Henderson, Thiago and Milner are very much advancing in years. Ox will go next year, Keita might go with him and Elliott and Jones are still young and developing and you don't know how good they'll turn out to be. They missed much of last season with injury when they'd have got more chances. It's surprising we haven't done business there this summer, as we'll end up needing 2 or 3 soon.
This is a very similar argument to what people were making 18-24 months ago around the front 3. We had quality options that were ageing and needed decisions around contract extensions plus the back ups (Origi and Minamino) weren't at that level and might leave anyway. Fast forward 2 years and the front line looks completely revitalised and set for the next 3 years at least. You could argue that the same can be said about the defence also.
In terms of the midfield, if we just use this season as the reference point, are you concerned about overall quality or numbers with our options:
Fabinho, Thiago, Kieta, Henderson, Elliott, Jones, Milner, AOC, (Carvalho, Bajetic)
Forget about future planning and assume that the people Liverpool employ will know the midfield needs refreshing in the next 2 years and will have a plan. For this season, are you concerned about the current depth?
If so, could you say what you propose should happen this summer? In terms of INs and OUTs. Assuming Bellingham is not available but players like Nunes are and buying a player or 2 for 40M is not prohibitive. Doesn't even have to be a named player. It's fine to be generic but suggest the profile of that player and where he fits in the pecking order when joining.
So now you have your new midfield options (if you've decided to buy someone). Can you suggest how many minutes over the season you would want from each? Assume we get to the final of the CL and it's 51 games when you include the PL. That's 153 starts in midfield assuming 3 midfielders per game. Or it's a total of 13,770 minutes. Let's throw in 8 domestic cup games and assume it's another really successful season. That's roughly 15,800 minutes in total for the midfield positions.
Here's my projections based on the current options:
Fabinho 3000 minutes
Henderson 3000 minutes
Thiago 2500 minutes
Keita 2000 minutes
Milner 1200 minutes (mainly domestic cup games and sub appearances)
Elliott 1500 minutes
Jones 1500 minutes
AOC 700 minutes (mainly domestic cup games and sub appearances)
Bajetic 180 minutes (domestic cups)
Carvalho 220 minutes (domestic cups and potential subs - will get more minutes as front 3 player).
Those projections of minutes are either lower than last season or similar to last season for each player. Elliott is the only player with a significant increase.
Interested how you fit in another midfielder, even with the subtraction of AOC, but still give reasonable minutes to Elliott and Jones.
Really interested to hear your thoughts process (and others) around this. With conservative estimates of playing time and potential optimistic estimates of how many games we'll play (i.e. 59) then it's hard to see how any new player gets game time and it not have a knock on effect on development of others.
With regards to the above I don't necessarily think we can throw Thcoumanei into the argument. We have no idea what the knock-on effect of signing him may have been. Maybe we would have binned Keita and AOC. Maybe Jones and AOC. Maybe we'd have carried another midfielder and not paid so much for a Mane replacement (i.e. Darwin Nunez). Hard to know how that effects things so put that to one side and if you get the chance tell me what you would do now around midfield and expected playing minutes.
