Gakpo’s great. But what about that gaping hole in Liverpool’s midfield, Jurgen?

Mails from Merseyside continue to delight in the signing of Cody Gakpo, but there is concern over what it might mean for the weakness in Liverpool’s midfield.

Get your views on any subject in to theeditor@football365.com…

Funny but fair
As a Liverpool fan, of course I laughed at us “getting one over” the omni-shambles that is that Manchester United transfer department. Gakpo (23) looks exactly like the type of player Klopp likes, and helps build the next generation of forwards with Diaz (25) and Nunez (23). Good business for us, done quickly and quietly.

But as much as I’d like to leave it there. I think there is truth to the fact that United might have gone cold on him. Not, maybe, because they have infinite players who can play on the left-hand side of the formation. The same is true of Liverpool, yet Klopp loves forwards who can play anywhere across the line, and Den Hag isn’t any different.

No, the reason why United have backed off on Gakpo is because his semi-doppelganger has finally recovered fitness, and now form. Rashford is playing well. Sure, he might not be seen as the heir to Ronaldo any longer, but he’s certainly a very good, tall and fast inside forward. And changes the equation from “we don’t want Gakpo because we have plenty of inside lefts we don’t really trust” to “we have a homegrown talent, beloved even outside Manchester, who will play for us forever if we want him.”

And that’s a fairly simple math problem to solve. So, as much fun as this has been, I don’t really think the United transfers are as silly as they used to be. Which means I’m upgrading them from omnishambles to Kwasishambles. Sign a decent forward and you get to be an occasional shambles. Good luck!
Andrew M, Streatham

…Re: Simon M – LFC. Have to express my amusement at Simon’s comments re: Gakpo, seemingly knowing Manchester United’s transfer dealings better than anyone, then, of course as a Liverpool fan of course he does.

Gakpo is an excellent player but United never made a bid, he’s joined Liverpool because United didn’t go in for him, he’s admitted that now. Excellent player but United didn’t want him or need him, but if it helps you sleep at night thinking you’ve got one over on Manchester United then you cuddle up to that Gakpo teddy!
Dave, Conwy

Misplaced priorities
While Cody is a welcome addition I can’t help but feel that in 2 or 3 months when we have Jota and Diaz back we might regret not having signed a stop gap for the midfield rather than the attack.

I can’t help but admire the brass in Jurgen’s gentleman department to call up John Henry, completely ignore the fact that since Thiago we’ve only signed Arthur, and instead of asking for a defender to ask for another left winger!

Fast forward to 2026 and Liverpool have evolved to play a 4-0-6 formation. Guess you can’t lose the midfield battle if you don’t play with a midfield!
TM

Klopp and cash
In response to Garey Vance, MUFC let’s get this straight. Klopp was not referring to clubs spending money and his own club not spending money. Clubs are allowed to spend. It’s how they acquire players and build teams.
He was referring to some clubs (Utd, City etc…) having the financial means to spend MUCH MORE MONEY on players than majority of clubs including LFC.

I dont have time to do a thorough research on all this at the moment but thankfully Football365 seems to have done some decent work on this so I will use the data in one of their articles.
The link is here.

Here is 5 year net spend figures. Ranking #1….none other than Man Utd…

1) Manchester United: £-545.8m
22/23: £-204.4m
21/22: £-98.4m (6th)
20/21: £-58.32m (2nd)
19/20: £-138.24m (3rd)
18/19: £-46.94m (6th)

Compared to Liverpool who actually sit at 9th below Wolves, Newcastle, Villa and West Ham…

9) Liverpool: £-216.61m
22/23: £-8.64m
21/22: £-51.71m (2nd)
20/21: £-58.91m (3rd)
19/20: £28.08m (Champions)
18/19: £-126.79m (2nd)

Also, a quick look on the salary spent on players will further illustrate this point.

Top 20 players weekly salary by club;

Man Utd – 7
Man city – 6
Chelsea – 4
Liverpool – 2
Arsenal – 1

I know there are many different sort of metrics to measure financial power of clubs but from this it’s clear who is able to spend more on players.This is what Klopp was referring to.

The fact that Utd has spent so much and still been rubbish smacks of incompetence at the highest level.

Anyway this went longer than I intended so I will not even mention Darwin or Gakpo who Utd missed out on and is the source of their latest…oops…

Best
Paul (LFC Sydney)

…Must admit I do enjoy a transfer that comes completely out the blue, like Liverpool signing Gakpo from PSV. Hopefully the deal and paperwork is concluded in time for him to get into the squad for first game of the new year on January 2nd. Seen quite a few perspectives on this site regarding this deal. Some Liverpool fans enjoying us having picked Man Utds pocket to sign him, to Utd fans saying they didn’t need him anyway. All a lot of fan blustering. We didn’t nip in and take him from Man Utd like we did in the last January window when Spurs were close to signing Luis Diaz. This is different in that Man Utd were close to signing him in the summer, but instead went for Anthony. Doesn’t mean they wanted him now, and they are well stocked in wide attacking areas, even if those players are a range of very good to pretty terrible. Gakpo isn’t what they need at this moment in time.

From a Liverpool perspective, it makes sense. Diaz, Jota and Firmino are injured. A highly rated young player coming in to slot straight in now is what we need. Even when the injured trio come back, there will be enough game time for all of them. Would argue we needed a central midfielder more, but who’s to say that we won’t get one before the end of the January window? The Morocco midfielder Amrabat from Fiorentina would be my best guess and most attainable target.

Did we pay more than was touted in the summer for Gakpo? Yes, but not much. Since then there has been a season where he has become more productive, and a World Cup where he stood out for Holland. Looks like the advice from Louis Van Gaal about staying put was sound.

All in all a good deal at a decent price for a young talent who should get game time straight away. Which brings me onto Garey Vance’s query on Jurgen Klopp. Why pick comments from 2016 now, it is odd. It’s almost 2023. Things change. In 2016 the transfer market was very different. The £89m midfielder deal (pogba) Klopp mentioned then, was at the time, a crazy amount of money. Since, with the Neymar, Mbappe, Coutinho etc deals, the transfer market is a very different place to 2016. Is Klopp being a bit hypocritical? Possibly, but not to the point of dragging out comments from 2016.

Happy New Year everyone
Kevin

…The whole Liverpool net spend virtue signaling brought up by Mark is getting tiring, because it’s bullshit. If I go working all year and use my hard earned 100k to buy a Mercedes, and another guy gets an inheritance and buys a similar Mercedes, we both spent the same, for the same type of car, what is the problem? Liverpool had to sell, they sold, tough sh*t.
I got the point about developing youth, that’s important for the growth of the game, also needing a lot of money to compete these days, but he’s preaching to the choir at this point. Who in their right mind thinks Villa will win the league with their resources. Like big Shaq would say, ‘they ain’t got the facilities, man’. Who doesn’t like seeing young players coming through? But it’s becoming extremely clear, in order to win, a lot of money is required.
The fishing hook that really got me was Mark trying to defend Klopp on spending. Klopp is a spender, as far as his club can spend, he’ll spend. He hides it under the guise of, we only spent 70, that club over there, spent 130. You can’t expect us to compete but we’ll try. I first saw this at Dortmund, when Bayern finally got their stuff sorted and overcame his Dortmund team. Talking about how he had bows and arrows and they had bazookas.I cannot count how many shots he has had against the Manchester clubs, from saying he couldn’t spend that much when Man U bought Pogba, only to go and spend a similar amount on a defender, and a lot more on other players, that squad was stacked. Point being, when Klopp gets the money, he will spend the heck out of it, And I’d have been ok with it, if he didn’t revert to norm and start complaining about spending after he’d just seen his club spend like never before.It’s doublespeak, hypocrisy. He gets very jealous when other clubs are able to do it, recently talking about clubs that can do what they want, referencing Man City and NewCastle, while when he got the license, and the Coutinho money, he went to Vegas. Klopp is a brilliant manager, but is a hypocrite, sorry to say.
Dave(Klopp = Keegan = Benitez), Somewhere

Who’s the daddy?
Is Haaland’s daddy the only daddy in the world to sire a footballer? During the Eland debacle, haha, it was so cringe when the cameras kept panning to daddy when his son scored. Stop showing us daddies in the stadiums. It was cringe during the World Cup and it’s still cringe in the EPL. If anything, Haaland’s mommy should be the one being praised for carrying the goalbot in her tummy for 9 months.
Gitonga

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