|
|
I'd like a midfielder and a forward personally. Let's explore replacing Wijnaldum though.
I become more and more of the mindset that Thiago is/was the replacement and we got him in early. Now, through a horrible injury and Covid, Thiago missed most of first half of the season.
With Keita and Ox, the less said the better. Injuries, we know. So no point dissecting too heavily.
Milner and Curtis Jones though are relatively reliable fitness-wise. They played a good number of games, but only 11 and 13 starts for them in the League.
Then factor in that Fabinho played most of his football at centre-back and thus was out of the midfield selection "quota" as it were.
Henderson played 8 games at centre-back and due to injury issues only played 13 other games.
Now, obvious caveat, injuries will happen, though I think we'd be hard-pushed to have luck just as rotten as last season. So, bearing that in mind - we'll have Van Dijk, Gomez and Matip back in the side, with the addition of Konate, which should (?!?) be enough to keep Fabinho and Henderson away from centre-back minutes, making them available for midfield.
Wijnaldum played 3,900 minutes - in all competitions. Fabinho and Hendo played 2010 and 750 minutes at centre-back respectively, so realistically we will need to "replace" about 1,000 minutes of Wijnaldum's contribution, rather than 51 games worth.
That means we are talking about spreading 11 games worth of pitch time between Thiago, Henderson, Fabinho, Milner, Keita, Ox and Curtis Jones. Between the 7 of them, should we have better luck with injuries (surely we do?!?) that shouldn't be too tall an order. In an (absolute!!!) emergency we could stick Firmino in for a match or two with Salah, Jota and Mane ahead of him, do the 4-2-4 sort of thing.
Some may argue that Wijnaldum had a certain role within the side and we need someone to come in and replace that role. If that is people's opinion, fair enough, a respectable stance. However, if we're purely looking to replace those minutes that arose as a result of a freak injury crisis, it may not be as essential as we think on the surface level - and I'm saying this as someone who wants us to make a signing "just in case" after what happened last year
There's another way of looking at it as well. If Thiago is the Wijnaldum replacement, then we may actually need to find a perennially fit "every-man" who can do a reasonable enough job in most positions without complaint - a rare thing. What I'm getting at there I suppose is that it's actually Milner we need to "replace" - if we could find a 24-28 year old "Milner" who can do a bit of everything it would be invaluable and I'd definitely prioritise that over a 24-28 year old "Wijnaldum" right now.
Are we having a bit of a knee jerk reaction seeing other clubs splurge the cash?
We know where we need reinforcements, the current crop of players are probably 4th best in the league if not top 3. We need to be able to show that we can still compete. We probably will, injuries permitting, but still feel we might miss a trick if there aren’t anymore incomings
Klopp does usually do that but the market is tough for a few reasons.
Covid, late start/finish to season, euros/copa america, players only just starting to join back up with squads.
Our owners are business people but so are 95% of clubs.
I suspect like poster above says once a few big deals get done the ball will start rolling for everyone.
Sorry CCTV, I'm not seeing the connection between the net spend of Leeds United and the hypocrisy if Man United fans gurning about their side not being funded when they clearly are, or indeed what's cheeky about it.
Leeds have certainly been spending a lot of cash mind, especially considering their position.
Think man United fans can’t bring it on themselves to realise ole isn’t good enough. They’d rather blame their owners for “not spending” I’m ok with him still being there and so are fans from other clubs.
Another quality manager, with the players they have and have bought in will be winning trophies regularly. Sucks to say, but it’s the reality
Bookmarks