Cody Gakpo | OFFICIAL: Liverpool player

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lenny_1248 said:
You cannot accomodate him, Rashford, Martial, Sancho, Antony, Garnacho and a new CF (considering he comes in summer). Too many quality players and not enough minutes. Someone is leaving?
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Did you consider the fact that there is still a lot of games left and that an injury or two, and we’re short of quality?
Martial and Rashford have yet to prove consistency recently, and Sancho is having a tough season.
 
lenny_1248 said:
You cannot accomodate him, Rashford, Martial, Sancho, Antony, Garnacho and a new CF (considering he comes in summer). Too many quality players and not enough minutes. Someone is leaving?
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City seem to manage fine with stacking their attack. Anyway, Martial can't be relied on and could be sold if necessary
 
Feels like a proper ‘system’ player. Kind of glad we are moving away from looking only at individual talent without any idea of how they’d fit in to the team and the vision of football we need to be playing.

I think Ten Hag will move Rashford to the centre, have Gakpo and Antony on the wings. The latter two seem to be very good at keeping the ball or at least Antony is. From what little I’ve seen, Gakpo appears to be press resistant too : any regular watchers ?
 


PSV ready to do business for less than 40m pounds. I guess it will be a total of 40m euros.
 
croadyman said:
Vlahovic might move or don't you rate him
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People saying Vlahovic are on massive hopium. He only joined Juventus last January. There is no indication he is for sale or that he wants a move. There are several players they'd probably sell before him.
 
JustinC00 said:
People saying Vlahovic are on massive hopium. He only joined Juventus last January. There is no indication he is for sale or that he wants a move. There are several players they'd probably sell before him.
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If Juve gets reacquainted with Serie B after the investigation into their financial fraud, he’ll very likely leave this summer.
 
lenny_1248 said:
You cannot accomodate him, Rashford, Martial, Sancho, Antony, Garnacho and a new CF (considering he comes in summer). Too many quality players and not enough minutes. Someone is leaving?
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It might be there are doubts over the likes of Sancho or Rashford's futures.

But even if he took the minutes of Elanga and VDB (assuming he can play as a #10/second striker), he would already be on 714 minutes this season, which straight away is about half of the minutes he has had for PSV in their league and Europa league games. I doubt many would be distraught at seeing either of those players leave.

Beyond that, a lot of our players could do with playing less than they currently look like doing. Rashford for example has been chronically overused in recent years and generally needs to spend more time on the bench. Bruno plays more than an equivalent like KDB and could/should be rested more. Martial is currently our only striker when he should be no more than a very firm 2nd choice, mostly starting domestic cup games. If he's fit that is. Garnacho looks like playing more than someone like the much-hyped Phil Foden did at the same age. Etc etc.

All those minutes add up.
 
He brings goals to the team, just look at the table and observe the clubs GD compared to the top four. The defence has improved but United are still the second highest for conceding goals in the top 8. I don't even think Gakpo is enough bring him AND Felix for more firepower upfront.
 
I really hope we develop him to operate through the centre. He has a lot of potential there, but a way off being what we need in there right now.
 
We need a #9 to supplant Martial as a starter but truth be told, we're best off waiting until the summer. Elite strikers tend not to be available in January and there's no point in us buying a non-elite striker in January unless it's on loan or exceptionally cheap. More significantly, nothing Gakpo has done so far in his career suggests that he can be a #9. He's tall but his back-to-goal play needs a lot of work plus he'll need to fill out if he wants to survive as a #9 in the PL. Also, he hasn't really shown any striker-like movements (Something Martial has regularly been criticised for) so I think spending just under £50M on Gakpo to play him as a #9 seems like a disaster waiting to happen.

Plus whilst he looks a very good player, is he a properly elite player? I think we can argue that we have a lot of good/very good players but very few truly elite players; why add another very good but not elite player to the mix?

Finally, we have no-one behind Martial at #9, pretty much no-one of quality behind Antony at RW (That will hopefully be Amad in time), but we have Rashford, Sancho, and Garnacho at LW. If we sign Gakpo, then we will effectively have 1 ST, 1 RW, but 4 LWs; how does any of that make sense?

Who do we then sell? Should Sancho be moved to #10? Also, we will have effectively used up the guts of £50M from out summer transfer budget on a player we don't really need. We need a new GK, a new RB to compete with Dalot, a new CB to replace Varane in the long-term and likely Maguire in the short-term, a Frenkie de Jong/Enzo Fernandez-like ball-progressing midfielder, a RW to compete with Antony (Could be Amad), and a new ST to supplant Martial. Given all those needs, why would we needlessly spend around £50M on Gakpo?
 
Obviously he’ll need time to settle, but I have little doubt Gakpo could operate like a goal machine down the wing, eventually scaring the life out of any team.
 
He can run at players and has good close control but he does not solve our striker problem. Just one more to fight for a spot behind the CF.
 
Rawls said:
We need a #9 to supplant Martial as a starter but truth be told, we're best off waiting until the summer. Elite strikers tend not to be available in January and there's no point in us buying a non-elite striker in January unless it's on loan or exceptionally cheap. More significantly, nothing Gakpo has done so far in his career suggests that he can be a #9. He's tall but his back-to-goal play needs a lot of work plus he'll need to fill out if he wants to survive as a #9 in the PL. Also, he hasn't really shown any striker-like movements (Something Martial has regularly been criticised for) so I think spending just under £50M on Gakpo to play him as a #9 seems like a disaster waiting to happen.

Plus whilst he looks a very good player, is he a properly elite player? I think we can argue that we have a lot of good/very good players but very few truly elite players; why add another very good but not elite player to the mix?

Finally, we have no-one behind Martial at #9, pretty much no-one of quality behind Antony at RW (That will hopefully be Amad in time), but we have Rashford, Sancho, and Garnacho at LW. If we sign Gakpo, then we will effectively have 1 ST, 1 RW, but 4 LWs; how does any of that make sense?

Who do we then sell? Should Sancho be moved to #10? Also, we will have effectively used up the guts of £50M from out summer transfer budget on a player we don't really need. We need a new GK, a new RB to compete with Dalot, a new CB to replace Varane in the long-term and likely Maguire in the short-term, a Frenkie de Jong/Enzo Fernandez-like ball-progressing midfielder, a RW to compete with Antony (Could be Amad), and a new ST to supplant Martial. Given all those needs, why would we needlessly spend around £50M on Gakpo?
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Exactly. We cannot afford to spend 50m on Gakpo unless we are pretty sure that he can play the No 9 role. Better to bring in a loan in January and then spend big in the summer. If we do sign Gakpo I hope that we do in the next 10 days and not on January 31st.
 
Plant0x84 said:
I don’t get all the pessimism. He’s 6ft4, technically good and will have Bruno, Rashy, Antony and Sancho feeding him. He’ll be great!
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Didn't realise he was so big! We must be thinking of trying him up front I reckon. Trained by Ruud and Ten Hag seems to have a pretty good eye for a forward (who would suit his system at least). Looking forward to seeing the experiment and we probably won't lose a fortune on him at his age whatever happens so long as we don't go too mad with his wages.
 
Cathy Ferguson said:
Exactly. We cannot afford to spend 50m on Gakpo unless we are pretty sure that he can play the No 9 role. Better to bring in a loan in January and then spend big in the summer. If we do sign Gakpo I hope that we do in the next 10 days and not on January 31st.
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I'm sure that ETH just wants bulk our squad with attacking options in our squad and not necessarily with a striker.

I think that in the next 6 months Marcus will play in the middle and Gakpo will come as a LW until the summer where we're going to bring a number 9.
 
I am so confused about this transfer. I don't see any logic in buying him. We are stacked on lw, he is not no9, for no10 we have Bruno.
Does ETH really sees him as no9?
 
Andycoleno9 said:
I am so confused about this transfer. I don't see any logic in buying him. We are stacked on lw, he is not no9, for no10 we have Bruno.
Does ETH really sees him as no9?
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Ten Hag doesn't mind playing players out of position for the team's betterment. For example, he used to play Tadic as a false 9 back when Ajax went very far into the CL. In Gakpo's case, he's not totally new to the #9 role; he has played as a centre forward on several occasions for the Netherlands albeit as part of a front 2. His physical attributes (height: 6'4") also make him suitable for playing up front.
 
Under ETH Rashford is showing much better form down the middle or on the right so bring Gakpo in and play him down the left, Rashford down the middle, Antony on the right with Garnacho, Martial and hopefully soon Sancho on the bench and we'll be looking a lot stronger before obviously signing Mbappe in the summer
 
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