The definition of desperation
He hasn’t been in their squad for a Premier League game since the turn of the year.
It wasn’t a sign when he was absent on the 2nd of January and it isn’t a sign now.
Regarding Diop, as someone else mentioned, it wasn’t that long ago he was the toast of the town and considered a legitimate great French prospect at CB. He was purchased under Pellegrini for about £22M, but for whatever reason he just hasn’t been in Moyseh’s plan.
As an aside, does anyone remember when Mou (w/United) carrying on about Diop after United losing to West Ham? He called Diop a “monster”. At the time I remember the pundits implying Mou was having a go at the United recruitment team.
Full Quote:
”Congratulations to the scout who found the 21-year-old kid, Diop. He was a monster and dominated every single duel”
EDIT: I did some digging into what is happening with Diop at West Ham. And although he’s been inconsistent and error prone, just as recently as August supporters seemed fairly disgusted the Club was considering selling him and moving him on. Many of their fans/supporters feel he has all the tools and upside to be world class.
Andy Carroll all over again
The great Neven Subotic has signed for Altach, who are second bottom in Austria. On a 6-month deal.
So much for such lazy journalism linking the whole of Dortmund or ex-Dortmund players with Liverpool just because of Klopp.
Alisson, Kelleher.
Robbo, Kostas.
TAA and Neko.
VVD, Gomez, Davies, Kababk and Nat.
Hendo, Thiago, Fab, Jones, Keita, Milner and 1 new midfielder.
Mane, Mo, Bobby, Jota, Elliot, Taki and 1 New forward.
Wij leaving. And Matip, Grujic, Ox, Shaq, Wilson, Origi, Awoniyi, Woodburn, Ojo sold. Sepp, Rhys on Loan.
Can’t see Matip leave and rightly so.
Unlike Ox, Shaq and Keita he’s been quality everytime he is on the pitch and that for 3 consecutive years.
With the new options we have it will also be easier to manage his games.
I think Matip goes into the same programme as Keita now. He is going to be put on the back burner and allowed time and space to get properly fit. Klopp seemed to be suggesting the other day that he’d been playing through injury this season.
To be honest, I think fans are going to be disappointed if they think there is going to be much movement in or out this summer. Football is properly fucked. No-one has any money. No-one has a clue what players are worth.
Barca are on the edge of bankruptcy. The French league is on the verge of collapse.
The Everton Cup is going to be interesting to set up this summer. I’ve a good mind to say no money to spend, and player values are 25% Transfermarkt.
I don’t think five senior CB is too much if we consider going all out even in the cups.
VVD
Gomez
Matip
Ben
Ozan/new CB
Essentially Gomez and Ozan (if he develops as expected) or new CB (in case Kebab gets burnt) will compete for the other slot alongside VVD. Matip, when fit, will compete & rotate with those two and keep them on their toes (and fresh too).
Ben will monopolize the cup games and be the occasional late substitute for VVD. For some reason I feel he will play more than we are expecting him to.
Nat’s contract is over next summer, he’ll leave on a free.
It’s not. He signed a new long term contract in 2019 before he went on loan according to official homepage.
Long term means clearly longer than until 2021 in my book.
Transfermarkt has this one wrong.
I think @Zoran and @Nikola were discussing this the other day, I really fancy a player from the Balkans. Darko Pančev and Emil Kostadinov were two of my favorites from that region.
Off course it’s him
Something I hope we tackle over the next few windows, either internally or externally is to bring in some leadership.
My huge concern is that when Henderson/Milner aren’t actively on the pitch we really struggle.
Gini/Van Dijk whilst leaders off the pitch I rarely see them providing the vocal encouragement you hear from the two above. Even when you look at Trent/Robbo who again are captains for their country, bar the odd bit of snide from Robbo I hardly hear them and Trent can go into his shell.
I appreciate there are many types of captains, Henderson isn’t Gerrard and vice versa. I do think we have evolved that the captain isn’t the star, but he is the engine which makes the other parts work effectively.
Could Trent develop this? Potentially, that would be the ideal. Funnily enough not sure if anyone has seen the 2nd goal we scored against West Ham with the sound… You hear the Hendo scream (who ran 70 yards whilst being our center back to support Mo), it’s then followed by Jones with a “manage the game” type comment. So I wonder if he’s a dark horse of the next midfield engine…
Robbo definitely has it in him, but it’s hard from the wings. You really need a voice in the middle of the pitch.
We’ll have about 34 senior players this summer.
Some are younger than 21, but won’t be going back to Reserves (at least not regularly). Not counting the likes who’s contracts are expiring at the end of the season. Not counting Kabak, who will only be bought if we decide so.
A few of them would’ve been sold last summer if the situation was normal. We didn’t get the offer we wanted, we felt we could afford to send them out on new loans and delay decisions for one more year.
I don’t expect everything to get back to normal in the summer of 2021. Might still be difficult. But you’d imagine that we will look to sell quite a few of them (it almost never happens that we sell all of them on terms we want, that’s just fan’s imagination). Hopefully there will be good enough offers.
Yes I agree, even when Hendo was center back it was all you heard. He’s also in the ear of the ref (not that it does much good!). Maybe it’s the differentiation between a leader and an actual captain… Robbo is a leader, he leads from the front, he goes to war for you… Yet Hendo captains the team, he is basically Klopp’s voice on the pitch, keeping the focus, firing rockets when needed, praising when warranted etc. I think it’s missed massively with him out (and Milner not present).
I look at the younger midfield and don’t see any with similar qualities bar Jones who was a surprise to me, but actually it does make sense he is just oodles of confidence, so it must be quite natural for him to be vocal. Compared to the likes of Naby, Oxlade, Taki even…
Seen several reports that Kabak has everything to be a future captain so maybe he’s one to watch.
I posted the below in the squad thread but just thought it relevant to your post.
Looks more like 29 players to me who we could seriously think of calling upon.Going forward we do seem to be carrying a number of players who are regularly injured(4),don’t perform enough(3),leaving(2) or just getting on(1).
Out of 29 players,10 fall into one of those catagories.That leaves 19 who we can optimistically rely on on a regular basis going forward.3 of them are keepers,2 of them are new,3 others are rarely used /kids.
At a point we need to look at the number of players we have who for one reason or another we can’t rely on and think about replacing them rather than hoping their situations change.
Move out those regularly injured first as the rest are at least a body on the pitch.We’ll have to take a loss on some but better than paying wages to lay on the recovery table and see out their contract anyway.
I’ve never seen Bissouma play badly but he was something else tonight, a monstrous performance. While he was tentatively linked with Liverpool a few months back, I’m not sure if he’s the kind of player to replace Wijnaldum (he’s more of a defensive minded midfielder and I think this team needs someone like Aouar) but I do hope Liverpool staff have him in their sights. If Ndidi left, I’m almost certain Leicester would make him their no. 1 target to replace him, for example, and there are quite a few PL teams he would improve. No disrespect meant to Brighton, who always play well against Liverpool, but I doubt he’ll be there once the next summer window is closed.