Yeah I still love Neil but the "just buy goals" over simplification has become a bit annoying. Look at Real Madrid at Anfield this season, absolutely played us off the park in midfield, even with Suarez that day we'd have got beat comfortably IMO.
The top heavy "OUTSCORE OPPONENTS GUNG HO" of the end of 2013/2014 doesn't really ever seem sustainable to me, especially when you face top teams and intelligent managers
On this quickly, more than fine with people not liking my contributions - "you get a good review, you get a bad review but don't get suckered either way but none of them know you" - but this slightly misses the point. Probably my fault.
The argument isn't that midfields aren't important or that you don't need really good players in every position to compete at the very highest level. It's about allocation of resources when you want to compete at the very highest level in the league when you can be outspent on wages and fees at home and abroad and when everyone is at a higher starting base. It's about what this league is - 3 or 4 very good teams, 4 or 5 good teams, 4 average teams and 8 really quite poor ones. That bottom 12 need putting to the sword and first and foremost goals do that.
If we had City, Chelsea or United's resources then my argument would be quite different; I'd want to build a side capable of challenging on all fronts. Also, had we won league titles as recently as any of them then I'd be more generous about the idea of succeeding in Europe which is a different set of challenges. All I want is to win the league and while I don't think we will replicate 13/14 it does show a path, just as United of 08/09 shows a path in that they only dropped two points against the eventual bottom 13 all campaign.
Lastly, I think we are quite good in midfield. We have seven midfielders of genuine quality. It isn't Alonso, Mascherano, Sissoko and Gerrard in quality but Milner, Henderson, Coutinho, Lallana, Can, Lucas and Allen are good and deep. Six of them played for Liverpool last season. What undermined us was our inability to put the bottom twelve to the sword.
Real Madrid is a fantastic example in a sense. We had tried to spread the resources all over the squad and so we couldn't compete anywhere. And because we were so blunt in the boxes of the bottom twelve we don't get to have another go at improving that until at least 2016.
There is a further conversation to be had about whether what you need to do to do the business domestically in this league at any level of resources and what you need to do the business in Europe. One I want to have in the next couple of days.
Everything I say is about winning the league. Not trying to come fourth. Not trying to win any trophy. All I want to do is see Liverpool win the league. More than happy to listen to any better ideas, but "only buy really good players" doesn't really cut it for me. No one has perfect transfers. So overbuy up front for now, over allocate those resources and mitigate for the inevitable failure.
