Kovacic can play deep, CM or AM. Versatile player. Coutinho can play CM and AM. Kovacic is a great talent and I would love for us to sign him - but he is more luxury than necessity. We need a RCB, DM and ST.
Signing Benteke is just insane - makes no sense whatsoever. He won;t compliment the style we play, or the players we have. For the amount we will spend on him, we can get far better around Europe. He's not even that good - he's extremely lazy and only effective if you pump long balls or crosses - which we don't do. Bar a good first season, he's been average in the past 2 seasons in a side which do play to his strengths. Poor movement, poor on the ball. To get a better idea of what he would be like with better players around him, look at him for Belgium national team. Origi is far more talented. Utterly senseless.
100% agreed. Especially for £32m. Its something you can see from a mile off and we've seen it with Lambert, Carroll & to a lesser extent Morientes years ago. You're right about the style of play too, we barely cross the ball and when we do the cross isn't good enough quality & its not delivered in fast enough. Now everyone can see what a problem having a player who's strengths are getting on the end of crosses and bringing the ball down from long passes joining a team that doesn't cross and doesn't play it long. I haven't even mentioned the fact that he holds onto the ball (not a criticism, its what a target man does) when our players (Coutinho, Marky Mark, Sturridge etc) are better when we move it quickly and catch the defenders out of position. If we are signing a target man that won't suit our style of play we might as well stick with Lambert who has had an years experience with the players or sign someone like Luca Toni or Artiz Aduriz who have scored more goals over the last few seasons and wouldn't cost the world.
This is the thing - we have Lambert and Mario. Why didn't Rodgers play to their strengths? The fact he didn't gives me little confidence that he can get the best out of Benteke.
I dunno why we're interested in signing him either to be honest. Rodgers hasn't played to similar players strengths and on top of that he's inconsistent and injury prone. And he goes missing for large parts of a season, don't remember him doing much until Sherwood came in. Wasn't he on a massive drought? If that was Liverpool with all the media coverage he wouldn't have got off so lightly. Balotelli got slaughtered for not scoring and he was barely playing. Benteke was playing most games in that time period.
Yep, he's been poor. His first season, which was very good, skews his stats. We've seen over the years that many players can have 1 very good season. Benteke had that, and has now been figured out which is why he has struggled since. Doesn't have great stats if I'm being honest, technically limited and is quite lazy. If fans were on Mario's case, then there is no chance they will like Benteke.
So Konoplyanka (sp?) is out of contract this summer and still has an interest in joining us...talented wide forward, would really give us some more (quality) depth up top. Anyway: A lot of people have been speculating on what we need, but basically, we have no idea what formation Rodgers will go with next season or who's on their way out. Balotelli doesn't want to leave and we want too much for him for other clubs to be interested so we've already got 3 strikers for September before anyone goes - Sturridge, Balotelli and Origi. Ings seems to think he's coming to us so that's the fourth. This is assuming we can flog Borini and Lambert...and if they're happy to leave. If 4-3-3, that's our striker set completed already, no room for another because you typically only have one central striker. We could, however, buy another wide forward and another midfielder. If 4-2-3-1, the same applies. If we go 4-4-2 diamond, there might be a place for another striker, but we'd basically have no place for our wide players - Ibe, Sterling (he's not going to play ahead of Coutinho in the number 10 spot) and Lallana (same as Sterling) and certainly no room to buy another. We could, however, go for more quality in midfield. If we go 3-4-3, same problems with no room for more strikers, problems with no specialist wing backs which would then leave our full backs redundant once we buy some and the additional problem of needing more good CBs whilst trying to offload the **** ones - of which we have plenty. None of this addresses our CB concerns whereby we have a tonne of CBs (Sakho, Skrtel, Toure, Lovren, Illori, Wisdom and Coates) and yet only one who is rated by the majority of fans, a few who are average/ok and some who are unproven. A striker set of Sturridge, Balotelli, Origi and Ings isn't too inspiring. A midfield pick of Lucas, Allen, Henderson and Can isn't great either. I just have no idea what Rodgers is doing or what he wants. This will only hinder our transfer policy this summer. If he doesn't know what he wants to play, he can't address the big weaknesses. Edit: forgot Markovic too...another wide forward with no opportunity to play, depending on the system picked.
Regardless of style or system we will play in the future - we need a RCB and DM. That's fundamental IMO. Agree with the attack - it's all down to to the system we want to adopt.
We can't buy any more CBs. We have far too many and no one is interested in buying them. Our core problem right now is that we have too many average players padding the squad out, no one has interest in them and we're limited by FFP in how much we can spend without selling.
His goalscoring record for Villa 88 games 42 goals really isn't impressive. Not £32m impressive anyway. Watching us trying to sign him is probably like what Nicolas Cage felt in Knowing when he knew something bad was going to happen but couldn't prevent it. Its just sad seeing us pass on all these great strikers outside of the premier league seemingly just because they don't have PL experience and wasting money on players like Benteke.
I'd sell Skrtel, Lovren, Coates - all 3 have a market and can command a decent fee, and I'm sure there will be suitors. Wisdom can be used as CB or RB. I understand what you're saying re. quantity of players we have in that position - but that doesn't mean we cannot buy better quality because we badly need it. It's a problem area and if we get it right, then we can shift Can into midfield. Bringing in a DM then adds further protection to the defence and that's effectively 2 areas of the pitch sorted.
And if you remove this first season (because a lot of strikers/players can have a very good one season), then the stats are even worse. By focusing on the last 2 season, you see a better and more true reflection of his ability because defenders know how to defend against him.
Everyone says that benteke won't suit our style but do we really have one? lea be honest our strike was dictated by Suarez lat year and this year we haven't really had any kind of identity when playing. Whata ta weong with having someone that offers a different threat? Everyone says how we don't ever cross the ball well maybe because we've only ever had sterling on the Middle. Said it before but we became easy to defend against, play narrow restrict us playing through the middle and force us wide. Once we get there we have to come back out but with someone like benteke and a quick player alongside like Sturridge/origi then we can play the through balls for one to chase but also have that option to cross balls in. bentele is far auperior to Lambert and balotelli in being a target man and he also offers more with the ball at his feet. He is able to make the runs but ideally I'd play him with a quick player alongside to help keep that variety
Our non-football friendly owners aren't likely to look at it that way though. Skrtel is our one experienced CB who regularly plays and doesn't seem to be made of glass like the other CB (Sakho). Lovren is their recent 20mill acquisition and will get another season to prove he was worth the money. Toure just signed an extension. Wisdom too. Illori has a few years left on his contract. They'll all be staying imo along with Sakho. Only Coates can comfortably be agreed on. That's still 6 CBs at the club and too many to consider buying another. Our owners are still numbers and stats men
Problem with playing little and large strikers (this sounds familiar...) is how the rest of the team lines up. 2 up top means we'll go for a 4man diamond in the midfield. Where do Lallana, Markovic, Sterling and Ibe play? We then need our full backs to provide width and crosses yet our full backs are pretty poor overall...
I agree - we don't have a style, because Rodgers is clueless. But one thing is for sure - we have never played a style under Rodgers which involves putting in crosses or relying on long balls. And having a Plan B which offers a different type of threat is good - spending £30m on that Plan B is madness. And as mentioned, Lambert and Mario can both offer the same threat but we never played to their strengths. Benteke being a better target man is irrelevant when there is no evidence that the manager would play to his strengths,
