New contract appaz. No surprise. Happy with that. I'd be happy if it was a lifetime deal and came with a statue.
Yeah but how long?
HahaForever obviously.
I think the muted response is due to him not being a "new player". I think many of us are saving our excitement for the "big summer signing".Why aren't we more excited about Origi?
Why is Divock?
Legend.
I think the muted response is due to him not being a "new player". I think many of us are saving our excitement for the "big summer signing".
I still celebrate that like it just happened. Fucking awesome. Delighted for the lad, and with the 3 in front, do we really need to waste money on someone else??? Other areas need addressing.
Definitely. He's a good option from the bench, but we still need some outright quality who can directly compete against Mane, Salah and Firmino. I'd like to see an attacking left sided player come in or at least one who is two footed. I fear an injury to Mane more than anyone else.I still celebrate that like it just happened. Fucking awesome. Delighted for the lad, and with the 3 in front, do we really need to waste money on someone else??? Other areas need addressing.
I'll be honest, I would rather we sold him off his moment in the limelight and brought in some shit hot no. 9. I'm clearly lacking a soul.
I think we still need a quality player up front.
Mane, Salah and Firmino have only tiny summer breaks which will affect us.
Guys, I'm sorry, but I really think with a front 3 as good as Salah-Mane-Firmino you can't have "genuine competition." There is no way a player of similar calibre will consider coming here to "compete" with 3 other established world-class players who have already formed a tightly-calibrated attacking unit. Even the richest teams don't have that. PSG has no "competition" for Neymar-Mbappe-Cavani, they have a couple of players (Draxler, Di Maria) who can complement them by playing in midfield and also step into the front 3 when necessary. Barca had no competition for Mezzi-Suarez-Neymar – even a player as talented as Alexis was rotting on the bench and had to leave. In the best Barca teams of recent years, they would typically have Iniesta step in from midfield when they needed to sub for one of the attackers – it might seem disruptive to ask a player to change positions, but actually it helped them keep the cohesion (and remember that world-class players have ability to perform well in multiple positions – the whole "playing players out of position" thing really only applies to more limited or younger ones. You see this now with Mane and Salah – as they've matured, Klopp got more options to move them around the pitch). Oh, and Man City actually don't have a world-class front 3 – that's why there is more rotation there, but their main strength is in midfield.
A world-class front 3 in their prime play all the time and when one of them is injured or needs a break, you just deal with it – tweak the formation or fill in with other players and just accept the inevitable drop in quality. Hopefully your team still has enough quality elsewhere to win most games even when not at absolute full strength. But the whole concept of 4 world-class forwards competing for 3 positions is a myth, it has never been done in football as far as I can remember and Liverpool surely won't be the first team to do it. We're not going to buy Mbappe to "alternate" with Mane and Salah – the only way such a transfer could work is as a replacement for one of them. If you believe otherwise, you're just setting yourself up for disappointment.
That's true, with certain forward lines there is only so much you can rotate.
But genuine competition doesn't have to mean a like for like replacement - for example, you mentioned a world class player (like Iniesta) filling in with tweaks to the system.
We don't have those options though.
Perhaps I'm being overly negative about certain players and the likes of Shaqiri, Ox, Keita and Origi will really step up this season (as they did on a couple occasions towards the end of last season - hello Barca).
Perhaps I'm underestimating the abilities of certain youngsters who may come in and have a TAA like impact.
It just feels like we're in a rare position of strength at the moment and we're not capitalising on it. The squad, in certain areas looks thin, and our best players have all been playing throughout the summer. Risky stuff.
I'm not disagreeing with that, mate. I'm all for signing a great attacking midfielder; if it's up to me I'm selling Lallana and signing De Beek, Aouar or Havertz – someone who can play in behind the current front 3 or seamlessly move forward to replace one of them. My post was just explaining why I think we won't sign another expensive wing-forward this summer.
You're going to look pretty silly when Mbappe and Pepe roll in Rurik.
That's true, with certain forward lines there is only so much you can rotate.
But genuine competition doesn't have to mean a like for like replacement - for example, you mentioned a world class player (like Iniesta) filling in with tweaks to the system.
We don't have those options though.
Perhaps I'm being overly negative about certain players and the likes of Shaqiri, Ox, Keita and Origi will really step up this season (as they did on a couple occasions towards the end of last season - hello Barca).
Perhaps I'm underestimating the abilities of certain youngsters who may come in and have a TAA like impact.
It just feels like we're in a rare position of strength at the moment and we're not capitalising on it. The squad, in certain areas looks thin, and our best players have all been playing throughout the summer. Risky stuff.
As for "Even the richest teams don't have that"... that's not strictly true. They're just more willing / able to let players rot on the bench as an insurance policy.