As a brief and completely irrelevant aside I passed Anfield the other day, I have family who live in the city etc etc
So how are you looking upon the upcoming season, trepidation, cautious optimism....
I personally think you need to sort your defence out, and also think Mignolet is not good enough for you (would be interesting if a prat fall mid season leads to the Ginge becoming your no1 guy)
Benteke could potentially pay off really well if he stays fit and the midfield gets him the service, your style of play is not too dissimilar to ours and I rate him higher than I do Giroud.
Lucky man.
I can't answer that, since I invariably get it wrong anyway.
I think our signings have more thinking behind them this summer than last. We actually had to replace important players so that gave us more focus than sheer numbers. I hope we go back to a 433 or a variant of. Sakho and Skrtel are solid enough, they have their moments of insanity but are unfairly mocked for dodgyness, Clyne will hopefully be an improvement on Johnson and Moreno is decent enough at left back, though he definitely needs to improve defensively. Kinda important for a defender really. I actually like Mignolet. Ever since he was dropped he has come back and has looked a different keeper. Now he'll just plough through anyone and doesn't give a shit who is in his way, in turn helping his confidence and the defence's confidence in him. I can't for the life of me see Bogdan challenging him though. But then I haven't really watched him much either.
Without Gerrard, hopefully Henderson will step out of his shadow somewhat. He often looked stunted with him in the team. Certainly him, Milner and Can will be absolute engines in the middle; I thought the our pressing game was our biggest failing last season because it was one of our biggest assets the season before so hopefully they can help with that.
It does all depend on whether Benteke fits in and if Sturridge can find a donor leg. If they click well together and adding in the likes of Coutinho and Firmino then we potentially have a decent attack with plenty of pace, power, movement, pace and power. If they don't fit (Benteke especially) then it's curtains for Brendan.
We're more than likely hoping for one of the top 4 to cock up, but then we were briefly in race last season without a functioning striker, so who knows.
Where do you guys need to strengthen above all else? It still seems as if you're 1/2 players away?
Last edited by Shaqiri Is Boss; 24-07-2015 at 06:10 PM.
We would have had more of a chance than with Wenger. If nothing else, Rafa knows how to set his teams up to be hard to beat, and you need to do that in the Champions League. It's suicide to play as open as Wenger has done against the likes of Barca, Bayern, and Real. It's no coincidence that Wenger's best run in the competition came when we parked the bus every single game. Shame he didn't learn from that...
Perhaps but that would have been tempered with finishes outside the top four which would have impacted our prestige, status and revenue streams at a time we could ill afford to, bizarre transfers (wanting to swap Alonso for Barry) and a transfer merry-go-round, adopting a flawed short term approach to things, and most likely publicly falling out with the players and the board, the latter about a lack of funds. Less not we forget he also managed to destroy a Mourinho treble winning Inter team in the space of six months. Plus there's also the fact he's fat.
I don't think it's even a contest between the pair of them tbh. Wenger will go down as one of the greats, idolised by Arsenal fans and well respected by the entire footballing community for his work revolutionising the PL alongside Fergie whereas as Benitez just won't.
It really isn't a surprise that Wenger's done a lot better the last couple of years when we've as a club have finally had the same or close to the same resources as our rivals at the tops.
I await to see how Bentiez does at a massive club like Real but given the signs so far I suspect it won't be that well. I doubt he'd even survive one year let alone the three years he's been given.