Hughes - First Impressions

[tombrown]

Was listening to Momo's favorite podcast and some interesting points were made about Hughes' role. For obvious reasons, people focus on player recruitment and some use that as the only measure for him. There are a few loons who take that perspective to the point of calling him out as a failure already. But there was a list of things he had in front of him when he joined, all while settling into a new role:

- Hire a new a manager
- Replace the entire backroom staff
- Implement a new org structure as an all powerful manager was replaced with a head coach (at the same time as Edwards was implementing a higher level org structure around him)
- Assess and ultimately sell a bunch of fringe players
- Player recruitment
- Contract renewals

The lack of recruitment is potentially a negative (though that was said back in the day when we didn't sign an alternative to Virgil, and we know where that ended up ...), I think it is only fair to hold judgement on contracts for the moment as we have no idea what is happening and the outcome is yet to be decided, but on all other measures I think it would be fair to mark as a success.

 

[keniget]

All I'll say is, a lot of us (including myself) were sure Gravenberch was going to move this summer.

Which was a very fair assessment based on last season. Same goes for Diaz.

Slot and Hughes see and discuss what goes on in training and they know where each player's head/physical condition is at. Things change all the time. Fundamentally, every player who has put on a Liverpool shirt these past two seasons IS a very good player. Their tactical / physical profile / condition may or may not fit what the coach needs but that is an assessment that the team continually makes and revises. So if we were looking for a 6, but we changed our mind, there may be a reason for it.

I'm not saying I'm convinced this is the case, but I'm also not closing my mind to it.

I didn’t hear anyone talk about Gravenberch leaving.

 

[MomoWASright]

Was listening to Momo's favorite podcast and some interesting points were made about Hughes' role. For obvious reasons, people focus on player recruitment and some use that as the only measure for him. There are a few loons who take that perspective to the point of calling him out as a failure already. But there was a list of things he had in front of him when he joined, all while settling into a new role:

- Hire a new a manager
- Replace the entire backroom staff
- Implement a new org structure as an all powerful manager was replaced with a head coach (at the same time as Edwards was implementing a higher level org structure around him)
- Assess and ultimately sell a bunch of fringe players
- Player recruitment
- Contract renewals

The lack of recruitment is potentially a negative (though that was said back in the day when we didn't sign an alternative to Virgil, and we know where that ended up ...), I think it is only fair to hold judgement on contracts for the moment as we have no idea what is happening and the outcome is yet to be decided, but on all other measures I think it would be fair to mark as a success.

I stopped reading after the fifth word.

TLDR.

 

[MomoWASright]

I didn’t hear anyone talk about Gravenberch leaving.

Momo certainly didn’t.

 

[tombrown]

I stopped reading after the fifth word.

TLDR.

I don't blame you. Imagine tombrown misspelling "favourite" 😵

 

[moron]

So he's slow, has a poor first touch, often gets beaten one on one, loses out in physicality and gets bullied, and can't turn on the ball. But can pass forward sometimes.
Amazing how well we did last season in spite of him then.

Yes and it was quite incredible how shit we were when he was not in the team.

 

[StevieM]

Was listening to Momo's favorite podcast and some interesting points were made about Hughes' role. For obvious reasons, people focus on player recruitment and some use that as the only measure for him. There are a few loons who take that perspective to the point of calling him out as a failure already. But there was a list of things he had in front of him when he joined, all while settling into a new role:

- Hire a new a manager
- Replace the entire backroom staff
- Implement a new org structure as an all powerful manager was replaced with a head coach (at the same time as Edwards was implementing a higher level org structure around him)
- Assess and ultimately sell a bunch of fringe players
- Player recruitment
- Contract renewals

The lack of recruitment is potentially a negative (though that was said back in the day when we didn't sign an alternative to Virgil, and we know where that ended up ...), I think it is only fair to hold judgement on contracts for the moment as we have no idea what is happening and the outcome is yet to be decided, but on all other measures I think it would be fair to mark as a success.

Add to this - is there actually any difference between players extending their contract during a transfer window or after it, other than to give those perennially angry at something, one less thing to gurn about?

If anything, so far, the only thing it’s done is effectively have Virgil & Mo effectively indicate they’re keen on extending.

 

[King Binny]

Newcastle chief Paul Mitchell admits he appreciates Liverpool's market work this past summer.

Mitchell was impressed by the sales Liverpool made for fringe players.

He said, "Sometimes I think people get a bit confused with 'big clubs don't sell players, they just buy players from the smaller clubs'.

“I think there's a lot of good learnings in Liverpool's practices.

"Even this year if you look what Liverpool did, I don't think they lost a big one, but they did sell Fabio Carvalho at £25million and they did do the centre-back (Sepp van den Berg) at £25m, that's still £50million and then you can fund a big one yourself.

“So there has to be a more balanced approach, there has to be a more balanced model and there definitely has to be a more strategic approach here that we haven't had the last two and a half years.

"I think the work that has been done has been really good and set solid foundations in terms of the ability of the squad to perform at the level of ambitions of the club."

 

[KopRed]

He is just trying to reiterate that Gordon and Bruno won't won't come cheap.

 

[Cleric]

So he's slow, has a poor first touch, often gets beaten one on one, loses out in physicality and gets bullied, and can't turn on the ball. But can pass forward sometimes.
Amazing how well we did last season in spite of him then.

We were third last season. That's not really success, is it? Imo if we'd have bought Rice (prob not possible) or another top DM we could have won the league as it's such a key position in Klopp's very attacking setup.
Ultimately, I think Hughes could also be guilty of not reinforcing that key position. Mac has another muscle issue so we're already looking potentially short there. I really don't get only having one target, especially when other clubs have failed to get Zubimendi.
And rather than sarcasm, I'd be more interested in whether you think Endo is pretty slow, often bullied, hasn't got a great first touch, decent progressive passing at times etc. He's no donkey but definitely limited as a footballer.

 

[bluebell]

We were third last season. That's not really success, is it? Imo if we'd have bought Rice (prob not possible) or another top DM we could have won the league as it's such a key position in Klopp's very attacking setup.
Ultimately, I think Hughes could also be guilty of not reinforcing that key position. Mac has another muscle issue so we're already looking potentially short there. I really don't get only having one target, especially when other clubs have failed to get Zubimendi.
And rather than sarcasm, I'd be more interested in whether you think Endo is pretty slow, often bullied, hasn't got a great first touch, decent progressive passing at times etc. He's no donkey but definitely limited as a footballer.

Endo did really well but towards the latter part of the season you could see fatigue setting in. The saving grace is we do have Moreton and Grav, so Fatigue cannot be an excuse this year. I think we will be in the mix along with City until Jan window and at that point, I would hope by then they know where the chinks are and fix them

 

[Cleric]

Endo did really well but towards the latter part of the season you could see fatigue setting in. The saving grace is we do have Moreton and Grav, so Fatigue cannot be an excuse this year. I think we will be in the mix along with City until Jan window and at that point, I would hope by then they know where the chinks are and fix them

I saw it more as Klopp getting Endo to play beyond himself and not being able to sustain that level. He tended to look worse when the team was struggling, so maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe the team wasn't working because of the DM position though?

The new system makes us less reliant on a DM so I'm not getting my hopes up for Jan as I reckon we'll muddle through. I'd love to see Morton get games.

 

[Jürgen4PM]

You can’t win @Frogfish - strike them down and they only become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!!!

Star Trek...,......Right?

 

[Beamrider]

Star Trek...,......Right?

Sacrilege!

 

[Markeh]

Star Trek...,......Right?

beam me up spocky

 

[bluebell]

You can’t win @Frogfish - strike them down and they only become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!!!

 

[moron]

@Frogfish - is that guy in the hoodie Spock ?