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I’d have started with a more attacking midfielder in place of Hendo. Someone like a Thomas Muller or De Bruyne. The setup from minute 65 is more inline with my thinking, don’t think we conceded after that.

You did say a defensive midfielder, and. I countered that if we were to bring a midfielder, I want one with more creativity and goal threat to help bridge the 25 goal (from midfield) deficit against our main rival for the title, Man City. The team who incidentally don’t play with an athletic strong and quick defensive midfielder, as Rodri is about as quick as me, and the other two centre mids are basically AMs as LFD pointed out. Playing two DMs along with Thiago also as a CM is overkill. Fabinho is one of the best defensive midfielders in the world and Thiago is more than capable defensively, as he’s proven with us last season and with Bayern. Hendo played some of his best games last season as a DM also so we’re sorted for back-up. Spurs tactic was simply sitting back with seven players behind the ball and launch counters attacking the space behind Trent and Robbo. Has we scored a goal they would’ve had to push up further up the pitch to salvage the points they needed to qualify for the CL.

It would’ve been a similar purchase to Konate. Matip started the season as first choice, but Ibou’s form at the end of the season made him undroppable.

I don’t believe at the moment he’s as good as Ramsey. He might have a higher ceiling, but he needs to show it consistently.

To make some sort of profit on him, say if we sold him for £20m.

@Barrington Womble posted something in another thread saying we didn’t even put in a bid.

We didn’t want him at 100m though.

He looked really average going forward from his YouTube videos. @3 Stacks who watched Ligue 1 confirmed he’s not great offensively if I recall correctly. Looks to me like he’d been bought as a rotation option for Fabinho, to eventually replace him in a few years time.

A regular run is what Jones needs most at that point in his career, a season-long loan at Villa would be a great move for him I reckon. I’d even consider selling him with a buy back option set at say £25m, to further incentivise Villa to play him every week.

Don’t think that’s right. This is from The Athletics. When Kevin De Bruyne, a month short of his 30th birthday, agreed a two-year contract extension in May of last year to keep him at Manchester City past his 34th birthday, Salah, with guidance from Abbas, figured they should be aiming for something similar. That is roughly what they got – although there were concessions from both sides because some of his £350k a week is incentivised around performance and achievement.

So now he’s a defensive midfielder who’s able to play any of the three midfield positions? Who is this mythical player? Didn’t you say earlier you wanted a defensive midfielder in because it’d allow us to fit a more attacking midfielder in, like Harvey Elliott in or is that not the plan anymore? Who would you drop out? Why would you want to move Thiago from his best position? He’s a CM, why would you his take defensive responsibilities away, as he’s quite clearly more than capable at it; Bayern literally won everything with him playing in a two man midfield behind Thomas Muller and Lewandowski, and he won MOTM in the CL final. There’s very little point in us continuing to discuss the Spurs game. You’re never going to be able to convince me that what we needed to win that game was a defensive midfielder. It was pretty obvious what we needed to do was to score the first goal, then they would’ve had to throw their game plan out of the window. The reason the set up shop like that was they knew if we went toe to toe with us we would’ve destroyed them.

Just from the games I saw last season,

We saw last year Klopp wanted one of the midfielders to join in attack, often that player was Hendo with Trent tucking in. Appreciate the different focus but 25 goals is a huge variance. Closing that gap would go a lot further than adding another defensive midfielder to ‘free up’ Thiago, whatever that means

4-4-2 James; Jones, Babbel, Agger, Matteo; Ox, Redknapp, Keita, Kewell; Collymore, Sturridge

Get Jacob Ramsey in and send Jones on loan the other way. Win win.

I’m tempted to pay for Stacksy’s subs to witness his form with “neg” added to his arsenal.

Yeah not convinced about this change in tactic. We still saw Trent going narrow, and Hendo/Mo overlapping post January.

So your plan is for this defensive midfielder will play mostly when Thiago, one of our best players, is out or when we rest him. When all three midfielders are available, we will bench Hendo and move Thiago to a freer role, like what, a number 10? Why move him from his best position? He was the best on ground when Bayern won the CL playing in a midfield two with Kimmich, he doesn’t need a freer role, whatever that is. Below are the stats against Spurs, a 4th placed team. Doesn’t exactly scream DM deficient does it? Now compare the distribution of goals between ours and City, their midfield contributed 37 goals in the league last season compared to our 12 goals. Now that we’ve extended Salah’s contract I propose we we focus on addressing that issue next.

Ward >>> Edwards.

I reckon it was the length of contract, Salah publicly said the issue wasn’t the money, so i reckon we would’ve been happy for him to earn £350k in our wage structure given he’s arguably our best player but Salah wanted a long term contract.

Michael Essien is another, for two seasons he was arguably the best centre midfielder in the league, then he got a bad injury and that was it his career was done.

Michael Owen? He was a brilliant talent, I never saw anything like it. Made the best defenders in the world look stupid with his pace and movements. I know he won a lot of trophies, and Ballon D’Or, but I couldn’t help but think that he could’ve been an all time great, but he never even scored 20 leagues goals in one season, despite all that talent.

He’s that short centre half for Ajax,

Our form in the second half of the season was brilliant, we didn’t score enough goals because Mo lost form, not because of this supposed tactic change. The games we dropped points in we dominated but couldnt score goals. Not sure how a DM alongside Fabinho and Thiago would’ve helped. Mo lost form likely because he played way too many games, not because we stopped playing Harvey Elliott. Say you bring in a defensive midfielder, let’s say Kante to play an attacking midfielder in, either Elliott or Carvalho, who would you drop out of Fabinho and Thiago? Would that form a better midfield than Fabinho, Thiago +1? Unlikely.