With Klopp now finally taking first visible steps towards moving Trent to midfield, Robbo's attacking qualities gradually declining and current back-up options not strong enough to provide genuine competition for either, is it time to refresh that part of the team? Midfield is often called the “engine room” of a team, but arguably full-back/wing-back positions are even more crucial to a team’s energy and ability to transition from defence to attack and vice versa - so a true squad refresh will need to address this issue.
Now Trent is not a full-time midfielder just yet and Robbo can still be useful (particularly if we start moving towards quasi back-3 systems where he can play further back and use his experience), so I don’t think this is a position where we urgently need to buy first-team ready players next summer. One could say the full-back position now is roughly where our midfield was 2-3 years ago - a perfect time to invest in some younger players who will be understudies at first and later seamlessly replace the current senior players. But if you fail to make this investment in a timely fashion, you are risking a repeat of our midfield catastrophe.
A couple of 20 year old Dutch full-backs were linked with us today, right-back Devyne Rensch from Ajax and left-back Bjorn Meijer from Brugge.
I’m sure there will be other full-back targets surfacing soon and they won't all be necessarily alike. It’s generally complicated with fullbacks as nowadays managers love to move them around the pitch; some are part CMs like Raphael Guerreiro, some part CBs in a 3, sometimes a ball-playing CB can become a useful full-back like Ben White and there are all kinds of other permutations. So I don’t think managers at the top of the game are necessarily looking for the “standard package” of orthodox full-back qualities when evaluating potential buys in this position - rather they look for one world-class quality that truly stands out, be it crossing, pace or game intelligence, and then figure out how to best incorporate that quality into their team. What we need now is new energy and genuine talent.
Now Trent is not a full-time midfielder just yet and Robbo can still be useful (particularly if we start moving towards quasi back-3 systems where he can play further back and use his experience), so I don’t think this is a position where we urgently need to buy first-team ready players next summer. One could say the full-back position now is roughly where our midfield was 2-3 years ago - a perfect time to invest in some younger players who will be understudies at first and later seamlessly replace the current senior players. But if you fail to make this investment in a timely fashion, you are risking a repeat of our midfield catastrophe.
A couple of 20 year old Dutch full-backs were linked with us today, right-back Devyne Rensch from Ajax and left-back Bjorn Meijer from Brugge.
I’m sure there will be other full-back targets surfacing soon and they won't all be necessarily alike. It’s generally complicated with fullbacks as nowadays managers love to move them around the pitch; some are part CMs like Raphael Guerreiro, some part CBs in a 3, sometimes a ball-playing CB can become a useful full-back like Ben White and there are all kinds of other permutations. So I don’t think managers at the top of the game are necessarily looking for the “standard package” of orthodox full-back qualities when evaluating potential buys in this position - rather they look for one world-class quality that truly stands out, be it crossing, pace or game intelligence, and then figure out how to best incorporate that quality into their team. What we need now is new energy and genuine talent.
Last edited:
