Summer transfers

[Steveo]

The Konate we’ve seen of late yes - not the fella of the second half of last season and most of this.

[Daffydd]

Konate has played more league games for Slot than he did for Klopp.

[Insidious]

Hopefuly keep konate and give virgl one more season then replace him with quansah.

I think that if, in a few seasons time, our pick of four centre-backs was, in no particular order -

Konaté
Jacquet
Quansah
Leoni

We'd probably feel we weren't doing too badly. It would certainly be an excellent age profile, which is a good platform to further improve from.

[jozza800]

The Konate we’ve seen of late yes - not the fella of the second half of last season and most of this.

Think that can be said of quite a few.

Mac being the most obvious. We all know how much quality he has, we've seen it. And he's not being helped by the system but it's not just the off the ball stuff, his ball control and passing seems to have one AWOL.

Hopefully, he can pick it up in the home straight, in the same way Konate's form has really picked up.

We could do with Mo and Gakpo sorting themselves out as well...

[Nineteenx]

The Konate we’ve seen of late yes - not the fella of the second half of last season and most of this.

Konate’s world class, he was top class when.i saw him at Leipzig and everyone was raving about Upenecano

Even the best players make the odd error here and there and Konate has barely made any, he did get blamed for a lot of shit that wasn’t his fault

I remember him miscontronling as can happen to any player on occasion having beaten the attacker to the ball as there was no pressure on it because someone fucked up in the counter press, so putting it out for a corner

They scored from it through no fault of his, you and others were ripping Konate for it

That’s what happens with some players, especially if I’ve backed them, and wanted them before any alleged interest, been the same with Grav or was for ages and the same with Macca

[jozza800]

As the late Roy Walker would say. Just say what you see.

I think we have a cracking set of players, you go through them one by one and there isn't single one that that you would say isn't a good player. It's a far cry from some of the squads we've had pre 2017/18ish.

However, certain players, and yes i'm going to mention Macca (again) haven't been playing anywhere near to their ability.

Of the players that really struggled pre-Christmas, Kirkez, Wirtz and Konate have improved. Macca, Mo and Gakpo haven't.

There's no agendas, there's no pissing on anybody's Mr Chips. As always, most are just commenting on what they are watching, and we're all watching the same games.

[Nineteenx]

Macca scored 3 in his last 2 games 😂

[CCTV]

Maybe selling him with a buy back clause was an exercise I juggling the books, we needed the fee to invest in players in the summer.

Quansah wasn’t a bad defender, his issue was he wasn’t a front foot defender, he wouldn’t take the aggressive positions Virgil and Konate do and stop forwards getting hold of the ball and linking

He used to back off to our area and that would allow other players to join and lead to goals. So I’d be looking for the evidence he’s now able to do that

We need to keep Konate he’s I’ve if the best there is at it

Quansah has all the raw materials to be a top CB. At LFC he made too many costly errors. If he gets more gametime and takes those errors/lapses out of his game it would be worth getting him back.

Like Nunez & Elliott, he wasnt in Slots graces so moving him on probably right.

Hope Konate stays, think he'll be off though come the summer.

[jozza800]

Macca scored 3 in his last 2 games ��

2 in 2.

Gakpo has 1 in 2, in his last two games, doesn't mean he's playing well...

[RedMagic]

I'm not sure that it's necessarily an unwillingness to splash the cash - he would still cost a reasonable wedge (rumoured £51m) and that would be on top of us acquiring Jacquet (£60m wasn't it?) so we're already talking about £110m on centre-backs alone, with most fans crying out for one (or more often two) pacey wide players, a defensive-minded midfielder and potentially cover in one of the full-backs areas.

That would suggest that there's belief in his improvement, which is no real surprise given he is actually getting regular match time and in a weaker League. It's easy to forget he was picked ahead of Konaté (and at the time we might say on merit) for the first League game, but unfortunately was bombed out after one bad half of football - a bit wild considering some of the dumpster fire performances some of our other lads have put out on a regular basis.

It'll be interesting to see if Konaté stays. A quartet of Van Dijk, Konaté, Quansah and Leoni certainly doesn't look bad on paper, especially if one of Gomez or Endo remains at the club given that both are capable of cover when we're pushed on the injury front. Without Konaté it would of course look lighter.

If Hughes and Edwards are thinking of paying £51m to resign a player who we sold just seven months ago for £30m, they are even more stupid, clueless and inept than I already think they are.

Getting picked ahead of Konate doesn't automatically mean that player is great, it probably just means that either Konate is having one of his error strewn periods, or our manager is making yet another head scratching decision. Quansah is playing more often for a team in a weaker league yet we've heard nothing about how he has been playing. He's scored a couple of goals, but his team have also lost a third of their games. If he was playing well enough to warrant us resigning him for £51m we would have heard about it.

Van Dijk hasn't had a great season and it's possible that like Salah he's on the decline. Konate is inconsistent and doesn't warrant the pay rise he's looking for. He'll have a few solid games followed by a few games where he makes a load of mistakes, with some of them leading to us conceding goals. Leoni will be coming back from a very serious injury. There's no way to know if that injury has permanently affected him, never mind that he'll still need integrating into the side as it will be like he just signed for us. Gomez is a backup player at best. He can do a job for a few games here and there, but he is too error prone to be a starter. As for Endo, are you serious? He was bought as a backup player. He's now older and slower. If he is and will still be seen as a backup defender, we are in serious trouble.