Judging players off youtube videos? Not a great guide for me. Could makecsean Dundee look like Ronaldo
Better than nothing. In the absence of a seasie at Marseille, Schalke or Preston it's all I had to go on.
You have to assume that if someone has taken time to edit some clips that purport to show the player's best bits (wer-hay! steady on, girls) then they've given it their best shot, not just put together minutes of random clips good or bad. Mind you, having seen some of these videos over the years...
Something that was evident in all 3 players was that they were pro-active in challenges on the ground to the point that the two foreign lads would be picking up a lot of cards in the Premier League, and in Davies' case quite a few reds, there were some borderline off-his-feet challenges that were genuine attempts to try to win the ball by going in round the side of his opponent, not wild tackles at all, but the Greater Manchester Referee Society would take umbrage at some of them.
Davies was the best with the ball at his feet by some distance I thought. Decent passer into midfield. From what I recall almost no shots of him winning headers, presumably because he doesn't, being built like Lallana. That's not his game.
Caleta-Car was the most dominant in the air, as you'd expect, but he just looks a massive unit, a Ruddock level unit, and I'd be worried about him having to defend balls hit in behind him. He looks a level or two below Lovren and look at the extraordinary levels of sh*te Lovren had to put up with just cos he once misjudged a header against Spurs by a couple of inches. Crime of the century.
Kabak I haven't changed my opinion of much between the vid and him playing for us. He's OK but doesn't seem to excel at anything. Seems to take him a couple of seconds to get his legs sorted out before he sprints back in defence but he's no slouch once he gets going. Not that dominant in the air. And he's got an annoying habit of kind of scooping under the ball when he plays long passes so they've got loads of backspin on and they just sort of sail through the air with no pace on them, like a 9-iron golf shot if I've remembered my golf clubs right. You can see Salah sitting there having a cuppa waiting for Kabak's long passes to come down out of the sky. That's if they actually land on the pitch inside the touchline at all.
But yeah, Youtube, can be a good indicator or throw up false hopes. Suarez looked amazing and was available for £3m the year or 18 months before we got him for £25m or whatever it was. As you might expect, amazing player looked amazing. On the other side of the coin I saw Mark Gonzalez and he was absolute sh*t-off-a-shovel, I genuinely thought we had the new Ryan Giggs on our hands. I mean, he was lightning quick, so the videos weren't wrong, but stellar attributes don't necessarily mean a stellar LFC career as we all know. Did he get injured? I was gutted his signing didn't work out for us. [just checked LFC history and we signed him AFTER a serious cruciate ligament injury - ffs!]
Konaté I think I've seen once for Leipzig at CB and I thought at the time he seemed just as good as Upamecano, but neither really stood out as must signs. But it wasn't against us so I wasn't really paying that close attention so I'll see what he's like if and when he does actually turn up and roll out for our pre-season matches which I think a mate said were all gonna be on home soil this year?