinho and Henderson will cover the bulk of it, as they won’t be needed in defence this time.
And like all reds, I can’t wait to see what Elliot turns into… the kid can play!
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That’s the only thing that bugs me as well, but I don’t think that young player would necessarily see as many minutes as we would hope, given the competitiveness of the forwards we already do have. At best they have a role to play during the international tournaments, but that’s about it.
Shit, she’s signed for the wrong canteen.
#FSGOUT
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If they’re good enough they’ll play and Klopp will find time for them. All 3 of Salah, Firmino and Mane could have been rested more in previous seasons. Put it another way, currently, with everyone fit, the most advanced/offensive 8 is the most competitive role in the squad for bodies and a talented 18 year old has earned starts there in 2 out of 3 games. If a player is good enough Klopp will play them.
Needed someone who specialises in pasta and all we do is extend the roast carrot expert?! Can she even use the stovetop? #FSGOut
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I don’t think it’s quite that simple.
I’m sure we wanted another forward, but we know that the club will not settle for a lesser target. We know they won’t go too far down the list of options before they just decide it’s better to do nothing.
Twitter seems to think that Klopp has been begging for a signing - any signing - and FSG have been spitting in his face.
It’s more likely they have identified the one they really want, but he isn’t available this window (or PSG are refusing to let him go 
).
The more I think about last summers centre back stuff, the way we acted in January, and the way we pinned down Konate early on this summer, the more I think he was always the one we wanted and we were willing to wait.
I would not be surprised if the same thing is happening now.
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What I do know is
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City have so far failed to get in the forward they want, and are reliant or Jesus and Torres up front. Their second choice DM is a finished 36 year old. They don’t have a cover left back, and they are still reliant on De Bruyne to stay fit.
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Chelsea play a back three and have four Centre back options. Against us on Saturday their midfield change was a kid who’s played a couple of games.
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Man Utd basically don’t have a midfield, they goalkeeper needs replacing, and their right back can’t pass a football.
We look at this with whatever the opposite of rose tinted glasses is. We assume all our players are worse than they are, and the other teams are stacked with talent.
The other three top sides all have issues. They are no less perfect than we are.
Put it this way, I wouldn’t swap our squad for any of the others - even Cities.
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Absolutely
This perhaps inadvertently drives to the heart of the issue. The call for a new forward is not for an upgrade of our 4th or 5th choice forward (that’s just what place he takes) , but because of a noticeable deterioration in our forward line.
Firmino has not been in form for 18+ months, Mane has been hit and miss for much of last season. Even Salah has not been his peak self for a while.
It was evident they were out if form, tired and could not buy a goal.
If I am brutally honest I doubt we will ever see the old Firmino. I desperately hope we will. But his decline has been closer to a player in his 30s than late 20s.
Fear of a lack of upgrade, comes from a fear of our forwards not recapturing form (with huge drop in quality of squad players)
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I think we’re probably talking at cross purposes a bit and likely mostly agree. If we look at last season I think it’s pretty clear Origi is not favoured. That is only reinforced by him not making the bench this season.
But my point was a more convoluted one than we dont need a replacement because of origi. It was more that we can seemingly ignore origi when thinking about what Klopp thought of his firepower for the game on saturday, and presumably moving forward for the season. The reality is he has already got his replacement for Origi as evidenced by them (presumably Ox and Minamino) being on the bench ahead of him, and so it’s Klopp’s views on those players that would really drive the discussion on whether he’s happy with what he’s got.
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For me the odd part was that they were all pretty good up until January, when everything just seemed to collapse. I think the lockdown robbed us of some conditioning, while the shortened break probably exacerbated these problems with regards to the fatigue.
I don’t know what “the old Firmino” is, if I’m being honest. The only time he had relatively good goalscoring for us was 2017-18. Apart from that, he’s had a similar amount of assists across all seasons, around 7 or 8 like clockwork, and seems to still be doing the same work. Perhaps the fatigue we’re referring to has robbed both him and Mané of crucial steps of acceleration, which might explain why they’re more blunted than usual. This might also explain why refereeing is going against us more than it did perhaps a couple of seasons ago, since their acceleration used to be a lot better, resulting in the fouls on them being more blatant.
Replacing him is also the least worrying problem, as I am rather confident that Jota can play that role rather well, and if Minamino can adapt better to the physicality he’s probably the most similar stylistically to Firmino of all our options.
And Salah, what can I say. He’s had poor patches here and there, but he just keeps on chugging. Some games he’ll do worse, but same games he’ll just run the opponents ragged. I feel it’s somewhat safe to say that he has no issues with recapturing that form.
This leaves the only problem being Mané, but if Jota can keep improving, there’s no reason why Mané cannot be somewhat replaced by him. And if it all clicks together for Origi, then he’s more than adequate as a backup option there. But that would be quite the combination of events for it to become a real problem.
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tick tock… tick tock…
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Would have been nice to have at least taken Saul on loan…
I mean Chelsea seem to always have the funds to just take guys out of nowhere. Surely a 5m commitment wouldn’t have been too much?
For me I viewed Firmino as a clever player.
He might not have provided the goals or assists but the link up play. The clever ball, vision and the quick feet.
Hard to describe but something hard to capture in stats.
This video illustrates some if the play I mean
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What would we have gained from that?
The look on everyone’s face when they realised they’ve been confusing him with Koke this whole time would have at least been amusing.
I think Saul will struggle in this league, he looks really slow to me (although playing in that Chelsea team will help him - won’t be required to move much).
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Why I really like Martinez. Reminds me so much of a younger Bobby.
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I get what you mean, although I must admit I’m not very good with remembering games, I’ve already forgotten the games this season!
I remember thinking last season though that a lot of things he was trying was not working, and that uncharacteristically for him he was losing the ball a lot more. But I wonder how much of this was also from the loss of form of Mané, and our tactical tweaks here and there…