KopTalk.com Forums Football Liverpool FC Forum Have we actually Improved the squad so far this summer?

the club hope they have improved but they are sticking to not spending any money to do so. Lot of pressure on BR to get good deals. we were all hoping for the 3 or 4 players(men) that would give us the metal the teams above us have. So far we have not added that metal . If we have improved at all, it is only marginally, tough opening 3 fixtures could expose it as not at all.

Those 3 fixtures could also prove we improved far mor than marginally.

sure it could. but if I was a betting man, and we started the season with the line out in the last game, I would bet that we struggle in those 3 fixtures.

stoke under new management , more prem experience , always make it tough for us. hair pulling out frustrating draw or adam scored a set piece to rub our noses in it.

Villa - brilliant end of season form ,kept benteke, played us off the park last season- defeat

UtD - much better players - defeat......

Season over.

It's not that hard, just stop being so negative. Threads like this won't help.

Aspas has looked good in the pre-seaosn games, he was one of the stars of La Liga last year and cost <£10m. He a MASSIVE improvement on Downing which is where I believe he will be played.

Alberto may be an unknown quantity, but he replaced Shelvey who was a known quantity- he wasn't good enough. He's young enough to improve a lot of his current quality, however he's still god enough to challenge for a starting spot from what I've seen of pre-season.

Touré is definitely a step-up from Carragher. Up unitl the second half of last season, Carra looked like he was done. He was only reinstated into the first 11 when Skrtel's from nosedived and while he grabbed that opportunity with both hands and impressed, he had not been good enough for us for a long time. It's difficult, but nostalgia is not a good reason to pick someone.

Mingolet may be the most 'like-for-like' tranfer we've had in terms of quality, but as someone previously said, he was in reasonably good form over the last season or two, whereas Reina's form has been questionable over the last 3 seasons you could argue. As with Carra, nostalgia is great, but you lose sight of what's important, and that is picking the best 11 players from your squad. It just so happens that Reina was miles ahead of Jones in terms of quality, but he could have been miles better than he was as well.

We've had a good summer so far for transfers. We've got the wage bill down a hell of a lot, which will free ip funds for when we do make a big signing and they ask for top wages. We've got rid of players that were given a good chance to impress but failed (Shelvey etc) and replaced them with players that wanted to play for us. That's what I keep hearing, stuff like 'if he doesn't want to wear the shirt, he can sod off' or something along those lines. We may not be able to attract another Suarez, but everyone we've got so far has wanted to play for us, so that's got to count for something and should translate into good performances.

Ah sh*t EMP, wish you hadn’t said that, had just finished reading JJs post above and those lovely waves of optimism were sweeping up, and then I read your very sobering post and then the damned head started at me again!

just keeping it real

Not really, you could have written the following too:

Stoke- tough to break thru but conceded plenty in the 2nd half of last season, new manager, new style, perhaps unsettled- LFC WIN

Villa- despite beating us last season, we have improved more than them, and will know what to expect and won't underestimate them this time round - Win LFC

United- New manager who never beat us or any other big name away from home, big loss of Fergie, unsettled perhaps, not a brilliant pre-season - Draw or win LFC

We can and need to get at least 10 pts from our first 5 games given the fixtures, if we don't I will be very disappointed and would consider FSG/BR as a definite failure.

might aswell give us the League now then going on the way you see things.

The way I see it, those first 3 could go either way.