Liverpool could easily be ‘also-rans’ without Jurgen Klopp

Did Jurgen Klopp have Liverpool punching above their weight? Are they going to fall back into the pack now?

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Is Liverpool season going to be a long and boring trudge?

Urgh. It’s that time after the Euros when I have finally come back round to paying attention to my club and… urgh. I’m a Liverpool fan and its just hard to get excited.

Jurgen has gone. The great love of our life has left, and if I can continue the weird analogy a little longer, the new boyfriend has come in and underwhelmed, I mean he is fully bald. No one wants that.

I’m sure Arne will do fine (Which means 3rd-6th). He’s got a decent squad, he is obviously a talented coach, but then every manager in the prem is a good coach now, that won’t get you very far. We all knew Jurgen helped us punch above our weight, and when we had a smattering of world-class talent that meant we could knock out heavyweights. I fear we’re not quite packing the same punch these days…

And what do we have without Jurgen? We have FSG. And what are FSG? They are very good businessmen. That means they turn their £300m investment into a £4bn club valuation. That they did so whilst winning every club accolade available means there is not a lot to complain about. Unfortunately, it feels like Jurgen Klopp, shrewd player investment, and a healthy transfer kitty donated by Barcelona, were the very specific variables required for that outcome.

I’m desperate to be proved wrong. That FSG are suddenly going to splash the cash they must have been squirrelling away these last few transfer windows. That the combination of dramatically lowering our wage bill and bringing through our dirt cheap young players to fill out the squad, was done with player investment in mind.

Unfortunately, I fear it was done with the bottom line in mind, that Liverpool’s long running fiscal prudence is simply to ensure the owners never have to dig into their own pocket and because it provides maximum value when they inevitably sell the club, as none gets eaten up by club debt.

I’m sure we’ll make a couple of signings. A sensible outlay for decent players. It won’t swing the pendulum of success our way but it will quell some of the disquiet. But it wont allay my fears… Fears of mediocrity, of being also rans. Fear of a long, gradual descent that will have marginal effect on our valuation. I fear fan ire and the damaging affect disharmony brings.

But most of all, I fear a long old boring trudge through our season….

Ed Ern

So many Liverpool questions but squad looks great

Very nicely timed article about Liverpool. Lots of chats going on all over the world wondering what chocolate Forrest Gump takes out the box. Issues from my side are:-

How much did Klopp hold everything together as (almost) the best manager in world football?

How effective and well run was that coaching team that everything had been honed over the years so it had been optimized to maximum potential and performance?

How do the players feel in pre season now everything is so (maybe) different?

Why wasn’t Trent locked down on a new contract last season? Was he crying in front of the Kop on the last day of the season as he has decided to leave on a free?

Is Mo staying or going ? I love the fact he has shaved his hair. Shows a focus. Always knew Harry Kewell was having problems once he started growing his hair long….

Is Van Dijk happy to push on as captain and maybe retire from International football or does he want to ‘do a Mane’ and go chill out somewhere on a final big contract?

Does Edwards and the rest of the ‘brains trust’ go big early and look to move on VVD & Salah to reinvest or is this similar to Klopp’s first season where Slot wants to review the squad and keep a good team ticking over?

I personally think Slot does look a good fit to aid continuity, I would have loved to see Pep Ljinders stay too as I think he is an excellent number 2 (but not a good number 1…You heard it here first !)

The Squad is in excellent shape:-

Alisson / Kelleher (maybe) / Jaros

Robertson / Szimikas – decent

VVD / Gomez / Quansah / Konate (possibly need 1 more here….)

Bradley / Trent

Endo / Curtis DM – could be better but still decent

Mac Allister / Bajcetic / Szobo / Gravenberch

Diaz / Gakpo – difficult to play them both which is a shame

Jota / Nunez – maybe Jota & Nunez could somehow merge into Jonez ?

Salah / Elliott – something here might be required such as Takefusa Kubo so maybe get him in now if Salah is leaving on a free next year

Still room for Doak / Gordon / Carvalho and a few other kids so the question is will this season be a chocolate caramel or that bloody horrible orange fondant monstrosity that always tastes of flowers and disappointment.

We will find out soon enough. Can we please not jizz on our chips if it’s not an immediate 5-0 master class…

Hong Kong Ian – LFC – banning brackets from this day forth.

MORE ON LIVERPOOL FROM F365:

👉 Liverpool in ‘final stages’ of talks for £50m Salah replacement as La Liga chief responds

👉 Liverpool star ‘happiest I’ve ever been’ as Slot style ‘suits me and the lads’ better than Klopp

👉 Somehow, Liverpool may now be the Premier League’s biggest unknown quantity

North > South this season

I remember that Southampton team! Laurie McMenemy sure could sweet talk an older player and a European player of the year too. Young Moran was the under rated striker. I watched them perhaps thrice. Two 3-3 draws and a backs to the wall 0-1 away win on a rainy night at Anfield.

They were first on BBC radio 2 commentary, the late summer day that (Joseph) Kevin Keegan debuted in the blazing sunshine with a ‘motorway of white’ down the middle of their new shirt. I had to leave the Cornish beach, sit in the car with the doors open to liste , rum & raisin ice cream smears on my tanned face.

Oh! The august start of a shiny new season.

Not like in Spain where only one team will win for the foreseeable or France. At least Alonso has given a two team look to the Bundesliga.

But in England – so many contenders!

How to rate their chances?

The quality of the manager? The depth of the squad? The on field chemistry?

Is Unai a neck ahead of Mikel? Then Ten Hag, perhaps Maresca, Howe, Slot and Postecoglou are all of a similar level.

With all the star players being over played these days and running around more than a lot, the youth players need to be ready to step up.

For this reason alone I reckon Liverpool will do well, perhaps better than expectations.

Liverpool a nose ahead of Aston Villa, NUFC and Man United, followed by Arsenal a nose ahead of Chelsea and Spurs.

Then there is always a smaller club that gets it’s shit together, I’m going for West Ham United.

If my DAZN (‘ the zone’ evidently) subscription gave me the Scudetto I’d watch the battle for Italy alongside England’s top league. Alas, it does not so I’ll make do with the mellifluous James Horncastle’s Tuesday updates.

Best new kit? Sporting Lisbon’s in my humble opinion.

Can it really be almost 2025 already? TwentyTwentyfive!

That’s 43 years since KK’s Saints debut. In another 43 years all the super league’s clubs will probably have a euro squad & coach and another national squad and coach and we’ll have live footie 8 days a week.

Right. It’s cerveza o’clock.

If Alonso joined Liverpool there’d be four men from tiny Guipúzcoa in England’s top league.

That’s like Paisley, Jock Stein, Ferguson and Dalglish all coming from Ullapool.

Peter (Lesley Ferdinand for England manager) Andalucia

Winning a transfer window is not a thing

It’s a sign of the time of year when we have people talking about who is making the best and worst or no signings or winning the transfer window. Blows my mind.

Of course, this is all egged on by media looking for clicks. It seems the worst offenders are those supposedly ‘supporting’ a team. Take the Liverpool Echo; headlines designed to give Liverpool fans a heart attack with all their best players being sold off, no one wanting to sign up to play for Slot and all their opponents ‘winning’ transfers. Get a grip!

Chelsea spent £747m last summer, £115m on Caicedo and £58m on Lavia, who got 32 minutes. But there was a lot of crowing about how Chelsea beat Liverpool to those signings…only to scrape into 6th, on the back of the truly best signing of Cole Palmer. Perhaps Liverpool won by forcing Chelsea to pay over the odds for their two DMs when they only paid £40m for Palmer.

Newcastle, equally talked up their great signings, led by Barnes, Livramento and Tonali, only for Tonali to get suspended for most of the season.

Spurs, similarly, bought some great players in van der Ven, Porro, Johnson and Maddison only for their season to go tits up coincidentally with Maddison’s injury.

The point is that no matter who you sign—even proven grade A players—you can’t tell how it will all turn out.

Last season may have been an anomaly for injuries due to the non-stop nature of games the best players have had to endure over the last 3 years, but it’s likely not going to change, at least until next season after a real summer off. Many players looked truly knacked during the Euros – no surprise – so it looks like you may want players who still have some mileage left in the tank. Who knows. None of us, really, until at least mid-way through the season.

Paul McDevitt

,,,I just saw the link to your previous Transfer Winners piece and thought I’d click.

Lots of good wins in there until I found my club “winning” the summer of 2019. Now listen. I’ll big Everton up until the day I die but we haven’t been winners in a transfer window since we brought big Rom back. That was ten years ago.

Since then, we’ve blown over 500M on transfer fees that got us a bang average squad the not even Martinez, Koeman, or Benitez could get anything out of (just goes to show how really, really good a manager Ancelotti is.)

So, when you do your Transfer Losers piece, I guarantee we’ll be heading that one up on numerous occasions. I looked up our incoming transfer list on Toffeeweb that dates back to 1990, and if you start with Koeman (and transfer “guru” Steve Walsh) in 2016, you’d be absolutely stunned at the amount of money we’ve punted away for bang average or below average players. Did we get a few good ones? Yeah, sure but for the amount we spent, you expect a better success rate.

I thought about listing a number of the duds we bought but frankly, the list would be too long and would bore the F365 readers to death so I’ll refrain.

I’m hopeful that our new DOF, Kevin Thelwell, along with Sean Dyche can work within our very, very limited means going forward so that we don’t find ourselves on the “losers” list in the future.

TX Bill (buying Onana for 33M and selling for 55M is good business for us, more please) EFC

Lead balloon?

There’s no real football yet (pre season isn’t real)

And this has always annoyed me since I was a child (I’m 52…)

“It went down like a lead balloon”

But lead balloons go down incredibly, almost perfectly, well..

Never got it. Never made sense to me

Roll on Mid-August (I’m glad Mick Mills doesn’t still play for Ipswich as that boy could play! And may have given Mo a rough time from left back and they are our opening game) for some real actual football.

Al, LFC

More pedantry and Man Utd’s donut formation

Since people in comments seemed to enjoy debating their fave nonsensical phrases here’s some more.

Where I come from (points for guessing) people will often relay a third person conversation they were having with someone where their response is “so I turned around and said”

Why were you facing the wrong way when talking to someone?

Also for some reason people infer that Asda or Tesco is a person whose house your going to visit when they announce “I’m to going to Asdas”

On the subject of football I’m gonna have to agree with whomever said (Badwolf maybe?) United revision is a little unfair on Ten Hag for last season. United spent the entire season missing their centre backs and shoehorning people into left back. Of course they looked shit. However on the rare occasions Ten Hag got to field his starting 11 they won and looked decent too.

The only issue really (showcased against Coventry) is United tend to leave a big gap just in front of their back four which everyone exploits. In the cup semi Coventry manager noticed and made changes in midfield to exploit it and suddenly started scoring goals. Ten Hag did nothing about that problem at all. It was pretty clear to everyone watching that space just in front of the right centre back was being exploited and Ten Hag took off Mainoo and brought on….Eriksen.

Now either Ten Hag believes Eriksen to be a totally different player than everyone else on earth or he ignored/didn’t see the issue in midfield which Coventry had been exploiting and just scored from.

This happen multiple times in the season and is what lead to all those crazy looking scores against ‘lesser’ teams. If Ten Hag has fixed that blind spot of his United will probably do very well. If not it’ll be largely the same.

Lee

The definition of insanity

Enzo Maresca on continuing his style of football after Chelsea’s drab as hell draw with Wrexham.

“I have no doubt. I think you are going to concede in different ways, so you need to decide in which way you need to concede a goal.”

“Sometimes teams that try to build from the back concede goals but I think you are going to score more than you concede.”

So Chelsea’s new manager wants to win games by outscoring the opponent. Chelsea, a team renowned for not putting away chances. A team who haven’t had a half decent striker since 2017. A team whose starting goalkeeper (Sanchez) is infamously bad at playing it out from the back.

What can go wrong?

Will (it’s alright though, we’ve only spent £95million so far on a bunch of unknown children this summer.)

To clog or not to clog

Thanks for taking the time to respond Fat Man and to answer your question quickly, no that’s what I meant by tackles and passion. I also can’t tell if your whole mail is a pisstake or not but I’ll respond as if you were being serious.

There is a lot between a Michael Brown ‘tackle’ and a walking football tackle that the game is lacking these days (walking football is the non-contact version of football you might prefer – all the sidewards passes a man could ask for and not a slidet-ackle in sight.).. Fast, aggressive, strong but ultimately fair…. and entertaining. It builds up energy in the crowd and amongst the players and ultimately results in a better overall spectacle.

People who go out to hurt the opponent intentionally are losers and that’s not what I’m referring to at all.

By Passion I mean, literally passion. I love my club for some stupid reason but I’m passionate about it. I have a stronger connection to the club and the players when I feel that reciprocated. Nowadays that is very few and far between, I would sum up the way players come across to me by referring to the scene at the beginning of Basketball at the unveiling of new signing Townsell In fact the whole intro basically works about the corporate sanitisation of sport and it’s a f**king amazing timeless classic of a film.

Townsell: ‘After playing for New England, San Diego, Houston, St. Louis, A year for the Toronto Argonauts, plus one season as a greeter at the Desert Inn. I’m happy to finally play here in the fine city of Miami!’

Official: *whispers in his ear* ‘It’s Minnesota’

Townsell: ‘Whatever, shiiiiit’

Basically players don’t care about any club and emit almost zero passion into the ether so raising my passion levels is more difficult now. When the Roma boys of old grabb and kiss their badge, I feel it. Same with the Neviller. I don’t feel any passion with almost every single player. just mindless trained zombies, stumbling through their script, devoid of anything behind the eyes.

So thanks for replying but no, not at all what I meant.

Now my questions/Assumptions;

– Was that a typo on contact and you meant combat? Because yes it is not a combat sport, but sorry it is a contact sport. All over the field, even when tackles aren’t included it’s a contact sport. Contact everywhere at almost all times. Throw-ins, hey there’s some contact as people jostle for space. shoulder to shoulder as you both run to a ball, wouldn’t you know it, contact again. Badminton, now that is a non-contact sport. And a sweet one.

– Cloggers? Is someone who aims to hurt their opponent? And the cloggers in charge are?….. managers? The Refs? The TV Money men? I’m lost on this one.

– Let me get this straight as your logic is baffling and I’m getting a whiff of Sci-Fi here….

The Past:

Mavericks – yes

Cloggers – Yes

The Present:

Mavericks – No

Cloggers – No

So when the Cloggers kicked all the mavericks out of the game was it like a terminator John Connor time travel situation or what? Did the cloggers travel into the past to kill the baby would-be-skillful mavericks, so in the present day there are only nefarious cloggers running the game? That’s somee premier league level QAnon shit bud…

Then to wrap this mess up. I used the old internet and technology to find out how injuries have changed and guess what.

The 90’s had a higher proportion of contact injuries – fractures, dislocations, tears, etc. 72.7% to 28.6% muscle injuries.

The 2020’s are the complete opposite. 27.3% contact injuries and 71.4% muscle injuries.

If the cloggers are still in charge and unskillful players and still allowed to kick skillful players out of the game, they aren’t very good at it.

Still have no idea if your email was trolling but I’m afraid you’re talking shit buddy

Moses

Look to the wonderkids

For mavericks we are in a bit of a funk that will swing back. Pep’s cut-back goal drills are a bit dull and the euros have shown just how tactically astute coaches have gotten now.

However, I think something is in the offing. Pep is starting to buy dribblers again.

Doku last season, Savio this season. Endrick is coming in for Real Madrid.

Perhaps this is in the forward-looking acknowledgement that all the micro-tactical drills are now being stymied by ever more capable managers, so the OGs are looking to mavericks again.

Pep isn’t anti-maverick, yes he got rid of Ronaldinho but also produced Messi. The sort of maverick that chips the ball over Almunia while 3 yards out, not to the goal or to anyone else, no, to himself in order to volley it in the back of the net.

Guler, who produces both outrageous brilliance and refuses to defend, is also in the safe hands of Ancelotti.

We may not be seeing it yet, but something is happening. The mavericks are making a comeback.

Jonas, Enfield, MUFC

Oh captain, my captain

Re international captains, I give you the 08/09 United squad with 7 – Van der Sar, Ronaldo, Berbatov, Giggs, Park and Fletcher; Rio also captained England briefly around that time.

The 93/94 squad had 8 past, present and future international captains – Schmeichel, Cantona, Ince, Giggs, Robbo, Keano and Beckham. Supplemented by leaders in Bruce, Pallister, Hughes and Butt; no wonder we walked the double that year and narrowly missed out on the domestic treble. The FA Cup win against Vinnie Jones’s Wimbledon in particular was beautifully savage.

Wooden ships and iron men.

Garey Vance, MUFC