Not Actually that Crucial a Summer as of August 2023...beginning to now think everything isnt fine!

I'd sacrifice the left wing replacement of Jota if it meant we get a miracle maker in goals. In Europe, we can always play a lopsided 4-4-2 with McGregor left and Jun right.

 

Rodgers used McGregor as a left midfielder before.

 

Yeah but McGregor was early 20’s, I am not suggesting because he is now 30 that he doesn’t have an engine anymore but his game has changed so much. It is probably why domestically he suits being our deepest midfielder as a few times a game he can pop up and under or overlap our winger to help unsettle a low block.

See even the shouts of pushing McGregor further forward I am not convinced it suits him anymore. He used to be great at making 3rd and fourth man runs beyond the striker but I can’t see him doing that all game now.

I suspect he will play as either a single pivot or as the tempo setter in a double pivot with someone more industrious (Iwata or Kwon or new signing) playing beside him, particularly in Europe.

What wouldn’t surprise me is if we experimented at some point with something like the City formation 3-2-4-1 certainly domestically.

 

I'm a wee bit concerned at the scatter gun we seem.to have got out we are now heavy in positions without having nailed on starters from.the ones we brought in


On the right

Abada forrest tilio yang vata

Cdm - calmac iwatta kwon Mccarthy soro

On the left meada haksa Johnson

Strikers kyogo oh maeda

Defence is strange it's strong without being stacked ccv and starfelt are a solid combo Johnston on the right and taylor on the left no bad but berna isn't a leftback and ralston is okay


I'm not concerned with the squad to the point I'm pressing the panic button but realistically we cnt just keep signing and signing

Soro Mccarthy turnbull haksa ajeti welsh scales seigrist all could realistically go and we wouldn't miss them

We could also lose our entire first starters in attack to the Asian cup

I haven't included kobayashi cause I'm not sure what to make of him yet haha

 

mcgregor,hatate,oriley and iwata are all great players but i think they are all too similar in style .the fact they are such good players means its gonna take a particularly good dm or am to force them out of the team .there is a balancing act to be done and we need some quality in before considering selling

 

There needs to be a cut off point if we are indeed waiting on hearing back on two offers for winger/CM.

Eventually we have to issue an ultimatum take it or leave it as we can be left with our dicks in our hand on the last day of the window thinking we had our signings and they * off to another club.

We need a contingency period to have other targets lined up. Feels like exactly what happened with a few players last season, waited and waited and then panicked with the likes of Abildgard.

 

Rocco Vata off on loan to Aberdeen according to KDS that would mean if they want scales they would need to buy him from us as i am sure you can't have 2 players on loan from same team

 

There will be a deadline that's a certainty.

 

€14m spent this window (including the fee for Iwata) and €29m brought in for Jota.

€15m surplus, before we when entertain the rumour of the £30m kitty Ange was to be given and we assume Rodgers would have been told about as well.
* I don't imagine, judging by what Rodgers has said about his return, he would be here if we are only spending half of what we being in in sales. That not a club looking to improve for Europe.


So that in find, we surely are looking at anywhere from €15m to €45m still available without the club being overly concerned.
Now, I don't imagine we are going to spend 60m in one window, not a * chance. But I still expect 2-3 more big signings to take the tally surely north of 30m spent this window.

What positions, * knows. If the clubs not concerned about keeper just yet, signed about a thousand wingers and have a thousand midfielders already, it's hard to see where the "marquee" signings are gonna be coming in for.

But that's up to Rodgers and the team.

We just want to see them in the door and lay the markers down..

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Not like McGregor is ancient. In any case, a great shot-stopper will have more influence on a game in Europe than a great left winger. If we must choose between a marquee gK signing and a marquee LW signing, it has to be GK.

 

We aren’t going to spend another €45m.

There was talk of £30m being made available for transfers but that probably included some element of player sales in there. I doubt we expected Jota to leave but probably expected others to go. Ange spoke about this before he left for Spurs away back in March I think it was during the international break.

The talk of millions of wingers is a bit misleading too. We have Forrest for a start that is really being kept due to his club trained status and experience who will be lucky to feature in 15 games of a 50 game season but will be there in case of emergencies. Johnston would likely be out the door if he hadn’t got injured. Maeda, Rodgers has said he sees him more central. Yang and Tilio are both 21 coming in from Asia and Oz respectively as talented guys but I think we would be happy if one of them kicks on to be a player. Abada who is only 21 himself is probably our only sort of proven first team winger, Haksabanovic is yet to prove himself and if he doesn’t by January could be out the door too. I think one of our marque signings will be a winger, possibly two if Abada turned around and left. That is if Rodgers plans to play wingers which it looks like he will.

On centre midfielders we have lost Mooy who made a good contribution and replace him with Holm, who looks like a long term investment to deputise for McGregor. Kwon has come in too as a young guy. We have McCarthy and Soro who will either be away or play no part in the team. Turnbull has a year left on his deal and will either be given game time or more likely sold. That leaves us pretty thin on quality in there particularly if Hatate or O’Riley receives interest from the EPL.

Goalkeeper and left back would be the other two obvious areas for me, but I don’t see them being marque signings. A striker would be tough given we tend to play one up top and if we move Maeda more central we have three already.

There is still a lot to be done on both getting quality in and moving players out, thankfully on the later there has been some movement with I suspect plenty more to go now we are back from Japan.

It wouldn’t be surprising for
Hazzard (away)
Orhoghide (away)
Shaw (loan)
Vata (loan)
Lawal (loan)
Anderson, Oluyemi and McPherson (loan)
Soro (permanent)
Scales (permanent)
Welsh (Permanent)
Kobayashi (loan)
Ajeti (pay off)
McCarthy (pay off)
Turnbull (permanent)
One other first team player (permanent)

All left before the end of this window.

 

Fair enough, and I also hope we get both positions sorted.

 

But we don't leak these things anymore. We're surely working on things now that we'll all find oyut about a few days (or even a few hours in some cases!) before they're announced.

 

That would be excellent for Vata and us..

 

We've added 5, but are still arguably weaker as things stand just now, with the loss of Jota and Mooy..

We must get stronger every window and hopefully we start to see real quality added now.

 

A few people talking about the Jota money and I have a question for people more knowledgeable than me:

Of the clubs we might want to be emulating (definitely Benfica, Porto, Ajax, maybe Brighton?), what percentage of their income from player sales do they reinvest in buying players?

In particular, Benfica and Ajax are clearly light years ahead in terms of their academy set-ups. How can we start to build towards emulating that? Is it even feasible (I imagine they have some structural advantages as we seem to lose our best youngsters to England, e.g. Doak)?

There's a lot this money could go towards.

 

We can't emulate their model in terms of markets we raid. South America will naturally gravitate towards Spain, Portugal and Italy. Not to mention their citizenship laws. Academy structure is a different matter. We could aggressively push youngsters into the first team in order to get them to stick around, even risking results in domestic games so that a Summers or McPherson get a way into the roster.