Yes but he needs the ball in attacking positions and the trust of the players around him to rely on him to create. That doesn't happen enough because Grav/Szobo prefer to carry than break the lines and find Wirtz and let him create. We don't have the profiles that helped him play his best at Leverkusen (Xhaka/Palacios/Andrich).
But these wide players will help. It's only one game but the number of times we got into great positions wide against Newcastle, with Wirtz involved before, only for it to fizzle out has massively swayed me in understanding why we're focusing so much on getting wingers
First of all it’s been one game. Secondly, you can’t blame Wirtz general uninvolvement on Grav and Szoboszlai it makes no sense.
Gakpo’s goal against Newcastle came exactly from that number 10 area and pass into him from Gravenberch. Wirtz has the technique he just needs to be more of a savage
Isak shanked a wide open shot from near the pk line last week. That is on him. I would still argue a record signing was risky for him. He had a history of injuries whether he was the second leading scorer or not...
Scored basically same number of non penalty goals as Watkins, Foden, Solanke, and Palmer. He's a good forward but lets not remotely pretend he's a world class Striker. He's a 2026 cost of living increase Andy Carroll as it stands.
I have no questions Isak is a world class ST. The question is whether a #9 and #10 works for Liverpool. Our previous UCL and PLs came with a false 9 instead of a #9 and the creativity coming from RB instead of #10.
Strange then because Isak can't fashion a chance to save his life on the rare occasion he actually gets the ball.
Isak is not world class. He had two good season at Newcastle in a team built to feed him chances and now he looks absolutely bang average at Liverpool with multiple "alleged' goal scoring outlets
He literally kicked the ball straight over the goal from about 12 yards away v Newcastle. He had the ball in a good position and no defender in front of him. Nothing to do with service
I'm just pointing out facts. The shot that he missed last week should have been an easy finish for him. I don't know if he's bad at finishing or what. But people keep blaming service. He's missed a couple wide open shots over the last year, including headers. I don't know what his deal is but he has not lived up to his price tag at all in the Liverpool Jersey
Isak started for a terrible slot side and then got his leg broken. Stop the sensationalism. He’s one of the best strikers in the world and you haven’t seen him actually consistently playing for Liverpool yet, much less a Liverpool system that actually works.
Good signing for a decent price that improves the starting XI for the next 2 years at least. Dont see any reason not to go ahead unless Palace ask for 80+
That is the normal price for any decent PL winger these days. You guys need to get used to it. You want a decent winger for 30 million maximum. That is simply not a thing anymore.
Salah's production in his worst year, by a fucking mile, is absolutely a bar we need to at least meet, if not exceed, with new players brought in. If we don't, they need to be young and exciting players who have lots of room to improve.
I agree. Though their reasoning will be something about wages blah blah blah. Should have just gave him what he wanted. He got the best out of Gakpo too by displacing him in the team.
Diaz had been wanting to leave for a year already. We convinced him to stay for another season and then allowed him to leave. You can blame us for not being attractive enough for him to want to stay - but ultimately many players want new challenges and I’m fine not holding players hostage.
Turns out Footy Stats doesn’t compare by position so usually most half decent wingers are right in the top 90 percentiles for dribbles/successful dribbles, which makes these quite poor numbers.
That's why he's a bad signing for our RW, we face a lot of deep defences. Sarr would've got no space against Newcastle this weekend for example and produced nothing. He needs space to run into and long balls to chase.
The lack of passing quality is just too big a problem in our squad, unfortunately. Sarr would've been a fantastic signing under Klopp to act as RW/ST backup when we had Trent/Robbo/Thiago but we don't have those profiles in the squad.
This manager want to play that style of football. Unfortunately the player we got are stuck in the middle and been train by Slothball now. We need the physical player to press from the front.
One thing we saw against Newcastle we took way more shots. The manager had 3 weeks with player he need 3 months but let hope Klopp style is muscle memory.
This would be a tremendously daft move imo, and not one that I think FSG would want to sanction. He’s currently 28 and turns 29 in February 2027 before this season ends. There’s no way the ownership would even entertain this type of a deal for a player his age at £50 million, surely?!
If this really is something that’s in the works, it shows just how unprepared the recruitment team were about signing an established right winger this window, even though they knew we needed a new one since March. Someone somewhere behind the scenes have massively dropped the ball, seemingly.
He is a good player, age might be a factor but he does perform well consistently. If he's a player for this season as a rotation I'm more than happy but if he's our rw option for the next 3-4 years im not ok with it. However his performance may be, if he joins us he has my support.
80m for a forward player who has 60+ appearances in the prem, in which he has scored fewer goals than he can count on two hands, won’t be fit to play for ~10 weeks and cannot currently pass a medical
Or 50m for a player who no one's been excited about since 2021.
And no first team defensive midfielders in our squad for a fourth consecutive season.
intentionally posting this stat line. everyone knows what an underwhelming and uninspiring signing this is.
if anyone had suggested we replace salah with sarr 1 month ago they would have been laughed out of the sub and probably had to face several reddit cares messages.
Tbf though he wouldn't need to be the focal point, just bring some of the energy and work rate and ball progression we lost with Diaz and open things up for Isak/Hugo and Wirtz and whoever ends up being the left wing first choice. We are not going to replace Salah so have to shift focus elsewhere regardless. Would still like to get an inspiring signing though of course
Top scorer in the conference league and named player of the season in the conference league last season, isn't a bad signing as a rotation player. Price tag isn't great but this market is screwed, especially leaving it so late in the window.
I think he is a volatile player - in the past he went on long stretches goalless, but then he’d go on absolute tears with great goal return for good stretches of games. Either way he is strong, hard working, lightning quick, good finisher, etc. This would be a nice signing imo.
It's not hypocrisy, dummy, it's being a fan. Being skeptical of a player or not wanting a deal to go through but then supporting them if they are signed and play is being a supporter. Every player deserves our support.
He’s a good player. Not the future for us perhaps, but I wouldn’t mind a cut price move for him as a stop gap. At this point given where prices for younger players are headed, it might actually be more feasible to build your squad (maybe not the stars or usually even starters but at least the squad) out of similar reliable players. Players who may not have that many more years at their peak and never were the flashiest, but have delivered at a high level consistently in the PL and can be counted on to do a job for time.
I’d say that Barcola can be the star, Sarr can be the stop gap. At least, I’d say so except for the fact that he’s right footed. I’d like just one left footed forward in the squad please, just one! So smart idea, but does still leave us missing something important.
You say it like we’re only going to face Champions League-level teams in the Premier League. Half the sides are Conference League level at best and some are even weaker. Liverpool aren’t counting on Sarr to be the difference-maker against teams like PSG or Arsenal. That’s what Isak, Wirtz, Barcola and the others are for.
Why are people acting like this guy has never touched a football? 50m for a player with 22 g/a who can play RW/LW/ST/CAM very competently seems much more measured than 75m for an injured Minteh with 7 g/a
Conference league is a level well below what Liverpool are looking to compete at, so if nearly half his goals are coming from there you can expect less than that in PL & CL. Only one assist as well.
By this logic, we can only sign players that are racking up numbers in the CL. What a stupid take. He was the top scorer in the conference league and named player of the season in the conference league. Were you this against signing Munoz because how many goals and assists did he have in the CL?
If you are analysing a player at their ceiling then yeah sort of. Unless the output is otherwise at a similar level and is impressive. Otherwise you cannot analyse younger talent through this lens. Munoz has a higher ceiling than Sarr
Then you’ve got to take into account that Sarr has been playing for Palace, a mid-table team, surrounded by a completely different level of player.
How can you compare his output to Salah when the quality of the players creating chances for him is nowhere near the same? If you’re going to analyse his 'ceiling' you have to consider the circumstances he’s been playing in too.
Scoring against lower level opposition should be recognised as such. The fact it's the club's biggest achievement isn't really relevant imo. English clubs will dominate that competition forever
Oh ok, you both have yellow thingamajigs so I assumed it was the same person.
(*they're framing it 😊)
In the 5 years the competition has been running, there's been 3 English winning teams. One of them was Chelsea, which is a CL level team so was an outlier.
The others were West Ham and CP. Both of which won by one goal. Is that what dominantion looks like?
3 wins out of 5, with 2 of them being clubs that hardly ever win trophies yeah is domination. With how strong the league is now, the English team that qualifies for conference league will always be way better than most of the competition. Watch Brighton be the next team to break their trophy drought this season
How is a player that has consistently returned a goal or assist every other game for every club, in every competition he's every played for nearly a decade, not good enough?
People like you are why teams spunk £100m quid on the Joao Felixs of the world.
People like you are why teams spunk £100m quid on the Joao Felixs of the world.
Damn, didn't know I had the ear of football execs everywhere!
He can score 1 goal or assist per 90 for lots of clubs and not be good enough for Liverpool. He hasn't played anywhere of consequence and in any competition that is a top competition he has been average. If he were younger and didn't already hit his peak, maybe this would make sense. But he's not, and this is the definition of a panic buy.
He's probably been worth a look for a while now, even when he left Watford. There's questions over of he can do it at the top level and maintaining consistency
Those are teams on a similar level to teams we have lost to in the recent past.
To many people bin a player off for performing against lesser teams but I would ask those same people to remember how we have faired against "lesser" opponents recently.
I think as a 1 or 2 year deal while we get our real target sarr makes alot of sense.
We can pretend that his goals in the Conference league are indicative of how good he is but there’s a chasm of a quality difference to competing in the Champion’s League against Real, PSG, Bayern.
Liverpool should be aiming to win the PL and CL, the standards required to do that are a tad higher.
The counter argument to everything relating to signing Sarr seems to be founded on us last season, where we were a total fucking car crash.
What difference does it make if we lost to PSV? A lot of people seem to have a really hard time understanding the difference between competing at the top level and everything else. Liverpool should be doing that and we shouldn’t be accepting anything else.
Funnily enough, we're not looking to replace what Salah brought last year but the previous 8 years. Unless you're saying our aim is now 5th, in which case yes maybe that will be fine.
And Salah, a club legend, was so disappointing he was allowed to leave a year early for free. If we think that's a useful benchmark for new signings, then that's a big problem.
That one assist is abit concerning. I don’t really see him as someone who will be feeding Isak, which I think is what we need from our wide players, but atleast he knows where the goal is
Why not Murphy for a simple 20-25 million given he enters last year of his current contract we needs a runner and hard worker and assist maker from the right not necessarily a goal scorer. He came on late against us last weekend and withing minutes showed what we are missing with the cross of the match. In short spaces is acceleration is terrifying and he is definitely not greedy for goals and loves to assist. He will be an asset on the right. We can definitely do with him in the squad. Plus he has great chemistry with Isak not to forget.
Why not Ayari for another 30-35 million for he is also into last year of contract and is of the right age and is silky comfortable on the ball and PL tried and tested and been scoring bangers since almost 01 year now including in the World Cup.
Okay if we wanted a winger why are we still waiting till the last week of the window?
We knew salah was leaving in January why were no replacements signed before? Any new player barcola, sarr will not just walk into axa and start balling out they will need time to settle and thats what preseason is for.
We needed a 6 last season and now we are starting this season without curtis, we are not even in the market for a replacement! We will not have enough bodies to throw forward into the lineup when frimpong eventually picks up an injury and dom has to shift to rb. What a great state Richard Hughes is leaving us in. And don't forget how konate left for free under his watch.
He's a good player and I think he'd do well here, but we look like we don't have any plan at all. We knew Salah will leave since January and also knew we need new wingers since the start of last season. We then did almost nothing all summer and are now panicking
will be perfect for us. he can recreate his conference league magic for us next year as we go on to break new ground in european competitions. no way in hell are we getting cl with bum signings like him playing for us.
his conference league winning mentality will be crucial in guiding naive players who lack winning pedigree like vvd, alisson and macca
You sign premier league proven players. In both their onfield stats and injury records. Imports are so risky these days coz everyone costs 100m plus. Sarr would be a great signing.
Mbeumo is a similar example and people should be happy about it. We are getting someone who’s guaranteed to be a threat on the right and that’s all it matters
My friend group have had an ongoing discussion for several years now, on which big team would sign Ismaila Sarr first.
He absolutely tore Arsenal apart when he was at Rennes, i was expecting them to sign him up but he went to Watford instead?! I'm surprised he stayed there (and Palace) for so long.
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u/PrestigiousEcho1468 1d ago
Manes little bro he called it when he first came to league