But I think it would be more of an investment considering his age & price rather than really getting an improved partner for Virgil next season which was and in reality is still our mission. I believe if that happens, we would still be left hoping one of Matip/Gomez can start the season with Virgil and Kabak remains as one of the backups.
However, we really made a meal of our season and we could be without Europe next season. It was said that the owners would still back the team. But maybe with this new situation the possibility of buying Kabak grows. I wouldn’t bank on it yet, depends who is our target and what would be the price.
I’m just not impressed it’s what we need in the long run (I know he’s young and can improve still). Plus, I find it hard to imagine us selling someone like Matip this summer. Not impossible, but… to synchronize it perfectly when we have to buy someone, especially in a year like this, I highly doubt it.
See the problem with Matip is how many CBs can we realistically carry at the club?
VvD: Going nowhere but no guarantee he’ll be ready to start week in week out at start of next season and straight back to pre injury standards. Good chance of it though.
Gomez: Read above but less chance of being back ready, less chance of instantly being back up to standard.
Matip: Like the others but when he gets fit less chance of him staying fit. A luxury player we sometimes get to use at this stage.
Davies: Even though he seems pure back up I can’t see him instantly being traded out at the first opportunity so likely to be here next year but not likely to be someone we are comfortable playing week in week out.
Phillips: If he stays yet again doubt we’d be comfortable playing him week in week out.
Kabak: If he’s earned a stay great. It would mean he would be a comfortable choice week in week out.
So that’s up to 6 CBs but only one that might be consistently fit, playing at his normal level and that we’d be comfortable playing week in week out. We get to name 25 senior players maximum and if Matip stays there’s likely 4 but still a need for another 1 or 2 starting capable guys coming in. Sorry I just don’t see it. Especially as we get a maximum of 17 foreign senior players. We could have VvD, Matip, Kabak and Botman, nearly a quarter of what we are allowed full stop for less than a 5th of the playing positions.
For me what would be best is moving on Phillips (somewhere like Burnley, Palace, West Ham) and Matip (maybe to a decent side that competes in Europe like Lille in part exchange for Botman) and bring in two starting capable CBs, one might be Kabak made permanent. That way we have a “starting” CB partnership whilst Gomez and VvD get back fit and up to form and then competition for places and depth. Davies emergency back up choice to take into account 2 of the main 4 choices are coming back from long term injury and there’s a chance at least one may take a while.
We might possibly buy ourselves a year with: Virgil, Matip, Gomez and Kabak.
It’s more or less the situation we were in when Lovren was here. Virgil + whoever of the 3 who is fit and in form for a certain period. Though Lovren was the immediate better option than Kabak, but Kabak wouldn’t have such high wages and has room for improvement.
Then, we would have a season to decide who of the other 3 leaves to make room for most probably still a serious improvement for our new partner for Virgil at RCB. If we can’t pull that deal off this summer probably without CL football and possibly even without EL football.
Why do you think Lovren was better than Kabak? I’ve yet to see Kabak make a proper game changing mistake which Lovren was prone to. That for me is an immediate upgrade.
None of VvD, Gomez and Matip are guaranteed to be back from injury before the start of next season, any of the three could have a rough time of it getting back to fitness and form after such long term injuries. They could well suffer set backs too. This could well just be forcing us to play Henderson and/or Fabinho in CB again for a significant number of games at least till Christmas. Seriously would not risk this. The end may be in sight with regards to those 3 coming back from injury but it basically leaves us in the same situation we are in now (not good enough) assuming we are still keeping Phillips and Davies and you just forgot to mention them, worse if you meant letting them two go.
I think we start next season with five CBs to be on the safe side. Virgil and Gomez for certain and Matip because I don’t imagine we’re in a position now to get what we would want to make it worth selling him.
I’d be inclined to make the Kabak deal a permanent one. He had a couple of rocky games early on but given the situation he’s been dropped into I think he’s done well. The deal in January might not have been the one we wanted to do but he’s someone that we’ve reportedly looked at before now so he’s likely been on our radar for a while.
Kabak is a known quantity. He’ll also have had half a season of learning how play so if we aren’t going to have the other established three back raring to go for game one this could be quite pivotal in our thinking. Other options like Caleta-Carr, Konate or Botman for example will be coming in cold and their arrival possibly delayed until after they’ve had a break post Euros meaning even less time to get up to speed.
Phillips has done a good job but we all know he has limitations that mean he likely won’t work in the way we want to play. We were ready to let him go in the summer so now we might as well take the money whilst his stock is high. Or if we keep him, Davies goes but keeping both seems overkill even in light of this season.
Kabak is one of the most highly rated young centre backs around. The level of experience he has for a centre back at his age is pretty rare. The deal is there to be done and we’ve had a chance to see him up close, more so than any other target we may have.
I agree. If Gini is off, that will be at least one midfield option that we will be down and there may be more changes ahead. I can also imagine Fabinho feeling he has done his bit at CB now and that he should be 5th or 6th choice CB next year.
I can’t see us starting next season/ending the transfer window with 3 out of 5 CBs not fully back from major injuries and ready to play week in week out yet. Especially if Phillips or Davies is one of the other 2. If we did that we might go for a run of games, possibly all the way up to Christmas, where we have the two fit CBs needing to play practically every minute of every game whilst one or more of the injured CBs make sporadic appearances whilst they get brought back up to full fitness and match fitness. It’d be a bigger risk than the one we took at the start of this season. If Matip is still here next year along with one of Phillips or Davies I think we’d end up having 6 CBs on the books. Too much optimism about when VvD and Gomez are back and how often we will be able to rely on Matip to be fit for me.
We’ve five months ish until the start of next season and both Virgil and Gomez are back running I believe. Klopp seems to think the Euros would come too soon but has stated he’s hopeful of them being ready for the start of pre-seaon. Joel he isn’t so positive on.
Based on that I’d say five would probably be the aim but Davies and Phillips would be low cost alternatives to keep around. Plus we have Fabinho who was seen as a viable enough option to go into this season with him as fourth choice. So in that sense it’d be 7 options if we bought Kabak/a.n other and held onto everyone we have.
I personally don’t think we will keep hold of Phillips and shouldn’t keep hold of Matip.
Davies it would look extremely bad to other players from unfancied places if we got rid this summer, even on loan. He’s not kicked a ball yet. The next Andy Robertson might think LFC are too big a club now for the likes of himself based on Davies experience.
I think Davies is here for next season as emergency cover. That’s fine.
VvD obviously wouldn’t be going anywhere and there’s a real good chance, although nowhere near guaranteed, that he will be fit for the start of next season. It would be negligence to use him as much as we have done previously though and he might not be back firing on all cylinders straight away.
Gomez I think needs to stay. Not only is he class when he plays and he’s young but for squad rules. He not only counts ad home grown but as club developed for European rules too so it gives us an extra senior player we can list. With Brexit there’s no way of knowing if the squad rules will get more restrictive or not too. But it’s quite possibly foolishly optimistic to expect we will definitely see him playing at pre injury dependability levels before Christmas, it’s not guaranteed he’ll be playing at all.
Kabak is doing real well and as things stand I’d be more than happy to see him stay permanently. Though the fee option is apparently £18m with potential add ons taking it as high as a possible £35m and I’m not sure, I’d want us to try and renegotiate that!
That leaves one spot for me. Its possibly a spot for a player who might well see a lot of playing time in the first half of the season if they can stay fit. If they perform they could compete to keep a starting role even after that.
Phillips isn’t good enough for that to me as great as he is doing. Matip would just end up letting us down again (through no fault of his own) right when we need him most, if he’s even fit to start the season.
For me if we do keep Matip we will only add one CB when I think, with or without Matip, we need to add two. We keep Matip and I see another season with loads of games covered by CMs or academy kids again next year. Or we go into the season with 6 CBs.
I had the impression that the Kabak deal was a straightforward £1M loan fee and a £18M future fee (with no further add ons) should we decide to buy him permanently. It does not sound right that we would pay more for Kabak than Caleta Car
There’s definitely add ons. How much they are changes depending on source.
Caleta-Car was a deal that couldn’t be completed because we didn’t give them enough time to bring in a replacement otherwise we’d have completed a permanent deal as we were more sure on him.
Sky have total price at £26.5m if that helps? Most other places don’t seem willing to list the final possible price;
If it is £26.5m that’s better than the £35m I thought I’d seen at the time, but still not sure its quite the bargain people dress it up as.
I’m not completely sold on extending Kabak yet… He was low down our CB list. And wouldn’t be here if the Caleta Car deal had materialized… I would evaluate at the end of season after we have seen him deal with the likes of Real Madrid and tougher PL teams… Kabak is here out of desperation from us. If we really wanted him he could of joined us first day of winter window.
He has played ok but given Gomez and VVD may not be fully ready at beginning of season. And Matip can breakdown at any moment. I would rather another CB that can actually Challenge Gomez and Matip spots to play along side Virgil.
Finding a CB with that potential quality will allow us to possibly move on the injury prone Matip at a future date.
I don’t want to see Fabinho at CB again… Maybe only as a last resort for a game or two.
He would has cost at least £30m on the first day of the window. Getting a player like that on loan with no obligation to buy is a move that only arises late in the window. We were pretty desperate by then, but so were Shalke.
There’s no way we shift Matip if, as you seem pretty convinced of and Klopp suggests, he won’t be back for the start of pre-seaon. He’s here next year whether we like it or not.
If you sold Davies, Phillips and didn’t make the Kabak deal permanent then you could possibly justify buying two. But given finances will be tight and we’re hoping our first choice pairing will be back and firing relatively early on in the season, who is coming in to be fifth choice that is going to be any better than Phillips or Davies and at what cost? And would they be any better than Fabinho anyway?
Instead of two CBs I’d get one and a CM to replace Gini. Then in an absolute pinch Fabinho could step in. Whilst we’ve been incredibly unlucky with injuries at CB this season I don’t think we can or should be planning based on the possibility of the same happening again.
Matip will see out his contract. I’m sure of that.
He is a (nearly) 30 year old player on big wages with chronic injury problems.
No-one is paying a fee for that, and I don’t think there would be many teams willing to pay his wages for basically keeping the physios busy.
The other thing about Matip is that Klopp has alluded to him not being properly looked after by the club - there was something in a press conference about him playing through injury or sacrificing his body or something. Klopp said that the club would stand by him and get him right.
And we shouldn’t forget the club have just invested in bringing in a new member of the medical team to look at recovery and rehab, and the like. This goes for Matip, Keita, Ox, Shaq and anyone else we think are injury prone and therefore ready for the scrap heap. The club are dealing with this, but not like it’s a game of footy manager.
So I think he is on the clubs books back next season, and the one after that, and the one after that. Probably until his contract expires in 2024.
I think our Centre Backs next season will be more or less what they are now. Virgil, Gomez and Matip. Kabak (I think doing really well under the circumstances) made permanent, or someone else in his place, and Ben Davies as a further option. Nat Phillips will leave and Rhys Williams could do with a loan. Klopp really likes Billy Koumetio, so he might get a look in.
Fabinho/Henderson will still be asked to play the occasional game at CB, which is no bad bad thing. One of the podcasts the other day said that Fab had been doing Centre Back sessions in training since he joined the club.
For the record I don’t think we will sell Matip (unless the player pushes for it) but I think we should.
And yes a player like him would still be high on many teams wish lists. Injuries or not he’s still class when he plays, far better than the vast majority of clubs would be able to recruit under normal circumstances. He’d be many clubs Ledley King. Start whenever he’s available as he’d be far superior to their other options. The kind of player who even if he only played a 3rd of their games could be the difference between Europa League and Champions League.
He also wouldn’t be the first player to move clubs whilst still currently injured, not by a long long way. People really should have a look at the absolute state of players the vast majority of clubs have to settle for. We are really spoiled at LFC in recent years.