Roberto Firmino

[Kenneth]

Call me mad but I do want a goalscoring center forward.

[labourRed]

Call me mad but I do want a goalscoring center forward.

I remember when everyone lost their collective **** when Spain played Fabregas instead of a conventional CF.

I'm not saying I'm not against playing an out and out number nine, but we don't have one (that's reliable) so Firmino is without a doubt the best alternative IMO.

You play the best hand with the cards you're dealt. And as I said earlier we won't be getting a CF in until we replace a few IMO. Our wage bill is unhealthy enough as it stands without having another striker on the books.

[Kenneth]

Screw it, bring back Crouchy

[Maxiedge]

Firmino needs to start putting away some of these piss easy chances and then all would be well

[EwarWoo]

Countinho straight swap for Suarez, drop firmy back to supply him and watch the goals rain. Sorted.

If only.

Short of Suarez or a player of his ilk (not necessarily quite so good, just his attributes) I don't want a CF. It doesn't suit us anymore.

[labourRed]

Countinho straight swap for Suarez, drop firmy back to supply him and watch the goals rain. Sorted.

If only.

Short of Suarez or a player of his ilk (not necessarily quite so good, just his attributes) I don't want a CF. It doesn't suit us anymore.

I tend to agree, but to argue against myself, if you've got a pretty ineffective midfielder such as Wijnaldum then i don't think it would do much harm to play with a CF in a 4-2-3-1... it would be difficult to play that way against a team with 3 at the back though and would require a lot of tactical discipline from Mane, Salah and Firmino dropping back when we don't have possession.

I think Klopp is pretty set on the 4-3-3, which is good enough for me as we're scoring goals easily enough.

[dww]

And if we face a back five or a parked bus? Those two aren't going to get the space to be most effective. Mane can drift inside but doubt Salah can in the same way. And are we writing off crosses and corners etc, you'd want your central striker to be taking it to CBs in such situations, we seen to rely on Lovren.

A lot of teams don't use their centre forwards as the main threat at corners.

I was going to concede that we weren't great in the air in attacking sense but I looked at the numbers from last season and we were ahead of all of the other top 5 sides bar Arsenal for headed goals (admittedly we were midtable and 1 behind Everton but I think it shows we did okay).

[Rich]

Having a free scoring central striker - like all the other big teams seem to have bar us, also helps in those games when for whatever reason its a struggle, things aren't working and then bang, said striker manages to bag one and your frustrating 1 point becomes a hard fought 3 points.

I don't see wide forwards, as good as ours are, as consistently being in the right place at the right time to score a scruffy, match-winning goal.

[RedReet]

Having a free scoring central striker - like all the other big teams seem to have bar us, also helps in those games when for whatever reason its a struggle, things aren't working and then bang, said striker manages to bag one and your frustrating 1 point becomes a hard fought 3 points.

I don't see wide forwards, as good as ours are, as consistently being in the right place at the right time to score a scruffy, match-winning goal.

TBF, that's exactly what Salah did against Watford and it should have been the winner.

[Exiled_red]

Having a free scoring central striker - like all the other big teams seem to have bar us, also helps in those games when for whatever reason its a struggle, things aren't working and then bang, said striker manages to bag one and your frustrating 1 point becomes a hard fought 3 points.

I don't see wide forwards, as good as ours are, as consistently being in the right place at the right time to score a scruffy, match-winning goal.

[BG1973]

totally agree mate & I hope he's with us for a long long time.

While he fails to score those 20 goals a season he probably will be

Terrific player. Love him.

[SB]

While he fails to score those 20 goals a season he probably will be

Terrific player. Love him.

If Phil was to go & then big him up to Barca I'd be worried he might leave. But for now let's just enjoy him.

[Kenneth]

I don't have that worry.

[RedReet]

I don't have that worry.

He really went down in your estimation after that drink driving charge.

You claimed he was our best player less than a year ago (playing CF I may add), so it's quite the U-turn since.

[Kenneth]

Did I, that must have been an aberration? I looked back through my posts with 'Firmino' in and it seems to be mostly me complaining about him missing sitters and generally grumbling, so just nornmal stuff really.

Either way, Barca coming in for him is not a major concern.