I think with Edwards back, the idea that we'd pay big fees for players who are 27+ can be firmly nipped in the bud, just not how we do things. Watkins is very good though.
Seen comments across the varying player threads and so on in the LFC forum bemoaning some of our signings we’ve made since Edwards left. I’ve been saying this as my main reason for wanting Neto but I feel we really need to be looking within the Premier League for our summer signings unless it’s a stone cold world class player like another Tchouameni becoming available.
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I think there is an element of truth to that - it does feel like our more successful signings under Klopp have had at least a spell in the PL first - Mane, VVD, Gini, Robertson, Macca (I'm not going to include Salah as he barely played for Chelsea). But then equally Alisson, Fabinho, Konate have all been successful signings who were all brought in from overseas, and though it's more divisive, I'd personally put Diaz and Nunez in the same category.
But for me the issue is as much the type of players, which I think boils down to 3 things. 1 is quality, and we've been taking what feels like more risks on players than we used to (and tbf this does lend itself to the PL/non-PL debate). 2 is attributes, which has seen us buying players who don't really seem to fit in with our overall high-energy/high-pressing intensity plan (see Gakpo, Endo, Gravenberch). But thirdly I think it also feels like recently we've bought players with no real clear plan of how to use them.
I mean buying Gakpo (who we evidently envisaged as a #9 given our refusal to play him wide) 6 months after buying Nunez makes no sense whatsoever - they're completely different players vying for the same position and honestly we don't particularly cater to either of them in that role. Buying Mac Allister and sticking him at #6 (which even he seemingly didn't expect, and you had Klopp saying at the start of the season "it's not his position but he CAN play there") because we didn't or couldn't recruit a top-level defensive/deep midfielder. I like Szoboszlai but I honestly don't know what he is in this set-up, and it feels like the way we've been playing him minimises his strengths and we've turned him into little more than a runner who covers other players when he was primarily an attacking midfielder for most of his career so far. The purchase of Gravenberch feels almost like a superfluous passion project - he's clearly very talented with lots of potential but hasn't been able to consistently show it since leaving Ajax and he's nowhere near nailing down a starting place.
It just feels such a far cry from what we did at our best - build clearly defined roles, go out and buy a player who suits that role. If you said to be we need to buy a new number #9 tomorrow, I wouldn't have the first clue of what kind of player we'd be looking for. And I could say the same of the forwards, and the full backs to be honest.
