goodrobotusses

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:

I read the "digga" explanation too and can confirm that it is widely used by young Germans and is akin to "bro" or "mate". As an outsider living here, though, what I would really like to know about this word is what exactly inspired its mutation from "dicker" ("dicker Freund" meaning "close friend", or alternatively "fatty") to "digga". Doesn't sit right with me at all, but like I said, every kid here says it pretty much three times a sentence.

There's still chance for us to row back.

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We'll get that DM when Tchouameni is a withered husk crawling out of Madrid.

Based on what I saw last season, with everyone fit and in the assumption Trent will still be inverting from RB. Alisson / TAA Konate VvD Robbo / Mac Endo Jones / Diaz Salah Gakpo That's Diaz right, Salah in the middle and Gakpo left. If Salah gets someone reliably getting outside of him (Trent or someone like Szobo, who talent-wise should be in the team but faded badly after a good start), he can still play on the right. But too often last season he was too wide and isolated to impact games, especially now he doesn't seem as able to beat a man through speed and strength as he once did. Diaz can beat a man and is happy to hold the width, allowing Trent to do his midfield thing, even if Diaz isn't the ideal choice on the right. If we get in a CB, DM and a forward, then obviously the team would look different.

The biggest stinker in there is 19-20, even if we did end up winning the league that season. After that, you could argue a combination of Covid (affected everyone, of course), Edwards going (announced 2021, happened May 2022), Gordon disappearing late in 2022 and Klopp/Lijnders' alleged greater influence over transfers and contracts (which may have been a factor in Edwards and Ward leaving) are part of what derailed our hit rate. Without going back and looking at each transfer window, my recollection is that we almost always finished transfer windows at least one short, especially when we did that "one target for a certain position and one target only" thing (van Dijk, Tchouameni). I'll leave it to others to debate the value of that approach, however, as I am agnostic about it. Mentioning Arsenal is interesting, though. They have done very good business in the last seasons, yes, but prior to their recent successes and uptick in performance, the debates about transfers and the club's ownership (American, unambitious) on Arsenal forums would have looked quite similar to the ones we've been having here since FSG took over.

This is true and my preference also, but this year we have a new coach and international tournaments that are slowing everything down and preventing Slot from meeting and assessing the players he has. I'm sure he suspects we need a CB, DM and forward too, but there are valid reasons for the slow start. And had Newcastle not played silly buggers, maybe we'd have signed Gordon on June 30th rather than around August 31st, which might yet happen.

Defo agree with this post. It's a real head-scratcher. Like, across five players we're better as a squad in attack than we were with Salah, Mane, Firmino and a packet of crisps (sorry, Div), but with any three of them on the pitch at once, we're worse than back then. So we have five good forwards, but I'd sell one happily if we were able to bring in a great one and improve the first XI. Isn't his agent his mum?

No, but if the powers that be inside the club think one or two of our kids have elite potential, their pathways shouldn't be blocked off. Not saying any of the current kids will become a TAA, Gerrard, Owen or Fowler, but we don't know how they are viewed internally. Like, I like the idea of a Geertruida as a player, but when we already have TAA, Gomez and Bradley, who looks potentially top level, I think the money could be spent better elsewhere. As for the three midfielders you mentioned, Mac Allister is the only one with prior PL experience. It's not unreasonable to expect Endo, Szobo and Gravenberch to all be more consistent this season.

I don't think what you're saying is unfair, but I wasn't really commenting on people's wonderings about the overall effectiveness of our transfer dealings over the years. I was responding to what Diaz7 said about the club feeding names to journalists and us consequently getting linked to more than 100 players. I've also been left frustrated at the end of different transfer windows by our lack of activity, but the only time to judge is when the window closes, not mid-July based on how much chatter is happening or not on social media. I'm hoping we get the types of players I think we need, but I'm also half-expecting to end up feeling we're one or two short, as has often been the case with FSG/Edwards.

We do feed the press on some players, sure, but I'd assume the vast majority of links every transfer window come from agents. Maybe LFC scout a player, make an enquiry, standard due diligence without 100% definitely wanting to sign the player, and then the agent goes running to the first "online transfer influencer" they can find to say "LFC are interested in Player XYZ". As for what we're doing or not doing, I'll judge on September 1st. Find it a bit weird that it's assumed we're doing nothing if there is nothing to read on the internet about what we're doing. Transfer articles and social media posts are just the tip of the information iceberg.

I wondered the same, but looking at stories on Colwill, it seems he's settled at Chelsea (as much as anyone can be). Changed his shirt number for the new season from John Terry's accursed No26 to No6, which, if you thought you were leaving, why would you bother? And the team was in large part playing together for the first time. Klopp himself said the team should improve this year with more experience under their belts. That said, we do need a couple in IMO.