Originally Posted by
justme
Klopp kinda played Gini all the time. he was one of first men on the team sheet. We got away with it. for the most part. But the midfielders who started had to play way to many minutes. It was basically Henderson/Fab/Thiago/Keita and no one else apart from the odd game for Jones and even less for Milner. we were always 1 midfielder short.
Gini was a top top player, him being LCM controller and driving the ball forward worked incredibly well for us and he was absolutely integral to our Champions League and Premier League wins
It seems to be lost on people, maybe wilfully so, be we effectively replaced him with Thiago, who only has 3 assists and although he plays some absolutely fantastic passes in isolation that are a joy to behold, they don't release our players as they need to for them to try and create and assist and he hogs the ball and stops Virgil, Trent and Hendo who are actually better than him at releasing our players as described despite him being a far superior passer of the ball technically
Gini, although not the best passer, did regularly release Robbo and Mane on his side and play triangles with them that worked well to this effect too with simple 10-15 yard passes
The fact remains, Thiago hasn't improved our midfield, an improvement would be winning one of our games v City while continuing to beat Chelsea and Spurs in both games, we didn't manager to beat Chelsea in 4 games this season and failed to score in all 3 of the finals we reached, the idea of signing Thiago was that he'd put goals on a plate for our forwards and release them and our full backs to put goals on a plate, it hasn't materialised yet and he's been here 2 seasons
I think he has been a poor signing, we were better with Gini, played simple passes on his side that did release Robbo and Mane in combination and helped cover up Fabinho's deficiencies hugely
"If Everton were playing at the bottom of my garden, i'd close the curtains”
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