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Martin Zubimendi

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Robbo, tsimi, Gomez, scanlon, chambers

I don't think we're signing a left back unless they're going cheap. Centre back? Maybe. We seem keen on selling sepp, leaving 4cbs for 2 positions. 1 os injury prone. 1 is a kid, 1 can be improved upon, 1 might be leaving for free in the next few years. CB should be priority
We've been linked with an LCB forever. Inacio, Colwill, Hincapie, Gvardiol, Beraldo were all strongly linked last year, and this summer, we reportedly scouted the fuck out of Calafiori and Pacho.

Surprising why we haven't made a move in that area - plenty of top options still available - Bastoni, Lukeba, Inacio, Schlotterbeck, Hincapie, Murillo, Hato

That gives you cover at CB, and also allows you the flexibility of inverting Trent and building up with 3 at the back. Also obviates the need for a defensive specialist in midfield, if you have 3 capable 1v1 defenders at the back.

Morton + cash for Lukeba is something we should seriously be after
 
We've been linked with an LCB forever. Inacio, Colwill, Hincapie, Gvardiol, Beraldo were all strongly linked last year, and this summer, we reportedly scouted the fuck out of Calafiori and Pacho.

Surprising why we haven't made a move in that area - plenty of top options still available - Bastoni, Lukeba, Inacio, Schlotterbeck, Hincapie, Murillo, Hato

That gives you cover at CB, and also allows you the flexibility of inverting Trent and building up with 3 at the back. Also obviates the need for a defensive specialist in midfield, if you have 3 capable 1v1 defenders at the back.

Morton + cash for Lukeba is something we should seriously be after
It’s the same conundrum as Salah, nobody good enough will come and sit on the bench for a year or two waiting for the person in front of them to move on. We would want top tier replacements and top tier players will demand game time.
 
It’s the same conundrum as Salah, nobody good enough will come and sit on the bench for a year or two waiting for the person in front of them to move on. We would want top tier replacements and top tier players will demand game time.
Yet Chelsea signed Pedro Neto while they have Sterling and whatshisname.
 
It’s the same conundrum as Salah, nobody good enough will come and sit on the bench for a year or two waiting for the person in front of them to move on. We would want top tier replacements and top tier players will demand game time.

I think you just sign the best 20-22 year old you can possibly find and give him as many minutes as you can as sub plus maybe playing slightly out of position where possible. That seems pretty feasible. Then they take over in a couple of years.

Got no idea who that player would be, though.
 
This is very much what I expected when we bought in Slot and Fsg named him as new "head coach".
More than ever we would be linked with this player and that player and make no real signings of real worth, nor if a signing was made they would be no real improvement to the team, but just keep us treading water while every team around us will have improved their squads.

FSG need to fuck off, sell the club and allow some one who loves and understand football to take us over
 
I think you just sign the best 20-22 year old you can possibly find and give him as many minutes as you can as sub plus maybe playing slightly out of position where possible. That seems pretty feasible. Then they take over in a couple of years.

Got no idea who that player would be, though.
That could work for a left back who could become a centre back but has that been successful with any other player?

It’s more difficult with right wing. Say we bring in one today, he wouldn’t get centre mid minutes because of how many bodies we have there. Up front is saturated with Gakpo, Jota and Donkey.

We are probably in a position of resigning ourselves to Virgil and Mo leaving for free and looking at breaking our transfer record twice next summer and replacing them.
 
That could work for a left back who could become a centre back but has that been successful with any other player?

It’s more difficult with right wing. Say we bring in one today, he wouldn’t get centre mid minutes because of how many bodies we have there. Up front is saturated with Gakpo, Jota and Donkey.

We are probably in a position of resigning ourselves to Virgil and Mo leaving for free and looking at breaking our transfer record twice next summer and replacing them.

Well a kid of 21 or so isn't going to demand to be an immediate starter.

Plus he'd be second in line anyway, and we have a shitload of matches to manage. Lots of sub appearances, lots of starts in less important matches.

Plus GENERALLY SPEAKING a RWF can usually do some sort of job on the left/centre/no 10, so that affords more chances for minutes - in all probability, anyway.

It's totally feasible.

In the absolute worst case where none of those mitigations suffice, we could always just do what we have with Mamardashvilli and send him out on loan for the first year.
 
Well a kid of 21 or so isn't going to demand to be an immediate starter.


Tbh the calibre of kid we should be looking at may very well be expecting that though, because they'll be getting it at their existing club.

Realistically we should have been looking at 18-20 year olds on the cusp and loaned out for a few years. Arguments there that we could still do that with doak, which I'm not opposed to (providing he kicks on)
 
Tbh the calibre of kid we should be looking at may very well be expecting that though, because they'll be getting it at their existing club.

Realistically we should have been looking at 18-20 year olds on the cusp and loaned out for a few years. Arguments there that we could still do that with doak, which I'm not opposed to (providing he kicks on)

We could have signed the best wonderkid RW in the world last season and Klopp wouldn't have given him a single minute over his boy Mo.
 
We've been linked with an LCB forever. Inacio, Colwill, Hincapie, Gvardiol, Beraldo were all strongly linked last year, and this summer, we reportedly scouted the fuck out of Calafiori and Pacho.

Surprising why we haven't made a move in that area - plenty of top options still available - Bastoni, Lukeba, Inacio, Schlotterbeck, Hincapie, Murillo, Hato

Apparently none of these are better than Robertson, Tsimikas, Quansah or Konate
 
It’s the same conundrum as Salah, nobody good enough will come and sit on the bench for a year or two waiting for the person in front of them to move on. We would want top tier replacements and top tier players will demand game time.
I don’t understand why? On one hand we are complaining Salah is not pants and shouldn’t play every game but we don’t want to sign an understudy? We have ton of games this year and we were rubbish in Europa mostly playing a mixed teams of ability, this year we are in CL and won’t get away with it. We should have brought a RW a year ago at least he would have got a fair share of games especially over AF Con, the reason for not signing an able RW is not related to playing time I believe.
 
Much as I dislike it, squad improvement is about bringing in 2 to 3 quality players every seasons, along with a few young projects, and then forcing out the weakest 3 to 4 players players.

It is not waiting for first team players to leave before plugging the gaps.

I agree that we should only bring in players better than those we have, but finding these players is precisely what we have a massive army of scouts and analysts for. How can Zubimendi be the only player on this planet that is better than Gravenberch and Tyler?
Generally agree but class, first team level (for us) players aren’t going to come and sit behind Mo, VvD or Ali. In those cases it’s usually one out one in.
 
With a fully fit squad, there are only 2 glaring weaknesses.

1) DM - Imo, Endo isn't good enough for Slot ball. Gravy/Stef potentially could be, but it's a huge punt. Zubimendi was a more sure fire DM. I'd be fine taking the risk on not buying a DM, if it meant sorting out:

2) CF - I think we win the league last year if Jota stays fit - but Jota's fitness record means we're relying on Nunez. He's simply not good enough for a technical team. Diaz doesn't score enough from LW, Salah can't beat a player any more, but can create a lot of chances. Those chances need to be falling to a Jota or Isak. I would have loved if we could offer Newcastle 40M + Nunez for Isak. When Jota is fit, both can play LW/CF and we'll have 3 goalscorers up top. When Jota isn't fit, we can play Gakpo/Diaz LW and Isak CF.

Agreed. I would bolt on back up RW. We have nobody who can go on the outside of the right flank unless Slot wants to use utilise Bradley up the pitch. For me this summer was an opportunity to explore potential Salah replacements, so it's been disappointing to see so few links.
 
I tend to go with the consensus that we should be investing in 20-22 year olds who have the potential to take over from Salah and VVD. OK, we can argue that we've done that to a degree investing in the likes of Elliott, Nyoni and others at an even earlier stage of development. I don't think it's that hard to sell to a 21 year old that they will figure in games, most likely as a sub and in cup competitions, with a view to proving their worth and taking over from a player who is leaving 12 months down the line. If anything, that's exactly the situation we should have seen this Summer (or earlier) and clearly what we are trying to do with this Georgian lad. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just perplexing and frustrating that we've not done it earlier for the positions we are now desperate to fill.

I mean, imagine being tapped up by one of the biggest clubs in Europe and being told you will be mentored (in a sense) for 12 months by two of the best players of the past decade?
 
Honestly think we should just invest the Zubi savings in our doping program. Inhalers and stimulants for everyone and we might just make it through this season ok.
 
Well a kid of 21 or so isn't going to demand to be an immediate starter.

Plus he'd be second in line anyway, and we have a shitload of matches to manage. Lots of sub appearances, lots of starts in less important matches.

Plus GENERALLY SPEAKING a RWF can usually do some sort of job on the left/centre/no 10, so that affords more chances for minutes - in all probability, anyway.

It's totally feasible.

In the absolute worst case where none of those mitigations suffice, we could always just do what we have with Mamardashvilli and send him out on loan for the first year.
A 21-year old who is going to be good enough to replace Salah in 12 months would be demanding minutes. In our current situation that player wouldn’t be getting minutes when we have 4 or 5 players vying for the left/centre/10 roles. They are spoken for.

It would be feasible but wouldn’t really play out in reality. Salah would play 80+ minutes in all available league and European games. That just leaves the domestic cups. I’ve said elsewhere, this is the reasons the Clarks and Mortons would be wanting away because they need those minutes.

I don’t think our thoughts are a million miles away from each other. I would’ve preferred us to have signed a 17-19 year old or two back in 2021 or 2022 who we believed to be that successor. They’d be more willing to wait for that spot to open up than trying the hard sell to a 21 year old right now.
 
A 21-year old who is going to be good enough to replace Salah in 12 months would be demanding minutes. In our current situation that player wouldn’t be getting minutes when we have 4 or 5 players vying for the left/centre/10 roles. They are spoken for.

It would be feasible but wouldn’t really play out in reality. Salah would play 80+ minutes in all available league and European games. That just leaves the domestic cups. I’ve said elsewhere, this is the reasons the Clarks and Mortons would be wanting away because they need those minutes.

I don’t think our thoughts are a million miles away from each other. I would’ve preferred us to have signed a 17-19 year old or two back in 2021 or 2022 who we believed to be that successor. They’d be more willing to wait for that spot to open up than trying the hard sell to a 21 year old right now.

Nah you're just whingeing about a non-existent problem. It's a totally manageable situation, clearly.
 
I can't help but feel as though Stockholm syndrome has taken over somewhat.

Unless my memory is totally failing me (which is entirely possible), more or less everyone was in agreement here that we needed to strengthen. Now there seem to be increasing numbers who are parroting the lines that we have a big squad, it'd be hard / impossible to find the players to fit into our squad and so forth and so forth.
 
We have a decent squad. No doubting that. But, others have stronger squads and have added further.
Unless Slot is Klopp plus ultra, we may scape fourth with some luck is we don’t strengthen.

I’ve been saying for a little while that it was going to be a quiet window for us. I hope I’m wrong and we land a few top few players before
The window shuts.
 
We will fall short again again due to the obvious lack of depth compared to the competition. Every once in a blue moon we will pull a Leicester. People will tell themselves whatever necessary to prepare for the season.

We all have the fukcing t-shirt at this stage, dont we?
 
Can we like.....maybe close this fucking abomination of a thread? Drown it, stone it then burn it.
 
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