They were strongly linked to him in the summer. He'll end up there. But doubt in January unless the player goes on strike. Palace are playing the best football they've played in years this calendar year. They are loathe to give him up mid season. If anything, they may look to strenghen if they can.
I'm curious. In my neck of the woods/back in the day no one ever said this. Instead it was strictly: Form 1s and 2's 3rd Formers, 4th Formers -> 7th Formers Similary you said I am in Form 1. But then i am in the 3rd Form. No one ever referred to "Form 5" or the "1st Form". Never thought about it before, or why this distinction existed. Perhaps UK was different?
IMO Wirtz is the replacement for Salah. Not directly of course as they don't expect him to score 30 goals. But I think a future post Salah team would be built around him.
Sample size is too small to be statistically significant, but after seven rounds of games last season Salah had double the amount of goal contributions. 4G+4A vs. 2G+2A this campaign.
In January, with only 6 months remaining on his contract, Guehi may reject a transfer in favor of the financial benefit of becoming a free agent next summer.
I think they brought in too many players in key roles and in previous years its worked well for them, this year its not working at all. Ekitike is the only new player who has been above average, his season so far is a B+ and would be higher but he is now losing match time to Isak. Kerkez has been poor, Frimpong looked ok in pre-season and first game of the season but has been constantly injured forcing them to play Szoboszlai and Bradley at RB. Then you have Wirtz who will also come good eventually but is definitely well off the pace in the EPL. And Isak who has come in on the back of just about no preseason into a team who are struggling. Early on they won games they should have drawn against us, Newcastle and Everton, but Palace on a wave of momentum and Chelsea got wins by exploiting their non-functioning midfield and struggling back 4. It makes our loss to them a little frustrating. They have their bunnies Man U at Anfield after the International break, which they should win, but then they have Brentford away who are a challenge, Villa at home who might have sorted their shit out by then and Man City away who are also not in the best form overall but they have 4 players currently carrying their season. The main difference between City and Pool this year will be while City's new players integrate some of them like Reijnders and Donnarumma have started well, Haaland is in beast mode which is currently papering over their cracks. Pools new players are all struggling, and Salah isn't in beast mode and reliable players from last year like MacAllister and Gravenberch aren't at last years level.
I don't think Reijnders has started that well. I think that early performance vs. Wolves has put some lipstick on it, but he has one assist in the six league games since then. Pretty sure Pep expects more goal contributions from that position of the field.
1 of those goals was late when Bournemouth were pushing for an equaliser after some very poor defending, and his other goal was a penalty. Definitely not his imposing self from last year.
The VVD sledging for his pose when he left a gap the size of the titanic for Caicedo to waltz through has been excellent.
Reijnders got so much time in that game . Wolves completely opened up the middle of the park especially when they lost possession. he is quite quite good in transition carrying the ball but lacks defensive awareness and final ball in the third … he just recycles the ball when man city have possession in the final third Not a bad player but has his limits
Transfer Flow website is having issues so I can't paste a link, but their post today that has a Salah radar that would be quite concerning if I was a Liverpool fan.
Guehi could still move if he convinces Liverpool to pay "free transfer" level wages in January. Would also give him a bit of insurance in case of a major injury. Not sure how much PSR/FFP head room Liverpool have for huge wages.
I'd highly recommend the AV pod they did on Friday with Clive and Jon Makenzie---The Athletic tactics guy. The last few minutes of it, he gives his take on Liverpool's current issues. It's quite interesting.
Good pod - Jon Mackenzie knows his stuff, though he's going to get some undeserved hate for his comments about Declan Rice.
Speaking of good laughs on a pod. On this one from the Beeb: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/football-daily/id261291929 An assistant coach from Mjallby, A a club from a town of about 800 people who are about to win the Swedish first division, starts talking around 28:00. Then at 33:00 he says how they play a 3-2-4-1 just as Amorim is trying to but sucks at it. This guy pulls no punches, in an unusually public and hilarious way. Poor poor Ruben… people like this wanna get him fired, if not take his job! Something tells me there are people on this thread, who would rather enjoy listening to that segment.
That's what's happening? Looking at their underlying data, their xG/shot is about what ours is, and they shoot more. After Liverpool their schedule is pretty friendly, so they could string together a pretty decent run of results and the "narrative" will change.
They were still pretty savage about Utd. Basically they are better than last season but still pretty poor for what Utd should be given the spend. Ted went in to the 'chucker' issue. As we know Utd spent a fortune on players with mediocre underlying xG data. Specifically Cunha and Mbeumo hugely overperformed xG last season, so their performances would be expected to revert. Sesko you could hope will still develop, but his data last season was disappointing if we are being honest about it. So what you end up with is two streaky guys who had every shot flying in, so they went out this season and are taking lots of very low percentage shots. Fernanasch is also super guilty of this. Meanwhile Sesko's data is the same as last season (but early days). What Utd need to do is impose shot discipline, and come up with structures that generate better quality chances. You'd think everyone understood this stuff by now given it's so so basic - but apparently Utd don't understand it.
Ted also talked about Wirtz which made sense to me given what I had seen at Leverkusen According to them, Liverpool are missing TAA's build up play/passing in midfield. Wirtz brings high attacking output, but especially he can act as the playmaker and deliver progression. However he hasn't been given that role, and he isn't a good match as a destructive type midfielder which liverpool have relied on from their midfield 3. Perhaps they see Wirtz as being central to things when they figure it all out. But currently his use doesn't quite make sense given his talents.