I'm probably just wasting my time going through this but after watching no Football for over a week now I'm feeling a bit frisky and thought I'd revisit this pet peeve of mine. We currently count 8 players as first team midfielders with Arthur Melo being the 9th. Is there any other similar level team where going 8 or 9 deep in midfield is even a part of the conversation?
ManC? No, they have 5 midfielders that play all their minutes
Chelsea? No, they have 4 midfielders that play all ther minutes
Spurs? No, they have 3 midfielders that play all their minutes
Real Madrid? No, they have 5 midfielders that play all their minutes
Barcelona? No, they have 5 midfielders that play all their minutes
Bayern? No, they have 4 midfielders that play all their minutes
Inter? No, they have 4 midfielders that play all their minutes
I can keep going but suffice to say there is no CL level team that is going 8-9 deep on midfielders. And you know what? Given a choice Klopp won't either. The whole run-in last year was basically Fabinho-Thiago-Hendo every game with a bit of Keita sprinkled in. 18/19 was Fabino, Gini, Hendo every game.
So then we have a couple of explanations here. Either we truly don't have 8-9 midfielders, we are the only club in the world that needs 8-9 midfielders or some bad choices have been made that have compounded on each other to create this situation. In none of these is the answer then that Klopp hasn't been supported and was left high and dry to operate on a shoe string. Same as it was with the CB's and forwards, choices were made and resources allocated. What you can truly then say is the resources we've allocated to midfield have been misused, not that there were no resources spent. You can't on the one hand claim we can realistically go 8-9 players deep, more than any other team in the world, and then on the other say it's a travesty how underfunded the squad is. One doesn't equal the other.
For me, LFC as a club have just not made great choices, relatively speaking, at this position and now we're paying the piper for those choices. If you replace Gini with a younger and healthier player than Thiago, or if you decide by signing Thiago you don't need Hendo, or if you move on from Ox or Keita quicker, if you don't re-sign Milner, if you decide Jones won't be good enough, etc etc. There's a ton of choices here that were made that would completely alter the dynamic of the conversation about why this position group now is an issue. All in isolation make sense but only viewed as a whole can you start to see that we just haven't made ideal choices. Even if you want to accept the premise that FSG have short changed the club, between all these players listed you figure there has to be about £1m per week in wages going to it. How is that not enough in resources to not have a better option to play in meaningful games than Milner and Elliott or Elliott and Fabio? It's kind of insane when you think about it that way.
Anyway, for my own sanity and enjoyment of RAWK I think I'm going to start ignoring any poster that says the club is being short changed now that I figured out how the ignore function works. There will always be someone richer but the real issue here is a misuse of the resources we have, not a lack of resources.