But that is not Klopp’s team and that wasn’t the time Henderson played so deep. Back then, under Rodgers, he saved his Liverpool career by playing as that dynamic type, as Gerrard needed legs around him.
It’s not that black and white though, that team wouldn’t function if that midfield was so limited as you portray it. We went through phases, even under Klopp, we made steps and some of those players remained important or at least useful for a long time.
And that’s coming from someone who screamed for years in that time to add a bit more quality to the mix, something Lallana managed in 16/17, Coutinho to a certain extent for not a long time, Keita unfortunately struggled to be more important as we all wishes, Ox brought a little but was also more dynamic, Thiago was quality but also somewhat past his prime.
I don´t know what you mean by not able to play well enough. What playing does a Dm need? Win the ball, give it simple.
I´d argue the best midfielders are specialists. Vitinha for example runs the show with the ball and needs an anchor next to him. Pedri the same. Valverde is a bit of an exception maybe but not a patch on a specialist like Modric was for them.
DM is maybe a bit more rounded. Rodri is good going forward. Other than him though I can´t think of any defensive midfielders who are really great - Caicedo I guess. Rice and Zubimendi are two all-rounders and aren´t all that good and Arsenal barely score.
If you playing for a midtable team trying to steer clear of relegation, maybe. But for a decent team with expectations of winning stuff this is way too limited. This profile is always demanded by fans whenever a team starts looking soft and struggles to stop conceding, but the second one of them arrives fans realize how much more is needed out of the role at the level we aspire to.
Can you give me an example of one of them arriving and that happening?
Even at small teams nowadays their DMs try and be playmakers. Fans always talk about a 6. Before the last few years, teams that won stuff had specialist defensive players. Doesnt mean they couldnt do anything with the ball but they certainly werent expected to be playmakers.
It is BBC gossip after all, nah I was referring to the Slot one, it made it out that Slot was considering Ajax but we refused it. I would only assume he would consider a step down if he was going (it’s also a bit old news).
I’m betting you didn’t know about Haaland at the time Minamino moved here. But the club will have. Probably just weren’t ready to take a chance on a lad half way through a breakout season in Austria.
Dembele struggled hugely with injuries at Barca and had some off field issues. Few clubs could afford to take the risk.
Rice was and still is overpriced and over hyped version of Henderson. If he wasn’t English he’d have cost about half what he did and get half the plaudits.
Kvarva is one I really wanted but we’d have had some serious competition for him if we had gone after him.
The thing with all of these is it’s dead easy with the benefit of hindsight to say we missed out but then so did every other club when it came to Salah, Mane, Firmino, Alisson, van Dijk, Robertson etc.
Even back at the start of the summer when Arsenal were buying Eze and Gyokeres they were looking jealousy at us annoyed they’d missed out on Isak, Ekitike and Wirtz. Hasn’t turned out to be the case but goes to show you never know. Last season there will have been fans of other teams wondering how we managed to get Grav and Mac, two thirds of a title winning midfield, for £70m when their team was dropping big money on the likes of Onana, Ugarte, Merino, Lavia, Mount and Maddison.
It’s easy to lament the ones we didn’t get but we’ve had more than our fair share of players others will wonder why they didn’t end up at their club.
I wouldn’t be surprised if clubs have data on most of them since they were 10. In this modern age of football, everyone is tracked.
Haaland was super hot at that time and had offers from half the big clubs in Europe. The only reason he chose Dortmund is that he could control his future with a release clause.
City won most of the league titles because they had a deeper and higher quality bench, period. In 2018-2022, if anything our starting 11 was slightly stronger overall, hence the H2H favoured us. I am sure we would have won the 2020/2021 league title had our defense not been wrecked by injuries.
Of course we knew him. The season we bought Minamino Haaland had started like a train but it would have been quite the gamble and departure from how our forward line was set up had we gone and got him then.
And then they replaced him in the team with Patson Daka who had an equally impressive couple of seasons. Still remember there was some clamour for us to get him having missed the Haaland boat and he’s gone on to show he’s not even a Championship level striker in that Leicester team.
As our recruitment team have often said, it’s as much about who you don’t buy as it is who you do. Sometimes we have to accept great players will have passed us by but so have a lot of bad ones who fans have been begging for us to sign. We’re all dead clever with the benefit of hindsight.
