The summer for Liverpool FC

Awk let’s face it lads, Liverpool have gone backwards this season to the years before Klopp, hit and miss in ‘smaller’ games but tend to have a real go in the ‘bigger’ games. Why is this? For me, 2 main reasons: injury record and player mentality.

One of the posters recently showed our injury record compared to other teams, no one is even close to ours – it is ridiculous

Yes we have had problems recruiting and/ or keeping medical staff but this can hardly be the reason. We have had players get freak longterm injuries like VVD, which happens in football let’s face it, and does lead to invariable performance issues upon the players return as they almost ‘fear’ committing to a hard tackle in case of injury, can be a mental thing to overcome. It happens.

Surely our issue in this respect is simple – we persist in keeping players other teams would have moved on

Ox for example. Leaving on a free and truthfully has been very unlucky with the 2 big injuries he’s had. Never recovered, but allowed to run his contract down? Has not been the same player for a long time now – surely we should have sold him last season or the season before?

Keita is another example. Plays a few games, has a couple of good games and you think finally, this is the player we’ve been waiting on, then gets injured, misses a good few games and the cycle restarts. Been like that since we signed him, yet he’s allowed to run his contract down and leave on a free? Indeed, I think we tried to give him a new contract! Really?

I could rattle off a load of names with dodgy injury records. The 2 above are leaving, so is Bobby and we could have got fees for them if we had been more savvy.

I would personally like to see Klopp be a bit ruthless with some names in this summer or next – I’d sell Matip now, again not a great injury record and could fetch a decent enough fee, but I think he seriously needs to ascertain if players are worth keeping if they miss so many games.

The other issue for me is mentality, I do not know what has happened this season in that regard. There seemed to be a tactic change whereby we stopped the press and we are woeful in games then and are outfought by teams, which is hard to believe from a Klopp team.

Is the mentality simply that some players are being ran into the ground and playing too much? The likes of VVD, Salah and Trent seem to play every game, regardless of their form.

Robbo has been decent this season one of few players who can hold…