Erikse

That was Willock from 22/23

Shot stopping: Steven Taylor

I'm sure we'll play some beautiful and entertaining football with that lineup.

Well, if he can match what Callum Wilson did for us 2-3 years ago minus the injuries, then he would probably be a regular starter. We're talking 20+ at that point.

Which was the original point, yes (TCDs post).

Still can't shake off the fact that he scored 18 non penalty goals in a season last season, for a mid table team.. 12 goals in less minutes the season before, also for a mid table team. I doubt that he was playing exactly like what we are seeing now. He's obviously in bad form at the moment.

Personally I never meant to use it as an excuse, it was more of a dig at the Liverpool fans who used that excuse for months.

Antony has also scored some goals with his right. He's one of the most left footed players I have seen. What's your point?

They used lack of preseason as an excuse for Isak for 3 months, so he still has a month left of being excused. Make that 4 months, as he also missed half of the season.

It's so annoying. They're not even good, like at all.

Liverpool has won just 1 game in their last 7 (in the league)..

Yeah, but despite earlier success, I feel that we've allways been slow in the windows. Usually not much happening at the beginning of the windows. I really hope that will finally change, and also that we go for players with good value that we can realistically get, which is what we need.

Actually if you sell Wolte at the same price as his total leftover ammortizarion, and buy another striker for that same price and wage (maybe even a bit more), I guess that would mean that we break even on the budget? I guess that's pretty good.

We have more depth than ever, but not sure our starting 11 is actually that much better than the team from 2022-2024. Some of the key players from that timeframe: Trippier, Isak, Wilson, Schär, Bruno, Gordon, Botman, Joelinton, Willock, Pope, and Burn. Isak has been sold, and so has Wilson, who declined due to injuries and age. Gordon has declined massively in general. Botman, Willock and Joelinton has declined due to injuries, and can't be relied on for the same reason. Could say the same about Pope. Trippier has declined massively due to age, which Schär and Burn are also starting to show signs of. Schär moreso than Burn. On paper our midfield is better for sure, and Bruno is even better now. We should be getting more out of our midfield. Unfortunately this just goes back to our recruitment last summer, when we were supposed to replace some of these. How much blame Howe has in all of the factors mentioned is hard to say. Except for players getting older, ofcourse.

I do think that he will be giving us quite a few goals in the future if we can put together a set of players and system that clicks offensively. Right now we're all over the place. He was a great finisher at Brentford.

As mentioned, yes. It's not much, but I guess it's something.

Exactly my thoughts, he'd make a solid backup, and I think that with time he can become a Wilson with less injuries. We'll just have to forget about how much we paid for him.

We also need 3 fullbacks if we sell Tino. I think we will sell Wolte or Wissa if we're going to buy a striker. I don't think any team in the league has 3 expensive (pure) strikers in their squad.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't we have to pay the rest of the amortization aswell when we sell? So effectively it won't free up funds in the immidiate term, it will only get rid of his wages and yearly amortization, which I guess helps a tiny bit. I'm asking because I haven't updates myself on how this works, and what changes that has been made to the rules.

Sure, but we also need like 7-8 new players, so we need to prioritize still. Think we'd have to sell Wolte or Wissa if we're going to get an quality striker in. Doesn't make sense to have 3 expensive strikers when you're playing just 1 every week.

That's what I'm hoping for. Then again we would need to find a buyer for decent money, and also find a replacement in an already highly busy window. The work on finding replacements for everyone needs to be done 10 times better than last summer. We've often left it late.

Might be a young and cheap striker in that case.

As mentioned in another thread, are we going to buy another striker without selling Wolte or Wissa? I can only see that happening if we change formation to play Wolte together with another striker.

Agree, the last few season the mid table sides have been our nemesis. Bascially the best teams amongst those who doesn't have the added games from European football. Before 23/24 we actually did pretty well against those. We've been consistently winning against bottom teams, and decent against top sides.

Squad needs yet another overhaul, but we'd have to sell a few to make that happen, and also be much smarter with who we bring in. The problem is that we didn't really find good solutions to our problems last season, so now we are just left with even more problems to fix. Our team is a mess now. Our strikers currently looks mediocre, and we would be selling at a significant loss. What can we do? Buy a third striker, or hope they come good, and potensially have the same issue next season? I think Wissa can come good if the team is doing well, but I'm not as convinced about Woltemade in this league. We've spent loads on wingers, but only Barnes has been remotely exciting this season. Even he is limited, but definetly one to keep. The rest aren't doing much. What can we do, spend more on wingers? We will probably just have to hope that Elanga comes good.. If we're going to buy a winger, we'd probably have to sell Gordon, but Howe seems to like Gordon and I'm not sure we get that much for him anyways. Our midfield is lacking in terms of depth, especially as Joelinton often gets injured, and Ramsey hasn't impressed yet. Miley could become a regular next season, but if we sell Tonali and Willcok, we're probably going to need 2 quality midfielders back in? What do we do about Joelinton, maybe we can use him more as a rotational player, and hope he doesn't get injured much? Problem is, whenever he has a good game, Howe won't bench him. Even if that means he has to play twice a week until he gets injured. This season has proved that we need 2 new fullbacks. Burn and Trippier can't be second choice at the fullbacks. If Tino goes, we might even need 3 of them, but I don't think we will buy 3 fullbacks in 1 window. At CB we have depth, but 2 of our best centrebacks are on the decline. Burn is still doing well, but he turns 34 in may. When Burn and Schar can't keep up anymore, all we have is an injury prone Botman, and Thiaw. We kind of need another centreback, but I doubt it will be a priority, and we will probably just keep Burn and Schar for another season. We also need a new goalkeeper, whether that will be a first choice or second choice. If we get a new first choice GK, Pope might leave, and then we need 2 GKs. We might just run with Pope for another season and replace Ramsdale. Bottom line is, we have so many things to fix after last summers disaster, and there are several dilemmas. It seems like we are going to be stuck with quite a few players that we ideally want to move on from. It's such a tricky situation to recover from (short term atleast), unless we change the system of how we play, and some players just looks a lot better in the new system (a long shot).