goodrobotusses

If these deals get revived and Gomez does leave, I'd assume the mooted deal for Geertruida would end up happening.

Why? FWIW I think Trent and Virgil sign when they're back with the squad after their holiday. Mo will probably leave next summer.

But I think that's exactly the type we're not in the market for, like an Ugarte. Was the case with Klopp and the same again with Slot. Think you can no longer carry a player who offers nothing on the ball in a team that plays so intricately from the back and in tight spaces in midfield.

Played 33 out of 34 league games, was injured at Schalke the season before I think.

Bakayoko. Links to him have mostly gone quiet. Maybe Brentford will finally get their man.

I don't think the price ends up as high as €20m but rejecting the first lowball offer will be a first step. PSV and the player have done a lot of shouting in public and through proxies about how they want the price reduced, but the club can definitely do better than €10m if they want him that much. I'm sure on some PSV forum somewhere there are posters moaning, "Just pay the price FFS," albeit with a Dutch accent.

I assume it coming out that a bid for Endo was rejected and that other clubs are interested is the first step in trying to get the best price possible. But there's no way we can let him go without thinking a replacement is coming. God knows who that could be though. No creditable links and I really don't know who is out there who fulfils that unicorn criteria of being a ballwinner who can also turn in tight spaces and start building play. A more limited destroyer like Ugarte is available and no sign of interest from us. We'd be mad to leave it to a combination of Bajcetic (young, coming off a long injury lay-off) and Mac Allister (can play there but better linking play further forward). Endo isn't a world-beater but he's still the closest thing we've got to what I assume Slot wants at No6, and even then it seems Slot doesn't rate him enough to want to hang on to him.

Depends where in the south though. Toulouse is proper "Twickers" but Marseille is definitely a football town.

Were Maresca still there, I'd agree, but Steve Cooper's Forest were very back-to-basics in the PL. I think of the coaches at the two clubs, Russell Martin at Southampton is more dogmatic about an attacking style of football, although, as pointed out, Kompany eventually caved on his philosophy at Burnley last season – and too late to boot.

Hmm I wonder why that would be.

Yeah, I understand it's a part of ongoing reservations about the player, but if we do our job properly this summer he should hopefully end up a dependable deputy to a better player who adds experience as the younger midfielders develop. Every squad needs guys like him.

He wasn't great but it's just pre-season. I would only worry if that stuff was happening when it gets serious.

It was a weird 4-2-4-0 with Salah right, Carvalho left and Elliott and Szobo as No10s/false 9s. Slot said we would use a proper striker when we have one available though. Definitely looked more 4-2-3-1/4-2-4 in conception though, with a double pivot at the base of midfield. He started alongside Endo as one of the two at the base of midfield before Nyoni had to replace him. Nyoni was probably the best player on the pitch. We improved a lot playing through the lines after he came on. He is another who seems to have grown over the summer, but only upwards. He's really skinny.

I'd be very surprised if we spent big on two attackers this window. MAYBE if Diaz goes, but even then it would be a surprise. It would be great, but a surprise.

It's really weird how Newcastle only gave Gordon a 3.5-year deal when they signed him. Like others, I think if a deal for him doesn't happen this summer, we go back in next year, when he only has a year left (assuming he now refuses to sign a new deal with NUFC). I'd assume him coming in would require an outgoing such as Diaz anyway. And with interest in Diaz still seeming relatively soft, it wouldn't surprise me if we pivoted to getting Salah's long-term successor in now (Kubo, Kudus, take your pick), with Diaz staying another year.

Yeah, he's definitely one we've been following for at least a year. I guess the question is how we rate him versus other candidates out there. If we end up signing a Kubo or Kudus to play off the right long term, you'd assume we've decided he's not the one for us.

They talked about a few alternatives, specifically Brajan Gruda at Mainz (mentioned as a Slack favourite at TTF) and Johan Bakayoko at PSV (praised highly, could be about to explode but Eredivisie asterisk). Yankuba Minteh also gets mentioned as someone they're surprised LFC didn't go for, with Raphinha an outside-the-box shout who gets dismissed by the Statsbomb guy as not good enough. Both the analysts also think Gakpo is an overrated one-trick pony.

This discussion about the Kubo to LFC links from a stats perspective was quite interesting. It's also available as a pure podcast under the name "The Transfer Flow" if you don't want to look at these lads' faces for an hour: The guy behind the pod (on the right, I think) is the Statsbomb guy Ted Knutson, who sometimes appears on The Anfield Wrap and used to do analytics for Brentford and Midtjylland. Statsbomb is also the analytics company that LFC uses, I believe.

I find them frustrating sometimes, but unless we're happy having murky owners of the City/Newcastle/PSG/Chelsea variety (which I'm personally not, but each to their own), I honestly can't think of another club that punches its weight and has better owners. Maybe at the moment some might argue Arsenal, but until their recent uptick in fortunes, many of their fans hated their owners as much as some reds dislike FSG, and often for similar reasons. Beyond that, I don't know… Spurs? Are Levy and co really better? You could argue for smaller clubs like Brighton, but they swim in shallower waters. Europe-wide, you could say Bayern and Real Madrid have "honest" owners, as in they're not funded by states and/or oil money (although Real Madrid have had suspect dealings with the Spanish state in the past), but their league circumstances are totally different to ours. Even Madrid's one competitor, Barcelona, has utterly collapsed.

You could also see that Klopp never 100% trusted Keita and Ox defensively. Our workmanlike midfield, including Gini's more conservative role, was the reason TAA and Robbo could be so aggressive in attack without destabilising the team in defence. I think Klopp was always trying to find a way to get more guile out of the midfield without compromising the team defensively. For a short spell with Thiago, it did work, but his body couldn't cope.

Transfers are often part of a chain of sales though. Maybe we have players lined up but need to wait on the selling clubs arranging replacements before they are willing to sell. The Fulham-Bayern-LFC Palhinha-Gravenberch last minute merry-go-round last summer being an example, and even then Bayern didn't get their deal sorted because Fulham couldn't get a new DM in. Likewise, maybe our buying a forward is dependent on an outgoing such as Diaz. Frustrating, definitely, and I definitely have the same reflexive fear that FSG/Edwards' cautious approach might leave us short on September 1st, as it has before, but these could be real factors that we're just going to have to accept and judge when the window closes.

I for one am very upset that Man City have already signed their ownership group's own player, and Arsenal have turned Raya's loan into a permanent deal, continue to haggle over the Calafiori fee and have bought in two kids from Denmark and the Netherlands.

Alvarez and Bernardo are gonna have to stage a jailbreak.

Yoro (answering phone): "Alo?" Ferdinand: "Ballon d'Or! Ballon d'Or!" Yoro: "Oo iz this?" Ferdinand: "BALLON D'OR!!"

His history is all over the show. He was at Barcelona's academy before Madrid, but they had to release him after it turned out they had signed a bunch of kids via dodgy methods (Onana and Lee Seung-woo also had to leave). He went back to Japan, where he played first team football at 15, with the idea Barca would bring him back at 18. By this point a bunch of clubs were circling and his then-new agent demanded a €1m a year first-team contract from Barca, who were only willing to offer a €250k youth deal. Madrid offered a €1.2m, so he went there instead and then cycled through a bunch of loans (did well at Mallorca, less well at Villarreal and Getafe) before ending up at Sociedad two years ago, where he's impressed. https://breakingthelines.com/player-analysis/takefusa-kubo-home-at-last-at-real-sociedad/ This is him at Mallorca from a few years ago: