Curtis Jones wearing the #17 shirt. There was a pic of him with that number on a training warmup earlier this week, but this confirms it. Also, the LFCTV camera angle is shit.
Fair, but that doesn’t make it any less shitty. Grujic is a very large man and Tsimikas played some decent defense in the second half. Good to see the kids play.
He sure is. All of our CB looked massive, really. Sepp used to be a beanpole, but has put on a ton of muscle.
Gini is always available though and that matters. Honestly him and Fabinho are our only regularly available midfielders
Does feel like we’re going to have to get rid of players before taking him. Right now our midfield has ox Keita Milner Henderson Gini Fabinho Jones We’re not going to carry 8 senior midfield players.
I think we just might. The schedule compression this season is likely to wear down players quickly / cause injuries. Plus, Ox & Naby haven’t shown that they to be healthy at the same time, and everyone else on that list except Gini and Curtis missed chunks of last season due to injury.
Going to be playing every three or four days. If Gini doesn’t resign and Miller leaves at the end of the season we are back to 7. We don’t need a midfielder, but Thiago is so good I’d just say fuck it.
You’d think this week for sure with the community shield next weekend and the league a few weeks away.
With as much talk as has been going around, I’d think they’d make their decision pretty quickly. I don’t expect a winger at this point unless someone really wants Shaqiri. I’d prefer a 4th CB.
I’m fine with that. Klopp and Edwards seem picky as hell about their CBs. They seem to only want Ben White, but Brighton aren’t going to sell for anything short of a massive offer, never mind if White would want to be 4th when he can start and develop. They brought in Matip on a free and Klavan for £4m. Then obviously VVD.
Serious question because I don’t have an answer myself. If Thiago meant one more league or UCL in the next 1-2 years, would you make that trade off for the stalled development of Naby and/or Curtis? I am pretty torn on it. I’d love Thiago for one year but that obviously wouldn’t be the deal.
Yes. Keita is talented enough that the only thing that can hold him back are injuries. Of the players he’d take minutes from, I’d think it would be Milner and Ox.
https://theathletic.com/1991423/2020/08/13/the-premier-league-60-no-39-virgil-van-dijk/?source=user_shared_article This article about VVD explains that he really doesn’t move around that much. Hence why he plays every minute. Our midfield and fullbacks do a ton of running. So we need bodies there. I’d love better attacking depth behind the front three, but there are at least bodies there. Spoiler Virgil van Dijk’s Premier League career is a story of growth, dominance and calmness. He’s a player who has confidently organised Liverpool’s backline en route to their first English top-flight title in 30 years and anchored himself in the minds of many as the best centre-back on the planet today. The narrative around the Dutchman is usually the same: powerful, strong, quick, great passing range, a leader. For once though, wouldn’t it be nice to have some numbers to back all of these claims up? Van Dijk’s debut in the Premier League gave a glimpse into the player he is today. It’s September 12, 2015, and Southampton’s new centre-back recruit from Celtic lines up in a kit that can only be described as gunge-green in colour, in a match away to West Brom at the Hawthorns. The game ends 0-0, but Van Dijk’s box score is familiar. He doesn’t make a tackle, although there is one situation in the game where he politely eases Salomon Rondon off the ball and knocks it back to Maarten Stekelenburg in goal. He wins all four of his headed duels, and attempts 14 long passes, with Southampton retaining possession after all but one of them. Ronald Koeman, Southampton’s manager at the time, labelled the performance as “perfect”. In reality, though, this game was something of an outlier, and Van Dijk’s role at Southampton was quite different to what we’ve come to expect at Liverpool. For a start, he was a far more aggressive defender at Southampton. That, of course, is influenced by the variety of managers he played under in the two and a half years at the club, but shows an active change in his game in recent times. To assess whether he’s changed or not, we can adjust how many defensive actions a player makes per 1,000 opponent touches. It’s not a perfect measure, but a decent proxy to allow comparisons between defenders whose teams have very little of the ball (think: Newcastle) and those who have a lot of the ball (think: Liverpool). If your team has less of the ball, you have more opportunities to defend, and vice versa. With Van Dijk, there’s a clear trend of front-foot defending at Southampton, and slowly but surely he’s become a more reserved back-foot defender at Liverpool. For a bit more context, the comparison of Van Dijk against other central defenders in the Premier League shows just how much his profile has changed. In 2015-16 he was in the 77th percentile for all tacklers (meaning he was making more possession-adjusted tackles than 77 per cent of the rest of the league), yet in 2019-20 he sits in the second percentile. It’s a similar story with his interception numbers, in the 90th percentile in 2015-16, slowly dropping down to the 11th percentile in 2019-20. Van Dijk’s enhanced reading of the game has led to him choosing if he should engage the ball possessor in an attempt to win it back for his team, not when. And if he does engage, his perfect timing ensures it’s an efficient and effective challenge. Lionel Messi perhaps summarised it best when he was asked why it’s so difficult to beat Van Dijk. Speaking to Marca in 2019, he said: “He is a defender who knows how to judge his timing and wait for the right moment to challenge or jockey.” (Photo: Michael Regan/Getty Images) This evolution from active to passive isn’t because his physical gifts have escaped him — but the intellectual side of his game that’s developed in recent seasons. Although the volume of those defensive actions paints a neat picture, the location of where they take place has changed too. At Southampton in 2015-16, Van Dijk would regularly detach from the backline, stepping up to challenge for the ball or cut out a pass before it reached its intended receiver, again indicating that level of aggression in his game that isn’t as prevalent now. He was used both on the left and the right side of defence — hence the larger coverage across the pitch of his attempted tackles — but was making plenty of attempts to win the ball back in the middle of his own half. Contrast that with his style of play now and the volume of tackles have both reduced and seen them take place in far deeper locations. The average position of Van Dijk’s actions, as noted by the dotted lines, is just 20.5 metres from his own goal, the deepest in his Premier League career to date. Perhaps that speaks to the structure of Klopp’s Liverpool that Van Dijk now is very much the last line of defence, and called upon only in times of need. It’s common sense that the best defenders in Premier League history are tough to beat, and excel in the physical side of the game. Although so much of the art of defending is hidden in the (currently) immeasurable or the intangible, there’s something in Van Dijk’s ability to win a one-versus-one that goes to explain the fear factor he transmits to those facing him. His raw aerial and true tackle win rate (the latter being a player’s ability to cleanly make a tackle, adjusting for times where they are shrugged off the ball or commit a foul) are somewhat useful here, but don’t give a complete picture. As explained before, rate stats — those formed by taking the fraction of two stats together, such as pass completion rate or duel win percentage — can lead to fallible conclusions if not used correctly. Paraguayan attacker Juan Iturbe has a 100 per cent aerial win rate in the Premier League (he had a stint at Bournemouth back in 2016, remember?) yet aerial dominance wasn’t likely to be one of the key skills that brought him to the Premier League in the first place. Or how about Matty Longstaff, who has won just 17 per cent of his tackles in the Premier League. Is he really that bad a 1-on-1 dueller, or is it a function of the small sample of tackles he has made? Edge cases like this caused by small samples make it tough to understand how skilled a given player truly is at a given facet of the game. Thankfully with a bit of mathematical gymnastics (empirical Bayes estimation, if you must know) we can create a rating that pushes those with a lower number of actions towards how the average player performs, creating a level playing field and allowing comparison of players with differing numbers of duels. Extraordinary skill requires extraordinary evidence, otherwise you might not be as good as the stats suggest. Thankfully with Van Dijk, the extraordinary evidence is there for all to see, and the data backs it up. He’s not just good, but the best one-on-one defender in the Premier League in recent seasons. Highlighted alongside Van Dijk are Per Mertesacker, who was nearly as competent in the air, and Aaron Wan-Bissaka, who is hands down the best tackler in the league — but neither combine excellence on the ground or in the air quite like the Dutchman. While it’s not possible to compare these ratings to the likes of Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic or Tony Adams, it wouldn’t really be fair to do so either. Van Dijk is playing in a Premier League era where every single player is an athlete. To be so dominant within those conditions surely isn’t much of a contest. These ratings point to Van Dijk being something of a sleeping giant. He’s is a centrifugal force emanating from Liverpool’s backline, repelling attacks through his mere presence. If he is required to go toe-to-toe against an opposing attacker, it’s highly likely he’s coming out on top. As noted before, plenty of the sentiment around Van Dijk is based on his physical attributes, but focusing too much on his pace and strength misses out on the other impressive aspects of his game, and ones that he arguably spends more of his time doing on the pitch. Physical stats have always been something to be avoided in this parish — distance stats are nothing without context, the saying goes — but thanks to Sportlogiq, we can actually garner some insight into Van Djik’s game from them. For a start he’s a leader, constantly talking, organising his teams from the back with a complete awareness of what’s going on around him. Van Dijk can keep concentrated on this because he doesn’t expend his energy running around. In fact, he spends more time standing around or walking per game than any other Premier League defender, spending on average 65 minutes of the 90 doing either of those actions. Naturally, that lack of movement is due to plenty of the play being in front of him, but also shows an appreciation for the value of space he occupies on the field. And despite being blessed with pace, Van Dijk spends just 90 seconds a match either sprinting or running at a high speed. That’s similar to the likes of Jack O’Connell and Fabian Schar, and below the league average for defenders of 100 seconds. Running little and walking lots shouldn’t present Van Dijk as someone who is lazy, but point to the fact that he’s efficient with his energy. Concentration and focus are energy sappers, and over time he’s traded being a proactive defender for a hyper-aware, reactive one. Like a watchful father, he needs to be on high alert, and able to shift up a gear to prevent danger before situations such as a child climbing onto a wobbly chair — or a through ball into space — get messy.
With Ox, Keita, and Hendo’s injury history I don’t think Thiago would hinder Keita and Jones at all. If anything it may accelerate both in that it could allow them to play more of a 10 role and they both play well in space and in the box. Could also do the same for Gini. Really we could see Thiago Hendo Fabinho rotate, Jones Keita Ox rotate, and Gini who can do all roles in midfield with Milner starting to transition out. To me Thiago reminds me of when we signed Milner except not free.
I expect a CB and a backup winger at the least. I’m not sold that the youngsters we have at those positions are ready for backup PL minutes, and they’re sure not ready for starter’s minutes.
I don’t think the 2 Dutch kids and Koumetio, as big as he is, are ready. Fourth guy probably is Nat Phillips. He is 23 and at least big. I’m fine with him if VVD is his partner away at Fulham and games like that. Not that any of the three young CBs will be half the player Trent is, but when Trent was 18, we had Clyne and no back up. They thought Trent was 6 months to a year away and decided to roll the dice on Clyne not getting hurt. Course we building then, not try and win everything mode like now. Bring Klavan back is what I’m saying.
Right. We are in win now mode, and the decision process has to be different. Plus COVID fixture congestion means you need a solid 2-deep (at least) at every position. I’d be perfectly fine with Klavan as our 4th CB. Easily done, and cheap, too.
Watching Thiago, he does what our cbs do now with distribution and recycling of the ball. I think Illini is right, if we bring him in Fabinho may be a cb vs bottom half opponents.
The only issue is we are full on our foreign players for the 25 man roster. Karius should be easy enough to sell. But we want good money for Grujic.
goes back to the kid from Norwich. Would’ve fit a homegrown but weren’t willing to overpay. I see that as an issue with our squad going forward unless we’re sure neco and Elliot pan out.
No way. Also, they’re likely to release Suarez, so he’d be available on a free. Still not sure I’d do it, but there’s no way I’m paying for him at this point.