Football

WTF. Did Pleat pick this?

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https://www.stats.com/industry-analysis-articles/last-line-defence-first-line-attack/

Why pay £62m for Allison Becker when you could have Nick Pope for (£20m?)

That's only going to work if the team also buys Ashley Barnes to get on the end of his passes.

My Liverpool fan pal said Pope, Alisson and Heaton were the only keepers available and felt Pope and Heaton weren't much of an upgrade??

maybe but Alisson has Dzeko so not a million miles away and he has good short/mid-range passing plus excellent traditional goalkeeping stats. I'm just surprised he has such good numbers and doesn't get mentioned in the same breath as Alisson.

(Although some of the data in the above article is different to other stuff I've seen).

Hard to say.

Rui Patricio, Luckas Hradecky &Vicente Guaita have all moved this summer for free (or very little)I'd argue they're all better than what Liverpool have (in order). Then you have players like Mattia Perin or Bernd Leno who have moved for €15-20m and who are better. Nick Pope only has a season of top flight football but I don't see anything which make his performances unlikely to be repeated.

Alisson is a great keeper, I'd just question the logic behind spending £60m+ on a GK. Not my money though and don't suppose Liverpool fans will really care either!

Fabianski probably another low key option who's gone to West Ham as part of their impressive transfer activity.

As I Spurs fan (and its also my nature/necessity) I'm willing to make sacrifices in the name of prudence/vfm however he, as a Liverpool fan, is of the opinion that it's worth spending 200% more for a player that's 10% better (if that makes sense) - a bit like VVD I guess.

Agreed. I think he wants 'his' team now, no stop gaps, no journeymen. £200m on Keita, Van Dyke and Allison is staggering; add Mane and one or two others and he's being given exceptional resources

Pope is a very good keeper. Strong, dominates his area and is a good shot-stopper, UFO knowledge is a bit limited though https://twitter.com/nickpopemod/status/907322279184363520

His distribution isn't that great, a fair few of those missed passes have gone spiralling off to touch and he's had the benefit of a couple of big men up front to hit most games (probably every game actually).

Whether he'll be as good a keeper away from the Burnley framework is anyone's guess. Those expected goal stats against goals conceded stats are a bit skewed as the model doesn't really work (at the moment) with Burnley's style of defending where you allow the shots but load the box with defenders to block the shots.

Interesting to hear the players at the world cup saying they practised penalties against Pope as he was the hardest to beat.

Surely Newcastle have done the best piece of business signing Dubravka for €5m.

If we lose Courtois I wouldn’t be too upset if we end up with Jasper Cilessen.

Liverpool agree fee with Roma

Winning the spending. Loosing the net spend.

i read somewhere on a liverpool fansite that liverpool are the only team to have really strengthened, other top 6 teams have added depth but only liverpool have added first team players with each purchase fabihno and keita are both upgrades on last season allison if he comes is an upgrade, shaq we'll wait and see
roll on blackburn tomorrow night

Oxlade-Chamberlain out for the season with a knee injury. That’s rotten luck.

Flatlining the Kopite rollercoaster.

He's immediately improved their chances of winning the league...

thrushy saying he wants to see pogba play the same way as he did for france

oh the irony

For that to happen, United need at least a decent midfielder to stand in and do some more grunt work.
And for United to have a proper idea about what their midfield will look like.

haven't we had this conversation before?
Maybe Fred is the midfielder to allow him to do that. So much of his freedom during the world cup, came from Kante doing the hard work.
And nice to see that Pogba knows/understands and values him
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E6LUK_ImPs

He isn't for sale...

Carrick is leaving United which presumably means that there could be space for Kante.

Looking forward to seeing if we get taken over before we go into administration over the next week or so. And seeing how much we get bummed for Grealish and Chester seeing that we seem to have an intern and a marketing guy doing the negotiating.
Fun summer.

Everyone is for sale.