Mascherano would look just as good in this team as he does in a tight knit midfield, maybe even better.
I wonder why the solution is always said to get more legs around Fabinho rather than replacing him with someone who can run. The idea that nobody would do better than Fabinho because he has a lot of space to cover sometimes is a total fallacy.
The idea that thinking getting some legs around Fabinho would help also means you don’t acknowledge his level has dropped is a total fallacy.
The point is that even when Fab was at his best, playing that single pivot number six in Klopp’s system was possibly the hardest job in football. And he had Gini and Hendo helping him out, as the other two thirds of a very functional midfield.
We sometime forget when Fab came in, it took him half a season for Klopp to trust him to play that role. It isn’t easy.
The hardest job in football? He had two hardworking number 8s next to him and the best defender in the world behind him.
He had one of the easier jobs in our 11.
How was that more difficult than what Fernandinho or Rodri had to do for City? Essentially the same job with far less protection.
I can’t agree that playong DM when we were at our best was the hardest job in football. So at his peak he had two workhorse midfielders to cover the flanks and the best CB partnership in the world behind him. His job was/is seek and destroy - read passing moves ahead of him and win it back. He’s barely ever had to think about anything else. He can’t cover space, he can’t track runs and because we had a great system around him he never had to.
Now he’s being asked to do a little bit to help other players out and he’s getting totally exposed. Fabinho is probably the biggest beneficiary of our perfectly balanced system. Klopp, as he tends to do, got the absolute best out of Fabinho and his limited skillset. Now he has to do things he can’t and its becoming clear we either rebuild the midfield that covered up his deficiencies or we replace Fabinho with someone who can do more things to a higher level.
Matip is 31 years old so we only get a small fee and cost a fortune to replace him so no way.
Ox leaving on a free in the summer so no fee.
Jones having some injury problems but is home grown and on small wages.
Be mad to sell Kelleher, a loan if he’s not happy and I rate Pitaluga highly but imagine Alisson getting injured and we relying on 20 year old for top 4 and champions league games.
Rumours we are still offering Keita a contract extension but I’m 50/50 as to whether we should or let him go in the summer. Then we need money for replacement.
All these circumstances people bring up to diminish and undermine a players role and importance to the team is purely agenda based, take the psychological impaired seed that’s planted in your head out. “2 workhorse midfielders beside him to carry his running” get outta here. The reason why a midfield of Fab Hendo Gini were more successful than Masch Xabi and Stevie was because they complimented each other better and were better at carrying out the manager’s instructions.
Fabinho before he started to decline (round about 12 months ago now) was as good as any DM in the history of the Prem. Ok it’s fair to say his all round game was nowhere near the level of Viera or Kante who will go down as 2 of the best ever.
If you believe that then good for you.
Those 3 weren’t better than Mascherano, Gerrard and Alonso, they just had much better players around them.
Torres was better than Firmino, but every other starter was better under Klopp than they were under Rafa.
I do, & I’m not making a joke of it so I don’t see the funny side.
People want to suck up to the likes of Rodri and Fernandinho as if they played in an inferior team thus making what they did for City look more appealing, utter bollocks I say 
City were already champions before Fernandinho was signed, multi time champions before Rodri was signed…before Fab signed we hadn’t won a thing. I suggest we all put a bit more respect on his name.
Rodri has all the same flaws defensively that Fabinho does, but he has the added dimension to his game of being excellent on the ball.
Fernandinho was significantly better than Fabinho defensively. If he was anchoring things right now we would look much better than we do because he had the ability to cover large amounts of space.
We’ll have to disagree on that.
The biggest quality Fernandinho had over Fab was his unerring ability to somehow escape yellow cards for blatant tactical fouls.
Was going to mention that too.
Nothing to do with any unerring ability on his part, just a fucking downright crooked establishment running football.
It’s okay @Dane Howard Webb is now in charge of the refs and everything will become much more even handed.
He’d make fouls on players that Fabinho wouldn’t be able to get within 5 yards of.
Fernandinho was a massive cheat but also a much better defensive midfielder. Only pure delusion would have anyone pick Fabinho over Fernandinho. Same goes for Casemiro who is now impressing with United, although tbf he does have Eriksen and Fernandes’ legs there to help him out.
I initially thought the Casemiro signing was a bit desperate, and maybe the process was, but all its done it prove that Casemiro is the best DM in world football at the moment. He’s been superb.
Problem is if you sell Matip then you are relying on a lack of injuries.
Would also be interested to see where Sepp van de berg factors in all this.
Matip himself isn’t the best at availability.
He’s averaging less than 30 games per season in his time here.
He also has that well known problem in the last season or two with 3 games a week, need to manage his minutes.
I do rate all of our CB’s to a certain extent, but I don’t want us to “carry” the likes of Matip and Gomez for almost their whole careers.
Highly doubt that Berg is in our first team plans for next season. He got a serious injury after playing 4 games for Schalke.
Just coming back from injury himself. Would be surprised if he had a career here. I think he might be someone we look to sell or loan out again in the summer?