NEIL ATKINSON, Mike Girling, Kieran Morris were joined by Stu Wright to sum up where and what Liverpool are up to going in to the new season.
PODCAST: SOMETHING TO PROVE
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NEIL ATKINSON, Mike Girling, Kieran Morris were joined by Stu Wright to sum up where and what Liverpool are up to going in to the new season.
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Personally think our squad depth is pretty useless when the first 11 is just not good enough. We have missions in transfers fees & thousands per week in wages just wasted.
Compare to other top clubs where the first 11 would blow the second 11 away in a match… with us thats just not the case. Depth is great if the first team has no gaps but not just for the sake of it. We ‘did a Spurs’ for the second summer running. Why not buy a couple of stars & promote youth?
What stars did you want us to sign Olly? I think we’ve had a much better window then last summer and Rodgers now has absolutely no excuses. We don’t have the wealth of Chelsea, City, United and even Arsenal now and also no CL so what did you expect exactly?
Stars may be the wrong word just players that are considerably better than we have in their position. I read an interview with Rodgers in April / May & he was talking about targeting one or two key players & not like last summer… To me it looks very much like last summer & don’t understand what changed.
Clyne is great improves the position but the rest are just filler. The amount of forwards & 10s we sign is quite remarkable. When competing domestically against four teams with greater resources I cant see the logic in building two teams pretty equally matched. We have great youth & feel we should use that as the depth behind a great 11-14 players.
Firmino and Benteke are fillers? Can’t see that myself. I’m tipping Benteke to have a big impact (not that it should be that hard to improve on our strikers from last season), and reckon swapping Sterling for Firmino will improve us in the short term at least, as much as I rate Sterling’s potential. Also reckon that swapping “boring” Milner for a “legend but well past his best” Stevie will improve us no end.
Not sure I agree with your assertion that the other top teams have a clear first and second teams too, I haven’t worked it out on paper but I’m pretty sure Chelsea, Arsenal and Man City’s second teams are still very good sides.
On the rotation issue, I think Rodgers’ would be open to changing tactics and rotating the team if the squad was approaching a point of stability where the majority of the players had mastered a couple of different systems.
Last season we were struggling for fluency and desperately trying to account for our lack of strikers so to change up the team any more in that situation would be foolish. The season before we really didn’t have the personnel to be rotating the team.
As Neil suggested I think we will see a couple of fairly separate teams emerge at the start of the season to provide consistency for the new players bedding in and to handle the very different requirements between the tough aways, “easy” homes and Europa league matches (expecting Markovic to feature heavily in the Europa league where he looks the most comfortable). Then, all going well, as we move towards Christmas he will look to integrate them more closely and build up different combinations of players.
How much Markovic and Lallana cost is irrelevant now. Markovic is still only 21-22 and so can have a decent season this year and then a better one next year and so on. Really don’t get this “he must make it this year or else”. Why?
He will get his game in the Europa league and coming off the bench. He doesn’t need the pressure of starting every game at this stage of his career. Just forget about him for now and take the pressure off. At his age anything he shows is a bonus.
Couldn’t you guys open and pour your drinks before the show starts? lol