Out of interest what were our problem areas from last season in your opinion. From my pov one of them was LB where we have recruited a very good LB with Prem experience etc and it appears we have manage to condition Moreno into being able to defend, although its very early days on that one. Another area of weakness was on the wing where we have recruited a very good player in Salah. Another area was midfield where we tried very very hard to recruit Keita and th efinal area was CB where we are still trying, I hope, to recruit VVD. I'll accept that I also wanted a better goalkeeper but we now have a 3-way battle for the jersey so hopefully they'll push each other along.
We're having a similar discussion in another thread so I'll consolidate my response here and we can leave that one focused on the transfer rumors rather than on FSG.
Our problem areas were:
-GK: Migs and Karius were simply not good enough. If we want to give another season of trying to get Karius to actually push Migs, then I'm fine with that for now. Didn't expect us to improve spectacularly on what we had here.
-CB: Matip was/is a very very good player. Lovren has improved steadily since his first season and is a solid CB, but I think we could see an improvement on him with a large investment. Look at the Spuds CBs, Alderweireld and Vertonghen are the quality of CBs we should be targeting. Lovren is not there. Klavan meanwhile was pretty awful and I would not trust him when we need him. Gomez has some good showings, but is too young still and seems he could be unreliable with injuries. We needed to invest here. Fine, we've been targeting VVD for months now, but we haven't landed him. We have our opener in 4 days and we're still scrambling for coverage at CB. Going into the season with what we have is a failure for this window - this is a gamble.
-LB: As you mentioned. We've held on to Moreno, maybe he's improved, maybe he hasn't. Milner is aging and who knows if he'll be able to pull out performances like he had last season. Robertson is still young and in early days and played in a defense which gave up 80 goals while only scoring 37 in the PL. Our defense and keepers only conceited 42 (which was high) - maybe he'll be a great addition I don't know, but to me that is a gamble and not what I'd consider shoring up that position with a top class player.
-CM: We don't have a great #6, we don't have a great #8, we do have a great #10 (maybe two if you count Lallana) and we've got three guys (Gini, Emre, and Hendo) who are good players, but seem like they're all still trying to figure out what types of players they wanted to be. Either way we need coverage there. We're seeing the likes of Woodburn and Kent being actually considered in people's lineups - maybe they're good talents, but that's not what a team who wants to fire on all cylinders and compete strongly for the PL title should be banking on. Going into the season without improving our CM is a gamble again and in my opinion was a failure.
-General depth: Mentioned it before, we're going to be playing 55+ games this season and a club of our stature should be planning to win a vast majority of these games. Our first team may be pretty strong on it's day, but how's our second team? How's our depth at CB, how's our depth at CM, how's our depth in the attack if one of Mane goes down again? Is it strong/reliable/ready to fill the boots of our best? No, it's not.
The point being is that we're valued as one of the top franchises in
all of sports - top 10 in world football - and we have been for a very long while. I want to see us wake the f*ck up and start acting like it when the time comes, and with how we're positioned right now ahead of the season I think it's very clear that the time has come and I don't think we're acting like it.