It's not that, David Silva wouldn't fit in our team. Mata is facing the exact same problem, our team just can't pass the ball in those forward areas.
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Your team now has the one thing you lacked before: squad depth.
Today, none of Reus, Hummels, Gündogan, Sahin, Bender, Kuba or Schmelzer started, and you still looked top class(albeit against mediocre opposition?). I don't see why this team isn't going to be just as good as you were at your best. The only weakness I see, is that you no longer have that world class striker who can guarantee goals. No disrespect to Ramos and Immobile though. They both seem like very competent strikers.
Silva would do well here, or anywhere.
Well, it was communicated by the officials that way with the intention to manage expectations. Kagawa was in a sense a luxury transfer, which could also been seen as the result of that move was sending our promising youngster Hofmann on a one year loan to Mainz. Shinji does improve our overall ability by a notch, though.
It was always about the window of opportunity and the costs with him. I said over half a year ago that if we had the chance to get Kagawa back for less than we sold him for, we would jump on that. For 8 Mil. €? A complete no brainer.
I highly doubt it because we would still have a poor CM and poor wingers anyway. He isn't no Ronaldo nor Bale to play great while the rest can be poor.
Our team's play was the problem and also a lack of faith shown in our more adventurous players. Our attacking the last few years has consisted of standing still next to the defender and hoping Van Persie or Rooney get on the end of a cross. My God I can't wait for us to be fully rid of it.
It's not even a surprise is it, he's a good player suited to a passing based system, something we certainly haven't been for the past 2 years. Again the £6m or whatever it is we sold him for is a complete joke.
Silva is much stronger on the ball than Kagawa, much stronger!!
Kagawa is shit and all...
We could have never replaced Lewandowski one to one. Nobody in his class would have played for the wages we pay. So we did the wisest thing we could do in our situation: we splitted up the burden on multiple shoulders. We signed the closest thing to Lewandowski´s syle in Ramos (our best performer today btw,), moved the rapid Aubameyang further up the pitch and brought in the hard working and decisive poacher Immobile. Three fairly different striker, who all can get the job done. We don´t need a super star striker given that we have four players behind the striker (Kuba, Kagawa, Reus and Mkhitaryan), who are all capable of scoring double digits in a season.
In the end we made us better prepared for injuries, which is the whole strategy behind our spendings this Summer. We became less dependent on our world class players: resigning Sahin for Gündogan and Kagawa for Reus, bringing in the extremely highly rated defender talent Ginter for Hummels.
This is without a doubt the strongest team Klopp ever had at his disposal and we crafted it with investments of a little bit over 50 Mil. €. Simply quality business and nothing else.
@Sphaero
Do you reckon you can overtake Bayern? I'd love nothing more if you did.
Also, what's your verdict on Jojic? I saw him for the first time today, but I was mighty impressed by his speed, engine and presense. I thought that the likes of Gündogan and Sahin would be no-brainers for the starting XI once they return from injury, but I'm not so sure about that anymore.
Do you reckon you can overtake Bayern? I'd love nothing more if you did.
Also, what's your verdict on Jojic? I saw him for the first time today, but I was mighty impressed by his speed, engine and presense. I thought that the likes of Gündogan and Sahin would be no-brainers for the starting XI once they return from injury, but I'm not so sure about that anymore.
This season? Possible, more realistic than in the last two.
As a whole? Nope. We are still a good way off before matching them in every sense, at least five years of quality work and this is a very optimistic estimation.
Typical Klopp transfer. Impressed me in his first half season on multiple occasions. He struggled a bit with form as result of the physically very demanding Pre season but the curve points upwards right now. He is the closest thing in style to Gündogan in the squad, but still has a long way to go until he matches the latter as a player. God knows when Gündogan is back to best form, though and with Sahin also currently out I´m very happy to have him. His ability of being able to play in the offensive midfield makes him also a valuable squad player similar to Großkreutz.
That pass that leads to the assist of the first goal as so sweet.. Great player in Dortmund, that Kagawa.
There's no team in the BPL which is better than Dortmund over the past 2 or 3 years. They have proven that in the UCL. Dortmunds first eleven is (or was) as good as Bayerns, but Bayern has much more depth in their squad.
YOU GAVE US KAGAWA BACK.
thank you!
thank you!
Looking at these results you see how good the Bundesliga looked the last years. Only a troubled Bayer got destroyed.Last five years in the CL:
Wolfsburg - United 1-2 / 1-3
Bayern - United 2-1 / 2-3
Bremen - Tottenham 2-2 / 0-3
Schalke - United 0-2 / 1-4
Leverkusen - Chelsea 2-1 / 0-2
Dortmund - Arsenal 1-1 / 1-2
Bayern - City 2-0 / 0-2
Bayern - Chelsea 4-5 after pens
Dortmund - City 1-1 / 1-0
Schalke - Arsenal 2-0 / 2-2
Bayern - Arsenal 3-1 / 0-2
Dortmund - Arsenal 2-1 / 0-1
Schalke - Chelsea 0-3 / 0-3
Bayern - City 3-1 / 2-3
Leverkusen - United 2-4 / 0-5 (
Bayern - Arsenal 2-0 / 1-1
Bayern - United 3-1 / 1-1
What can be seen with these results is that the EPL used to be clearly superior to the Bundesliga aside of Bayern. This difference has lessened over the last years especially with Dortmund´s rise and Schalke´s and Leverkusen´s decent runs in the CL, although the last two have shown severe mentality problems at the biggest stage when it counted.
However, there is still no argument, which league has the superior depth. Germany has two clubs, which would be serious contenders for the top 4 in the EPL, while there are 6-7 clubs in England which could do the same in the Bundesliga.
The direct duels have often been very close matches, though, which will most likely be the case on Tuesday aswell.
We are getting better by the year.
Cant agree with your look on the top clubs in Germany and England; for me Bayern is above anyone then City and Chelsea above Dortmund. After Dortmund you have Liverpool and Arsenal.
Bayer is atm for sure stronger then Tottenham and Everton. Gladbach is looking great. Schalke(when all fit) not worse then Everton and Tottenham.
A good mix for me.
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Oh what a fecking state this whole Kagawa thing is, the ridiculous price he went for is just the icing on the cake.
He was great at BVB playing with Grosskreutz, Błaszczykowski, Kehl and Barrios.
Still those players, under the instruction from their coach, provided more movement off the ball than Utd. The system they were playing in was spot on.
Under similar circumstances, he wouldn't have done any better than Mata anywhere.
What's the point of having an expensive piano in the front room if you don't know how to play it?
shinji had to leave the pitch after 60 minutes, due to severe cramps. i'm talking to you, united's training staff!
I never wanted him to leave. Young, Fellaini and Anderson should have been shown the door before him. We should have played to the style he is used to, that's clearly the style of football we're going for anyway!
Footballer thrives in one league. Flops in another. Well, that's never happened before. What's the world coming to?
When did he ever work hard enough at United to get cramps? Hmmm...
Shock and horror really! Never seen it before.
Why always us..
Nice to see him do well but he didn't ever proved to be good enough for United. He's a very good player but something didn't click with United.
I think he could have done more himself to influence but I also don't think it's a coincidence that he and Mata have been seen to struggle to be playmakers despite proving their abilities to do so at the same level elsewhere. Will have to see what happens under LVG but last couple of seasons our attack as a team has been pretty average and that you could do a direct swap of kagawa/mata for another playmaker and they'd struggle as well to look as good as they do elsewhere.
Mata's been absolutely miles better than Kagawa as a 10, with stats to prove it. You can't lump them both in together.
This is what Klopp had to say about SAF telling him about the progress of Shinji -
I still think the plan was for Shinji to settle in for a year and Rooney to be shipped out next year. Obviously it didn't happen; shame he didn't work out here though.
You seem to be struggling, so I'll spell it out to you. Footballers cramp up when they work much harder than usual. Why didn't Kagawa cramp up once when he was playing for his United career under Van Gaal in pre-season, yet runs himself into the ground after 60 minutes in Germany?
Silva's superior in certain areas, has strengths that Mata doesn't, and plays the role differently, and I think that would translate to him fitting in anywhere, even here. I think his quality would shine through, and we wouldn't even be having discussions about whether he's been good or not, or whether he's worth the money.
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Sure but I meant in terms of being the playmaker, Mata definitely has done more, particularly in output but both have faced criticism for not dictating the play as much as they're known for, at least from what I've heard/read and I'm just saying that I don't think it's a coincidence that neither have looked as comfortable here and it's imo more about us as a team than them not being able to cope at united.
The football of last season wasn't conducive to anyone looking good. Nonetheless, some of our attacking players remained productive. Some others that didn't produce at least had a track record of previously being productive under Fergie. Neither excuse applied to Kagawa.
I understood your post perfectly well, thanks for being condescending, as always. As for the rest of your post, there can be a number of reasons besides your suggestion that he didn't work hard enough for LVG. For example, Dortmund's gegenpressing's tempo is at a completely different level to the tempo at which United play at, which Kagawa might not be used to. But I'm tired of the Kagawa debates. There's been fault on both sides as to why his United career didn't work out, and I won't pretend like I wasn't frustrated that he never seized the chances he was given.
It's been that long since he played in his best position and playing style on a competitive match, that's why. He was badly used by United.
It's mainly down to how Dortmund plays. Full field press over 90 minutes that's something he isn't used to anymore from two years at a club who doesn't even know what pressing is. I hope LvG can teach us that as it's a tool we are sorely missing.
When you respond to a post with a rolling eyes smilie what the hell do you expect?
A footballer can - and should - run himself into the ground no matter what tactics are being used.
Well there's no doubt that a flaw to Kagawa's game is that he's more reliant on the team playing well to influence than others will be, again for me I would say that's similar for most playmakers even if Kagawa was particularly poor. Not sure how many games Kagwa played centrally either last year, it's hard to play in a poor performing team, even harder to play in that same team but out of position.
As for others having past records, seems a harsh basis of assessment imo. Kagawa had a decent debut season again for me still not playing in the sort of team that favors his style of play. I'd be more concerned about the players who suddenly turned very average as opposed to a still relatively new (but proven) player struggling in an underperfoming team.
Anyway I'm not trying to overly defend Kagwa, I'd have liked him to stay and I think had Fergie stayed he would have played centrally more. Even under Fergie though that first season with Young/Valencia wide isn't really ideal for players like Kagwa or again other playmakers of his type imo. They want players who are going to run from outside towards the box and offer little link ups imo and that's not what they do. Had Fergie stayed he might have addressed the wings to change how they played, certainly with Januzaj coming through who's ideal for that role and Nani who Fergie might have tried to bring back in we had the players to go that route but unfortunately things didn't go that way.
Either way I think as the team was, both in Kagawa's first season and his second a lot of similar creative players would have struggled to be the players they were at other clubs. I'm not saying Kagawa is blameless, he definitely could have done more but also the team in his 2 seasons wasn't right for him either.
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