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That was true of Mikael Silvestre, Phil Jones and Memphis Depay but maybe less so Christiano Ronaldo.

I think we saw it in the first month or so. Good dribbling and movement, pace, happy to take a shot on, picking out crosses rather than punting them. Played with good amount of urgency. Then it fell to pieces from there. If he actually had mental resilience, he could have been a proper player.

I remember him playing there, under Rodgers I think. I actually thought he looked good in that position. Weirdly enough played with far more freedom from there. He had the most fragile mentality I've seen in an attacking player. Couldn't handle being at a club like this at all.

In hindsight the way it looked to me was that comolli went to Kenny with bad data analysis that said "crosses leads to goals" and Kenny was willing to listen to the modern experts around him (Clarke was a good choice) and adjusted the tactics since that is how comolli wanted to compose the squad to be geared towards anyway. Think with different setup around him, rather than FSG's first attempt at being the smartest men in the room that also involved hiring that social media weirdo, things would have turned out differently. He was geared towards being making sure all the parts work together, when the club needed someone to say "no, this is stupid. I will be presenting a better vision for all to follow" as Klopp then did.

You forgot Downing. As I recall, we proceeded to cross lots of floaty percentage crosses, but without Carroll actually playing. That was the most baffling part.

And somehow Isak stands out as doing worse than all the others except maybe Konate and Mac Allister. And Mac Allister at least puts in mediocre performances here and there. And has even had two good games this season ()

I think his technique is too clean and his centre of gravity too effortlessly balanced for that. Suarez was more about trying things he had no right to do and somehow doing it over and over again. In my head canon, he is the player in history with the least difference between stuff they do in training and stuff they pull off on match day.

I was more upset about Lambert who was a Rodgers pick. The fact we all know which ones were comitee and which ones were manager signings is f***ed up.

I remember he played for us but I honestly can't remember a single action from him or what he was like on the pitch. Blanked out. Yet I have plenty of memories of Balotelli perambulating a small area of the pitch that same season. f***ing Rodgers.

Poor bugger, having to partner with someone like that.

Look, I am easy to convince. If he starts actually playing well I'll flip real quick.

Putting the kind of businessy lens on I imagine the suits would be wearing, the negative risk of selling him is quite low, since we already have a proper player in his position. And the positive risk of selling him is the opportunity to put the money to use elsewhere in the squad where it is more needed (ie. left wing). Meanwhile, the negative risk of keeping him is looking quite high at the moment, although it is somewhat mitigated by Ekitike filling that gap. But conversely, the positive risk of keeping him is also lessened by Ekitike. How much better than Eikitike is he really going to be, that him staying on will significantly improve the side, assuming he actually delivers in a reasonable timeframe, relative to his salary and potential fee utilised elsewhere?

Or mentality. Like Hassony said, if he doesn't cope well with pressure, he's a bad fit. Players do turn crap "overnight". A player's ability at the top level is not simply the sum of fitness, natural ability and a bit of confidence sprinkled in. Coutinho's career as a top player was basically over at 25.

If he were playing like Darwin and making unprovoked errors and bad decisions, that'd be explainable here. He doesn't even do enough to make bad decisions.

I don't think waiting two seasons for him to find his feet will end up being fine.

This is mildly interesting and perhaps goes some way towards explaining how different a game he is playing, some of it by design, some of it not. That and the fact that he has prior form for taking a season off here and there could perhaps suggest he could turn it around. I still think the negative risk of keeping him far outweight the negative risk of selling him for a half decent price, but let's see how the second half of the season goes.

oh god. He's Balotelli, isn't he. fml. Loan him out to protect his value?

I don't get how he can be so mentally absent. It's not like the Carroll situation, where we're buying him and he's basically only going along with because the club says the money is too good. He's forced it like no other, staked everything on getting to play for us. And now that he's here, he makes it look like he never wanted to be here in the first place. He should be out there with more fire in his belly than Darwin Nunez, not doing some form of s*** homage to Balotelli in a red shirt.

I don't recall giving an opinion on the matter at all. For a good price, I'd sell in a heartbeat right now. I can't imagine anyone willing to offer that though. In the summer, we might well be staring into it being a good deal to sell for a less than good price.

When is it overdue to be thinking that way?

Foden is also in an environment where he knows he's been successful before. Also, to me he's kind of the archetype of a systems player. He'll only ever play as well as the system permits. So when it worked well two years ago, he was ace, when it didn't work last year he was awful, and now that it sort of works, he's sort of good. See also why he doesn't play well for England and doesn't have a leadership bone in his body. I think Isak's best shot might be a new manager. Besides maybe having a different and/or better tactical approach for him, just to have someone new come in and say "why have you been doing this? do that instead" and reset the whole dynamic could be the ticket for him. He needs a lot of things to start going right for him as things stand. He's not even near Wirtz' struggles to adapt.

Griezman is probably the nearest example to Isak. Amazing at Atletico, could never make it work properly at barcelona despite two years of trying. Even then, he was a lot better than Isak has been so far.

I think the common denominator is that whatever the reasons, they ended up in a negative spiral too strong to extract themselves from. The muscle memory of being ace leaves their bodies and the pressure of knowing you had it and lost it makes it even harder to get back, when you're stuck in the environment that caused it in the first place. And I fear the same with Isak, the longer this goes on. I don't see a scenario where he's this bad for a whole season and then turns up world class after pre-season as being all that plausible. I am genuinely thinking something like lukewarm Torres-style "he play well enough, except for the lack of goals and all the great things we thought we were getting when he signed" is more plausible at this stage.

We're halfway into the season. A season where he was meant to be a top contributor, not our worst f***ing player. I hope he recovers and all that, but we're basically writing off an entire season from our premier league proven record signing. It's f***ing mad.

That's honestly what I was thinking myself. Coutinho, Griezman, Pogba, Kaka, Veron, Anelka, Di Maria, Zlatan, Dembele. All world class players who simply couldn't make it work after their big move and weren't able to turn it around (at least not before moving elsewhere). And that's not even accounting for the failed mega transfers with discernible causes, like Torres, Shevchenko, Hazard and Sanches, or the predictable failures like Lukaku, Morata. It happens and actually more often than not when shopping from the most expensive shelf. In the case of someone like Torres, people talk about his knees, but what I saw at Chelsea was far more in his head than his legs. He was terrified of shooting at goal. Something broke in him mentally and never came back.