Mhsc

Can't wait to sell Sanchez

They're already time wasting lol

Why do we even have CBs? They may as well just leave that space open because these guys just stand in those spaces and act like they're gonna do something but every ball goes by them like they're not even there

Osimhen would be perfect for them, and they don't seem shy about spending huge on wages (given the stupid money they gave Kai), something like that wouldn't surprise me at all other than for some reason they seem super shy about signing conventional / obvious attackers and prefer to do weird things like buy Kai Havertz, Gabriel Jesus etc to be "quirky" up front. They could definitely win the title with that team if they all stay fit.

Maybe if we get top 5 they can put something like this out about us - "FULL-TIME - Chelsea NOT SO BAD AFTER ALL" Edit: what the hell if you write Chelsea all caps it gets automatically edited when you post lol

On the other hand, Rice is the only sort of elite player in that midfield and having two (perhaps) elite CMs is usually what the really great sides have. Far more reliable that way if you want to stay strong for a whole league campaign. If they also get an elite CF finally it will be a genuinely generational team for them that they have been waiting for in last 20 years.

Gonna embarrass myself here but... I reckon we win. Comfortably.

Agreed, he got a great loan deal in with some fantastic experience at a top club, time to bring him home The only thing with him versatility wise is that Maresca said in an interview that Veiga is very insistent on only wanting to play CB and the loan move was to get time at CB to try to get and hold down an international spot there. And he plays left CB. Personally I doubt he is worse than Colwill who cannot defend but does have other qualities.

I don't think we have much choice. The club has almost no revenue other than player sales - we're pretty poor really, small stadium, years outside of CL now, not won anything in ages, lots of money sunk on bad players in transfer fee and wages. At this stage all we can afford is young people on lower salaries that we have hope to sell for similar or more money in the future. Even if sugar daddy Boehly pours money in, we just can't balance the books in PSR at this point if we go for elite players on big wages - maybe if we do a good job offloading deadwood we can have a few to replace them, but even that is probably quite ambitious. We are operating on a mid table clubs revenue now and have played most of our one-off PSR tricks. We need to be back into being consistently in the CL, get the stadium sorted, and get some really good sponsorship deals in - 5-10 years of work realistically. In the meantime, we have to keep our wage bill low and keep buying young players who will hold or improve their value - its the only money we get.

Personally I think we've had a very nice progression this year, whatever happens in the league, just based on the eye test all season. We've gone from being a team with 0, and I mean 0 game management, to knowing how to control the pace of game, when to slow it down and when to speed it up, and how to see out the end of a game. We know how to chase a lead without going ridiculously OTT. We know how to defend in a structure now as a cohesive unit, on and off the ball, how to press as a unit, when to drop deep etc. Our improvement in off the ball play has been literally that of a youth team with no clue turning into a mens pro team over the course of a season - just go back and look at how we were off the ball last year or in preseason this year. We are not where we need to be in terms of on the ball play, while we are deadly if teams press high and try to play progressive football (even with Sanchez in goal passing the ball around), we are pretty hopeless at defeating a low block but even there we have improved IMO. For me Maresca is several tiers above Poch in terms of tactics and the way he's developed the group - maybe Poch was good for getting them all to be friends, but Maresca has taught them how to be a team, both tactically and in terms of working for each other on the pitch. I also think we saw how Maresca-ball is supposed to look in the beginning of the season and I thought it was good to watch. We have seen a collapse in form that overlapped with Lavia + Fofana being injured, NJ being injured and then out of form, and our cheat code player Cole Palmer being dreadfully out of form for 3 months. I really don't know what options Maresca had in that period to do things differently, the SDs should and could have handled January better and maybe we would be in a better place 2nd half of season. Maresca does have obvious flaws and areas to improve in, but I don't think a better manager exists for this project. If we change the project (sack SDs / change vision), then it makes sense to move on from him.

Ffs totally free header for Van Dijk

Cole finding his way back to his best I reckon Just needs a goal

No excuse for that NJ ffs a mile offside for no reason

Enzo's passing been pretty poor, corners poor, but calm and composed in front of goal... If this guy could finally bring it all together at once he'd be the £100m man that we signed.

Love how hard Cole works

We've been asked not to post them as the site got a complaint from Google about it

Agreed Salah always been a respectful guy, managed badly by us and proved us wrong for dumping him, never whined and always been a class guy

Enzo really coming on at finishing calmly man

I honestly don't think we have any choice but to keep buying these high potential kids. Tiny stadium, poor (or often none) sponsorship deals, no CL football in years - we're only surviving from a PSR perspective through loopholes (some of which don't work in CL fair play rules, and all of which when played once cannot be played again) - we need to keep buying & selling TONNES of players as it is our only hope of generating enough income to cover how badly run everything else is. And the other problems will take a decade to fix probably. When you look back at it we have been a really badly run club for 10 years+ now, let so many other teams catchup and overtake us through essentially negligence and repeated short term-ism.

Can't say I know anything about this Hato guy - do you guys watch Ajax much then? His stats don't stand out in quite the same way a Huijsen's do but still looks decent just glancing at that. I like Hujisen just from seeing him in PL games - looks like he is already an immediate upgrade on any of our CB so not fussed he's young. Is it similar story with Hato? Does he immediately bench any of our CBs effortlessly? (think that's a pretty reasonable minimum standard for any signing as our CBs are poor af)

Nico choosing the right moment to start scoring goals again

I'd take them both here np Some concerns about Wissa injury history but both easily upgrade our squad and based on recent form from our players they go into XI too

Absolutely Tempted to just watch that game instead

Scrappy but idgaf

Pep took time and a pretty expensive squad building process too I'm sure Maresca can play the tedious Pep approach and win if given cheat code players like prime De Bruyne and co Whether it is a good idea to take an approach that was successful in the past but required infinite money and 115 violations to make work is another question Liverpool have shown a few times its not the only way to win the league and operate as an elite club and plenty of other successful clubs in the world playing different football to slow positional play. In the end all strategies have their era and get fazed out as new ideas get introduced. Seems very brave to build an entire vision for a whole club to play exclusively one approach - fine if teh approach turns out to be the right system for the next 10 years, but what if we build it all for a lot of money and it turns out a more aggressive style like Liverpool play is the new meta?