This is possibly why we didn’t get a CB in the summer. I reckon we’d have hoped for £50m from the sales of Origi, Grujic, Wilson and a couple fringe kids like Nat.
Without those options we might need to look at other funding sources.
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But you’re forgetting about what’s behind the door marked Scenario 4:
A world class defender for £5 and a bag of tangfastics.
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Devils Advocate in return;
Scenario 1; I’m not sure I believe this stance. There are very few stand out candidates out there. There are lots of “good with potential” but no VvD version 2.0. If we are so focused on one option who isn’t available when we most need him he’d have to be a fair way better than the best available now. Also next summer we lose Phillips, Matip may be moved on, Williams may go on loan and Fabinho may return to CM to replace the departing Wijnaldum. If who we buy now really is significantly worse than some one only available in the summer there is no reason why we could not buy both. Wijnaldum being replaced will likely be our main outlay in the summer, it can be a CB to allow Fabinho to return to CM. As long as we are buying someone in the summer it can be a CB now and one then IF we need it to be.
Scenario 2: Unlikely. If the league was to be suspended it probably would have happened already. With vaccines coming it’s much more likely they’ll find their way into football before any suspension scenario. But, if that did happen, it is probably extremely wishful thinking VvD will be back in time (league needs finishing before Euros, most optimistic timeline has him maybe ready for them) and Gomez probably not till next season.
Scenario 3: Just because he’s bedding in doesn’t mean he can’t play. We will be desperate, as long as he’s a better CB than Williams, Phillips and Henderson are right now he’ll play from the off. Improve us. And then develop under Klopp, settle in over this half a season, next season he could be pushing for starts even when Gomez and VvD are back or at the least a very solid backup. You keep saying the price will double too I don’t believe that. There’s some clubs desperate to make sales right now.
Who said any one wants us to abandon our strategy? We’ve probably had a carefully worked list of CB targets ready since before we decided to let Lovren go. It’s probably the most well researched position in our side right now for several months possibly a year. We would like the same type of approach as LB and the forward from this summer when we had multiple “good with potential” targets.
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You say that pitchforks won’t be out. I bet on January 31st if we haven’t signed a CB they will be.
Fingers crossed it won’t come to that, and we’ll get someone in.
You say nobody is saying it’s a piece of piss, and yet a few posts after yours, there’s a lad saying if money’s tight, we should just sell someone. Well, fuck me. Better get on the blower to Edwards right now because he might not have thought of that!
There is a bit of a mood brewing about this, not just here but on other social media.
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Yes, I know and I agree. In fact I doubt there is a CB playing in any decent level that LFC don’t have a dossier on. It’s not that I think Liverpool sat down on 1st of January in front of Edward’s big computer and started looking at CBs.
The question is - and this isn’t an argument against making a signing, it’s more a pre-emptive response to the fume that’s coming if we don’t - how far down our list of centre backs do we go down before we say actually let’s leave it. Three? Five? Ten? At what point does the need to make a signing to ‘save’ this season become not worth it anymore, and we’d be better going back to the original plan of picking from a better pool in the summer. How far away from the number one target, and sorting the position for several years, do we go to address a need for the next few months? I know, fingers crossed we can do both, but what if we can’t?
If one lad that we think could meet the criteria is available, how much are willing to overpay to land him? How much will we bung the club to persuade them to sell in the middle of the season? What kind of ‘we’re obviously fucking desperate’ tax are we willing to pay? At what point does the premium tip the scales back towards toughing it out.
Exactly what state are our finances in as a result of the virus? It’s pretty obvious we had to sell to buy in the summer. Is that still the case?
These are valid questions, but ones we can’t really answer. Edwards and Klopp know the answer, and I can accept that I’m fiddling round the public edges of this issue. But I do know if Klopp and Edwards (and FSG) make the decision to wait, then the chances are greater that they are right, than a bunch of lads on t’interwebs who think they’ve fucked up.
In a lot of ways we’ve been here before. When the Van Dijk deal originally collapsed, and the club elected not to pursue a centre back at that time, the shit hit the fan. I appreciate the ‘him or nothing’ element is not the same with this, but it might be something more like ‘one of these five lads or nothing (until summer)’. If we can’t get one of the lads that we really want, and there isn’t a decent short term option out there (which there might not be) then really the best option might just be to stick, as much as that would piss off the fans.
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They call everything long term oficially, can be anything between a 2 and 5 year deal.
I doubt we’d give Nat Phillips more than he got to be honest, it’s about time that he goes somewhere.
Hence why we tried and were very close to selling him last summer.
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When your current world class CM partnership are playing at CB, you sign a CB or two. Anything else is frankly bonkers.
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The question should actually be how a recruitment team can’t find an available CB that would be better in that position than Williams, Phillips and Henderson? There must literally be over 100 (at the risk of coming off Mac Red here).
I fail to see how signing a limited “squad” CB (should that be all we can get, an idea I already disagree with anyway) would stop us going in and getting our “ideal target” CB in the summer anyway. People keep on saying it and referencing it like it’s fact yet it’s a theory I see very little evidence to back up.
Next summer is a different financial year to this winter, spending this window doesn’t impact next summer like some seem to think. We may have difficulties spending this financial year but that’s a different matter and argument.
As things stand we get to the summer with VvD and Gomez hopefully back or back soon ready for next season. We don’t know they’ll definitely be ready or whether they’ll have long term effects from injury. Either or both may not return to previous levels straight away or develop regular injury concerns. Matip will continue to have spotty availability and at his age it gets smarter and smarter to accept an offer from another club. Fabinho can move back into Midfield as some there have uncertain futures (Wijnaldum for one, possibly Milner, possibly either or both of Keita and Ox), buying a new top class CB would usually be cheaper than a top class CM on average. Phillips is off. Williams and/or Billy the Kid could benefit from a loan.
If we are faced with a situation were the best CB we can get this window is a limited squad filler option to see us through to summer and make sure we have top 4/compete for the league and IF there is an ideal target not available till the summer then we can make room for both. Quite easily.
But I refuse to This idea that we can only buy a limited CB, that he WILL cost more than his value, that it will impact on our ability to complete business in the summer.
I think what is a lot more likely is the club are working on at least one deal, just like in the summer our deals are difficult because of the current situations and take longer to sort out than usual. We are at the phase of negotiations when the club mouth pieces once again do their job telling the world we are broke and quite happy to go without. Then once again fans come on here/TIA and argue passionately about how the club are right to hold their hand and be cautious, those wanting the transfers are made to look unreasonable and like we don’t see the big picture. Then the club find some surprising (note not really surprising as worked on awhile) way to make it work and what the “unreasonable” fans wanted happens. We had it with a forward last year and Minamino arrived, a “summer signing” well why didn’t we leave him there on loan? Because as the “unreasonable” fans pointed out we needed to add a forward. But we were unreasonable and didn’t understand how much Brewster was going to play. Similar happened with the 4th quality forward we’ve finally added that puts pressure on the starting 3 that we were never going to be able to sign and the seemingly quite good dedicated LB backup we were never going to be able to persuade to sit on the bench for Robbo. Will happen again soon with a quality back up keeper, probably this summer.
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It was rather painful seeing our 3 first choice midfielders as the last line of defence against Southampton. Felt like a championship boxer fighting with one hand tied behind their back.
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I may have forgotten, but Robbo did play CB for Scotland before? Would Tsimkas returning allow Fabinho, Matip, Henderson, Robbo and Williams/Phillips to rotate at the CB spot?
Who knows, it could be Klopp’s idea that if he cannot get a CB that can settle in immediately like VVD, it would be as good as waiting till the summer to buy one. Or, if the league eventually gets cancelled/null-and-void/end early, then having an additional CB on the books won’t make sense.
This season is as uncertain as it gets. We may look back on this with the benefit of hindsight next time, but who knows what may happen between now and the season end.
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Maybe they have identified numerous CB’s but can’t afford the inflated fee’s to get them out of the clubs they are at atm??
Maybe they have a transfer plan for the summer that involves spending every penny they have on the number 1 targets Klopp wants (maybe replacements for Origi,Shaqiri,Milner,Gini,Salah plus a new CB for example,if they are planning a rebuild),so spending on any lesser CB now will put a stop to buying say an Upamecano (who at £40mill could be a bargin during the summer,that they may be holding out for??),Klopp also won’t buy a player for 5 months then throw him to the curb,any player coming in has to have the right temprement and skill set and be part of our squad,not another bench warmer,like you’re suggesting with a limited squad CB,Klopp probably see’s Phillips and Williams as that already,why would he bring in another one??
Mate i don’t think you’re looking at this financial mess properly,this isn’t seasonal,this covid money loss has impacted probably any money saved up from not spending big in the previous transfer windows,plus will have a knock on effect for next season aswell,they don’t know 100% what our finances will be,plus with us still having to pay a £300mill wage bill again this year with more loss of income,we’ll be lucky to have any major new signings,unless we sell big during the summer.FSG aren’t going to commit millions like United or City untill this mess is over,i’m just glad we haven’t done an Arsenal and got deeper into debt and put a massive loan on the club to keep our heads above water.
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I am not saying it’s a piece of piss because it definitely isn’t, nor is it as difficult as some people on here will make out.
Even if it’s a 6 month loan deal we need somebody in.
I can take on board the point that we may not have 30-50 million to spend on a player but surely in world football there is a player we can bring in who is an upgrade on Phillips and Williams, even if it’s a short term thing to be CB number 3 to cover Fab and Matip.
Or we can go into the rest of the season hoping Fabinho and Matip stay fit, and if either of those or God forbid both get injured hope that Williams and Phillips can mix it with the likes of Rashford, Aguero, Vardy etc etc etc
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For me the ideal is bringing forward summer plans to sign whoever was going to be our target then (eg Botman), but I’m at the point where I’d happily accept a cheap, experienced signing more in the vein of Klavan or Kyrgiakos… a cool head who’s been around the game long enough to be able to slot in and do a good job asap, but who won’t harm our summer plans either.
I can’t name names as I don’t have that kind of player knowledge, but there must be someone out there at whatever the current equivalent of Augsburg is, or somewhere like that.
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I think the dilemma is as follows.
A lot of our difficulties stem not from defensive frailties (we’re not conceding a lot) but because we’re having to play a deeper line, which pulls the midfield back. We’re taking less risks because we know that without Gomez and Virgil (two of the quickest centre backs in the game) we’ll get exposed.
Trent and Hendo are the most impacted players as they are usually the ones on Phillips/Williams side of the pitch, sticking quite close to him and making sure he is given plenty of protection. It’s been especially harsh seeing Trent get stuck, as he has clearly sacrificed some of his attacking thrust to protect his inexperienced centre back.
So unless we can get a defender who enables us to push up the pitch, liberates the midfield and Trent to get back to what we do best, and (preferably) can ping a decent cross field pass, we might not be improving our situation very much.
I think getting in the 2021 version of Klavan or Sotis wouldn’t really help us that much. A good defender who does good defending would be good for cover, but doesn’t really improve the team. We need defenders who can do that, and also get the team up the pitch - by being able to take a riskier starting position, making less demands of their fullback, or just being able to hit a quick pass in transition.
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You missed Kolo 
. But yeah, I have been suggesting this since the summer window opened. An experienced guy good enough for couple of season but not hindering the long term plan.
VVD and Gomez aren’t just out for the season, we don’t know how long it will take to get into the groove next season. Matip will always be iffy. Rhys and Nat are nowhere near becoming the Fourth CB. We have to stop drooling over Fabinho at CB too; since Keita & AOC are iffy, Milner isn’t getting any younger and Wijnaldum might be leaving.
Only thing is, even Edwards would be taken to the cleaner if we try to sign a quality CB during this window.
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For that last point, for me Fabinho has that covered already. We don’t want someone slow for sure, otherwise we may as well just keep playing Rhys, but there must be players out there who can move a bit.
The issue for me is Klopp clearly doesn’t fully trust either Williams or Phillips, as shown by how they’re both in and out of the team, with Hendo most recently coming in for both. But that’s a situation we need to absolutely avoid for me - not because Hendo is a disaster there - he could play any position on the pitch probably - but because we need him in midfield or our team performance takes a sharp dip as we just saw.
If it was just another month or two until Virgil was back and up to speed I’d say stick with it and hope for the best, but we’re rapidly reaching the point of the CB situation, and its knock-on effects throughout the rest of the team, including nullifying the threat of our full-backs and affecting our midfield solidity, likely costing us a title it should be well within our means to win.
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Talking of a loan, this is from the BBC’s rumours page. I’ve no idea what this player is like but if he’s wanted by various big name clubs and he’s available on loan then maybe we should push to the front of the queue.
Tottenham could bring in 22-year-old Brazilian defender Eder Militao - wanted by Roma, AC Milan and Inter - on loan from Real Madrid with an option of a permanent move. (Corriere dello Sport - in Italian)
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There have already been rumours linking us to him.
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I think Rhys is actually very, very good at most of his defensive work. He is decent in the air, very composed, good in the tackle, and his passing ranging is pretty good as well. He even looks a bit like Van Dijk, as as soon as he’s old enough to grow a beard the look will be complete 
The thing that he is really going to struggle with is his pace. Honestly, if he was a bit faster I’d be actively against signing a centre back and in favour of fast tracking the kid.
But that pace. Christ, he’s slow. The goal the kid scores for Villa was a case in point. He got absolutely burned. And knowing that’s a risk requires us the pull the full back in, drop the midfield and play a bit deeper. Teams are starting to play on the shoulder a bit more against us as a result.
I actually don’t think putting a more experienced player there is going to drastically improve us unless he is significantly quicker than Rhys.
So if Jurgen has sent me to the Centre Back shop my criteria are 1) Good in air and winning his aerial battles 2) Quick enough to play higher 3) Little chin beard.
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I just want to add that I think Rhys is doing himself a world of good at the moment, and while I don’t think that he is likely to have a long term future at Liverpool, there are plenty of lower Prem Clubs, who play a bit deeper and where his pace wouldn’t be as exposed, who might have a look at him in the summer.
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