Blame can't just sit with the owners, the transfer commitee like Ward/Edwards, Klopp etc get hailed when a signing happens but when a signing doesn't happen it's the owners fault.
Ultimately, the way I see it is stubborness and too much loyalty to certain players at the expense of further success. The amount of players we lose on a free transfer over the years when it's quite clear they will leave at the end of their contract is a bit daft (we can add Ox and potentially Keita into that list next summer, combined purchases of over Ā£80mill), when those players could be sold, get something for them and put the funds towards a replacement.
Our midfield last season was injury prone and inconsistent. Klopp said that we have plenty of players for the midfield so we can't just go adding more numbers to it. But if you look at the midfield;
Ox - Always injured, plays very little part when he isn't injured and when he does play he fails to step up and deliver
Keita - Often injured, failed to live up to the expectation, doesn't get trusted in the big games more often than not
Thiago - Our best midfielder, a truly world class player but lucky if he isn't injured after a handful of games
Hendo - Can't fault his availability and effort but for every game he's boss, he has a game where he's ineffective and spends more time barking at players
Milner - Near the end of his career and now at the stage where he's better coming on in games rather than starting games
Fab - A misconception about his injuries but over the last year he's been inconsistent and has made a very poor start to this season
Jones - Young player who is struggling to make any sort of impact. Often picking up odd injuries
Elliott - A young player still breaking through, not even a natural midfielder and on the back of a horrific injury
Carvalho - Same as Elliott minus the injury
We done great last season, no doubt about it, but if we had a better midfield last year then IMO we would have won the lot.
2 years ago we were top at Xmas despite having countless injuries. Come January, we should've been ready to bring in a player of first team quality and built on what we had. Konate I think will be a great player but waiting until the summer for him ruined our title hopes that year. We were getting more and more injuries and our way to finally take action when results had spiralled and we were losing game after game was to loan Kabak and sign Davies on deadline day. Kabak was neither here nor there really, clearly not quite up to it and too slow. Davies was just a complete waste of everyones time.
Nothing wrong with showing loyalty to your players but we put far too much faith in players that are either injury prone or failed to deliver and once again it's costing us. We have injury after injury and history is repeating itself from 2 years ago. We are an injury away from playing Fab or Hendo at CB again the way things are going.
The glaringly obvious weakeness in our team is the midfield and it's been that way for a couple of years now. We need a midfielder who will influence games in the way KDB does for City. I'm not saying we will find a player as good as that, KDB is one of the best in the world and arguably the best player in the Premier League, but it seems like we would rather wait yet another season because if the reports are to be believed, it's either Bellingham or nobody and Bellingham isn't available this season.
Maybe I'm being knee-jerk after a couple of bad results to start the season but already being 4 points behind City is far from ideal because they will drop few points over the course of the season. Vulnerable midfield, conceded the opening goal in 8 of the last 10 games and once again dropping points in games that should be won and at the moment it seems as though nobody really knows how to fix it other than to ride it out and wait however long for injured players to return.
But yeah like I said, maybe just knee-jerk after a start to the season none of us expected.
« Last Edit: Aug 16, 2022 09:01:00 am by 7-King Kenny-7 »
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