Yep, this is what he told the media, when the owners told him that there is no money available for new signings…
Availability?
Dont think it is that he doesnt want signings so much as accepting that it’s difficult to get the ones you want this window. He also has everyone back and wants to back them.
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I don’t think he will be concerned over that.
Klopp’s priority is to make the team better, we can’t get (too) romantic over certain young players, so we need quality, regardless of their names.
If anyone should be concerned, it’s them. Really making it at a club like Liverpool is difficult. We have a “pathway” (whatever that means sometimes), but we cannot promise everything. Ultimately it’s up to them, if they can prove they can stay at (hopefully a successful) Liverpool side for the majority of their careers.
So far, they’re here on merit and that’s good. Going forward, some will make it, some won’t, some will go out on a loan, might be sold after spending a few years under our contract. It’s really nothing new. The chance of all of them really making it is really, really low.
It’s clear that we will eye a midfielder next summer, but let’s see what happens, who we get, how does that player even do, etc. Keita came in as a serious transfer and it just didn’t happen.
A lot of football to be played between now and next summer, people might evolve, become more important, etc.
And yeah I also think it’s possible that in the end it’s one midfielder instead of two.
Never bought the idea/wish/theory that we will go for something like 3, that’s just too much.
2 at most and I’m even 100% sure that it will be more than 1.
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Players are available, we just need to pay what it takes.
Anyone who has watched Fabinho and Henderson labour in our midfield, backed up by a string of injury prone players can’t possibly think it’s not a huge area needing investment. Klopp literally said so in the summer.
Sure, and the club are looking to invest - but we dont have endless amounts of cash and many clubs will not want to sell a player in January. Even if we buy someone that person may need time to adapt.
For what its worth Joyce appears to be saying that we are trying to get a deal done for Bellingham this window (presumably the player would stay with Dortmund until the summer). That would probably mean we have no more cash for other deals unless we can sell a sufficient value of players - which itself is a problem.
We had that period around losing the Karius final and going on to win the league where we spent big - virgil, Alisson, Keita, Fabs. Fans act like we’ve stood still since then, but we’re still only in the 3rd season since we won the league and so this is only the 6th window since then. In that time we’ve brought in 9 new first team players, and that doesn’t even include elevation of younger players who were already at the club into more prominent roles like Elliot, Jones and now Bajcetic. This is the context in which Klopp gets frustrated at calls to buy players There can be legitimate concern over what has been allowed to happen tot he midfield and the decisions Klopp and Co have made in getting us here, but that is an issue of a disagreement over priorities rather than one of us sitting on our hands and being content to stand still with what we had,
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No shiny new toys, no breaking transfer records, that’s why.
We’ve essentially bought an entirely new forward line since, bought a solid young centre-back. Brought Elliott in, whom whether people here like it or not, is quite clearly earmarked for a big role for us. Thiago, another big purchase, whom so many were jerking off over.
People just hanker over the flavour of the month.
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The club need’s investment regardless of what that looks like, I hope it is in place in the summer.
It is better than having a midfield that has obviously gone stale.
All talks on that has gone dead silent. Our midfield needs a pretty penny to reduce the average age without reducing the on-field performance.
Right now, the average age is reduced but the on-field performance is not there.
Skriniar is free agent this summer. Psg want him, can we sell VVD to them then get him?
A strong athletic midfielder
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Apparently only three of those exist in the world and they’ll all cost between £70-£130m.
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Caicedo
Kone
Amrabat
Khephren Thuram
Joao Gomes
Weston McKennie
Tyler Adams
Yunus Musah
It should not be difficult to get someone with some athleticism into the middle of our engine room, asap.
If Brighton are playing silly buggers on the Caicedo fee, move on. There’s plenty of others in the list.
I understand that we waited for VVD and that was the right decision. Best in the world. Bedrock for the side.
And perhaps that’s what we are doing for Bellingham now? Waiting.
In the meantime, we need some legs. Their job is to close the space, press, contest everything in the middle of the park. Give it simple. Don’t let teams waltz through us.
It shouldn’t be a one off sort of player who can do what we need them to do. That list is off the top of my head, and presumably the club has detailed files on many more such players.
Sign one in January! ASAP!
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I think the challenge wouldnbe to sign midfielders who take us straight back to the top of the league. There’s only a couple of those kind of players who could do it and they’ll be extortionate.
However, if the goal is simply to improve the midfield and lay the ground work for the next great (or at least functional) midfield to emerge then there are loads of those guys.
Everton signed Onana for peanuts. 21 years old and he’s bigger, stronger and faster than anyone we have in midfield. There’s more than a few of those kind of players around… we seem to play against midfields full of them every week.
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While i agree with this sentiment it is a tough nut to crack. Sometimes the time it takes to make the “right” decision is the killer. In the end, even the best laid plans can go awry. Sometimes you just gotta pull the trigger - even Klopp said as much.
I think the new guy will likely be ok but is that what we most urgently needed?
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MacAlister apparently signed a big extension right before he left to go to the world cup and its reported to have no clause in it to help him get out. Given they squeezed Chelsea for 60 million over that LB, even after City had dropped out negating an auction, suggests the asking price even in the summer for him will be significantly higher. The only saving grace is there are a few of the same sort of player supposedly being pursued and that potential to go after an alternative could help push a price down for any specific player. But I think if we think of either of the Brighton lads as being a cut price alternative to Jude or Enzo there is going to be a shock.
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There has been a lot made of Klopp’s “we could take more chances” comments and mostly people interpreted it as a dig at FSG for not sanctioning sales.
I disagree with that view, I think it was an honest comment about the scouting process and us being a little too conservative in finding the perfect option. Sure it has taken us all the way to CL and PL wins so of course we are all in on the patient “get the right guy” approach but I think Klopp was saying that we could afford to sign players with a few more warts every so often. Ie - he’s confident in his ability to get more out of a player than they’ve previously shown, or confident in his ability to cover up the weaknesses in a player’s game.
In this circumstance I think he’d live to take a big bodied midfielder, who is good in the air and can cover ground even if they were not particularly good on the ball. We have plenty of players who can create and do that side of the game so we can cover that weakness in order to get a strength in we do not currently have (mobility, pace, strength in midfield).
Perhaps we sometimes are looking a little hard for the perfect player, when we have a coach who doesn’t need perfection to thrive.
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I used to work with a guy who was excellent at poking holes in a project plan. Identifying these flaws up front meant we could proactively deal with them and navigate around the issues. The problem was he came to only be able to see problems. As we went through several cycles and applied lessons learned, we developed more mature and robust processes and the issues with the initial project plans were fewer and fewer and of less seriousness. The nature of his reviews never changed though. He kept finding the same number of issues to raise no matter what. In the end he became an obstacle to getting projects off the ground quickly because he had found his niche and felt to add value to anything he had to find problems. He couldn’t just look something over and say “yep, looks great to me.”
When the recruitment team have hit so many home runs before, often when pursuing the less trendy option, you have to be conscious of the risk in them losing sight of the objective, of bringing in the right player at the right price at the right time. We’re now in a position of strength where that player might be the totally obvious one. But no one gets praise for signing the obvious guy. All he does is help you win matches. If this was happening, and it’s pure speculation on my part, you could understand there being a developing tension.
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