What is going on at LFC?

Between the Caicedo shambles and the news breaking today that Lavia has also turned us down in favour of Chelsea, Sunday’s game almost feels like an afterthought at the moment.

On the game itself, we had a good start and played really well for the opening half hour, scored a brilliant opener through Diaz after some nice build up play and then were desperately unlucky not to add a second, after Salah was ruled marginally offside and if that had counted I’m sure we’d have gone on to win the game. As it was, the disallowed goal seemed to give Chelsea a kick up the backside, while simultaneously taking the wind out of our sails.

After that we saw the all too familiar problems rear their ugly head once more. Far too easy to play against, it’s so simple for teams to play through us from their box to ours and has been for quite some time. We saw our defence become disjointed, leading to their goal and we still seem to have no answer to simple balls over the top, which brings us to Trent. I’ve made no secret of my disdain of this floating RB system, it is fundamentally flawed in so many ways. I won’t go over old ground but it really is driving me nuts. Everything good Trent does on the pitch now, he does from midfield while simultaneously being an absolute liability of a defender and if anything, he’s actually regressing in that department. How many shots on goal did Chilwell have on Sunday? We got away with one with his disallowed goal but he was in on our goal so many times, with Trent either clueless to the fact he was there, or just letting him run off him. For the love of god just move him into midfield and sign a proper RB. It almost feels like stubbornness on Klopp’s part now, determined to prove everyone wrong by persisting with Trent in the RB role, when the facts are it costs us at least one goal almost every single game.

What was abundantly clear on Sunday however is that there’s almost no defensive instinct in the team at all. Mac Allister isn’t a DM, he’s a deep lying playmaker like Thiago. Szoboszlai is an attacking midfielder and now we’re trying to shoehorn Gakpo into midfield? Seriously what is going on? We desperately need a ball winner in the middle of the pitch and we actually probably need to add two to the squad, yet all we’ve managed to achieve in the past week is embarrass ourselves.

Can anyone give me even an indication of what the Caicedo deal was all about? Surely to god if we were prepared to pay that kind of sum for him and really wanted him we’d have made our interest known earlier in the window. After haggling over 3-5 million for Lavia, we then offer 111 for Caicedo? If Lavia was overpriced at 50, the money for Caicedo is nothing short of ludicrous and he’s never worth that in a million years. To add insult to injury, we then went back cap in hand to Southampton, prepared to pay 10 million more than the original asking price to try and get the deal done, only to be turned down for Chelsea for the second time in almost as many days. I don’t blame the kid, god knows what he must’ve been thinking when the Caicedo story broke and I suspect he’ll have been offered more money and a longer contract at Chelsea and so another one bites the dust.

Since when did we become just so rigid in our targets as well? Last season it was Bellingham or nobody and we saw how that turned out. We never used to be like this. Here’s some examples. We tried to sign Gotze and ended up with Mane. Tried to sign Brandt and ended up with Salah. Tried to sign Chilwell and ended up with Robbo. Tried to sign Zielinski and then Dahoud before we eventually got Gini… All of the above turned into absolute superstars for us but none were our first choice. Whatever happened to having a list of targets?

The club just seems in complete disarray behind the scenes now. One minute we’re up for sale, the next we’re not. We’ve no money and then we’re putting in British record bids. We can’t even decide what position our bloody RB is playing. The Darwin signing continues to baffle, god only knows who we’re going to target at DM now, or what we’re going to have to pay for them, having shown our hand with the failed Caicedo bid.

I’m trying to find reasons for optimism but it’s difficult at the moment. Whatever happens between now and the end of the window, we desperately need a proper DM in the team and one that can hit the ground running, although as I said we arguably need two, as well as a CB. We’ve gone from being ruthlessly efficient to a bit of a laughing stock if we’re being honest and whatever business we do manage to do this window, there’s bound to be an element of panic buying around it.

Well that turned into a bit of a rant but it’s difficult to feel any other way. We were already thin on the ground last season and have now let six of our first team squad from last season leave in this window, while only bringing two in. It’s an absolute shambles that is showing no signs of abating and even the most ardent defender of FSG must find their patience wearing thin at the sheer ineptitude we’ve shown in the transfer market these past couple of seasons. Someone badly needs to get their finger out and get this mess sorted. Walk on!