We have improved on our points tally in spite of our midfield I dont think anyone can deny that. Largely its been the amazing performances of our defence and goalkeeper that has won us games, which is great. Cant complain about that, long may it continue. That and we are clearly prioritising the league this year. And yeah, Klopp may have intended to improve the midfield, but my point was all those months ago...and has borne out to be true now...we HAVENT strengthened in that area when you consider the players that went out. What everyone was bleating on about to be our strongest area of the pitch, it seems it was only me (on this forum at least) to contradict that thinking.
But mark my words, the way we're playing, there are only so many rolls of the dice that can go your way. City are still a level above us (they were unlucky with that missed penalty at anfield), Arsenal look strong, Chelsea look strong and Tottenham look ok despite not buying anyone and still not having their own stadium. Points wise its still very close and very early with the christmas fixtures coming up. A time of the season we have struggled before. My prediction of "just scraping into the top 4 and doing ok in a domestic cup" might just still come in. And with the way we're scraping results and not looking convincing, would it really be that surprising?
What really worries me is I seen something in Keita in that Napoli game that I really didnt like. He played poorly for the first 20 minutes and then suddenly had a mysterious back injury... we havent seen much of him since then despite him being now fully fit for awhile. Something tells me that Klopp has seen what I saw in him in that game and he's lost a bit of trust.
As I said, more was expected on the midfielders we bought for 110m, we cannot deny the fact that Klopp wanted to improve that area. You say we have lost players, in fact we have lost only Can who was mostly injured during our second half of the season, Coutinho didn't play a single game for us since December, the best period of last season's campaign. The only player we are really missing is Ox who we didn't sell, but is injured. However, I don't think Ox is the best midfield we ever had, he is no Messi. It does look that Keita is not performing as expected as he is supposed to be much better than Ox and Fabinho is supposed to be better than Can, therefore, on paper we have improved our midfield when Shaq is also included, but, there are always chances we take when we buy players, nobody knows how exactly it will pan out. That said, I am not sure if our lack of fluidity is just because Ox is not available but rather the adoption of more cautious tactics that has made us concede less. Also, I don't think that Salah, Mane and Firmino are missing chances they were taking last season because of our midfield. What a better midfield could have done to help Mane score that sitter on Sunday, Salah was scoring extraordinary goals from nowhere last season, but this season he is missing easy goals.
