Completely agree. I think they wanted to do early work in the market and have done. They got the low hanging fruit in the ones that were young with no PL experience or could be got on favourable PFR terms. They have got European experience but non have got PL experience. The difficult thing will be getting those in and at the right price too. Lots of time left in the window so it’s not all doom and gloom but that experience thing is vital for us whilst keeping the make up of a young hungry team.
About the playstyle bit I can see where you’re coming from but I think it’s hard on Neil as he was an 8 and he’s sort of been shoehorned into a 6 as the club haven’t had a ‘natural’ 6 bar Corry Evans. So for him to play 6 in a team with not much of the ball is always going to be hard for him. Overall I’d say he doesn’t really fit in with what we will probably end up doing this season, but he has 100% shown on multiple occasions that he is more than capable of playing a part this season.
I think you’re spot on. RLB said that pre game he told the lads this will be different to Portugal, it will be a team full of energy that will go direct and we have to be ready. The lads didn’t adjust imo and we have to take our medicine and give credit to Hearts. That’s what pre season is for. The club will have picked the opposition carefully, different styles, different phases of preseason (hull closer to the kicking off their season too) and to get these mistakes and bad habits ironed out so we can get off to the best start possible. Certainly worked last year.
Funny one with Liverpool because they are approaching a bit of a transition period with salah, van dijk and Allison closer to the end of their careers. Think they’re trying to get ahead of that but with isak they’ll be tough to stop like and I’d be delighted for him not to play for the mags. Hopefully they waste the money they get because it will be a key month coming up for them for how they get on in the next few years.
I don't have any doom and gloom tbh. We've not only been promoted to the Premier League, we've seen players arrive we couldn't have dreamt of a year ago. The club clearly have the finances and the manager wants experience brought in. I'm quite happy with what we're doing so far and I believe Xhaka will be signing.
Salah is 33 now, I was expecting him to regress but he was absolutely incredible last season! It’ll be interesting to see how Liverpool cope when he finally does ease off.
have to say when i first took notice of him (mainly down to the name and me still immature) i thought he had the look of a very good keeper, probably still is, but after he moved he seemed to lose a lot from his performances and he never looked as good to me. 'early' areola would be a no brainer. recent areola i would not be happy swapping him with patto so we appear to share a similar opinion.