Doubt it. You can just tell by his touch and dribbling ability that he oozes class. That's not easy to "suss out". There is a reason Liverpool pounced as soon as it looked like he was going to Spurs. The guy is a top talent. He has looked like their most dangerous attacker pretty much since he arrived.
Luis Diaz
- Thread starter Frank Grimes
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
I am not so sure there are very few managers who actually go out on top and have sustained success through out their careers .
I was 'encouraged' against my better judgement to turn on the TV at half time to witness the plucky underdogs Villarreal overturn the fraudulent giants in the most exciting comeback since Lazarus......and then this fella rocks up onto the pitch 
I'm intrigued to understand on what basis you've both arrived at this conclusion?
These signings aren't even hard to see. We just make it look difficult.
How the heck did this guy get to 25 before getting noticed? Feels like the hype only really started after the Copa America.
Seems they have actually signed the crux of their top players all around that age (Van Dijk, Alisson, Salah, Mane, Diaz, Fabinho), instead of going for the spend big on the under 23s craze.
Seems they have actually signed the crux of their top players all around that age (Van Dijk, Alisson, Salah, Mane, Diaz, Fabinho), instead of going for the spend big on the under 23s craze.
Absolutely electric this guy, he's gonna be big. Changed the game completely. Another one they've unearthed, fecking annoying.
If we went after him - what would his cost be?
60 million + ? Was linked once at 75 million but ended up moving for 37.5 + add ons.
I hate the " we are the biggest club " crap when we are not. All it does is increase the fee of transfers because we are rich due to a big fan base.
60 million + ? Was linked once at 75 million but ended up moving for 37.5 + add ons.
I hate the " we are the biggest club " crap when we are not. All it does is increase the fee of transfers because we are rich due to a big fan base.
Hopefully I'm completely wrong.
What's to suss out? It's not like he's a one-trick pony or a pace merchant. He's just technically very good, has a good feel for the game and works really hard for a player of his type.
I'm sure he'll go through some ups and downs as most players do, he's obviously brimming with confidence at the moment as Liverpool are playing so well and his form will correlate to the teams form, but I don't think he's going anywhere.
Had Rashford came through Liverpool Youth academy, he would have been as good as Salah. Unfortunately we didnt handle his career very well. We played him too much and portrayed him as Savior too early in his career.
Not sure if his early success has gone to his head and he feels like he has achieved everything and hence concentrating more on his other activities. What he's done is exceptional but I feel he could have done that later in his career and concentrated more on his football.
So basically we should curse Spurs if Liverpool wins quadruple this season. Magically after his signing, suddenly everyone realized Liverpool have great squad strength till then nobody was sayin that.
Pretty sure our scouting dept didn't know who he was
Just my opinion, but I think he'll find it hard to be as consistent as he is being currently, just like Liverpool did last year too. He's come into a team bang in form and he has obvious qualities, but I don't think he's shown enough that makes him able for them to "not miss Salah" or some other hyperbolic statements about him.I was 'encouraged' against my better judgement to turn on the TV at half time to witness the plucky underdogs Villarreal overturn the fraudulent giants in the most exciting comeback since Lazarus......and then this fella rocks up onto the pitch
I'm intrigued to understand on what basis you've both arrived at this conclusion?
Their transfer committee is amazing. People make it seem like a one man job but there's a lot of people behind the scenes who are absolutely best in class.
The bloke is a top manager but it must be nice to be Jurgen Klopp and have your recruitment team churning out gem after gem for you.
I can't remember the last time Liverpool made a bad signing, in contrast I can't remember the last time we made an objectively good signing
The key is Liverpool understand what makes a Premier League player. They sign real street fighters, not these airy-fairy types who want to rush home from spending an entire training session trying to nutmeg people to play xBox online
I can't remember the last time Liverpool made a bad signing, in contrast I can't remember the last time we made an objectively good signing
The key is Liverpool understand what makes a Premier League player. They sign real street fighters, not these airy-fairy types who want to rush home from spending an entire training session trying to nutmeg people to play xBox online
I don’t like this line of thinking tbh. Yes Liverpool’s recruitment is very good but good managers usually bring out the best in players. The players we sign are usually always highly rated at the time, it’s very rare we sign a player and we think “feck me, he’s shit, why on earth did we sign him?” They’re made to look like bad players because we’ve had shite managers for years.
If you switch this guy with Sancho, Liverpool would get a Ballon d'Or candidate and we would get a Columbian version of Tony V, left side. It's Klopp, he is a genius.
I disagree I am afraid. I stand by my assertion we have targeted the wrong players. It's pretty difficult to support the idea that Moyes, LvG, Mourinho and Rangnick are all bad managers and don't know how to assemble a decent coaching staff.
Liverpool's recruitment team would never go for the likes of Ronaldo, Varane, Angel di Maria, Schweinsteiger, Falcao, Pogba, Cavani, Lukaku, Fellaini etc....in the first-place.
In addition, whenever we have tried to bring in players and develop them, we end-up making poor signings because we don't know what we are looking for. Case in-point, we sign fundamentally 'decent/good' system players like AWB, Ander Herrera, Daley Blind, Morgan Schneiderlin, Victor Lindelof, DvDB, Mhiki etc...but don't know how to use them and/or don't know how they fit into the style of football we are trying to play. This ultimately leads to them looking far worse than they ever did at their previous clubs.
Liverpool sign 'cogs' which fit perfectly into their 'machine', and that's why they all hit the ground running and look at home right away....because they know what they are looking for and what role that player will take-on in the team
Is it not basically the same transfer committee that was a laughing stock on a regular basis under Rodgers? Klopp has transformed that club.
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It was only portrayed as a laughing stock at the time by the British press who still scoffed at the fancy Continental idea that someone other than the manager could choose players
Well it was a laughing stock because they bought in mostly terrible players, with the occasional star. There's a reason Klopp had to gut pretty much that entire team.
The issues really boiled down to a 'war' between Rodgers, who openly wanted full control, and the 'transfer committee'.
Yes there were some unsuccessful signings, but the committee had bought in the likes of Firminho and Coutinho before Klopp arrived.
Signings like Nathaniel Clyne and Christian Benteke were largely attributed to Brendan Rodgers.
There was open talk about how Rodgers was so distrustful of the committee that he would reject their ideas and refuse to choose the players they did sign.
Decent article here - https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/spo...w-liverpools-transfer-committee-went-16479508
In general, we're far too obsessed with the agency of 'managers' in English football. Even your final line 'there's a reason Klopp had to gut pretty much that entire team'. Klopp alone didn't do it, he worked as a part of that committee. The crucial thing is, he worked with them, not against them.
Wasted so many words, could have just written "Got lucky with timing, hired Klopp and that's it".
Why are people so desperate to assign agency to one person? It's nuts and it's not the way modern football works.
You need a great Head Coach but you also need a great backroom team to be successful at the top level now. You can't have one without the other.
We, United fans, should understand better than any supporters the consequences of a poor backroom team
I'm not sure. Klopp would make him look better than he did for us this season, no doubt but he does lack a huge amount of explosiveness that Klopp wants from his wingers and you can't simply train that.
You can hire any backroom staff, if you hire average or poor manager everything look shit.
Actually your last paragraph is completely wrong. ManUtd fans should understand better than anyone what a good/great manager can do. We watched the greatness for 20+ years.
I think he lacks nothing in order to be a top top class player, only thing lacking is a competent manager who knows what he is doing. Let's hope we found one in ETH.
I hope so. It's way too early to tell anyway but I thought he was a bit quicker off the mark when we signed him than he turned out to be.
Brendan Rodgers saw the committee as usurping power he believed should have been his, and so he didn’t commit to it. Klopp saw them as another facet of the club to help him, and he worked with them. He trusted them, and they in turn delivered for him.
By the way, Firmino, Coutinho, Henderson and Suarez etc were all “committee” buys i.e. they were not just manager picks.
I think Brendan needed to mature a little bit into his role as manager at a big club and mostly not take everything as a power play and accept that everyone at the club was working for the same thing.
Klopp has been able to focus on managing his squad rather than managing the club, and Liverpool is better off for it.
Now, if the same could happen at Man United.
Nowadays you need both.....and tbf later on in his tenure SAF surrounded himself with experts because he realized/understood that he couldn't do it all on his own. To my mind that's what gave him his longevity.
Exactly. SAF was appointed in 1986. It's 2022 now!
And by great coincidence the club's whose transfers and backroom structure is praised all have great managers, or lets say once they hired great manager, their backroom staff/transfer team miraculously became very efficient.
@Relevant Yes, you need both. But the quality of transfers team is judged based on the quality of the manager. Give good players to average/poor manager, he will make them look average/poor. Give the same good players to great managers, they make players look great. All of a sudden everything looks perfect.
What a superb player, pains me to say it.
So your argument is that Liverpool and City have signed 'good' players and they have Pep and Klopp....so they become amazing players under their stewardship?
In contrast, we've signed 'good' players but Jose, LvG, Ole, Rangnick and Moyes, either themselves or via their coaching staff, couldn't organise effective coaching sessions to make them 'great players'?
I just want to understand it, because if that is your argument, I believe we're so polarised on this it's kind of even pointless discussing because we'll never come close to agreeing.
Also....as an aside...who do you think chose Klopp and Pep for Liverpool and City....and why did they choose them?
Pep had entire world behind him, you don't have to be a genius to hire him. All it took was good money, half a club for his brother and maybe some luxury apartments in few countries.
Do you think Klopp was some hidden gem? He was very highly rated and was even a wet dream of caf. Shit thing was timing, when we needed manager he was committed to Dortmund, when he resigned, we had decent season with Van Gaal, showing some signs for progress and no reason to sack him. On the other hand, Liverpool had poor season, followed by poor start, so they were lucky with the timing.
Coming to the actual point, yes. Not every player is a good player for both sides but their fates took different directions. Now who is going to tell me that they always thought Salah as a player who was among the top 3-5 best players in the world or Henderson as the player who was good enough for Top 2 team in the world? Henderson was the laughing stock, him and Downing gave so many good memories for Manutd fans and suddenly he is the midfield man for Liverpool. Midfielder without whom Liverpool would struggle, captain marvel and all that.
This isn't even first team to do that, Spurs average bunch suddenly looked like one of the best players in every position when they were so painfully average before Poch took over.
Pep and Klopp both have systems that is fantastic, it's so good that it elevates the players and they always play dominant style of football.
Or do you genuinely believe that their transfer team is so good that they don't sign bad players and ours is so shit that we can't sign any good players? I mean we can look at the profile of players before their moves to respective clubs.
Ironically Liverpool signed one of the best in the world at that.
Good posts you are bang on. Unfortunately there’s a large portion of utd fans wanting to take the simplistic response of blaming all the players and calling them crap. It’s really quite simple, when you sign such talented players and none of them match or exceed their potential that falls on the manager. Ole got the closest to maximising player talent but unfortunately he wasn’t tactually astute enough. All our other managers have done a shocking job of it.
Yeah, when almost every talented player you signed failed to live up to the expectations or reach the potential then it's obvious where the issue is. It's not like we signed duds and random punts. They all had very good seasons before signing for ManUtd.
There are some fans who call all of our players 'crap' and I agree with you, they are not.
My point is that Liverpool know what type of player they want to sign. @roonster09 mentioned Salah and Jordan Henderson....both fit perfectly in a Klopp system. If the point is 'good players need good systems to operate' then I agree 100%, and that is in-part down to the manager - but it's also about identifying the right type of player in the first-place.
United have failed time and time again because we don't know how we want to play and don't understand the type of player we want to sign as a result. That's why we end-up with a real mixed bag of players, none of whom are especially well-suited to the style we now seemingly believe we want to play.
In essence, I don't think we're all necessarily disagreeing that good managers implement systems which suit their players and therefore they get the best out of them, however, my point is those players don't end-up their by accident. They end-up there after the recruitment team analyse tens of thousands of players and identify the perfect players to fit a system.
Case in point, the chap this thread is about. Nobody can claim Diaz has been improved by Klopp, because he has only been there a few weeks. Sure, Klopp's system allows him to flourish, but again, that goes to my point - it's not an accident that Liverpool buy players who fit seamlessly into their system whilst we end-up with so many square pegs in round holes.
They may well have all had great seasons before joining us and also may be great players working in the system that they were used to .... however this doesn't guarantee they would be great fits for United.
This then causes real problems when they're shoe horned into new systems that they can't easily adapt to.
It could be argued that a GOOD manager can help them adjust and make the most of the situation and the undoubted talent of the players in question.
Seems to me though it'd make much more sense if the players we were pursuing were both a) excellent players in their own right and b) readily suited to the system United are currently seeking to employ.
Thinking about the player who is the subject of this thread - an excellent player obviously (hadn't known much about the bastard previously tbf) but also fits absolutely seemlessly into the way Pool play.
Compare that with Ronaldo.
GOAT. Nuff said.
However......does he fit in with what United are trying to achieve, the system we (Ole at the time) were trying to implement? Ole went on record stating that he wanted the fittest most hard working team in the league.
As wonderful as he is as a footballer, there is no way you'd include CR7 in such a system.
I said it at the time and it bears repeating. Never in a million years was Ronaldo a Solskjaer signing.
Rodgers was apparently at loggerheads with the transfer committee at Pool and wanted full control of the reigns including hiring and firing of players from the get go. There's an hilarious video of him saying exactly this the day he was introduced to the public, the faces on the FSG blokes were absolutely priceless
...The sting was that the transfer committee survived and Brenton did his Elvis impression. Klopp came in under no illusion that he was part of a team - ffs he wanted Brandt ahead of Salah
That transfer committee is the real brains behind Liverpool's success, some of them actual feckin rocket scientists I'm led to believe.
Klopp's a wizard as a manager but he weaves his magic via the unparalleled backroom staff he's inherited or brought in himself.
Let's hope ETH fits a blueprint that everyone behind the scenes at Carrington has meticulously developed or it's gonna be another long period in the wilderness.
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Lentwood are you bugging me or am I bugging you