17 Aug 2026 18:51:17
After watching the preseason games, what I come to is:
We badly need an out and out six, teams will run through us.
We are brutal without the ball and we need someone to marshal the mid.
Sobo is a great engine, but he goes on a mad one and out of position.
Wirtz looks a bit lost.
Grav is tidy but he’s not the 6 we need or does the job of a 6 we need.
As it stands we’ve no rw as Rio just looks all over the shop when he switches.
We’ve Isak up top will.
He last 4 games on the bounce 90mins?
Leaves Cody who seems to want out after the witch hunt and he’s our last leading goal scorer who I'd not be letting go.
One good game in preseason doesn’t excite me with Frimpong I still think we need a rb.
Gomez Elliot Endo Chiesa jones the Greek should have been gone long ago I’d rather youth in than any of them.
Just my 2 pence worth.
17 Aug 2026 19:01:36
Blimey that's cheered me up no end.
17 Aug 2026 19:11:24
And what about the negatives?
17 Aug 2026 19:20:48
Yeah, Jay Dub. And the sun might not rise tomorrow either.
17 Aug 2026 19:22:55
I think we've just gotta accept it. We know we're short.
I can't believe we haven't fixed the RB issue though that plagued us all last season, that's a bad one
But we don't have to watch Slot-Ball, we will be entertaining, we'll enjoy the football, and Anfield will be bouncing again under Iraola.
17 Aug 2026 19:52:48
It needs to be Wirtz or Szoboszlai in midfield. It doesn't work with both. Szoboszlai is so poor off the ball in the deeper positions, but it's to be expected, he's an attacking midfielder.
17 Aug 2026 19:56:32
I can see the club competing for 2nd or 3rd. Which in the toughest league in the world isn't that bad of a thing.
I agree there's lots of areas for improvement, but I also look at 18 other clubs and could say the exact same thing for them.
Minimum expectation is CL qualification again.
17 Aug 2026 20:02:38
It is what it is, guys, no point glossing over it! Joe Gomez still being relied on speaks volumes; would any other club put up with it!
We need to take the rose tinted glasses off.
I'm not here to cheer you up; a matter of watching the preseason games speaks a lot.
Of course there are upsides, like the youth pushing through, that's great to see, but a wk before kick off we've no RW CDM, it's not great reading.
I hope we bring in a few before the window closes.
17 Aug 2026 20:04:42
Exactly right, JK. We are very insular because we don't really care about other teams, but all of the teams in the league have 'holes' in the squad too.
A squad will never be complete because there's always improvements that can be made.
A lot of the time, what looks like an improvement on paper can actually make you weaker.
We have a competitive team, and if Iraola gets them going and we have a bit of luck with injuries we'll be right up there.
17 Aug 2026 20:56:49
Simi should have been sold last year but as ed1 said he loves it here and doesn't want to leave
17 Aug 2026 21:37:53
We have had two months to plug most of the gaps. Just saying.
17 Aug 2026 21:48:33
Is that the same Gravenberch who was the star midfielder in a title winning team?
{Ed025's Note - or the same Gravenberch who decided to take last year off and was as much as an ashtray on a motorbike?..
17 Aug 2026 22:15:15
Ashtray on a motorbike - you wanna patent that quick.
18 Aug 2026 00:21:12
Grav's not currently the 6 we need, but he's the 6 we have, that's not going to change, we're not going out to spend £100m on a DM and pay Grav £280k a week to sit on the bench.
18 Aug 2026 03:28:25
It doesn't matter if it's 2 years, 2 months, or half an hour, if the right player at the right price (in the club's estimation) isn't available then there's no point spending money just for the sake of it.
18 Aug 2026 06:10:00
Think someone needs to go Specsavers if they think we are that bad.
18 Aug 2026 06:31:29
And who is this right player, WDW? Some 48 teams play in the UCL and similar numbers in the EL. Are you saying there isn’t one good CDM in the whole of Europe? Then I have nothing to add. Why don’t you just accept the club isn’t pursuing a CDM? If you are fully behind the board, then you should retain them.
18 Aug 2026 08:27:27
This is such an unbalanced assessment, it is unbelievable. If you read this without any context you'd genuinely think Jay was talking about a team that's in danger of relegation. It's honestly not even worth anyone's time to reply to the individual points that have been made.
18 Aug 2026 09:01:22
The right player is decided by the club, @Whndm. Not by us. How do you think AI is going to set the team up to play? Once that is decided, the scours and analytics team can be given an idea of the player profile that we want. Then it depends if a targeted player wants to come, if his club are interested in selling, if we can agree terms and if our priorities don't change for things like the need to buy a player for a position where we've lost, say, two or three players to an injury.
A lot of people think we need players at RB, RW and DM, but they want a name, in a lot of cases, not really seeing what the club sees in terms of need rather than want.
Who do you think should choose the players we buy?
18 Aug 2026 09:01:33
In terms of an assessment of where we are right now, I'd say we've got a fairly strong starting eleven. That should be good enough to finish somewhere from third to fifth.
The main reason I doubt we'll finish higher is that defensively we've still got holes, both in midfield and at fullback. I'm not convinced with either fullback defensively, or our midfield.
The second reason is that last season we didn't score enough goals. We need to average two per game to finish higher.
We haven't filled the right wing spot, and that, together with a lack of RB, hasn't been addressed, which will mean the right side won't function in a creative sense. I also don't think Isak will last more than a half dozen games without injury, so we'll have to patch it up.
Obviously, there's a couple of weeks left in the window, and we should start with a win, but over the course of a season I think we're light squad wise.