I read this morning that if Real do genuinely pursue Bellingham or Enzo, there might be a willingness to give up on Camavinga. He hasnt started well and has tended to play his best football coming off the bench when Real needed energy and less well when starting when they’re trying to employ a structured game plan. You add one of those guys to the mix and you then have multiple players of the same type there of whom he is very much at the bottom of the pecking order. Could be worth a look.
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Schalke, Hull, Newcastle, Southampton, Roma, Hoffenheim?
Not proven at top clubs.
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Thats the point? That’s the full arguement here… Why have we moved away from finding players at low value and turning them into world class players…
Can you name the last one?
I don’t think we necessarily have, but we’ve improved as a team and individually, so the standard has moved up and then it becomes a bit harder to find hidden gems or whatever. Klopp says it all the time, it’s not easy to improve this team. Even if it seems like for us fans, the answer is 9 times out of 10 to just sign new players.
We’re not oil/state run, but we’re not poor either. We’re talking about a top English club that finally managed to have a highly successful side. We managed to break close to the top of the foodchain.
My point was that we very rarely buy finished products from other top clubs, but that a lot of the ones we got were better than average.
Thiago is a rare example of getting one of Europe’s best CM’s at the moment of signing him, from another top club. But then even in that case, we were aware that he’s in his final years at the top level.
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Surely the answer is pretty much everyone we’ve signed over the past few season with the exception of Thiago fits the bill. The only caveats being few of them have yet turned into “world class players”, which maybe explains why we are seemingly so set on pursuing our next signings who is being targeted by the big boys.
I think its difficult to argue that we’ve turned away from what made us succesful when we just signed Gapko who, especially at that price, seems a textbook case of it. Likewise Konate in the summer - a player with a ton of potential but would have been way down the list of targets favoured by most fans and didnt seem to be attracting that much attention from other big clubs.
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To be honest, when we were buying players from Southampton in the Rodgers days, there were plenty of people wanting us to be buying those players straight from European clubs rather than letting them settle in the league before paying twice the price.
We perhaps have done that with Tsimikas, Elliott and Carvalho, but because they aren’t immediately better than the players we already have, they also start attracting criticism.
Gakpo seems like a Mane/Salah level signing, ie just on the cusp.
Nunez was a pay big for one of the best young in form strikers in Europe (though obviously didn’t immediately continue at that consistency after his move).
I’d say we’re doing a variety of moves in the market, but because we were so spoiled with the last Klopp team, we now expect every player to arrive sub-£40m but immediately World Class.
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Yes and no, for the Gakpo (which I agree is exactly the type of signing we should be doing), why are we putting all our eggs into the Bellingham basket…
Van Dijk moved literally the window after we fucked up his summer move, we’ve been fluttering our eyelashes at Bellingham for 2 years now and we aren’t even close to nailed on to sign him… In that period we’ve seen our midfield go from one of our strengths to a complete liability…
Based on this season even he can’t keep a straight face (in private) at this statement.
We could improve on many areas of the team, especially midfield, for a modest fee as well.
To get a lot of the top quality players you often have to put that time and effort into getting them. It’s one of the reasons we missed out on Sanchez for example when he was leaving Barca.
Okay, that’s the dream of all clubs.
Get quality players for modest fees. I think we will probably pay serious fees, either some of those 50m we seem to be signing in last years or potentially more.
We will sign players, perhaps not anymore in this window.
But cases like Robbo were, are and will be rare. Especially when we’re still high quality and a top English club. That usually commands money.
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I dont think we did or are given our well sourced reporting on our involvement in the Tchoameni deal and continuing links to other CMs moving forward. But I think the fundamental discordance is everything we did prior to the closure of this window was based on Klopp having a different view of the suitability of his existing midfield options than most fans did, and seemingly of what even he himself now thinks. What you can do with your targets is different when you dont feel there is an immediate need for any change. Now he seems to have changed his mind and seemingly sees more need to rejig that part of the side we’ll have to wait and see whether the almost singular focus on Jude was a reflection of a unique response to a specific circumstance (seeing a great candidate to evolve a part of the team who didnt yet need to be changed) or a reflection of a changed philosophy. I suspect the former.
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If this was, say, ten years ago, then I’d think that Camavinga would be made available this very summer. However, there seems to have been a change of thinking at Real Madrid when it comes to developing young players. They don’t write them off so soon, they are investing unbelievable sums of money in unproven talent (they’ve taken the Gago/Higuain/Cicinho type of transfers to a whole new level) and are developing them quite admirably.
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Please find a prime Sadio clone and a prime Gini clone please thanks.
A prime Stevie clone would be even better but there is only one Stevie G
We all want success but there are many ways to get there. You can get a coach like Pep who can manage superstar egos and are ruthless and will demand spending whenever he deemed fit. Then you can also get Klopp. Klopp is not perfect of course. But you cannot just want the best of Klopp and not the other things that come with him. You can call him stubborn and blind to obvious weaknesses, but that is him. There is not a moment that I will believe that Klopp does not want to win everything. But he also believes in winning right according to his principles that he brought to the club. So for good or for bad, that includes his principles of dealing with players as humans and in recruitment. It seems that some like to pit Klopp against the owners as if they are being forced to stay together. Klopp signed a new extension to his contract knowing what the owners principles are. The owners gave him an extension knowing fully the kind of person they are getting. So we can go on lamenting what could have been, I would rather enjoy the journey. It might be frustrating, it might be deflating but beyond winning everything every season, I am glad this club is still the peoples club that I came to support decades ago. So I definitely hope to see players coming in to strengthen the club especially the midfield but I believe in Klopp and the club more regarding recruitment.
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@gasband wise words mate!
100% mate.
Neil Jones
Neil Jones, Goal on Liverpool’s top four hopes:
“The bottom line is clear: if Liverpool don’t do something now, they can forget about playing Champions League football next season.”
Maybe Neil should go and play some FIFA on PlayStation.
90% of available midfielders might come in and won’t even be able to help the team until they adapt.
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Jones strikes me as a very average football man. Possibly a decent journo (he sounds to me like part a fan like us and part a journo) who slowly worked his way through, with contacts and whatever. Not that I read him regularly, because I just found it a bit meh. Good the the odd information, also mainly when it breaks at other places as well. But talking football? Bang average at best.
Neil Jones, why has James Pearce gotten hold of your social media.
Perhaps in past years, but you can’t tell me that a non-adapted Caicedo type would not improve our midfield massively at this point.
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