Wirtz out for £200m apparently to Saudi.
Okay I made that up like 99% of people on twitter / social / window cleaner / bollox
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Grav is a really bad passer to the eye at least. It’s a real problem. He will be a good rotational player and is very good on the turn and carrying the ball, but surely we can do better.
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Wirtz isn’t going anywhere.
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2-3 should be fine.
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It totally depends on this season. If he fails to improve, we should cut our losses.
Still, an aggressive high-pressing system is much better served by a 4-3-3 formation with 3 CMs or 2 CMs + 1 DM than a 4-2-3-1 one, as the former offers greater balance.
PSG, Barca and Spain don’t use No.10.
Not quite correct.
On the first goal, look at the space when Osula gets the ball and the position of VVD and JJ. That is the primary issue.
The rest is recovery after the fact…
The 2nd goal is down to individuals not being aggressive enough as we had the numbers in place…
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It’s more the players who make the difference.
But the 4-4-2 shape does make it simpler for collective defending. We reverted to it a few times under Klopp when we had issues.
Olmo is a #10. And PSG play with a false #9, as do Spain. Will be interesting to see what Barca do next after Lewa, but yesterday they were also in a structure with Fermin as #10 behind Raphinha up top.
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Well it depends on the season as you say, not a game.
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Yeah I’m still sad we don’t have curtis. The ‘bad smell in the dressing room’ rumour is (slightly) lessening the blow but if there was a do-over I don’t think I’d be alone in preferring to have Curtis out there against Newcastle with Dom taking Rio’s place on the right (or playing a 4-4-2)
I agree btu I think the key here is less about the individual than it is about the team. Specialists help because they make it very clear what role players have within the team. You saw last season, and again vs Sandcastle yesterday, that our players do not currently have a strong sense of where they should be and what they should be doing. Hopefully AI can coach that into them. Guys like Flo are absolutely elite but they (and the team) don’t seem to understand where to be. We could have 3 specialist midfielders which undoubtedly would make it clearer but we also could have some heavy coaching - dare I say it Pep style where players are told where to fucking stand when - for similar (superior?) results.
Play 4 in midfield with 2 strikers. Cody and Alex to begin with and cameos from the others until Hugo is back. Dump the pursuit of PSG players and look to improve elsewhere (CB and CM)?
Lets hope we can get a deal over the line for Barcola and Minteh! (Although both probably won’t be contribute much for a month or two)
Like a 4 4 2 diamond? Not a bad shout in the absence of having top quality wingers. Would work when Hugo is back too. Would mean 3 midfielders behind Wirtz too.
Yeah been saying it for ~6 months. Not sure it’s the best option longer term but back then I was perplexed why Alex and Flo weren’t working and I thought connecting them centrally would help and the rest of our players could work satisfactorily around that.
I said dating back to last season that the best formation with the players we have is a 4-4-2 diamond. I know @Zoran isn’t a fan, but I feel like it would give us some solidity and a different look.
Have we been unreliably linked to 4-4-2 this window and can they play on the right wing?
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I don’t know how much Watkins would cost as Emery seem to not trust him like he did with Elliott, he is a proven goalscorer in the PL and an England international.
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It’s not that I’m not a fan, but football by large isn’t a fan of that system.
How many times you heard shouts from fans for a diamond formation and now think how many diamond formations you saw in football; successful over a longer period of time…
Not much. And there are good reasons why.
I said if that was our grand plan with everything we threw on the pile in the last year or so especially, we would’ve seen a serious or multiple attempts at it.
I don’t expect it, even less so under Iraola.
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What’s happening on the Barcola front? Is it no news is good news or should we be updated daily in the next 8 days?
Can you all fuck off with the non transfer chat in this thread? Thanks 
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