TalkSilly

With Adey Ward as his agent these stories of him turning down £180,000 a week at Arsenal don't seem that credible to me, would we pay him that? Neither does the prospect of FSG sanctioning a £30 million move for an injury prone player with only a year left on his contract.

And it's not as if there aren't other positions that couldn't be improved upon either. I'd hoped we would just do what Spurs have done these last few years: add 2 or 3 decent, effective players every summer and eventually find ourselves in the strong position they are now. But we definitely need one or two more first-team ready players in before the end of the month for that progress to be maintained.

If nothing happens before the end of the window there will be trouble no doubt. At the very least FSG will have to shake up the recruitment team as they just aren't delivering. It's nearly 5 years since they moved over from City and their record has been patchy to put it mildly. This is Klopp's 4th window, there's been ample time and opportunity to sort out the shortcomings in the squad but we still only have 2, first-team quality but injury prone centre-backs. One slip and we will be playing that CL qualifier tie with Klavan or Gomez in the heart of the defence and that will put the prestige of the club at risk, to say nothing of the massive revenue at stake. It's not in FSG's or the club's best interests to put itself in this position but it has. That's just incompetence, nothing else. What I find really odd about FSG's stewardship of the club is the hapless way they've managed risk. Henry's whole business career revolves around the accurate assessment of risk, his fund is one of the best performing anywhere over the last 20 years because he is so good at it. But with him as owner Liverpool as a club seem to have taken ill advised gambles all over the place. With Coutinho for instance, just because he signed a new contract doesn't mean he couldn't leave us high and dry a few months later, it's already happened to them once before with Suarez. Even if we keep him this window he will almost certainly be off next summer so we should be looking to get his replacement in now to give them a season to bed in but I'd be very surprised if we do. I hope things have turned round and we have reasons to be optimistic by August 31st because all the old excuses no longer apply. We don't have a manager nobody's heard of or no chance of Champion's League football or a lack of money anymore. City and Chelsea are getting these deals over the line, why aren't we able to do the same?

Anyone else seen the stories about one of the attackers calling himself "Abz" and wearing an Arsenal shirt? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

All this talk about £100 million for Keita and Van Dijk but not much about a left-back or another quick forward. Milner has plainly had enough of playing at left back and faded to an almost non-existent attacking threat in the second half of the season as far as I could make out. I can't see how this young kid from Fulham could be a replacement either. Apart from being 17 he's more of an attacking player anyway. As for the forward, Julian Brandt appears to have decided to stay put apparently because he wants guaranteed first team football to improve his World Cup chances. The only other player mentioned is Mohammed Salah, don't know how likely he is. I wonder whether Coutinho moving back into midfield might allow Klopp to persuade Brandt that he would be first choice in a front 3 with Firmino and Mane. I know Brandt has been a long-term fixation for our scouting department. They were reportedly watching him when they noticed Emre Can, and that was 3 years ago.

3 nill up with 15 minutes to go and I am still shitting myself.

We weren't top of the league on New Year's Eve, we were 6 points behind Chelsea in 2nd but I agree with your general view of the second half of this season. It's been atrocious. So far we have 27 points from the 17 league games in 2017, that's a point less than we'd got from the same games last season but then we had to play an extra 8 Europa League ties and a League Cup final and were reduced to starting Stewart and Chirivella in the league. Considering the different circumstances the second half of this season has been a disaster, we have utterly failed to take any advantage of the free weeks' preparation time we've had at all. I hope you're wrong about the Europa League but our form this year would suggest that's where we're going to end up. I find it difficult to make a case that there's been any real progress this season overall. We might have a few more points in the league but considering the advantages Klopp has had we should have done a lot better.

Yup, that's where I am at the moment. Looking back you could make a case that the wheels began to fall off when Coutinho got injured in late November. I can only think of a couple of games since then that we won convincingly: Boro away and the Anfield derby. The rest have all had an element of "could go either way" about them. Events seem to control this team rather than the other way round so anything could happen in the last 4 games. It's frustrating because Klopp had 8 months last season to work English football out and come up with a substantial improvement this year and no matter what happens in the next 4 games does an extra handful of league wins really constitute the sort of progress we expected without the distraction of Europe?

This 3 goal deficit is worth another point to us. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Difficult to believe that we've going to achieve less this season than last. Klopp's going to have to pull his finger out because the club can't go on like this.

I doubt he was expecting the form of his back up players to be as abject as it has been either. Klavan has had the odd good game but the rest of them have been consistently awful. Lucas and Sturridge look as if they can't cope with top-flight football anymore, Moreno is still useless and Origi and Çan have been shockingly bad considering how well they played at times last season. Most of them will have to be replaced if the club is to progress but who would bet on us doing that successfully? Not me. Judging by the rumours circulating in this transfer window, the only position we currently want to recruit in is at wide forward, hence the links to the likes of Brandt and Pulisic, we don't seem to be bothered about any of the other positions that need improving.

God, I think I'm more upset after reading that than I was at the end of the game, and I can't think of anything positive to add either. I think Klopp had a difficult balance to strike with the squad in the summer. He's an optimist by nature so he gambled and it's just not paid off. Out of Europe, this season's demands were always going to be ridiculously uneven. 17 games in the first 15 weeks. Only 4 midweek games in the League Cup where he could get away with playing a fringe side, then it goes mental in December and January, 15 games in 9 weeks, all of them important. From the start of Feb until the end of the season we only have one midweek game if we don't progress further in the cups. 7 relatively sedate months but the failure to cope with the 2 mad ones in the middle have cost us this season.

Doesn't look like we're going to sign anybody this month, which seems a bit risky as there's only 7 points between us and the Mancs in 6th at the moment. Another couple of off days like the ones against Bournemouth and West Ham might see us out of the top 4 so I wouldn't be taking anything for granted at this stage. If there is the remotest possibility of improving the squad we should be doing everything we can to make it happen. Klopp delivering the CL after 3 windows where he has effectively just traded the squad he inherited when he arrived and not spent any additional money would be a pretty remarkable achievement in my book, especially considering the insane amounts of money the rest of the top 6, bar Spurs, spent in the summer.

I'd have agreed with this 5 years ago but I think this league is now so competitive managers feel they have to try and spread minutes around the squad as much as possible. When Benitez was in charge we'd have expected to go to a mid-table side like Palace and at the very least draw even after a difficult Champions League game mid-week, these days we don't really know what to expect from game to game and neither does anyone else. Apart from Leicester all the teams involved in European football last week dropped points in the league last weekend. For me Tuesday's team was a pretty clear indication that, despite all the talk to the contrary, Klopp is seriously prioritising the league this season way above everything else. It will be interesting to see how we do if most of our first eleven have only played 30 odd games going into April as, of our last 9 league fixtures, Everton on the 1st are the sole team currently in the top 6. None of the other 8 teams are in the bottom 3 at the moment either so they might not have that much to play for. With a fit and relatively fresh first eleven who knows how many points we can put on the board this season?

I notice they scored a minute after Olsson got away with that insane challenge on Matip, how the fuck did the officials miss that? It wasn't one of those 50-50 ones it was all Olsson and as blatant as it could possibly be. It looked like he was trying to get Matip in a choke hold. If that has been given and we'd converted the penalty at 3-0 that would have been that. If we'd lost points yesterday it would have been soley down to terrible officiating, nothing else.

Wisdom plays for Salzburg doesn't he? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I presume I'm not the only one thinking "great performance but let's see you do that to Hull and West Brom when they turn up at Anfield". Pulis will no doubt be dusting his 6-4-0 formation down after watching that last night. God I hope Klopp can find a way to break down the anti-football fraternity in this league because if he does we have the makings of a very successful side there.

It's marginal in slow motion, don't know how the linesman makes that decision with any confidence at full tilt. We haven't been lucky there. Not a bad performance though but we usually have good games against sides that want to come out and play ourselves.

True, unfortunately. It seems like we've spent a lot of money on a lot of players since FSG arrived but the bulk of that outlay has been recycling the £150 million plus we received for Torres, Suarez and Sterling. The aggregate spend in that time has been less than the Manchester clubs and Chelsea will spend this summer alone and we've spent it badly most of the time. The fact that we are still reasonably competitive in one off games against the top handful of clubs is remarkable when you look at how little has been invested in players. Klopp is showing early signs of "Wenger syndrome", he won't buy players unless they're exactly what he wants at a price he feels is reasonable. A player like Hector may not be Klopp's ideal left-back and he might be overpriced but he'd almost certainly improve our chances of getting top 4. If we did offer CL football next season our chances of attracting the players he really wants, like Dahoud, improves and the virtuous circle starts to form. That's what City did, and sooner or later we will have to do the same if we're to get anywhere.

It will be interesting to see whether he ever reproduces his Villa form for Palace, he certainly didn't do it for us. There was always a question mark over him after he ruptured his achilles tendon before the 14/15 season. He was so static and passive last season, we've done very well to get most of our money back, we won't be doing that with Balotelli and Markovic.

I would have thought we'd be there or thereabouts if we finish higher than Spurs this season, although I'm not sure how achivable that is. The inconsistency problem is inherent in the players' tempraments and I'm sceptical that there's any way to change that. If we start chucking points away from winning positions early on in the season then the mood will become pretty negative as it will look as if we've wasted yet another opportunity through not addressing a clear, known problem. I just hope players like Lallana, Henderson, Sturridge and Moreno understand that they will be out the door next summer if they aren't more effective in the next 9 months. Since Benitez left we haven't had a mode of play that allows us to defend leads, none of these players seem to have a clue how to drop back, get organised and stifle the opposition. If Klopp needed to work on one thing this summer, that was it. Let's hope he has. The lack of full back cover is alarming, with Milner out at the moment we are one injury away from having to play Conor Randall at right back and nobody knows how well Gomez will fare after his long layoff. There don't even seem to be any credible links to full backs either, apart from sales our transfer activity looks to be over for the summer. How much of this is down to our poor scouting I don't know, another part of the club Klopp will have to sort out. Fingers crossed we will get another "out of the blue" signing like Klavan to solve this problem. There must be someone available that Klopp knows from the Bundesliga that can fulfil this role for a couple of seasons. Anyway, I'm still cautiously optimistic that we will see a significant improvement in our points total this season but how that will translate against the rest of the league noone knows.

Those quotes make it sound like Klopp might have been a bit chastened by the team's defensive performances on this tour. It doesn't look like Matip is going to be fit for the start of the season either, what happened to Lloyd Jones and Jordan Williams? Are either of them good enough to fill in if necessary? Full back cover should have been a top priority in this window, especially as we've let Smith and Flanagan go. If Clyne gets a serious injury we could end up with Randall and Moreno at full back until January, that would probably destroy any chances we have of doing well this season.

He was, Klopp elected to play him in front of Sturridge in Dortmund, he scored and gave Hummels and co the runaround, we really should have won that game. After that he came on at half-time and scored twice in the 4:1 home win over Stoke. Scored the goal that started the revival against Dortmund in the home leg, only played the last 15 minutes in the 2:1 away win at Bournemouth then started again in front of Sturridge in the Anfield derby, opening the scoring again before Funes Mori crocked him. Arguably our best run of form all season coincided with his emergence. The result in Basle might well have been very different if Origi had been fully fit and able to start. My only reservation with him is injuries, apart from the unavoidable Funes Mori stamp he missed a few months around the turn of the year. If he's fit and on form he could be crucial to our fortunes next season.

Pretty much where I am, I think not having to play 15 midweek european games as we did last season should put us, and Chelsea for that matter, at a significant advantage. Mourinho will probably not bother much with the Europa League so they will likely prosper too, unfortunately. The 4 clubs in the CL may well struggle even more than they did last season, especially before Christmas when the fight hasn't yet been beaten out of the also rans. Of the CL clubs last season only Arsenal and City, by a slim margin, managed to scrape back into the top 4. This issue might be even more pronounced next season. Am I the only one who thinks City haven't yet done much to revamp their squad yet? Guardiola might well find our league a bit of an ordeal as he's never had to worry about any more than a handful of genuinely competitive domestic games a season in Spain and Germany before. Unless they strengthen a lot before the end of August they'd be my favourites to miss out on the top 4 next season. If Klopp is what we hope he is I'd expect to see us evolve a much more cohesive playing style as the season progresses. Far fewer stupid defensive mistakes and the development of a real understanding between the players. If we don't get top 4 without the distraction of european football I won't fancy our chances of doing much better the season after if we're in the Europa League again.

I wonder if the club itself is surprised by how much cash it is raising in the market this summer and that might change the level of player we go for at left back. The Zielinski saga ended up with us signing Wijnaldum at twice the price, maybe the Chilwell pursuit will end in the same way? We've still got Benteke, Balotelli, Markovic, Lucas, Alberto, Ilori and Wisdom to move on as well so there should be decent money available to get someone a lot better than Moreno in.