I think the club have found it far more difficult to move players like Shaqiri on than they had probably imagined.
Just because we were still winning doesn’t mean we hadn’t started to look lethargic and hadn’t struggled with physicality at times.
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Because of the fee we’ve demanded not due to lack of Interest.
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You think we breezed past every team? The teams/games that caused us most issues were those that brought physicality and/or pace. Towards the end of the season we were starting to stumble. Claiming it was just the Watford and Atletico games and everything else till the break was perfect isn’t accurate.
Whenever the malaise kicked in, we have had a massive drop in form this season and don’t seem to be turning the corner. With the age of our key players we are entering a phase where we need to start a rebuild anyway. As was peviously mentioned this is a crucial window for the club in exceptionally difficult circumstances.
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Adrian is absolutely shite and if we can replace him this summer we should.
I do somewhat agree with @AnfieldRdDreamer in that squad looks tired regularly. Not sure about that being something that happened pre-Covid but I don’t remember the pre-Covid world anyway. It was probably great.
Anyway, I think this season is just a culmination of 3 straight seasons of relentless high level performances. 1 CL win, 1 PL win and another CL final to boot. The PL in particular was an emotional year and was the second of two seasons where we were almost perfect (97 and 99 pts). All of the above was probably mentally exhausting and then Covid comes in and not only are the players now mentally fatigued bit they are playing in front of empty stadiums with constant health concerns. I don’t find it at all surprising that they would struggle to perform to the same level.
We probably need a bit of a shake up of the squad. Of we look at Man City last season they were pretty poor also as I think they had a year where they hit the wall and had to revamp key areas of the team. This is probably the point where we have to look at doing the same.
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The thing is a lot of change will happen this summer as the squad is heavily bloated. Between what we went with and what was on loan the squad is probably about 50% larger than needs to be. It seems impractical to me to keep or loam that many players. Especially as that would then mean trying to sell a hell of a lot next summer when many will then be in their final 12 months of deals.
I think we have the core of the squad we will have/need next year but we’ve got nearly double that. There’s only a few places that actually need incomings. But even with diminished fees on our sales we will likely end up bringing some significant money in.
With the way the market will be this summer that could create some real chances to not just do required/necessary buying (Wijnaldum replacement, a CB) but also some opportunities to really bring improvements to the squad too.
Just looking at players who are out of contract in 2022 reveals a whole host of really interesting options.
Is that a requirement now? Tough crowd in tonight.
No shit. We’d gone at an unprecedented pace to win that league. We were allowed a stumble at that point.
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Yet you literally just laughed at this:
A core strength of the side is the growth they have achieved together to get over barriers the team faces - the loss of Matip and Virgil removed our strength when attacking at set pieces for example. Replacing players doesn’t necessarily improve upon that.
Not in all cases. Players have turned down moves where a deal was close to agreement between clubs.
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Yes, this is a really succient point. When we won the league we certainly did not blow away teams, we aren’t City… We ground out wins based on hardly ever conceeding, but also the same solid defense were a huge offensive weapon at set pieces.
Giving us a corner or free kick now is litterally a way of getting the ball back, we have zero threat. So to go from scoring every 3-4 games to never scoring is taking away a huge amount of output, adding extra burden to our front line who are wilting under the pressure.
I may be completly wrong but it feels like a lot of our bigger wins when Salah hit multiple goals the deadlock was a set piece goal to get us going. (But I can be re-inventing history).
*Edit - Matip/Van Dijk scored 8 goals between them last year. Trent/Robbo 3 + 4…
Looking at our stats last season there is a huge drop off from the midfield - Oxlade scored 8, Gini 6, Hendo 4, Milner 4, Keita 4, Jones 3, Fabinho 2 = 31 goals from midfield + 15 from defense is 46 goals from outside our front 3…
This season midfield/defense = 12 total…
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There needs to be 3 things. A club that wants the player. A club the player will go to. A fee we will accept. The biggest hurdle in getting players off our books in recent years has been self made as we’ve been trying (successfully) to develop a reputation as a difficult club to buy from who don’t undersell. We’ve got an opportunity this summer to clear the decks when the blame for the low prices will be pinned on corona and it won’t harm that reputation.
Careful… Mascot may laugh at you.
Yes, because you were being ridiculous, again.
You said we had begun to lack drive and energy, before the Covid break.
I pointed out that we were 25 points clear and had only dropped four points in the league at that point.
You then said we stumbled towards the end of the season, which we did, but that was after the covid break, and after the league had been won.
You then tried to change the point to ‘we were winning, but we were not really breezing past teams.
Hence the laughter.
Until the covid break, our league form was impeccable. Never had a team gone at a league campaign with quite that ferocity and conviction. In all honesty, it was won at Christmas. It was an annihilation.
Did we have to dig deep at times? Ride our luck? Dog out games? Of course we did. All teams do, and if your barometer for this football team is that we sweep all aside in every game, your relationship with the game is going to be frustrating and unsatisfying. Teams can’t always play their best and sometimes you just need to find a way to win. That became the mantra of LFC 19-20. Just find a way to win.
What you are trying to do here is construct a narrative whereby the roots of our current malaise can be found prior to lockdown. Otherwise the effects of the compressed league campaign, the injuries, the lack of fans and Covid itself, (which some of our players have had and may have been suffering with more than we realise) need to be taken into account, and the problems of this season become something that maybe you don’t need to solve with signings and player churn.
I find it hard to look past the injuries this season. The injuries have been absolutely relentless, and the problem with an injury crisis is that it has the habit of spiralling out of control, because you are forced to overuse players which then causes more injuries.
We still have a great football team with plenty to offer. A couple of signings in the right places, a couple of good returns from injured lads, and a couple of the youngsters continuing their progress, and we will be in great shape for a really good season.
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Man City did exactly the same when they pipped Liverpool to the title in 2019. Their response to last season’s failure has been very impressive so far - while they hardly had big injury issues this season, the re-emergence of their underachievers was the biggest reason behind their so far successful attack on all four fronts, in my opinion.
I hope Klopp’s underachievers react in a similar manner next season, especially those in the first eleven, but there is also a huge difference between the strength of their bench and Liverpool’s bench. I would look at their options last season and think how it was only a matter of time before Rodri or Mahrez or Bernardo Silva or Cancelo started playing at their true level - which is exactly what they did. Gundogan has been the biggest surprise, though… Imagine Keita having a season like the one Gundogan is having.
It’s obvious that the side will need strengthening and it’s obvious that we won’t be competing for the most coveted players out there. I wouldn’t have it any other way, established stars don’t fare well at Anfield (I hope Alcantara proves me wrong, though). I expect a bit more creativity from Klopp in terms of reigniting the players and Edwards in terms of replacing the likes of Shaqiri, AOC and Origi with those who fit the team and who can actually contribute when needed.
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@Mascot you like to say what people are saying without actually stopping and considering what people are actually saying.
What I said was;
What is wrong with that? Do you disagree that are players are aging? And many of them are older players? That we have quite a small squad without the likes of VvD around and we’ve started struggling a bit for size and physicality? I don’t know what I’ve said has earned you the right to talk to me like shit all the time.
Yes, I’m in two minds really… I just have this feeling that last summer we were about to shift our tactics, formation and style… We brought in Thiago/Jota for that… Then Covid hit… So what we’ve done is gone back to the previous years tactics, formation with what the vast portion of the team understood and could implement… We lost a lot of the summer time due to delays, so Klopp had zero time to change anything really. So really as a team we’ve just stood still, not evolved and it’s why we just see the same tepid games over and over.
Hard for us to watch, but as people like Mascot says this season was a complete write-off when the injuries destroyed our ability to even play the 433, high line, high pressure game from last year. The players seem to know this as well.
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Correct, but you keep oversimplifying by focusing on only one of them.
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