When you say bring in replacements, what do you exactly mean?
Because when I look at the squad I see Jota as being brought in as an eventual replacement for one of the front 3. I see Konate being brought in as a potential replacement for VvD or Matip. We also have some emerging young players who can contribute now but could easily grow into much bigger roles in the squad in the next few years.
The replacement of the key players in the squad seems like it will be a continual thing over the next few seasons. A process that we've started already with some of our acquisitions. I personally don't feel the whole squad needs to be ripped up and replaced at this point, even if there are some reasonable doubts currently about some players. I think we have some very painful examples in our past (1991-1994) were we ripped apart a title challenging squad too quickly, and that had knock on effects for years after.
So to go back to the original question, what do you mean by replacements for our key players?For example, are you saying we should buy someone now to replace Firmino? Or that maybe we should have Mane and Salah's long term replacement on the books now incase, in Mane's instance, his drop in form last season was not a blip?Or are you saying you want to see more of a Konate/Jota type approach to squad evolution, where the players can contribute now and have the ceiling to be potential key players in the future?
Based on your post I don't quite get what you mean. Would be good to explain further what type of approach you are advocating and some of the potential knock on benefits and challenges.
Thanks, good question. I think by replacements I mean long term replacements in the core 14 player or so group for Henderson, Firmino, Mane, Salah and Gini/Thiago (if Thiago was the Gini replacement we'll need a Thiago replacement soonish). At some point all of the above will drop off, or they already have started to in certain cases, and we'll need to faze new players into the core group. It's clear that Henderson, Firmino and Mane's contract situations are quite complicated and we may not renew/ may not renew on terms that they'd be happy with, this shows we're aware we need to be transitioning certain core players out of the core group. But we also don't seem to think we need to be bringing in potential replacements this season. If that's true (and I suspect we're briefing one thing and doing another so the proof will be in the end of transfer window pudding) then I think it's a mistake because we're narrowing the window we have to bring in replacements up front and in centre midfield. The smaller that window the more important that we get it right first time. It's ok to bring in a long term Firmino replacement who doesn't work out if we get to have another go afterwards, but if we bring in a new long term replacement for Firmino when Firmino has left/ already declining we've got an issue. We'd perhaps be able to get away with this if we were buying at the top end of the market, signing Mbappe is about as much as a banker that you can imagine. But we're probably not doing that. It is so much harder for us now because our success has raised the bar of what a 'good enough' replacement is. When we brought Mane in he was a massive upgrade (stylistically not just quality wise) on what we had simply at his Southampton level. But now we need to bring in a player who can replace the monster that Mane has become. That is very difficult to do and waiting till Mane drops off/ leaves feels risky. That is, unless we're bringing in an Mbappe but we're not going to do that. Given that doesn't it make sense to begin the process of signing long term replacements for Mane, Firmino, Henderson and Salah now rather than wait? On top of this we also have more uncertainty at the beginning of this season than we've had for ages. Are Mane and Firmino dropping off? Maybe. Is our first choice midfield now too injury prone to be relied upon? Maybe. Did our abysmal run in January-March indicate anything more than an awful injury crisis? Probably not but we've got to admit the possibility that it does.
How we go about this is another question. Do we bring in a player we expect to take Firmino's place in the first 11? Maybe, but even if we do he won't for months because that's not how Klopp works. I suspect the replacement would have to be at the very top end of talent to do that, and we're not playing at that tier by all accounts. So whether it's a potential, 'starter straight away' or 'rotation option to begin with' I'd like to see us bring in players who could, if they continue their development, be the next Firmino/Mane up top and Henderson/Gini/Thiago in midfield. IF Firmino and Mane haven't dropped off, and Henderson is robust enough to be available a decent amount this season then I don't think that is required this season but, given we need to do it at some point, I'd like to do it now because it helps to mitigate the risk of drop off and it makes the ongoing process of transition easier too.
To be clear, I'm not criticising the club here because we don't know what they're doing and they'll probably end up signing an attacker and/or a midfielder, but I am disagreeing with the posters who say we don't need to do more this summer than we have done. I'm not sure we need to, but it feels to me to be very risky not to. Both in terms of immediate success and long term squad management and evolution.