I read £65m clause. Would be an ideal replacement IMO. Just can’t see us getting it done in January after the summer spend, especially if we’re prioritising a CB
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Yeah seems unlikely. We need a CB first and foremost to help with solidity and progressive passing.
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We will absolutely need a winger or two going forward with Salah only having a year left on his deal. Otherwise, our only wide options are Gakpo, Rio, and Chiesa.
I agree that we need a CB (or two) and probably a CDM to give Grav some cover. But order doesn’t really matter - you make the signings as they become available. Think long term.
With that in mind, if Semenyo is available, I’d be glad to bring him in.
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I’m really starting to question why we got Isak when we already had Hugo.
Hugo’s ceiling seems very high
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I have a friend who’s been saying the same thing for months but I have to disagree with both of you - Liverpool needed another striker. The real question is whether that striker should have been Isak - not because he lacks quality (he doesn’t, he was the best and the most complete striker in the league last season, he’s been on an upward curve for years) but because Newcastle were behaving like a small-time club from the moment Liverpool made contact with them and I will be happy if their butt-hurt behaviour costs Isak only this season when it comes to his Liverpool career.
Maybe Liverpool’s hierarchy wanted to take that next step and make the club be seen in the same light as the likes of Real Madrid and Bayern with some of these transfers - I hope club don’t lose sight of what got them where they are, which is smart, not expensive recruitment.
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Understandable but one also has to consider the ‘investment’ we put into convincing the player to come here. Walking away may have damaged our ability to convince other players to come to us over alternative offers.
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Agree with both of you. It makes sense if we consider that the club thinks of a multi-step refresh. Because surely we had more spots to replenish than the ones we just did. Centre backs, wide forwards/wingers, bench strength. It’s immaterial how we do it (academy, young prospects, shrewd buys, maybe an expensive one but only if we are completely convinced) as long as we do it.
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From the little I have read, the suggestion is that we were looking to revamp our forward line with players that take up narrower positions than we have been playing with since Klopp arrived, and have excellent movement. Isak and Hugo would presumably play alongside each other in that instance.
The loss of Diogo, Isak’s late arrival and subsequent lack of fitness/ injuries have probably all played a role in limiting our ability to play that way for now.
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I’m pretty sure Isak was the club’s first choice already when major transfer plans are made (at least at an organized club who’s doing well), probably back to the start of 2025 or spring.
Then, from the moment we knew we had to (or decided) sign two, we possibly didn’t want to compromise on quality by bringing someone cheap. Plus, the whole Isak deal was in danger of even happening, so we brought in another important forward and still targeted Isak.
So surely there must be also a bit of the “they could play together at a push” if they both get to a level where it’s hard to ignore them and leave one out. Though that seriously messes with having the likes of Salah, at least one of Wirtz/Szoboszlai and not to mention our main double-pivots on the pitch.
I still have doubts over this even with Slot’s recent comments about believing Ekitike can play on the left. I’m all ears and eyes to see how this plays out. There could be an Alvarez situation around the corner. I just want no injuries. Let the football decide who is the main man, if not both (in that situation, I think someone else would have to drop out).
Then there’s always the factor of the unknown, regardless how good the transfer is and your belief in a new player. It can be totally different, especially at the start.
Ekitike showed promise from the first day, but as we ended pre-season and started the season with Wirtz and Ekitike being our two most offensive positioned players, I wondered how would our pressing look like with them two in.
We already had a player who we need to camouflage in that first defensive phase in Salah, brought in 3 new players with a view of them being key or highly important. Of course, it could’ve played out that we decided not to press as high for now, as they bed in, but then the defensive transition wasn’t good either.
I do see a few scenarios how this plays out successfuly for us (not everyone will be happy though), but it’s true that we’ve ended the transfer window with more question marks than I would’ve liked. And that’s not even going into the full backs we’ve signed.
Despite a few wins in the last few games (and things improving a little bit), we still look like a team that needs at least a mini pre-season, if not a full one. And it’s not only transfers, because you can have good and bad pre-seasons regardless if you make 10 or 0 changes in the market.
And that is not a pleasant thing to say about a team in the first 3 months of the season.
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Did he play on the left for France the other night - you can’t always trust the formation line-ups …
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He did in the last two appearances for France.
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Liverpool usually respect their commitment to players, so I hope Guehi will join, just like Isak joined (hopefully under much less acrimonious circumstances). On the other hand, I genuinely want to see how top players’ agents and players themselves come to treat Newcastle after that whole Isak saga.
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There are going to be a lot of requests for release clauses.
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I think the summer recruitment suggests we are moving to a front 2 instead of a front 3 with wide wingers. A 4-4-2 (or similar) makes a lot of sense with the players we have at the moment. I wonder if Semenyo is a good fit for that kind of setup. My instinct says yes, but I have no idea, really.
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4-4-2’s with classic wingers are rare these days, especially at the top level. Basically leaves you too light in centre midfield. It would have to be incredibly compact, Atleticoesque and have the help of at least one of the 4 offensive players to have balance. What you get more is like mobile central midfield players playing narrowly on the sides, like Villa often did under Emery, with no classic wingers. But they’re not built to be protagonists (even if they try to evolve certain aspects like now playing out from the back), like we want to be. And we already have one special player in Salah where we need to compromise and camouflage him in certain phases of the game.
I am talking a diamond midfield where the fullbacks provide width.
I believe we would’ve seen it by now, if our plan was to move to a diamond.
It’s also very rare and when it was deployed by some teams, it didn’t last long.
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Just out of interest, what do you think the plan is? And related to that, how do you see Wirtz, Isak and Ekitike fitting into it? Cheers.
Said it a few times since the middle of the summer, I don’t know exactly.
I mean, to be also fair to the decision makers (of which Slot is part of), there’s only so much they can plan anyway. The rest, like always, depends on how the players do once they’re here. The pitch is where the ultimate truth is.
As things stand, I just don’t see how you fit all those important members (either new ones or pre-existing ones) on the pitch in a highly functional starting team. We all agree we need more than 11 quality players, but there are different ways how you create a balanced squad and team…
We’ve had issues even without all of them being available and fully fit (obviously Isak is the one who’s been largely missing or was unfit).
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