On available evidence he’s a worse option than Fab.
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Kabak or Ajer.
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If the club have made a conscious decision to make Fabinho 4th choice CB this season, I am sure they have done so in the full knowledge that Gomez and Matip spend time out with injuries. I am happy with that and seeing how the season plays out.
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Yes. But two of your 3 regular CB’s are injured. Fabinho does a damn good job but it’s still risky going through a season with only 3 CB’s + Fabinho. Still need one more experienced hand as a backup. Why can’t it be Rudiger ?
And lets face it, Frank’s naive defensively. Lot of chelsea’s fuck ups defensively (barring Kepa , no one can be to blame for that clusterfuck) have had a lot to do with Frank not having a clue on how to coach a side defensively. Rudiger won’t be bad under someone like Klopp.
Why can’t it be Rudiger ?
Because he’s crap
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Beat me to it!
There’s better out there some of which will be younger, some will be cheaper and some will be both.
I don’t know why there’s so much opposition to Fabinho playing centre back. He has the build for it and the attributes required. Many other players have made the same transition. We have 2 or 3 really good other options for the ‘6’ role and Fab hasn’t been playing it well for a while.
It makes too much sense not to try it.
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Even if we went in for him,i doubt he’d pick us seeing as Rudiger wants regular first team football to make Germany squads for the Euro’s,we aren’t going to offer that as 4th choice back up.
And he’s crap.
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I think Rudiger is pretty good, combative and experienced, and if cheap, would be a solid back up. Chelsea missed him yesterday.
Decent shout, broadens the discussion too.
Mind you, I don’t think it will happen. I think we’ve shut up shop now, and will only do sales. We will see what the needs are in January.
VVD imperious, and always fit.
Gomez very good, couple bad injuries but usually fit.
Matip very good, not available enough, big concerns.
Fabinho if need be, very good, and with Thiago on board, and Wijnaldum probably staying, Fabinho dropping back to fill in doesn’t really hurt the midfield much.
Koumetio - not ready yet, but we have to think about pathways to the first team for the best prospects.
My take is this is enough, for now. Arguably we need one more, with such question marks over Matip’s fitness. But we can reasonably adopt a wait and see approach, and see what’s what in January.
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Antonio Rudiger is the German Mamadou Sakho!!!
I’ll join in the chorus of people saying he’s shit. But just on the centre back issue, the concern I have with this is that the only way I think you can justify the number of central midfielders we have is if a couple of them are going to player other positions as well.
At my count we have eight first team midfielders, and that’s not including Shaq and Elliot who are at their best somewhere between midfield and attack. That’s a lot.
Carrying that many midfielders makes sense if we are going to play Fabinho in defence against 5-6 of the shitter teams in the League, which I would do regardless of injury.
Any fourth choice CB has to be better than Fab at that position, and he did well whenever we has played there. If we wanted to have 4th CB just for the sake of having it, we might as well have kept Lovren.
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Sold! 
Let’s say we move on all of the fringe players (Origi, Wilson, Shaqiri, Phillips, Brewster, Ojo, Karius, Grujic are the ones that immediately come to mind as either not good enough or needing to go elsewhere for the sake of their career).
Where does that leave us particularly weak?
GK: Alisson, Adrian, Kelleher
FB: Trent, Robertson, Williams, Tsimikas
CB: VvD, Gomez, Matip, Koumetio
CM: Henderson, Fabinho, Thiago, Wijnaldum, Keita, AOC, Milner
AM: Jones, Minamino, Elliott
FW: Mane, Salah, Firmino, Jota
To me, you’d struggle to improve upon our CM options. Ditto for FB. We don’t really play with a #10 but you could say that’s potentially missing from our squad. We also don’t really play with a #9 and with Brewster off-loaded you could say we’re missing that too.
To me we’ve got enough up front with that. No need to play around with that any further if Jota can play through the middle as well as out wide.
CB looks susceptible if two or more of them were injured at the same time although we’ve seen with Fabinho that he can do a decent job there. My concern is that he’s now effectively 3rd choice there now rather than 4th given Matip’s increasingly frequent injury absences. I’d like a youngster (23 or under) with a few seasons under his belt at top level to be brought in as competition for Gomez. I’d then try to move Matip on.
Back up GK is always a hard position to recruit for. Who might be reasonably attainable for £20m or less?
Bearing in mind we’ve basically got a zero net spend for this year, any amount generated by selling the fringe players mentioned above could, in theory, be put towards buying that CB and back up GK (if you agree that our other areas are now well-stocked).
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The fact that Matip is injured most of the time, and Billy being a couple of years off first team standard, leaves us with two centre backs and a converted midfielder. If VVD were to get a knock in training (God forbid!), we’d be screwed. It’s a long season and it’s a risky policy not to strengthen in that area imho.
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We 're in ludicrously good shape. It sounds mad given how conservative our transfer business has been for a couple of years now, but we could easily go another couple of transfer windows without adding anyone and be fine, imo.
We’re reaping the benefits of joined up thinking on the recruitment front, so that we don’t have anything like the sort of flop-attrition you see at other clubs, outstanding coaching and a productive academy.
The recruitment means our first 15-16 players are exceptional, while the academy means that rather than having to sign any more depth players, we’ve got talented kids pushing for places to provide cover across the pitch.
Matip for a younger, reliably fit CB as @Kopstar says, and that’s basically all we need, and that’s hardly a hugely pressing concern either.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt as positive about a Liverpool squad as I do this year, each season under Klopp we just go from strength to strength.
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The saying always used to be two top players for every position but Klopp likes smaller more flexible squads. But think we still have it;
Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Gomez, Van Dijk, Robertson; Thiago, Henderson, Keita; Salah, Firmino, Mane.
That’s got to be one of the best starting 11s in the sport right now.
Adrian; Williams, Fabinho, Matip, Tsimikas; Wijnaldum, Milner, Jones; Oxlade-Chamberlain, Minamino, Jota.
That 11 could probably compete in Europe as a starting 11.
We still have some players on top of that although most look like they’ll be leaving. A lot of them are certainly useful in some ways if they do stay this season.
As to who would you buy? It’s a near perfect squad. Any improvements are just tweaks. An improvement to the back up keeper is possible but may not be easy. Another CB with either injury hit Matip moving on or Fabinho returning to midfield. Fabinho in the 6 so Wijnaldum can play the 8 leaving Milner out improves CM to a degree but it was ridiculously strong anyway. Likewise another wide forward option on the right better suited than Ox or Shaqiri or Wilson and more ready to contribute than Elliott would be an improvement but then so many players are left out. Some if not all would have to be sold or loaned.
Yes mate, I mean just how on earth are transfer targets going to think they’ll get any game time?.. 
[Oh no… I can see you’re writing out a reply… 
]
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