Strategies evolve and have flexibility to adapt to changing situations. The strategy that got you from place A to place B may well not be the strategy that then gets you from place B to place C. Our strategy got us from the relative doldrums to perennial challengers in the Premier League and Europe. That doesn’t automatically mean we should rigidly stick to that strategy in order to remain where we are or go even further.
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The right player, yes. Tielemans has been available all summer for £20m. Buying him for 20m with hours left in the window would be crackers.
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Alot of us believe in the narrative that precisely its 20m and we are not going for them is because we are never interested in them. They might be good where they are, but we are not interested in them so thats why even for 20m, we are not going for them. That is the narrative many believe. But of course you are free to believe that its because the owners and the club are stingy fucks that they are not willing to spend 20m on a player that Klopp really wanted.
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I’m not sure the right word for throwing £20m at a player we don’t really want, and presumably giving him a lengthy contract, in the last hours of the window is ‘strategy’.
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The reason we’re getting Melo on loan is because Klopp has been told no for players like Nunes and Laimer.
“No Klopp, we don’t want to spend money on a player who we can negotiate as a free signing in 6 months.”
You seem pretty sure that was what happened, again you are free to believe that. I personally don’t and think there would be many who don’t too.
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And the fact that Klopp spent the first 90% of the window looking like he might lamp anyone who suggested we might need a midfielder is on the owners too. Bastards.
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Neither Luiz or Tielemans are good enough and the the ones that we did sign, are. Quality and price tag are not always aligned.
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Both players are better than what we got right now, that much I can tell you.
No man. Did you see the mad look in Klopp’s eye whenever somebody even mentioned the phrase ‘new midfielder’.
I know literally bugger all about this guy but I’d rather him than Tielmann or Douglas Luiz.
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While they’re on the treatment table, maybe. But if you really think that when they’re on the pitch then you’re having a laugh.
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Ok again its you say I say about players who have not played for us and we can think who is good and who is not. For what is worth, I like Tielemans and would not have be unhappy if we signed him but its obvious Klopp and team did not want to go for him because they do not think he can fit into our squad.
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Going by how tielemans downed tools last season , I wouldn’t have him here even if he were available for 10m. I said it as much last season
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Is Arthur Melo more a Ben Davies or Steven Caulker type player?
Fair point. But then equally it isn’t the right word for describing crossing your fingers and hoping injury prone players don’t get injured.
The strategy probably should have been to do something earlier in the window once we knew Tchouameni and Bellingham options were off the table. The element that needed to adapt was the one of “this one or no one”. Then we perhaps wouldn’t be short of midfield options and scrambling around either offering £20m for players we don’t really want or loaning players who are’t that much better.
The only other thing I’ll say on this is that if this is all part of the master plan to get Bellingham next year and we don’t, then that’s going to be a pretty big mess of our own making.
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I would not use his struggles at Juve as a judge of his ability as they never wanted him in the first place. The deal that saw Pjanic go the other way was a deal where both sides picked up a player they didnt want, in exchange for a player they needed to get rid of, and done in a way that by massively elevating the official signing on fee for both players cancelled it out in real terms but booked a ton of revenue for their accounts. It was a crooked deal that treated players as a commodities to shuffle around. He then ended up at a club that didnt want or need him and already has an excess of CMs.
Barca is a fairer period to judge him and that didnt go well either, but even that we’ve come to accept was considerable extenuating circumstances. I think the issue here is far less with talent and more how do you get something out of a player who has not played an important role in his side since he left Brazil 4 years ago.
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More Kabak he will play if not injured
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But you agree there were midfielders we were in for, that we thought could fight our squad, but Klopp was told no because they were too much?
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Klopp always wants a smaller squad so that he can ensure enough game time.
Where we’ve suffered is that the ox/keita transfers fizzled out… Add to that with the likes of Lallana / Wijnaldum leaving (not a big deal in itself as Lallana was beyond his best and we’ve replaced Wijnaldum with Thiago…
We’ve handled the midfield transition as well as we can. Klopp and his playstyle always relies more on hard workers which our midfielders are (we can fault them for some other things but not their effort)
I reckon Klopp thought that we would be okay to go into Jan atleast with the current midfielders and then get someone with a following big ticket signing the next season.
And this is where Klopp and his mentality of having a lean fighting machine sometimes gets caught out. Also only situation in this is that Ox/Keita were transfer duds despite them being pretty good players.
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