TalkSilly

Apart from the summer Suarez left in recent years I've always been able to delude myself into believing that next season will be much better and this year is no different. I think the league will be even more competitive than last year and throw up a lot of surprises but, with so many free weeks to prepare even if we hadn't changed the squad at all you'd expect an improvement of some sort from us. Last season we threw away 18 points from winning positions on top of too many truly abject displays away from home, at Watford, Newcastle, West Ham, Swansea and Old Trafford for instance. Woeful defending strewn with individual errors and a pathetic vulnerability at set pieces cost us a place in the top 4. I reckon our prospects next season largely hinge on how much of that Klopp manages to correct. I'd have been a lot more confident if we'd signed a decent experienced keeper like Arsenal did with Cech last season but Karius doesn't have to be that good to be a major upgrade on Mignolet so I'm hopeful there. Matip is tall but looks a bit lightweight to me, it's possible Klavan might come through to be the more significant signing at centre-back. He's very experienced, and we only managed to breakdown that well organised Augsburg defence with the help of a very questionable penalty. If he was responsible for the organising he might come in very handy indeed. There has to be an upgrade to come at left-back, Moreno hasn't improved defensively in the 2 years he's been here. He's still making the same errors he did when he first arrived and has "idiot" written all over him. Klopp might think he can improve him but I suspect our Alberto is far too thick to learn. Up front we should benefit from having a pair of Klopp-type strikers available from the start in Ings and Origi. As far as I remember Origi's breakout performance was the away game at Dortmund in April so for most of last season he wasn't contributing much. No idea what Klopp is going to do with Sturridge, Origi is so quick and robust if he hits form he'd be my first choice up front. With the pace of Mane and Wijnaldum to worry about as well the opposition will be much more vulnerable to our counter attacking if they throw everything forward. So I think there's plenty to be optimistic about and I'd be concerned about Klopp if we don't end up with 10-15 more points next season which should see us challenging for the top 4. My main worry is that Klopp's relentless approach breaks half the squad by Christmas and we end up mid-table as a result. There are plenty in the media who would love the excuse to tear his whole football ethos apart. Fingers crossed that doesn't happen.

Isn't he more the box-to-box type like Grujic? I thought we wanted a "playmaker" type like that lad Weigl at Dortmund?

I'm sure the arithmetic isn't that simple in reality but we certainly won't have shelled out much compared to our rivals. And, on top of Enrique and Toure going, we will probably be shedding the wages of the following along with receiving some sort of fee: Skrtel Lucas Wisdom Canos Ilori Alberto Allen, Ibe and Markovic aren't that likely to stay either. I don't see where they get many games next season. Not sure how much the latter pair would fetch but we had to pay £12 million for Clyne last summer with a year left on his contract, I don't see why we'd expect any less for Allen this summer, probably more considering where he plays and his current profile. If all Klopp now wants is a left-back and a central midfielder money shouldn't be a problem, persuading the right player to come here might be though.

The clubs will probably be hedging their £/€ exposure anyway, for the fees at least. How the players view their wages in sterling is a different matter, although they could be doing the same thing if their advisers are competent.

They're signing Wesley Sneijder apparently!

I'm pretty certain he was the first player we were linked to in the days between Rodgers leaving and Klopp's appointment being officially anounced. So whoever wrote that story either had very sound information or did a very good job of putting two and two together considering our scouting team would have known him from his 2 years at City. If we do eventually sign Hector Nat Clyne might have to brush up on his german as Karius, Matip and Lovren all have it as their "Muttersprache", Lovren having spent 7 years in Munich as a refugee from the balkan war when he was a kid.

Me neither, but I wonder whether all this isn't just a ploy to get Bayern to lower their price rather than lose him on a free next summer? Goetze was talked about as a "Messi sized" talent when he first appeared on the scene but he doesn't appear to have got anywhere near fulfilling that potential. He might resurrect his career under Klopp as he's known him since he was in his mid-teens and would probably be able to get away with delivering a few home truths but I wouldn't bet on it. Not sure how he'd react to getting kicked all over the place like Torres and Suarez were either, it's not as if they ever got any protection from what passes for a referee over here.

A quick google hooks out a few stories from early last month that Drinkwater is negotiating a new contract having 2 years left on his current deal. This story appearing now is probably just his agent chivvying Leicester along. I can't say I've noticed him that much but isn't he a bit like Henderson? Not sure why we'd want him really and, with Leicester very likely to lose Kante, I doubt they'd want him to leave either.

Just had a quick look at our league results post Europa League midweek fixtures: 12 points from 9 games. I didn't count the 2 against Augsburg as we didn't play in the league straight after, we did lose the League Cup final 3 days after the second leg though. Of those 9 games 6 were at Anfield, the aways were Goodison, Bournemouth and Swansea. Not a great record.

From the rules I've read we'd have to get 7th to qualify for the EL, 6th if Palace win the FA Cup. Also, if the eventual Champions League winners qualify for the CL group stage through their domestic league placing the Europa League winners will automatically go straight into the CL group stages.

With his fitness history the best thing for Sturridge would probably be to stick around and put up with mainly being used off the bench after the opposition defence has had to put up with Origi or Ings softening them up for an hour. He'd likely score a lot of goals that way and stay fitter for longer as well. His ego probably wouldn't accept that arrangement so he will probably go if the right offer comes in, preferably not to another english club. Let's hope his goals win us the Europa League first though, that should bump the fee up nicely.

Watching this game I think we'd be better off out of the Europa League next season. The Premier League is getting too intense for even the wealthiest clubs to compete in if any more than 2 or 3 of their players have to play 2 games a week for most of the season. Whereas before a lot of the also rans used to fall away as injuries and tiredness took their toll in the second half of the season, now they can afford a few more decent squad players so the drop off is nothing like as significant. They're just taking more points off the bigger teams and it shows. To cope with 4 competitions a club is going to need at least 20 top class players and another handful that can be relied upon to come in and do a competent job for 5-10 games. It's going to be very difficult for us to get that sort of squad together in one summer, much more chance of success if it is done over a few windows.

Sadly you're probably right, Gomez especially as his injury seems to have been more serious than Ings' who is back training outside at the moment. For the most part I couldn't care less who stays or goes, most of the performances since Klopp arrived have been so uninspired. Next season would Stewart really do a worse job than Lucas? Is Allen that much better than Branagan? Could Ward be a bigger catastrophe than Bogdan? Is Moreno that much better than Smith? Milner and Lallana haven't offered much either. If we can find someone to take them off our hands I can't imagine we'd miss them much.

A lot of that squad are going to be at the Euros this summer so won't be returning to the club for pre-season until late July. That's going to shorten the window to get rid of the ones Klopp has decided are surplus and deprive many of the rest of any meaningful pre-season for him to work on his ideas for the next campaign. If we can find places for them to go to there will surely be an unprecedented clearout, I can't believe Klopp rates many of the current squad. But I can see this happening over the next 2 summer windows rather than this year's. We will probably have to wait for the start of the 2017-18 season to see a real Klopp team take shape. You've got to wonder how many of us, including Klopp and his backroom team themselves, have the patience for this. I know I'm fed up to the back teeth with this, painfully ordinary, grossly overpaid group of players. It feels like the club is at its lowest ebb since Souness was in charge.

It's a crying shame he got injured. I'm sure we'd have a fair few more points if he's stayed fit. When he had the repair op on the torn ACL in October I remember the news was positive that he had a chance of playing again this season as there was no ancillary damage but he did an interview last month saying that he had been advised that he should wait until next season.

Yeah, at the very most someone at the club has told the journo that Klopp's getting to the end of his tether with Sturridge and that's lead to a conversation about how much he might fetch if he were sold. For me the very idea that anyone would pay a fee for a player that's played a handful of games in the last 18 months is absurd. And, even if Sturridge did manage to get through a medical, how would any club prepared to take him know that he wouldn't just cry off with some pain somewhere the minute it looked like he might have to play in an actual match. I think the most likely outcome is that we get a small loan fee for him from somewhere, probably abroad, where Liverpool also pay his wages every week he doesn't play. Like Joe Cole, that will be the arrangement until his contract with us runs out. He will probably also mysteriously start being available for more and more games the closer that contract gets to ending.

Me neither, not keen on Subotic either. He's only played once this season through injury and loss of form. The most likely looking is Matip but Schalke don't want to sell. Even if we do wear them down it's more likely to be just before the end of the window, as Spurs did in a similar situation with Lewis Holtby a few years ago.

He's going to have to shape up pretty quick, we've got 3 games in a week with Toure as the only fit, senior central defender, and he usually needs a mobility scooter after 70 minutes.

Division 3 South? Pre-decimal version.

Yes, that, and the beachball incident really fed my paranoia about the way officials were treating the club. I could understand them not giving things they hadn't seen but when they started flagging for things they couldn't have seen because they plainly hadn't happened you had to wonder. At the time there was no way they'd have dared do that to the Mancs, Ferguson would have had an aneurism.

I see our old friend Jean-Michel Ferri's son Jordan has just scored for Lyon against Ghent.

He could have said "I know the results haven't been good enough but I hope we can build on this and give the fans something to cheer about from now on" but no, he had to run his gob off once again. If he carries on like this he'll end up like Hodgson.

He's just after the maximum payoff by the looks of it. It's just a matter of how many dreadful results and performances FSG can stomach before they finally cough up. Whoever comes in next has to have a track record of building decent sides from scratch, because that's what's needed at the club. There was nothing of this in Rodgers' previous experience. Swansea had been on an strong upward trajectory as a club for 7 years before he took over and they have continued with that progress since he left. There are obviously a fair number of people in that set-up that know what they are doing, something you definitely can't say about Liverpool FC at the moment.

Maybe just an interim appointment while FSG work out what they want to do next. A bit like Benitez's Chelsea gig?

I think the deal was in place with Lille before he got noticed in the World Cup, hence the odd loan back element and relatively low fee. God knows how much we might have been persuaded to pay for him if it hadn't been agreed beforehand. He does look like he needs to go somewhere to re-build his game though. He's not going to do it at Liverpool this season.