What do we still need? Aka The never ending story

Attacking RM/RWB (left footed) - Quenda, Dibling or Dorgu

Ready now LM/LWB - Davies, Ait-Nouri or Kerkez

Playmaker type of CM - Pepelu, Zubimendi or Hjulmund

Young RAM (left footed) - Rigg, Mastantuono or Nypan

Experienced ST - Gyokeres, Toney or Osimhen

The above is a bit too much to ask in 2025 unless we go for the cheapest options of the lot and manage to sell some players for a reasonable fee.
So weird to include Toney.
 
So weird to include Toney.

Why? He's 28 which isn't ridiculously old for a striker who doesn't rely on pace. PL proven. Strong, good finisher, decent team player and home grown. I don't have faith in Zirkzee. I do have faith in Hojlund but he needs experienced competition. Chido Obi is too young but incredibly promising so Toney would make a decent stop gap in terms of profile. Maybe it's not the best shout but not ridiculous, especially for under £50m.

I'm looking in the 25-30 age range for strikers.
*Note that my suggestions in 3 of the positions are all very young. My CM suggestions are 25-26 because I feel we're probably losing 2 experienced CMs in Casemiro and Eriksen. Mainoo is very young, Ugarte is 23 and we have some exciting prospects who could compete for the 4th CM slot so need another slightly more experienced rotation option.

Other ST possibilities could be Mitrovic, Muani or Vlahovic. There's really not a lot out there in the all-round mold that Amorim seems to like (i.e. over 6 foot, strong, runs the channels but can also hold up the ball). I like Sesko a lot but he's 1) expensive, 2) similarly raw to Hojlund and 3) his signing would be a big FU to Obi.
 
Attacking RM/RWB (left footed) - Quenda, Dibling or Dorgu

Ready now LM/LWB - Davies, Ait-Nouri or Kerkez

Playmaker type of CM - Pepelu, Zubimendi or Hjulmund

Young RAM (left footed) - Rigg, Mastantuono or Nypan

Experienced ST - Gyokeres, Toney or Osimhen

The above is a bit too much to ask in 2025 unless we go for the cheapest options of the lot and manage to sell some players for a reasonable fee.

Good suggestions. This is not even that unrealistic. If we manage to sign one RWB or RAM during winther transfer season then it should be doable to sign four players in summer especially if we can get Davies on a free.
 
Ins
Diogo Costa £38
Vanderson £25
Kerkez £40
Nypan £15
Ederson (Atalanta) or Baleba £55
Diomande £45
Osimhen £65
Angel Gomes Free
Son Free


Total £280Million

Outs
Rashford £45
Shaw £23
Dalot £30
Onana £29
Antony £16
Zirkzee £35
Mount £25
Maguire Release
Casemiro Release
Eriksen Release
Lindelof Release

Total £203 Million

Squad

GK Diogo Costa, Altay , Heaton

RWB Vanderson, Mazaroui
LWB Kerkez, Malacia, Amass
CB Yoro, De Ligt, Martinez, Diomande , Evans

CM Ugarte, Mainoo, Ederson or Baleba, Angel Gomes

CAM/ Wingers. Bruno, Amad Diallo, Son, Nypan, Garnacho, Lacey.

ST Osimhen , Hojlund , Obi-Martin
 
Ins
Diogo Costa £38
Vanderson £25
Kerkez £40
Nypan £15
Ederson (Atalanta) or Baleba £55
Diomande £45
Osimhen £65
Angel Gomes Free
Son Free


Total £280Million

Outs
Rashford £45
Shaw £23
Dalot £30
Onana £29
Antony £16
Zirkzee £35
Mount £25
Maguire Release
Casemiro Release
Eriksen Release
Lindelof Release

Total £203 Million

Squad

GK Diogo Costa, Altay , Heaton

RWB Vanderson, Mazaroui
LWB Kerkez, Malacia, Amass
CB Yoro, De Ligt, Martinez, Diomande , Evans

CM Ugarte, Mainoo, Ederson or Baleba, Angel Gomes

CAM/ Wingers. Bruno, Amad Diallo, Son, Nypan, Garnacho, Lacey.

ST Osimhen , Hojlund , Obi-Martin
mate...this isn't FIFA video game
 
mate...this isn't FIFA video game

All of the transfer fee’s regarding outs are going from Transmarket.com valuations of players. Its a fairly respected source. Player incomings are all based off asking prices from very reliable sources I have seen .Apart from maybe Victor Osimhen and potentially Kerkez all those transfer are fairly realistic. What a biazzare reply. Its not like I am saying we could sign Bellingham. Haaland , Pedri. That would be worthy of the generic fifa game reply. The title of the thread is what do we need. Everyone with eyes knows we need a massive rebuild to even get back into the top 4. Son and Angel Gomes contracts are up in June and with the money we would save on getting rid of Casemiro and maguire we potentially have some good wages to offer them without champions league football. Son is apparently a United fan he is 32 and might want one last pay day we need some experience if we building a young team. Its an ambitious move but realistic.
 
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All of the transfer fee’s regarding outs are going from Transmarket.com valuations of players. Its a fairly respected source. Player incomings are all based off asking prices from very reliable sources I have seen .Apart from maybe Victor Osimhen and potentially Kerkez all those transfer are fairly realistic. What a biazzare reply. Its not like I am saying we could sign Bellingham. Haaland , Pedri. That would be worthy of the generic fifa game reply. The title of the thread is what do we need. Everyone with eyes knows we need a massive rebuild to even get back into the top 4. Son and Angel Gomes contracts are up in June and with the money we would save on getting rid of Casemiro and maguire we potentially have some good wages to offer them without champions league football. Son is apparently a United fan he is 32 and might want one last pay day we need some experience if we building a young team. Its an ambitious move but realistic.
not the money....he's not bringing in 9-10 new players in one summer
 
not the money....he's not bringing in 9-10 new players in one summer
He's well off the mark regarding the money too. Who's paying 23m for a permanently injured, aging Luke Shaw? As if Brighton will accept 55m for Baleba when they squeezed double for Caicedo. His incomings and outgoings are both well off. This guy's a dreamer
 
Did anyone see how Tyler Dibbling did against the scousers tonight?
 
Ins
Diogo Costa £38
Vanderson £25
Kerkez £40
Nypan £15
Ederson (Atalanta) or Baleba £55
Diomande £45
Osimhen £65
Angel Gomes Free
Son Free


Total £280Million

Outs
Rashford £45
Shaw £23
Dalot £30
Onana £29
Antony £16
Zirkzee £35
Mount £25
Maguire Release
Casemiro Release
Eriksen Release
Lindelof Release

Total £203 Million

Squad

GK Diogo Costa, Altay , Heaton

RWB Vanderson, Mazaroui
LWB Kerkez, Malacia, Amass
CB Yoro, De Ligt, Martinez, Diomande , Evans

CM Ugarte, Mainoo, Ederson or Baleba, Angel Gomes

CAM/ Wingers. Bruno, Amad Diallo, Son, Nypan, Garnacho, Lacey.

ST Osimhen , Hojlund , Obi-Martin
Several issues with this:

1. I know you said you referenced Transfermarkt, it you're likely underpricing most of the big buys (Baleba, Kerkez, Osimhen
2. A free transfer doesn't actually mean "free". You have to factor in the wages and the signing bonus. Son would be high on both. He probably costs £20M for next year all things considered
3. While maybe we get lucky with a £45M sale of Rashford, that's probably with a large subsidy of his wages. Net savings may be more like £20-30M.
4. Casemiro has one more year left in his deal.
5. No one, and I mean no one, is buying Shaw or Antony. Rashford may not be sellable and he's much better than those two.
 
Several issues with this:

1. I know you said you referenced Transfermarkt, it you're likely underpricing most of the big buys (Baleba, Kerkez, Osimhen
2. A free transfer doesn't actually mean "free". You have to factor in the wages and the signing bonus. Son would be high on both. He probably costs £20M for next year all things considered
3. While maybe we get lucky with a £45M sale of Rashford, that's probably with a large subsidy of his wages. Net savings may be more like £20-30M.
4. Casemiro has one more year left in his deal.
5. No one, and I mean no one, is buying Shaw or Antony. Rashford may not be sellable and he's much better than those two.

Yeah it was a rough estimate. I get football works differently and we have the United tax to deal with. I personally wouldn’t go any higher transfer fee wise on the players mentioned for example if Atalanta want more for Ederson go and find an alternative thats what the new team are supposed to do, we are running like a football club again with Wilcox and Berrada.

Osimhen is apparently going for £65 million as Napoli realised they priced him out of a move last summer De Laurentiis got greedy. Son I get that but the money we would save on getting rid of Maguire and Casemiro would free up wages. Antony might get interest he is still mid 20s. It obviously depends on if he wants to lower his wages demands and play football again. He is still a premier league level player. Just not good enough for us and has felt the pressure of a stupid transfer fee. Yeah shaw could be difficult I agree as he is a crook as it stands.
 
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Attackers. Doesn’t matter if it’s a striker/10 etc but need a big time injection of quality here. And I’m not talking about another “prospect”
Don't necessarily agree with this. Would be very happy if we could for instance hunt around other European giants for potential bargains in disillusioned young talents not getting game time. The likes of Tel at Bayern, perhaps Guler, Doué who all have the talent for a Cole Palmer breakout season if given the chance. Otherwise we're going to be splurging on the Eze's, Semenyos who its very difficult to say if they'd be more productive than what we have and would cost a fortune to lure away from their own relatively wealthy clubs.

Would personally save the financial fire power for midfield and go for a Baleba type athlete that can contribute to defence and attack.
 
Don't necessarily agree with this. Would be very happy if we could for instance hunt around other European giants for potential bargains in disillusioned young talents not getting game time. The likes of Tel at Bayern, perhaps Guler, Doué who all have the talent for a Cole Palmer breakout season if given the chance. Otherwise we're going to be splurging on the Eze's, Semenyos who its very difficult to say if they'd be more productive than what we have and would cost a fortune to lure away from their own relatively wealthy clubs.

Would personally save the financial fire power for midfield and go for a Baleba type athlete that can contribute to defence and attack.
Eze and Semenyo aren't what I mean when I say injection of quality.
 
Goals, goals and goals. That’s what we need. Everything else should be on the back burner until we address that.
 
Out

Onana
Lindelof
Shaw
Evans
Malacia
Casemiro
Eriksen
Mount
Bruno Fernandes
Anthony
Rashford
Zirkzee

In

1 GK
1 CB
2 LWB (Kerkez/Ait Nouri/Davies...)
2-3 CM's/Dm's (Ederson, Nypan, A. Gomes...)
3 Atacking Mid/Striker (Cunha, Olmo, Quenda, Gyokeres...)
 
Genuinely have no idea where they go from here.

There's a few promising youngsters who may or may not go up a gear - more likely they don't.

And as per last decade people say we need a mass clear out to get rid of the "bad eggs", even though we keep doing this and nothing improves.
 
Genuinely have no idea where they go from here.

There's a few promising youngsters who may or may not go up a gear - more likely they don't.

And as per last decade people say we need a mass clear out to get rid of the "bad eggs", even though we keep doing this and nothing improves.
Coach needs to improve the players he has. It has always been that simple. We aren't going to sign 15 players and even if we do why do we believe they will be brilliant based on the past?
 
Coach needs to improve the players he has. It has always been that simple. We aren't going to sign 15 players and even if we do why do we believe they will be brilliant based on the past?

There isn’t a lot to improve, we are going to sign 15 players but it’s going to take 3 summers. Amorim has to try and go well enough to last that long, or hope for patience in simile way to Klopp and Arteta.

This squad isn’t good enough and the issue is compounded by the fact they haven’t even got the power/pace/athleticism to out work, out muscle and out run opponents.

We’re starting from scratch pretty much and it’s years to sort out unfortunately.
 
There isn’t a lot to improve, we are going to sign 15 players but it’s going to take 3 summers. Amorim has to try and go well enough to last that long, or hope for patience in simile way to Klopp and Arteta.

This squad isn’t good enough and the issue is compounded by the fact they haven’t even got the power/pace/athleticism to out work, out muscle and out run opponents.

We’re starting from scratch pretty much and it’s years to sort out unfortunately.
If amorim can't improve these players there is no point spending years and 500m adding players to play his system.
 
Coach needs to improve the players he has. It has always been that simple. We aren't going to sign 15 players and even if we do why do we believe they will be brilliant based on the past?

Have a look at Klopp’s squad he inherited mid season in 2015-16, and count how many 1st team players in that squad he won the CL and/or Prem with a few years later. Scanning the list now, I count only Joe Gomez, James Milner, Adam Lallana, Jordan Henderson, Firmino and Divock Origi out of his 25 man squad.

We’re in a similar position now to that Liverpool side squad-wise, with only 6 or 7 players (at a push) who look like they have the quality, character and potential to have a chance of being here in 2 or 3 seasons.

For me that is:

Mazraoui, De Ligt, Yoro, Mainoo, Ugarte and Amad.

There are a few others in the maybe pile too:

Onana, Martinez, Hojlund, Garnacho and Bruno.


To say Amorim has to simply work with what he has and achieve the levels of what Klopp did (which I assume were on the same page that this is the target?), then your point is a bit weak.

What we do need to see from Amorim is progress and his ability to coach his system to the players over the course of this season. That’s one thing Klopp achieved, despite a mixed bag of results in his first year. To aid him, I think a minimum of one signing in January that he believes he is lacking to make his system work (I would guess a LWB) would be sensible.

But ultimately, if this project is going to work we need to be ruthless with this squad, even if it means selling the likes of Bruno, Garnacho and Rashford to get there.
 
We have a squad where the majority of our players are 6/10 Premier League level. They aren't awful but just aren't that great either.
Some were 8/10 players a few years ago (Casemiro, Eriksen etc) but are now at the end of their career, and several younger players (Hojlund, Garnacho etc) who have the ability to improve but are still a long way off and need to be managed. Then maybe 5 or 6 who are just sub-standard (Antony, Zirkzee etc).
For me we only have 1 player in Bruno who is genuine top level and would get into most European teams.
How many of our players would get into the Bournemouth or Wolves teams we've just played... 2 or 3 maybe?? That's a measure of how far we have fallen due to terrible recruitment over the past 5 years.
So infuriating watching the players we've brought in and comparing them to the ones 'small' PL clubs have bought.
Plus on top of that letting some decent talent leave. One of the worst must be selling Elanga and then replacing him with Antony .
Hopefully Amorin can do some smart recruitment in January and get in 2 or 3 players who can fit the system and help get 5% extra out of the other players. We are desperate for a LWB, a Striker, and a Midfielder. Fingers crossed for a miracle.
 
Decided to play real life Football Manager because I was bored and to assure myself that we're not that fecked. Heavy focus on boosting our physicality. Tried to make it at least semi-realistic by targeting players who are mostly out of contract in 2025 or 2026.

First Team:
OhShTs4.jpeg
Second Team:
MGO6Tcf.jpeg
Outs:
GK
Bayinder £2m
Defence
Lisandro £30m
Malacia £10m
Lindelöf Free
Evans Free
Midfield
Bruno £50m
Eriksen Free
Casemiro Loan
Attack
Antony £20m
Rashford £40m
Garnacho £60m
Zirkzee £30m
Total = £242m
Incoming:
GK
Valles Free
Defence
Huijsen £45m
Singo £20m
Alvaro Fernandez £12m
N.Mendes £50m
Midfield
Baleba £50m
Zambo-Anguissa Free
Attack
Cherki £45m
Joao Pedro £65m
Cunha £50m
Total = £337m
Net Spend = £95m with a significant wage reduction
 
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Don’t know how it would even be possible but we need to do something pretty major in January.
 
What are the best Goalkeeper options around currently?

Excluding the obvious/unrealistic options Gregor Kobel at Dortmund and Mike Maignan at Milan are the two standouts who would come in and displace Onana straight away. Diogo Costa is another, but not sure how good he actually is as he hasn't been snapped up by anyone yet and has had some bad performance for Portugal from memory.

One option could be to replace Bayindir with an option to truly challenge Onana as well. Someone like Brice Samba at Lens (previously was pretty good at Forest) who gives me Emi Martinez energy or Lucas Chevalier at Lille who is at a good age to continue growing and become a top GK.
 
For the time being the club needs to bring in experienced pl proven professional pros, even if the fanbase regards them as underwhelming.
 
We need two wing backs, two CM, two 10s, 1 x cf

Dorgu
Quenda
Baleba
Angel Gomes
Nypan
Nico Williams
Gykores

Our biggest problem is giving the ball away and tracking runners....that isnt management its attitude and overrated players.

Rashford, Bruno, Dalot would all be amongst the players I would sell personally,

Onana
Martinez -Shaw
Yoro - DeLigt
Mazraoui
Dorgu
Ugarte - Baleba
Mainoo - Gomes
Quenda
Williams - Nypan
Amad - Garnacho
Gykores - Hoijlund

Not many Id keep from the rest of the current squad
 
These guys first please. Anyone else is a bonus.

Ederson
Gkyokeres
Davies
Frimpong
 
Need a few incomings and outgoings between January and the summer. Doesn't have to be too expensive for the most part
  • #10 (January, cheap) - Olmo (free)
  • Left wing back (January) - Kerkez/Gutierrez
  • CF (summer) - Osimhen/Isak (dream), Gyokeres (more realistic)
  • deep midfielder (depth, summer) - Hjulmund
  • #10 (summer, big signing) - Kvara (dream), Cunha (more realistic)
Outgoings:
  • Rashford (January) - Saudi league?
  • Casemiro (summer)
  • Eriksen (summer)
  • Zirkzee (summer) - Juve
  • Lindelof (summer)
  • Antony (summer) - loan at best
Onana
Mazraoui De Ligt Martinez
Amad Ugarte Bruno Kerkez
Olmo Kvara/Cunha
Osimhen

Altay
Yoro Maguire Shaw
Dalot Hjulmund Mainoo Malacia
Mount Garnacho
Hojlund​