Caporegime
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I thought Firmino may have wanted to move on this summer.
The Liverpool Club Thread. **No Spoilers**
- Thread starter BaZ87
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Saw a story on twitter yesterday that he wants to retire at the club, who knows tho. I'd be more than happy with that, been my favourite player of the Klopp era
Caporegime
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How much regular first team football is he going to get though? It is a World Cup year, albeit only 3 months or so.Saw a story on twitter yesterday that he wants to retire at the club, who knows tho. I'd be more than happy with that, been my favourite player of the Klopp era
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Plenty with the amount of games there are.
He barely plays for Brazil anyway. He's only got 50 odd caps, most of them are subs. Be surprised if he doesn't go to the WC, but playing every week somewhere else won't get him into the starting XI. It never did when he started every week for Liverpool.
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So Thisgo’s out for months. Big problem for Klopp? Will he be forced to go into the transfer market?
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meh, I love Thiago but his injury record is ruining it. 
I expect Klopp will be stubborn and just go with what we have.
I expect Klopp will be stubborn and just go with what we have.He's still roughly playing the same amount of league games per season for us that he's always done.meh, I love Thiago but his injury record is ruining it.
As to buying another midfielder, not unless one we've tracked for a good while becomes available we won't.
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yeah, just seems he is quite often crocked. Frustrating as he is such a quality footballer to watch.
Perils of buying a player that often spends a quarter of the league season injured
I agree though, absolute gorgeous footballer to watch ping it around the pitch. Shame we don't really have anyone else that has his range of passing/style of play either.
Not buying a midfielder this transfer window is going to be a very big mistake imo. A huge one...because tbh I dont think we're going to get Bellingham next summer and if we're putting all our eggs in that basket its going to backfire.
I would assume that if we're going all in on Bellingham next summer we must have had some sort of guarantee from the player that he only wants us, our recent business has shown that we wont chase a player that doesn't want to move. Obviously when the time comes that BVB are open to selling there will be a lot of clubs after him but we're not in the habit of going after unobtainable targets (we're not Man U
), the kid seems very level headed from the interviews I've seen often talking about leaving a football legacy rather than being in it for the money and there's no better place for him to learn and fulfill his potential that under Klopp 
The squad is ageing, this is happening and we need to address it. With Matip, VVD, Hendo, Milner, Thiago, Bobby and Salah already over 30 and Andy, Fabinho and Ox over 28 this squad clearly lacks energy if we're going to play 3 games in 10 days, 2 or 3 times a month. The team is no longer capable of pressing and running without the ball like it used to, and our CBs are not as quick as they used to be (major injuries, ageing). Hopefully with Konate back and improved general fitness things will improve.
There's a lack of depth in the squad. We've let go of some of our best impact players (Minamino, Origi) and haven't replaced them. We need a better bench.
Our midfield lacks quality. The reality is that none of our midfielders can be replied upon to play 40+ games a season, and all of them at least have one major injury per season in them that keeps them out for 6+ weeks, and it's also quite often that they will not be ready for a game due to minor issues. This is especially true of Keita, Ox and Thiago but also happens to Fabinho and Hendo. We need another reliable always-fit energetic midfielder now, and then another major signing next season. We haven't replaced Wijnaldum yet either.
Our attack seems fine especially when Jota and Darwin are back, so I'm not that worried about it. We need to figure out what's up with Bobby's inconsistencies and get him on a fitness or confidence boosting plan so that he can perform like yesterday every time he plays, even if that means he plays fewer matches. I'd take this Bobby 20 games a season over last week's Bobby 60 games a season.
Despite the 9-0 win, this is going to be a difficult season. My targets for success are:
There's a lack of depth in the squad. We've let go of some of our best impact players (Minamino, Origi) and haven't replaced them. We need a better bench.
Our midfield lacks quality. The reality is that none of our midfielders can be replied upon to play 40+ games a season, and all of them at least have one major injury per season in them that keeps them out for 6+ weeks, and it's also quite often that they will not be ready for a game due to minor issues. This is especially true of Keita, Ox and Thiago but also happens to Fabinho and Hendo. We need another reliable always-fit energetic midfielder now, and then another major signing next season. We haven't replaced Wijnaldum yet either.
Our attack seems fine especially when Jota and Darwin are back, so I'm not that worried about it. We need to figure out what's up with Bobby's inconsistencies and get him on a fitness or confidence boosting plan so that he can perform like yesterday every time he plays, even if that means he plays fewer matches. I'd take this Bobby 20 games a season over last week's Bobby 60 games a season.
Despite the 9-0 win, this is going to be a difficult season. My targets for success are:
- Top 4 spot in PL
- Reaching CL semi final
- Winning one domestic cup
- At least 3 wins against top 4 teams in the league and/or getting at least 10 points from those 6 matches. Last season we had 6 draws in 6 matches.
Age of the players we've bought the last 3 seasons : 23, 19, 18, 25, 22, 18, 23, 29, 24
Add the players that were either suspended or injured yesterday and instead of the bench being
- Milner /Adrián/Tsimikas/Carvalho/Clark/Bajcetic/Phillips/Van den Berg/Davies
- Milner /Kelleher/Tsimikas/Carvalho/Jones/Thiago/Jota/Darwin/Konate
And yet the reality is that 4 out of 6 midfielder's played 40+ games last season (Thiago played 39 but I've included him anyway). Regardless games dont really mean anything - its minutes over the course of the season that's the true marker.
Bobby isn't a starter for us anymore, he's only where he is at the moment due to injuries, last season he had 1800 minutes for the season from 38 games. Jesus - who was probably comparable for Man city last year - played 2500 minutes from 49 games for example - Bobby only scored 2 less, 11 v 13.
Good for you?
Yeah, I never said we're signing 35 year old players. I said our squad is ageing, look at our best starting 11 and the average age is above 28. Looking at the 15 most likely players (Alisson, TAA, Matip, Konate, VVD, Andy, Fab, Hendo, Thiago, Milner, Keita, Salah, Jota, Diaz, Darwin) and the average age is again ~28 and will be ~29 at the end of the season. Our of our best 3 players (Salah, TAA, VVD), two are over 30. We're doing some good things though, bringing in Diaz was very good business.
When we won the league and CL and played our best football, our average age was ~25-26. Every player was hungry to get better and achieve their peak, rather than be conservative and try to maintain their levels (which is what we have now).
That's not how the world works. Yes if every single player is fit and available then our bench isn't that bad (it's average at best compared to City though), but that's imaginary because the reason you need depth is that the squad won't always be fit and ready. Especially more so given that some of our players are injury prone.
So yes, in the imaginary universe where there are no injuries or suspensions, that imaginary bench would have been nice. Not in this universe and yesterday's bench is what we actually had in the real world. Our bench in the CL final wasn't good enough last year, when our gameplan wasn't working we couldn't bring anything new to the team, that's the problem. We've improved it to a degree, but it's still deficient.
Agreed, what I meant by 40+ was actually 40+ full matches, coming on at 85th minute doesn't really count. I'm sure you'd agree that our midfield isn't strong in this aspect.
Liverpool FC - Squad statistics (Detailed view)
This is the detailed view of club Liverpool with performance data of the competition Overall statistics of current season .
Sort our players by minutes played, and see where our midfields are:
7th in squad: Hendo: ~3800 minutes, or ~40 full matches
9th in squad: Fabinho: ~3600 minutes, or ~38 full matches
12th in squad: Thiago: ~2300 minutes, or ~25 full matches
13th in squad: Keita: ~2000 minutes, or ~21 full matches
So yes, while we can claim Keita played 47 games last season, as you also mentioned the reality is different. Compare that to City, if you rank them by minutes played, 3 of their top 6 are their midfielders (Rodri, KDB and Bernardo).
We need one or two midfielders who are always available, are very rarely injured, can play the full 90 minutes every time, and are always 8/10. If you want to get 100 points in PL, you need those kind of players. We had that in Wijnaldum, letting go of him was good business as his consistency was coming to an end but we never replaced him.
Yeah, Bobby isn't a starter but when he plays he needs to be consistent and good. He struggled with fitness last year, and with form the year before. We need him back to his 2016-2020 levels even if that means he plays a lot less.
When Bobby plays well (like yesterday) he makes everyone else a lot better. That's always been his main contribution rather than goals or assists (which have never been exceptional). He hasn't been that player in the last 2 years, apart from the occasional game (yesterday, CL games last year like against Porto in group stage, first leg against Inter, second leg against Benfica), he's quite unique, he gives us a different way of playing so he can be the ideal impact player, but only if he can be relied upon. The reason Klopp didn't bring him on until 78th minute at the CL final last season, even though some of our players were very poor, was that he didn't trust him enough to perform. That needs to change. He needs to show up for the match 100% of the times like he used to.
I don't mind if he plays 2000 minutes or even less, but when he plays he needs to be like yesterday, rather than like last week.
Likewise friend. Likewise.
See I personally would disagree on the 15 most likely players you've listed, Gomez, Elliot and Carvalho would take the place of Matip, Milner and Keita for me dropping the average age of the 15 down to 26 - bearing in mind that VVD and Salah have got a good 3-5 years left respectively.
You know our bench last year in the final was
- Kelleher/Gomez/Tsimikas/Matip/Milner/Keita/Ox/Jones/Elliot/Jota/Firmino/Minamino
Man City only had 5 players that played more than 40 full games or 3600 minutes over the course of the season , Silva and Rodri and then the goalkeeper, cb and rb. We had 10 in Allison, Trent, Robbo, Virgil, Matip, Fabinho, Hendo, Salah, Mane and Jota. Think we played 4 games more than Man City last year though.Agreed, what I meant by 40+ was actually 40+ full matches, coming on at 85th minute doesn't really count. I'm sure you'd agree that our midfield isn't strong in this aspect.
Liverpool FC - Squad statistics (Detailed view)
This is the detailed view of club Liverpool with performance data of the competition Overall statistics of current season .www.transfermarkt.co.uk
Sort our players by minutes played, and see where our midfields are:
7th in squad: Hendo: ~3800 minutes, or ~40 full matches
9th in squad: Fabinho: ~3600 minutes, or ~38 full matches
12th in squad: Thiago: ~2300 minutes, or ~25 full matches
13th in squad: Keita: ~2000 minutes, or ~21 full matches
So yes, while we can claim Keita played 47 games last season, as you also mentioned the reality is different. Compare that to City, if you rank them by minutes played, 3 of their top 6 are their midfielders (Rodri, KDB and Bernardo).
You know in an ideal world on average you wouldn't want players hitting those amount of minutes though right?
Interesting, and yet the season we won the league we did so with 2 midfielders that played around 24 out of 38 full games in Hendo and Fabinho (around 2200 minutes), Gini played around 2800 minutes which is around 31 full games - similar amount of minutes to that of Hendo last year.
Booby's been out of form for a while which is why he's not a strater anymore, if you he gets the form back from previous seasons then he would be a starter. As an impact player coming off the bench he is fine as is.
I can see Eliiot and Carvalho coming ahead of Milner and Keita at some point this season, they're not there now. Gomez ahead of Matip isn't likely. He was our fourth choice centre back. Konate is more likely to break into the starting 11 on a regular basis and Matip would be the third choice. Gomez is still the second choice right back though.
Minamino didn't play in the final because the boss didn't trust him enough, or maybe it was a tactical decision. We had the subs to bring him on, and enough players that were exhausted. If we had stronger players things could have changed. The players that did come in (Bobby, Keita, Jota) didn't offer anything.
I care more about actual goals than xG or "dominating" though, we came close but didn't even score once. In fact we didn't score once in 3 finals last season and our bench could not contribute enough to change the course of any of those games.
In the league we didn't win against the other top 4, 6 draws against City, Chelsea and Spurs. See the pattern? The team came short against stronger opponents and the bench couldn't help.
Not a fair comparison as City didn't play as many games as we did. We played 10% more games.
Well in that season we got kicked out of CL pretty early on, same for domestic cups, so a LOT fewer games than last season, and it was a Covid year with the long break and then after we won the league pretty early on the matches were exhibitions with young players coming in. So can't really compare.
We need Bobby back to his best even for the bench. Bobby "as is" means one good game out of every few, with a couple of really awful ones in between. Do you seriously think he's going to make any impact off the bench if he's playing like he did against United or Fulham? Seriously?
"Everything is fine as is" seems to be your answer to everything isn't it. The current state of the team (form, fitness, squad, etc) "as is" means we're not winning the league or the champions league, we might not even get into the top 4 given the competition this year.