January 2023 Transfer Thread

[Scott_M]

1 hour ago, J-V said:

Sign him up. Quality player. 

 

 

A few places over the World Cup has already said we’d had initial discussions with him. Can’t remember where, they were some of the more reputable journalists.

 

Pretty sure I posted it in here. 

[Remmie]

25 minutes ago, J-V said:

Get rid of Matip & Gomez with Gavardiol and Skrinier in.  That's a major improvement for not much extra assuming we can find a mug to give us £40mill for Gomez.  Matip must be worth at least £10mill.

We'd be fucking mental to sell Matip for peanuts. He's boss. 

[3 Stacks]

40 minutes ago, lebron said:

 

Think people underestimate how much we're missing peak Mane and Firmino in the press. Salah alluded to that he liked our new way of playing last year, guessing he's had off days relative to the work rate those three put in in our most dominant performances.

 

For all the pace and unpredictability Darwin brings, he's not peak Firmino when it comes to reading when and where to set the press. Ox is lively, but definitely not Mane (not even Diaz is) when it comes to causing defenders stress/panic. Salah is Salah I guess, but it's frustrating to see how easily he's bypassed on the outside these days.

 

The biggest cause for our problems, I think, is that the other parts of the team don't really trust the forward players to put pressure. They therefore need to retreat, causing the huge gaps we see in midfield these days. Now that Henderson has lost his legs, we really don't have any recovery pace to solve the problems once they arise.

 

We need new legs in midfield for sure, but our attackers need to do a much better job defending as well.

 

 

 

I don't think he would call them out anyway, but he's been pretty consistent in his beliefs that we defend as a team (e.g. we press from the front). I guess he's just as frustrated with the attackers in that respect as he is with the midfielders.

 

 

That very rarely happened when we had Mane, Frimino, Salah in their peak. The few times we got bypassed, Fabinho would get a tackle and/or foul in, and we would have time to set ourselves. Rodri and de Bruyne do that for City now even more than before because Haaland is woeful in the pressing. They are getting away with murder in nearly every game btw. Same goes for Casemiro at Utd. Trouble is, Fabinho is so slow these days that his fouls are becoming later and later and more and more obvious.

 

The kamikaze element is probably mosly down to coaching, as well as our new players being less suited to the pressing than Mane/Firmino. No shame in that. Doubt it'll be much improvement until Diaz/Firmino are back.

 

Agree about the finishing. Shocking the lack of clean strikes our attackers are able to get off.

 

These are all good points. One of the reasons I don't like our business in attack very much recently is that I think it's a lot more scattergun than it used to be. With Mane-Firmino-Salah, they were so complimentary and made for each other that they developed brilliant chemistry and although, Firmino and Mane were naturally very hard working and intelligent, they also knew what to do in their positioning and pressing because they played all the time. That had to have helped our team defending and pressing. 

 

Now, with this approach where I imagine the plan is for there to be a lot more rotation and competitiveness for places between the striker and left wing positions, do we even know what our best front 3 is going to be? Like in theory, Gakpo, Diaz and Darwin should all be good pressers and we know Jota is willing, but how will they be able to build that tactical understanding with one another to the level of what we had before? It's good to have depth, but it might come at the price of chemistry on the pitch between players and we just simply have to build a hierarchy of players at the forward positions. Myself, I don't even know who I want to see play together. Salah is the constant on the right, but then it's a crapshoot. I like Gakpo more on paper with our other forwards, but he's not even played yet.  

[Bobby Hundreds]

I'd sell Jota he is on the road to the wizard of Ox. I've had my fill of these crumbly motherfuckers.

[El Rojo]

Prowsey on target again today. If his name was Enzo ‘El Loco’ Ward-Prowseinho he’d have his own thread here. Get him signed, LFC. 

[Scott_M]

38 minutes ago, Remmie said:

We'd be fucking mental to sell Matip for peanuts. He's boss. 

 

I’d entertain letting Matip leave in the summer.

 

Contract expires in 2024, he’ll be 33 then, poor injury history…

 

I suppose it’d come down to whether any fee we’d receive would be worth him leaving on a free in ‘24. Given the above, probably not. 

[El Rojo]

2 hours ago, J-V said:

Sign him up. Quality player. 

 

 

Nice to read, but boyhood clubs are way down the list in terms of important variables. History is great, but mainly thanks to agents, transfer fees and wages will dictate the big decisions.

[lebron]

1 hour ago, 3 Stacks said:

 

These are all good points. One of the reasons I don't like our business in attack very much recently is that I think it's a lot more scattergun than it used to be. With Mane-Firmino-Salah, they were so complimentary and made for each other that they developed brilliant chemistry and although, Firmino and Mane were naturally very hard working and intelligent, they also knew what to do in their positioning and pressing because they played all the time. That had to have helped our team defending and pressing. 

 

Now, with this approach where I imagine the plan is for there to be a lot more rotation and competitiveness for places between the striker and left wing positions, do we even know what our best front 3 is going to be? Like in theory, Gakpo, Diaz and Darwin should all be good pressers and we know Jota is willing, but how will they be able to build that tactical understanding with one another to the level of what we had before? It's good to have depth, but it might come at the price of chemistry on the pitch between players and we just simply have to build a hierarchy of players at the forward positions. Myself, I don't even know who I want to see play together. Salah is the constant on the right, but then it's a crapshoot. I like Gakpo more on paper with our other forwards, but he's not even played yet.  

 

Diaz maybe, doubt Gakpo and especially Nunez will ever be that good at pressing. They're just not very good at moving sideways and getting down low. A bit unfair on Gakpo maybe, but his body type isn't exactly ideal for this kind of work. Nunez is quick when running in (relatively) straigth lines, but his frame and agility won't really allow the type of pressing Mane used to do for us, and I'm not sure he's going to adapt the necessary game-intelligence to adapt to being our striker pressing from the front. Haaland at City is doing even worse at this part of the game, but City have so many ball-assured midfielders that they don't really lose the ball as much as us. Helps that he scores with every other touch he takes too, I suppose...

 

So what do we do? I'd (no surprises here) still play Firmino in the important league/CL games (seems his body can't take the toll 2-3 games a week inflict), with Salah on the right and one of Nunez and Gakpo on the left (possibly Diaz when he's back. If Bobby needs a breather I'd bring in Jota to play the CF, he's the closest to Firmino when leading the press.

 

I hate to admit defeat just as much as Klopp seemingly does when it comes to philosophy, but we might have to start being more pragmatic in some of the away games. If we can't set our press from the front, we'll continue to get roasted with the way the rest of our team is set up.

 

Just as a point of reference, and to say I agree with much of what Klopp says, this midfield playing with peak Mane, Firmino and Salah in front of them and peak van Dijk behind them wouldn't look half as old/finished as they do now. We can't escape reality though, and either we get new players in or the coaching staff needs to fix the tactical side/the players execution of it.

 

My bet is on Klopp bollocking the players and demand they be a lot tougher in their execution of their plans. E.g. the defenders and midfielders commiting even further up the pitch. If you are playing with a high press, it only takes one player being a bit cowardly for the whole team to fall apart. I think that would irritate him a lot more than some of the midfielders struggling with the pace of the game. We will see I guess.

 

[El Dangerous]

2 hours ago, El Rojo said:

Prowsey on target again today. If his name was Enzo ‘El Loco’ Ward-Prowseinho he’d have his own thread here. Get him signed, LFC. 

Fuck it I’m in. He can play the other half of games

Thiago misses. Free kicks are worth £60m alone.

[Scott_M]

@lebron - Are you suggesting Nunez and Gakpo can’t press because they are >6ft? 
 

How are >6ft centre half’s able to jockey players and show them the direction they want them to go? 
 

[J-V]

3 hours ago, Remmie said:

We'd be fucking mental to sell Matip for peanuts. He's boss. 

Getting on, struggles with two games a week and if we can upgrade which both of those mentioned are get rid.  Keeping hold of aging players and shite has left us in this mess.

[J-V]

Ward Prowse is probably close to 29 now and would cost £60mill. Leave him at Sounthampton.

[TD_LFC]

2 hours ago, El Rojo said:

Prowsey on target again today. If his name was Enzo ‘El Loco’ Ward-Prowseinho he’d...

...still be shit.

[Anubis]

3 hours ago, El Rojo said:

Prowsey on target again today. If his name was Enzo ‘El Loco’ Ward-Prowseinho he’d have his own thread here. Get him signed, LFC. 

On target is generous. He put a cross on from a free kick and everyone missed it and the keeper misjudged it and it crept in at the far post. It was a cross, not a shot.

[Scott_M]

[joe_fishfish]

They’ll be lucky if we offer £65, let alone £65m

[JohnnyH]

Yeah, there’s no way we’d EVER spend the kind of money on a player that would make them our 4th most expensive signing. No way we’d EVER do that. 

[I Am The One Who Knocks]

Now Football Insider are reporting that Caicedo has ‘told friends that he would jump at the chance to join Liverpool’.

 

Brighton ‘have no plans’ to sell him this month but it is stated that he is ‘valued around the £45m mark’.

 

Caicedo’s long-term future is ‘in doubt’ as he is set to change his agent in preparation of a ‘big-money transfer’.

 

He has ‘let it be known to people close to him’ that he is ‘definitely interested’ in joining Liverpool.

 

Caicedo is understood to be one player Chelsea have ‘interest’ in either this month or in the summer.

 

A move for Caicedo may be higher up on the agenda now that talks with Benfica about signing Enzo Fernandez have broken down.

 

Benfica boss Roger Schmidt has hit out at Chelsea over their “disrepectful” pursuit of Fernandez.

 

“They tried to get the player on their side and they know they only can get this player when they pay the clause. So it’s a very clear situation…” Schmidt said.

 

“What the club is doing who wants to buy Enzo is disrespectful against all of us, against Benfica and I cannot accept what they are doing. So to make the player crazy and then to pretend they can pay the clause and later they want to negotiate.”

[3 Stacks]

2 hours ago, lebron said:

 

Diaz maybe, doubt Gakpo and especially Nunez will ever be that good at pressing. They're just not very good at moving sideways and getting down low. A bit unfair on Gakpo maybe, but his body type isn't exactly ideal for this kind of work. Nunez is quick when running in (relatively) straigth lines, but his frame and agility won't really allow the type of pressing Mane used to do for us, and I'm not sure he's going to adapt the necessary game-intelligence to adapt to being our striker pressing from the front. Haaland at City is doing even worse at this part of the game, but City have so many ball-assured midfielders that they don't really lose the ball as much as us. Helps that he scores with every other touch he takes too, I suppose...

 

So what do we do? I'd (no surprises here) still play Firmino in the important league/CL games (seems his body can't take the toll 2-3 games a week inflict), with Salah on the right and one of Nunez and Gakpo on the left (possibly Diaz when he's back. If Bobby needs a breather I'd bring in Jota to play the CF, he's the closest to Firmino when leading the press.

 

I hate to admit defeat just as much as Klopp seemingly does when it comes to philosophy, but we might have to start being more pragmatic in some of the away games. If we can't set our press from the front, we'll continue to get roasted with the way the rest of our team is set up.

 

Just as a point of reference, and to say I agree with much of what Klopp says, this midfield playing with peak Mane, Firmino and Salah in front of them and peak van Dijk behind them wouldn't look half as old/finished as they do now. We can't escape reality though, and either we get new players in or the coaching staff needs to fix the tactical side/the players execution of it.

 

My bet is on Klopp bollocking the players and demand they be a lot tougher in their execution of their plans. E.g. the defenders and midfielders commiting even further up the pitch. If you are playing with a high press, it only takes one player being a bit cowardly for the whole team to fall apart. I think that would irritate him a lot more than some of the midfielders struggling with the pace of the game. We will see I guess.

 

I don't know how much the physiology of a player affects the quality of their pressing, but I assume Gakpo and Nunez have the athletic qualities and the intentions to be good pressers at some point. 

 

I think Nunez has been disappointing in that department so far. The type of athlete he is, he should be great at it, unless his size is a problem, but I would assume the club would have known about that.

 

My worry as I said is more about having complimentary profiles and if we can get 3 of them building real chemistry together.

[Scott_M]

Gotta dream the dream…

 

[El Rojo]

2 hours ago, J-V said:

Ward Prowse is probably close to 29 now and would cost £60mill. Leave him at Sounthampton.

 

Don’t go hating on Prowsey if you can’t even spell Southampton. Put some respect on his name. 

[lebron]

4 hours ago, Scott_M said:

@lebron - Are you suggesting Nunez and Gakpo can’t press because they are >6ft? 
 

How are >6ft centre half’s able to jockey players and show them the direction they want them to go? 
 

 

Not solely because they are > 6 ft, but there's definitely an advantage having a low centre of gravity when making quick turns (which is needed to be able to press efficiently). There’s also a big difference between being quick (van Dijk, Nunez) and having quick feet and being able to shift direction easily (Mane, Thiago). Mane had both, and Firmino sufficiently quick feet in addition to a great game intelligence.

 

I cant think of many CB¨s that would be good pressers of the ball if I am honest. Gomez would easily be the best of ours, which is also one of the reasons why he is able to play RB. Jockeying a striker with his back to goal requires completetely different abiliteis, like strength and balance.

 

[Heinze]

Announce Bellingham.

[Freddo]

Getting to the point aren’t we that we need more than midfielders here. Caecido is the man to get. He’ll make a huge difference. A centre half too. Another colossus at the back. 

[Mark M]

It will be the height of negligence to not sign a midfielder before the end of the month.