The last game of the league was played yesterday. Where do you think we need players most, a small injury to our squad always cause concern .We need a better first eleven and our bench needs to be full of quality also. Defence?. Midfield?. Forward?.
I would say midfield personally. Other areas could be better by maybe 1 player, but midfield could be a hell of a lot better by 2 or 3 players.
All three. Regardless of Keita coming in, we need another midfielder. Especially with Can leaving. Desperately need some kind of cover/competition for Mane and Salah. Equally Firmino needs help up top with cover/competition I think we all agree we need another CB I don't think we will go for a keeper Centre back, centre mid, winger/wide forward and striker Keita coming in on top of that of course.
IMO: For competition GK in GK out. CB in CB out. CM in to replace Can. For my sanity: LB out. For improvement in quality: Keita in = a big improvement. we have windy, lallana, ox, milner too here. Up front: ing solanke coutinho replacement sturrdige is toast seriously we need at least 2. there's lots to do so what will we do? IMO 1. no gk unless mingolet goes 2. Defence... I think CB is a long shot unless klavan goes. 3. Midfield 100% we must replace can. this will happen IMO 4. Up front. I can see two players coming. one is coutinho replacement and must happen and i can see us shipping ings out as the lad deserves a few games. The writing is on the wall when solanke gets the brighton gig. I still think 4 to 5. we will sell on or move 4 to 5 as well
Yeah midfield is the obvious spot... it doesn't just need depth it needs variety... all our current midfielders are quite same same with exception of OC. We need to present teams with different problems. Problem with up front is equally or near equally as good players are not coming to sit and watch our front 3 for the vast majority of games ...Klopp actually referred to this when talking about Solanke yesterday so I can't see much buying in that area....klopp will try to continue development with the back up players.
Gotta say Kieta and the Ox will be vitally important for us next season. Can can strop off and brush his ego in the Italian alps, another player to partner the 2 aforementioned would be great. Someone energetic and creative.
All over really GK still not convinced by Karius ... is there better out there ?? CB to partner Van Dijk, although Lovren has picked up lately and Matip will come back, maybe cover at LB as I don't want Moreno playing for us Midfield as has been said FW out and out striker of world class quality, but agree we probably won't invest here
I think we need improvement almost everywhere as far as depth goes; however, I would caution changing too much too quick. I'd rather improve 2 positions with top class talent than sign a dozen decent players. As far as first XI goes, it is really a CB and a GK that are the most pressing concern IMO.
that might get us about spurs But yeah actually improving areas sure why not 2 worldies would be nice. Who knew salah was going to do what he did. Then I think the most vital thing is cover up front. I think we can compete and get around the 70 mark again with our current squad without isse but only if we have cover up front.
We are already better than Spurs, just had more distractions. I feel like Rafa's greatest flaw (a flaw Brodgers also had) was that he tried to fix every problem every summer. It was a constant 2 steps forward and 2 steps back. Fixing so much at once would cause other problems. I bet if Rafa had the same approach that Klopp has regarding transfers, improving the team bit by bit and really focusing on one or two good positions; Rafa could have won the league with us.
Up front we've got Ings who I think Klopp quite likes if he can stay fully fit Then Solanke who at least got a goal and probably will get another season as a stand-in type player to show what he's worth With them and the top 3 guys, plus odd contributions from MF/ other FW players is that enough ?? Not sure ... I'd like us to bring in a top striker who is just a goal scorer/poacher type (NB. that doesn't mean stands around doing nothing till we're at/in the opposition box though)
It's a sound strategy. However our midfield is still a problem ... alright Keita is coming but Can is going so numbers still the same. Amongst those numbers we have injury prone players like Lallana, alright maybe just him, so are Keita, Hendo, Ox, Wiji and Milner enough to carry it ?? I see a space there for someone to come in But I agree with you that CB and GK are more pressing issues, kind of come around to the idea of keeping Lovren and Matip as long as we get another quality CB to play with VVD and those guys are back-up or rotation
Rafa loved a deal. if you looked at his tinkering he made masses and masses of singings and was all over academey etc. Rodgers was the opposite he wanted donkey sand there was infighting and it was you can have that one if i can have this one and none of them fitted. there was rarely a step forward with rodgers. I don't agree btw on Rafa. I would put it this way. had we sold to anyone but G&H and we had the finances in 2008 to weather the financial crash witout imploding then we would have not relied on 11 players plus a few subs and we wmight have done better Rafa won CL, FA cup had gerrard and torres etc etc etc. It was really hard to do more than he did frankly . Klopp is in the same boat now. HE could probably do more and be 3rd or even second but to win the thing requires a clear run. Rafa never had a clear run. It was the same old story in 09 when we had babel and the like playing up front that we fell off the pace and hamming utd at old trafford still meant we could only get within 4 points of them. top top teams are there to win it. To become a top top team you need to buy players. end of. lets not get all carried away with leicester hitting the one year ever there was no challenger. thats hope not a strategy. We have to compete with utd and city. To do it over 38 games requires a full squad and a bit of luck along the way.
For me it comes down to one question: Do you feel like each position or area in our formation has a quality first choice and a quality back-up ?? (obviously there are different levels between the two, but only slim/marginal) My answer is no way. It's still that dodgy, dicey, uncertain feeling when we haven't got out our 'strongest' side that it's not going to go to plan, even sometimes when we have the top lads all playing
CURRENT FIRST TEAM: DEFENDERS 2 Nathaniel Clyne 4 Virgil van Dijk Dejan Lovren 12 Joe Gomez 17 Ragnar Klavan 18 Alberto Moreno 26 Andy Robertso 32 Joel Matip 66 Trent Alexander-Arnold MIDFIELDERS 5 Georginio Wijnaldum 7 James Milner 14 Jordan Henderson 20 Adam Lallana 21 Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain 23 Emre Can FORWARDS 9 Roberto Firmino 11 Mohamed Salah 19 Sadio Mane 28 Danny Ings 29 Dominic Solanke 58 Ben Woodburn ON LOAN 15 Daniel Sturridge 16 Marko Grujic 27 Divock Origi 38 Jon Flanagan 40 Ryan Kent 50 Lazar Markovic 53 Ovie Ejaria 54 Sheyi Ojo 56 Connor Randall 59 Harry Wilson 68 Pedro Chirivella Allan Taiwo Awoniyi
Midfield should be a priority but really we need to increase depth across the squad - As good as Robertson has been, we've had to put up with awful performances from moreno to ensure that robbo could maintain consistency in the 2nd half of the season. Likewise Coutinho until he left gave us opportunities to rest players in the 1st half of the year, so he needs replacing. Imo we've been blessed by how stable our attack has been in terms of injuries. We need to add depth there to cover against injuries and rest players when needed. With the GK situation my opinion is that Klopp wants Alisson but that Roma may price us out of a deal this year. Karius has played well enough to make it less of a concern so he's worth waiting for rather than paying over the odds
He can **** of then. He should be ready and available whether it's playing real Madrid or Burton albion.
There's clear issues. 1. Karius is still imo potentially dodgy. He's done fine but those issues are still there. He is an improvement over what we started season with 2. Taa is only learning. 3. Lovren is accident waiting to happen. He must have dived into 5 unnecessary challenges yesterday alone. 4. Vvd is a massive improvement. 5. Robertson is a massive improvement. 6. Henderson tries but he is injury risk and kicks ball away a lot. 7. Ox is decent but not got the defensive side imo. 8. Windy retains ball but vanishes away and is mostly a sideways passer. 9. Firmino. Has done great. 10. Mane, inconsistent and misses chances 11. Salah amazing tbh. So...... yeah there's issue but for me the thing is take out the performers and the bench is woeful. If the new players bought up front can't compete with mane there is something wrong. Same for windy, same for lovren and same for karius. We need to buy for the first team and the depth becomes who can't keep up. The biggest gap by far is when we Putin solanke and ings while city and Utd and Chelsea have players to come in. Spurs lack options too tbh...
He shouldn't be there anyway. This hasn't been his team the last X months. Ings or Solanke should get a spot ahead of him anyway. They've been training with this team.
