Skrtel was our best defender last season....but that itself is a worrying sign.

Lovren isn't a good enough upgrade on our current CBs to warrant spending £20m on him. If we can sell one of Agger/Skrtel meaning it's a be spend of £10m on Lovren it might be good business.
Even I we do sign him, it won't make me more confident in our defence than I currently am.

12% lower win ratio with skrtel in the team as opposed to him being out of it since his career with us began.

When you factor in last year's exceptional season (which was because we scored so many) it makes for poor reading. I'd rather bring in someone to partner agger/sakho personally.

Agger gets a raw deal, someone posted stats here last season showing he had won a higher % of email duels than skrtel, don't know if that carried through to the end of the season.

Agger also organises the defence, our facking awful defence in the last few games of the season (after agger got injured) was sakho and skrtel and there was no organisation!! They were the worst defensive partnership last year.

Statistically agger toure was best, then agger skrtel.

Agger is a must keep.

Sakho got caught ob the ball a few times and had 10 dodgy mins against city, oher than that I thoufh he was solid, hia passing ia excellent, crisp along the floor and mostlt forward, solid in the tackle 92% success, get him a good partner and ww are sorted in Cb

Email should read aerial.....

Pretty amusing autocorrect though!!

And I like sakho too, I still don't see why you can't train two lcbs to play together, but I'm not rehashing that argument.

On paper agger sakho would be great, I just think that sakho is still a bit young and needs someone to organise him!

Therefore we either need someone with sakho qualities to partner agger, or aggers qualities to partner sakho!

None of our signings is making me more confident.

We're just squad filling with a higher calibre player than we did last season. Its good for the squad dont get me wrong but i dont see a massive influence to what we currently have.

Lallana looks like a Alberto improvement more than a Coutinho improvement.

Lambert is a Aspas improvement.

Lovren looks like a Kolo or Ilori improvement.

Im excited about the growth of last season's team though.

I wonder what the plans are for Illori?

comment by (Kash) Coutinho's Through Ball (U1108)
posted less than a minute ago
I wonder what the plans are for Illori?
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Depends who we bring in. I'd imagine another loan, hopefully to a premier league team.

Can is basically Lucas with better dribbling & creativeness...not current Lucas but Lucas when he was decent.

We are a young team, their natural progression year on year does mean we only really need to bulk out the squad for CL (almost done) this season and bring in some tactically flexible players to allow for formation changes.

As for illori we have another year of kolo. I would imagine they had planned to send illori out for first team experience for the two years of his contract, then bring Ilori back to fill that squad position.

It's the same principle I would use for lb personally I'd bring on Cole for a year or two while we take stock of where Robinson etc are at, it also gives us two years to identify a target and not get our pants pulled down on price, Cole and Enrique with flanno as backup should be fine!

I like Sahko but he's a bit awkward and his passing laboured. Accurate, but it takes a bit too much time and effort for him IMO.

Can is similar to barklry in his body and dribbling, did you know despite can playing deeper he obly created 10 fewer chances than barkley..

thats his posture, he doesnt take to long, if he did, why arent all his passss intercepted, hes an good passer, extremely accurate

rarely plays it back either, can see the gaps.

Different leagues, too many different variables for decent stat comparison.

I do however like the look of can, I'm not underwhelmed by our signings but we still do look like we are unable to close out deals for top top players.

Wether we need them is another matter but if we sell suarez we do need to bring in another "star"!

Lallana is 5 times the player Alberto is or will ever be!

Lovren at 24 is a very good young defender who in a few years could be a great premier league player. Brazil weren't getting anywhere against him before the ref jumped in!

Lovrens age is appealing too, easily 10 years left at the top, (allowing for him to be cover in latter years/improvements to medical science) 20 mill is peanuts for that sort of stability!

lallana is not 5 times the player he will ever be.

Alberto is very good technically, insanely slow thoigh, probably end up back in la liga

that little chip through ball vs spurs for suarez was excellent

where was lallana at albertoa age?

Sakho has been good in the world cup where when fit he is ahead of Koscielny and Mangala in Deschamps team.

That says a lot about him, and he is alongside Varane, another young defender, so I think he can organise or help to as well.

He just needs a more stable partner than Skrtel, probably one who he can communicate with better, hence Lovren.

My main concern with Sakho is he seems to be picking up a lot of muscle injuries.

Some players are late bloomers.

Alberto has gone out on loan for some first team football, we will spend the next year seeing if he has what it takes!

I wouldn't write him off yet, he has the potential and ability. He just needs to bring it out a bit!!

Lallana scored 20 goals in L1 at the same age as Alberto.

Ok, its only L1, but so far Alberto has achieved nothing at all other than a nutmeg.