January 2021

[teesred]

About as useful as 20m brewster for shef utd

Exactly. We'd have have been no worse off of we had kept the 13m and kept hold of that Kendrick Lamar lookalike.

[teesred]

Anyone heard Taki going to Southampton on loan?

[Balinkay]

Not sure I agree, our defensive depletion didn't happen yesterday. It happened months ago, they just waited for us to get right down to the bare bones to act when they know they should have sorted this a month ago.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised or care for that matter if Fab isn't even injured. I hope its been done/said to get them to put their hands in their pocket.

Depletion in what sense? The injury crisis hit months ago, yes, and questions need to be asked why exactly it took us a month to get our defenders in. There have to be pretty good reasons for that I'd imagine.

Us being short of CB players never actually happened. We have three top CBs (as much as some on here dislike Joeresi, he's still likely England's best) + a DM who's adept at playing there + two youngsters for the cups, one of whom seems good enough to play in the league. In theory that's just about... just about... juuust good enough to have a sustained season on multiple fronts, even if Matip gets injured from time to time. Of course I'd have liked another one in the summer, maybe an established CB to replace Matip or someone like Kabak, but hey, you can't always get what you want. We strengthened very successfully elsewhere and left CB a bit more exposed. As luck would have it, that's exactly where injuries struck. Bad luck happens sometimes. It hit us particularly badly with those two.

You don't and you shouldn't plan on your top CBs being out for a season through impact injuries (at last I think Joe's is an impact injury, not sure).

[Insidious]

Anyone heard Taki going to Southampton on loan?

Yep, Ornstein saying it's in advanced stages, but not done.

We need to free up a slot - so it has to be "someone" and someone foreign I think to tally with the registration rules, though it will depend on how we formulate our 2 different squads (for Premier League and Champion's League) - I had thought it would have been Adrian going out, but here we are.

[Steveo]

We might have replaced Lovren and his replacement might have gotten an injury too.

Would I have liked a Lovren replacement? Yes actually, I would. Could any of us have anticipated Van Dijk, Gomez, Matip, and utility option Fabinho all being unavailable at the same time, with two of them set to miss 70% plus of the whole season? Probably not.

We can't cater for every possibility - and if we did have a centre-back on the books sitting at £100,000 a week and Van Dijk/Gomez/Matip/Fabinho sometimes filling in happened to be fit for the larger part of the season, folks would be questioning the wasted wages.

Damned either way in my view.

But it isn’t catering for every possibility. What you are suggesting is that losing 2 CB’s at the same time is incredibly rare - I have news for you Sid... It isn’t at all. It happens to teams all the time. That is why they have minimum of 1 replacement for each first choice player and many teams have more than just 4 CB’s. Not a 1 in 3 if you are lucky Matip as the only cover because Klopp dares say Fabinho can play there if it is needed. Why not tell them Bobby can go in goal tok and be done with a 3rd choice keeper..?

That is being cheap as fuck. No ifs and buts about it.

We are Champions and still World Club champions. We could have spent some cash in 2019 or a this summer to at the very least replace a vital cover at CB. Lovren played many big games - you need minimum 4 - we didn’t even have that.

[teesred]

Losing your first choice pairing is depletion. Couple that with trying to rely on a sicknote CB and 2 youngsters who Klopp clearly doesn't see as long term options (yet) and its obvious something needed doing months ago.
Having to play your 2 best midfielders in defence is ridiculous.
It was obvious early on that the gamble on using Fab in defence was a big and stupid one.
He would have been in the equation to be used sparingly.

[Balinkay]

Yes, but losing them for the entire season is pretty rare.

[Kev0909]

@ balinkay look at the bigger picture if you can

fabinho luckily has slotted in at CB you're right and we are very lucky, however don't you think it's harmed us in midfield? most clubs have 4 + cbs at least the top half that can play, actually CB's not makeshift midfielders- that cost goals sometime, not a 19 year old kid that was playing in none league football season before.

Not like gomez hasn't picked up long injury's before, and not like matip has stayed fit for a long time...... crazy to have ONE reliable CB in VVD

easy to say in hindsight blablabla, but a lot of us was saying we needed another CB and look what happens, "but but but" the fact is FSG tightwads may of cost us becoming a dominate team, and staying at the top let's hope klopp can peform miracles... because that's the only hope we have.

City will pull further away squad depth wise no doubt in the summer if these clowns don't spend some money

Luckily we've got a few players on loan to make some money..

I doubt davies will even play much and will be sold in 1-2 seasons fsg $$$££££

Chance to stay on top while we're there, and may of blown it, yeah sick one.

[Balinkay]

Losing your first choice pairing is depletion. Couple that with trying to rely on a sicknote CB and 2 youngsters who Klopp clearly doesn't see as long term options (yet) and its obvious something needed doing months ago.
Having to play your 2 best midfielders in defence is ridiculous.
It was obvious early on that the gamble on using Fab in defence was a big and stupid one.
He would have been in the equation to be used sparingly.

Yes, that would have been the ideal situation. All I'm saying is that's a position we chose to leave slightly exposed in the summer and we got an abnormally large bout of bad luck handed to us in that particular position.

We all agree signing another CB in the summer would have been ideal, I just don't see it as that terrible a decision (without the benefit of hindisght).

[Insidious]

Bit it isn’t catering for every possibility. What you are suggesting is that losing 2 CB’s at the same time is incredibly rare - I have news for you Sid... It isn’t at all. It happens to teams all the time. That is why they have minimum of 1 replacement for each. Not a 1 in 3 if you are lucky Matip as only cover because Klopp dares say Fabinho can play there if it is needed.

That is being cheap as fuck. No ifs and buts about it.

Having 4 options for a position out at a time IS rare, whatever the injury record. Please don't misrepresent what I said.