Liverpool FC Forum

Bayern have a solid established midfield.. Kimmich, Goretska, and Musiala are gonna be hard to replace. Gravenberch probably went thinking he'd be playing most games, but it hasn't worked out for him.

He was brilliant at Ajax, and won 3 league titles with them. He's only 20, he's 6ft 3, and has a decent engine for a box to box midfielder.

I think for £25m we'd be getting a really good player on the cheap so it's a no brainer.

We should really be looking at both Kamada and Gavi as both are out of contract.. and then if we secure them signings we'd have the money to throw at Jude.

So we replace Ox or Hendo, Milner or Keita or maybe even Thiago with a 20 year old who's not playing at the moment.
No logic whatsoever when we already have Carvalho and Elliott who are unable to hold down first team places.

Well, he's cheap and got potential. That's the only model the owners are willing to go for, espcially with no cl money. Deluded if you think we'll be getting ready made stars....

damjan193 » Mon Apr 17, 2023 1:24 pm wrote:Anyway, I think our recruitment team has been in shambles since Edwards left. There are some good forwards out there that might not cost a fortune to get like Napoli's Kvaratskhelia and Brigton's Mitoma, but we already jumped the gun with Gakpo, who might come good but we didn't really need a player like him right away and could have waited to see if better talents become available.

I mean it's weird, we desperately needed a midfilder but never got one and we suffered for it while we didn't need a forward right away but rushed to sign one anyway. Recruitment team is in complete dissaray and we're the last team that can afford for it to be that way.

The funny thing is that everything we've been hearing this season is that Klopp has taken more power on transfers and the voice of the nerds holds less sway.

It's pretty clear that Klopp was frustrated this summer and he mentioned in one of his press conferences that if it was up to him, he'd "take more risks". People took this as a comment on budget, but I think it was a comment aimed at the walls that are put up around who we will spend decent money on. Over the past 5 years every time we've spent £20+mil it has been on players who are profiling well data wise and the data is from the PL, Spain, Germany, France, or Italy, and often complemented by similar data from the CL/EL.

More recently we’ve signed Diaz, Nunez, and Gakpo. Gakpo in particular seemed to be driven more by the eye test considering all the data was from the Dutch league and Lijnders reportedly referring to him as “the missing link”. There has been a clear effort by someone either involved with the recruitment now/in the recent past to use the press to make it clear that they have less say and to distance themselves from recent transfers. Julian Ward (appointed Sporting Director last year) is leaving in the summer and so is our long standing Director of Research, Ian Graham (to be replaced by Will Spearman who will be promoted). It does look like theere has been a few issues with the people working on recruitment and ultimately it sounds like FSG have backed Klopp and given him more power.

We’ll see how it pans out but everyone needs to work together to make our work in the transfer market is a success.

I think the media like to say Klopp has more control over transfer matters but his comments the other day say otherwise. He said the club will always operate the same regardless of who the manager is and I believe him. FSG will not allow a manager full control.  He constantly talks about budgets, how the club operates, the team, We, it's never I.

And despite that they pay him £16 million. Good job eh?

He's getting that money because he's one of the best managers in the game and we want to keep him here. If he was only getting 5 mil then would it be everyones problem. It doesn't matter how much he gets paid if the squad just isn't good enough and that's why we are where we are. We will either sign players in the summer to give us a shot at the league or top 4. I'd bet klopp would take the former if he has a choice.

That's great Red, fat salary but free hand to blame the owners when things don't work out.

Reg » Wed Apr 19, 2023 11:19 am wrote:That's great Red, fat salary but free hand to blame the owners when things don't work out.

Buying players is only half the job these days, on paper Chelsea have got a squad that’s up there with City’s but they are struggling to find a manager who can keep all the ego’s in check and get everyone pulling in the same direction. Jurgen Klopp is the best pound for pound manager in the world Reg, Guardiola is a flat track bully who wouldn’t know what to do without the safety net of a check book.

Klopp hasn't blamed the owners or anyone else and has taken full responsibility. The idea that he is beyond criticism and our failure this season has nothing to do with him is just nonsense. I mean those tactics at the start of the season with Trent and Henderson effectively playing as 10s and Fabinho left to fend off the counterattack by himself, were some of the worst I've ever seen. Looking back now it smacked of arrogance/complacency to think we could play like that. When you look at the players that Klopp has had available to him this season even after taking injuries into account, should we really be languishing in 8th place with 47 points after 30 games? No way. Putting transfers and injuries to one side, we’ve massively underperformed on the footballing side of things and that falls on Klopp.

I genuinely see this season as an aberration. To have the drop off we’ve had must mean multiple people have made multiple mistakes. But we have an absolute world class manager who loves this club and looks determined to fix things next season. Our squad is also much better than people seem to think. It’s jammed packed full of quality players. The idea that we’re going to see 6 or 7 new players in the starting line-up next season is farfetched and not even necessary. With some targeted signings that address the weakest areas, better tactical work from Klopp and his coaching staff, better performance from everyone involved with preparing the players for the season and keeping them fit, and no CL football to worry about, we’ll cruise into top 4 and probably be challenging for the title.

Don't accept the injury stats, ask WHY we had so many injuries! The reason we've had such a disappointing season is a culmination of a number of events - burning the current first team out, not getting rid of the deadwood over the last 4 seasons, not bringing in at least one first team player on an annual basis, letting the Michael Edwards and his successor both leave (he stayed in the job for such a short time I don't remember his name) and the injury farce. All of which took time to come to fruition meaning Jurgen has had his eye off the ball for 2-3 seasons in different aspects of the club. To be beaten 3 times by Real Madrid in CL and learn nothing is pretty distressing.

Reg » Thu Apr 20, 2023 9:28 am wrote:Don't accept the injury stats, ask WHY we had so many injuries! The reason we've had such a disappointing season is a culmination of a number of events - burning the current first team out, not getting rid of the deadwood over the last 4 seasons, not bringing in at least one first team player on an annual basis, letting the Michael Edwards and his successor both leave (he stayed in the job for such a short time I don't remember his name) and the injury farce. All of which took time to come to fruition meaning Jurgen has had his eye off the ball for 2-3 seasons in different aspects of the club. To be beaten 3 times by Real Madrid in CL and learn nothing is pretty distressing.

To be fair Reg, Real beat everyone else too

Manuel Ugarte of Sporting Lisbon is another midfielder to add to the endless list we're being linked too. Although these links are coming out of both Portugal (the country he plays in) and Uruguay (his home nation) so probably have a bit more credibility than the rumours that come from the red top rags in the UK. Has a release clause of around £50mil and his agent is Jorge Mendes, someone we seem to have a very good relationship having bought in a number of players he represents.

Haven't seen Ugarte play myself but was reading that his defensive data is through the roof but he's offensive data doesn't compare well with other 6s including Fabinho.