Ozan Kabak

[YNWAViking]

He's talented for sure. He was rookie of the season in Bundesliga a few years back - not bad. But young at 20, so he will have some ups and downs. The last 6 months has been tough on him, but with some Kloppo hugs and clear direction I have high hopes for this guy. 

[Barrington Womble]

5 minutes ago, El Rojo said:

 

Yeah, will likely be Hendo and Phillips for now until Fabinho is available again. I reckon Kabak will then get games alongside Fabinho once he settles in. 

I wouldn't be shocked to see Fabinho to be the one switched back into midfield. I think Henderson is giving a bit more there of what we lose from VVD being out. I think he reads it well like VVD, his talking is helping us hold that high line, his quick long diagonal passes are getting us up the pitch in a similar way and he doesn't jump in too quickly into challenges and tries to make the attacker beat him rather than gifting it to him. I know it's only a small sample size of games, so I may be reading too much into it, but he feels a better choice to me right now. I think if fab is available this weekend, we go with the 2 of them, after that though if they were both fit I would go with Hendo and get Fab back in that 6 position. 

[El Rojo]

5 minutes ago, Barrington Womble said:

I wouldn't be shocked to see Fabinho to be the one switched back into midfield. I think Henderson is giving a bit more there of what we lose from VVD being out. I think he reads it well like VVD, his talking is helping us hold that high line, his quick long diagonal passes are getting us up the pitch in a similar way and he doesn't jump in too quickly into challenges and tries to make the attacker beat him rather than gifting it to him. I know it's only a small sample size of games, so I may be reading too much into it, but he feels a better choice to me right now. I think if fab is available this weekend, we go with the 2 of them, after that though if they were both fit I would go with Hendo and get Fab back in that 6 position. 

Fair points. We’ll be a vastly better team with either in their proper role. 

[Barrington Womble]

13 minutes ago, YNWA-Viking said:

He's talented for sure. He was rookie of the season in Bundesliga a few years back - not bad. But young at 20, so he will have some ups and downs. The last 6 months has been tough on him, but with some Kloppo hugs and clear direction I have high hopes for this guy. 

my concern will be concentration. when it's backs against the wall all the time, you are just acting on instinct. it won't be like that with us, he will spend ages out of the game and it is how he deals with that will be really important. he is apparently one to jump in like Lovren used to, so he needs to be careful not to overdo that in his desire to impress, because he will feel sometimes like he has had no chance to impress because most of the cunts who play against us don't try and cross the half way line. what klopp and his team need to start drilling into him is at a poor team you can impress by making some big tackles here and there and you've so little confidence in those around you and the opposition come at you in such numbers, that reckless challenges perhaps make sense because you're fucked anyway. But it's different here. You will be judged on mistakes, not successes. Even when teams counter us, they rarely do it in numbers, so part of the deal with a centre back is to just cut down options, slow up the attack and let people get back. That's not to say if the chance is there to win the ball you don't take it, but you need to always look at the big picture and not just the immediate 1-2-1 confrontation - that decision making for me is what it is about. honestly I think you could make a quick video real of lovren and some of his brain farts and joel matip, who rarely jumps in to show the difference in how to defend in a top team. We need to drill that into him. Less Lovren and more Matip. 

[Strontium]

21 hours ago, SasaS said:

He is apparently Kurdish. Our first Kurd?

 

No way.

[sir roger]

This lad is 20 whereas Dejan was 26 when we got him and 28 by the time Jurgen got his hands on him , so much easier to mould I would imagine.

[magicrat]

49 minutes ago, sir roger said:

This lad is 20 whereas Dejan was 26 when we got him and 28 by the time Jurgen got his hands on him , so much easier to mould I would imagine.

Lovren had some fundamental flaws which prevented him from playing well under pressure at the highest level.  

 

[El Rojo]

16 minutes ago, magicrat said:

Lovren had some fundamental flaws which prevented him from playing well under pressure at the highest level.  

 

From time to time, yeah. But there were plenty of games against top quality opposition that he excelled in.

 

For all his flaws (which were much less apparent after Klopp hooked him against Spurs that time), we've missed him badly this season. 

[3 Stacks]

4 minutes ago, El Rojo said:

From time to time, yeah. But there were plenty of games against top quality opposition that he excelled in.

 

For all his flaws (which were much less apparent after Klopp hooked him against Spurs that time), we've missed him badly this season. 

We've missed having someone else available for sure. Have we missed Lovren specifically? The Lovren we saw last season. I don't really think so.

[Strontium]

2 hours ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

No way.

 

Curds. Whey.

 

Never mind.

[TheHowieLama]

1 hour ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

 

Curds. Whey.

 

Never mind.

Saw it.

[magicrat]

3 hours ago, El Rojo said:

From time to time, yeah. But there were plenty of games against top quality opposition that he excelled in.

 

For all his flaws (which were much less apparent after Klopp hooked him against Spurs that time), we've missed him badly this season. 

Don't disagree we could have done with him now. With Lovren I always felt OK when Virg was alongside but anyone else he would drop too deep under pressure and even to the point he would be on top of the keeper. 

[El Rojo]

34 minutes ago, magicrat said:

Don't disagree we could have done with him now. With Lovren I always felt OK when Virg was alongside but anyone else he would drop too deep under pressure and even to the point he would be on top of the keeper. 

In fairness, most of us could probably keep a clean sheet with Virgil beside us. 

[m0e]

Kabak was brought in literally last minute after what happened to Matip, which according to Klopp yesterday was a known at half time v Spurs.

 

(Having just written that, it may well be that Davies was the 2nd buy, even though it was completed first).

 

We clearly kept the Matip situation quiet for the public for a number of obvious and sensible reasons.

 

If you read what he's said about Davies, that's clearly a stop gap.

 

If you believe that we made bids for those Braga and Marseille players for over what it would have cost to buy Bakak (I can believe that), then it makes you wonder why we didn't just buy him outright, doesn't it?

 

I'll bet he's not here by the time the next window shuts.

 

Happy to be wrong, as long as its for the right reasons.

 

And don't really care either way. It's just how I see it now.

[YNWAViking]

Wrong thread!

[TheHowieLama]

5 hours ago, El Rojo said:

In fairness, most of us could probably keep a clean sheet with Virgil beside us. 

Easy to masturbate to - but then...

[VladimirIlyich]

15 hours ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

 

Curds. Whey.

 

Never mind.

You are milking it now.

[Barrington Womble]

23 hours ago, m0e said:

Kabak was brought in literally last minute after what happened to Matip, which according to Klopp yesterday was a known at half time v Spurs.

 

(Having just written that, it may well be that Davies was the 2nd buy, even though it was completed first).

 

We clearly kept the Matip situation quiet for the public for a number of obvious and sensible reasons.

 

If you read what he's said about Davies, that's clearly a stop gap.

 

If you believe that we made bids for those Braga and Marseille players for over what it would have cost to buy Bakak (I can believe that), then it makes you wonder why we didn't just buy him outright, doesn't it?

 

I'll bet he's not here by the time the next window shuts.

 

Happy to be wrong, as long as its for the right reasons.

 

And don't really care either way. It's just how I see it now.

I think you're probably right. Although with the option to buy there for kabak, there's no reason to buy him now. In terms of managing risk, I'm sure the club would pay 1m on every signing if it meant they could send them back at the end of the season. 

[VladimirIlyich]

5 minutes ago, Barrington Womble said:

I think you're probably right. Although with the option to buy there for kabak, there's no reason to buy him now. In terms of managing risk, I'm sure the club would pay 1m on every signing if it meant they could send them back at the end of the season. 

The 'try before you buy' method is a pretty sound strategy in the current climate given that most major transfers nowadays are paid in installments. The big problem is that you are not going to be able to try out a big priced target as their original club will never take them back without you having paid a much larger percentage of any transfer value agreed upon.

[Barrington Womble]

25 minutes ago, VladimirIlyich said:

The 'try before you buy' method is a pretty sound strategy in the current climate given that most major transfers nowadays are paid in installments. The big problem is that you are not going to be able to try out a big priced target as their original club will never take them back without you having paid a much larger percentage of any transfer value agreed upon.

Yeah, I don't think this will become a norm, but it makes real sense while you can. 

[aRdja]

We were linked with Kabak in the summer. Not so much the other defenders. Therefore I suspect he was first choice. Regardless, I don’t think Klopp’s current plan is to start Fabinho and Hendo at CB for the remainder of the season. He will only do so if the two we bring in turn out shite. Even then, we’ll still see Phillips start some games.

[Bad Red Bull]

 

 

[El Rojo]

6 hours ago, Bad Red Bull said:

 

 

Has Ozan Kabak just dropped a huge hint that he’s better than Virgil van Dijk? 

[El Rojo]

Strong suggestions in Jurgen’s pre-match  comments that he’s considering fast-tracking one of the two new centre halves into the side for tomorrow. 
 

Clearly a risk, but one worth taking if we have something approaching a properly functioning midfield again, an area that’s been a bigger problem than defence.

[El Dangerous]

I’m pretty much pinning all my hopes for the season on this little Kurd and all of you should too. I expect nothing less and absolute success and neither should any of you.