Or sell VdB, buy a centre back that challenges Konate and Virg to be in your best pair and let Joe carry on his utility role. Much stronger.
Something closest to most logical would be to naturally bring in a new CB who can add competition and also be a future key player. Quansah can be basically Matip’s replacement, but on paper lower in the pecking order. A new loan for vdBerg, maybe at a more competitive side. Gomez either stays as that one defender more than needed, who can cover across the back line, or gets sold in one of the next windows.
Gomez’s days at CB for this club are, fingers crossed, all but done. He struggled for almost 3 years after we won the title, can’t be trusted to switch on in key moments or play a brain fart ball here and there.
He’s stayed fit all season and reinvented himself at fullback which has done the team good and he’s happy to play back up for the rest of his career then the club won’t push him out…but Slot will want to build his own team over time too which of course means some players be sold if the offers are there.
Give Matip 1 more year, keep Sepp as 4th choice and we’re good until next summer as far as bringing in a new CB goes. Use the Jan window to do something if we’re in an emergency situation.
Give a new contract to the soon to be 33 year old coming back from missing almost an entire season with a ruptured ACL! Really?
Why would we do this only to then have to address CB next summer anyway, maybe even two if Virg doesn’t get a new deal. What are we kicking that can down the road so we can do this summer instead?
Would love to see Edwards face if someone suggested that to him.
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The top teams are ruthless as fuck. Man City and Arsenal (the two teams above LFC right now) are not afraid of selling players if they aren’t good enough or there isn’t any value for them to be in the team.
LFC by some luck, had a wholesale change of DM and CMs forced upon Jurgen Klopp. The result? An unlikely title tilt and an almost assured top 4 placing now until the games caught up with the players.
Top teams are always ruthless if they want to stay at the top.
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Well just for 12 months so I’m not sure why Edwards or anyone else would be that bothered by it. He’s a very useful player to have so if he can be back in time for pre season then even if he’s only available for 20-25 games next season it’ll be worth it.
“Why would we do this only to then have to address CB next summer anyway” something called a budget maybe? Unless you’re expecting us to have a busy summer and get the other 4-5 players in we need all in 1 go? Would be nice but I won’t be holding my breathe…
If he was at another you wouldn’t look twice at him. Just because he’s here doesn’t make any more sense to give him a contract.
We don’t need 4-5 players this summer. Unless we lose a Mo, Diaz or Nunez then we need 2-3 this summer, one of whom should really be a long term, first team ready centre back.
There’s every chance that VDB can be a late bloomer. Look at VVD for instance.
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Let him go somewhere he can bloom then. He’s not getting the opportunity to do that as fifth choice here so take a decent offer, stick a buy back clause in there and have him back if it works out.
There’s a lot of assumption going on as to where his place in the squad would be, no?
Well given he’s not in the squad at the moment probably tells you something.
It tells me that the club probably felt that it served him and the club better that way.
We started the season with Virgil, Matip, Konaté, Gomez as our main centre-back options. Quansah only came in as 5th place, which for van den Berg was probably not enough game time.
Olise
But you said just a few posts before this pointing out how often we have injuries in our centre back department.
So by letting VdB go out on loan you’re saying either Quansah was favoured as our fifth choice option we could be pretty sure we’d get a reasonable amount of games or the staff didn’t anticipate the level of injury absence most fans could have predicted.
For me it’s him or Quansah and Quansah has shown the potential in this side. But what we need is someone to come in and push Virgil and Konate, not someone who is competing with Gomez and Quansah for third or fourth spot.
van den Berg has played 2658 top-flight minutes across 31 Bundesliga games this season.
Quansah 1010 top-flight minutes across 15 Premier League games.
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Robinson from fulham and Isak from Newcastle
Give me the guy with half as many minutes in a side challenging for the title in the league we’ll be playing in next season over the guy with twice as many minutes playing in a team battling relegation in a different league.
Think you’ve sorted of proved my point there.
If that’s your personal valuation then fair enough.
I’m just pointing out that’s not how the team would see it. Quansah only got as many minutes as he has because of an unforeseen season-ending injury to Matip. The club would have sent van den Berg out on loan knowing that he was favoured to get much more playing time than that, which is essential for his development.
It has been rumoured that Gomez wants to leave in order to get the fabled ‘regular first team football’. Yes, it would be regular so long as you’re regularly uninjured.
So, have Quansah and VdB as fourth and fifth choice, but as @rab said, bring in an experienced CB to challenge Virg and Konate. Personally, I’d rather replace Konate and keep Gomez. Maybe one of those Sporting Lisbon players that we were linked with on the assumption that the next manager would be Amorim.
Also, a big yes to @kenno91 for Robinson and Isak. I would see them as replacing Tsimikas and Nunez, neither of whom are good enough.
The question for me is not who is 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th choice CB. Because we have plenty of choices to rotate there. Konate, Quansah, Gomez and if we keep VDB and even outliers like Rhys, Philips and Koumetio. I say it’s a question because at this point, not even Konate looks assured of a first team place besides VVD. In fact Matip is as good as any of them if not better for most parts when he was fit but I think that boat has sailed. So to me logically, the right move is to go out and buy a CB leader. I say leader because none of the CB options we have outside of VVD looks like a leader type who organises the defence. You need a 24-26 year old now who is already very good, leads, can play alongside VVD now and eventually takes over VVD. This will give Konate a kick for competition and Quansah who is much younger to develop and compete. These will be 4 CB in the coming season and then the 5th or 6th choice will depend on what happens with the options we have
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