Followed quickly by negative thoughts......have we strengthened at all? There is lots of talk of competition for places etc but all I can see is we have replaced Reina with Mignolet, Shelvey with Alberton, Carroll for Aspas and Carra for Toure. All pretty similar players. I suppose they fit the BR mould a little more but its a little hard to see these new guys as huge increases.
Couldn't agree more. We've spent no money, while the teams above us have strengthened. I'd go as far as to say we've gone backwards from last year. Watching the Celtic game- did we look any different from last year? Same problems. Big centre-forward causes us issues. Unable to break down the other team. And we looked even worse because we didn't have Suarez.
Of course you can't read too much into pre-season friendlies, but I think we were taking this reasonably seriously. Of all of the games, this was the toughest game we had, and we've not looked good at all imo. Kolo and Lucas were good, Coutinho had flashes of brilliance. Over all though, I'm pretty disappointed. More worrying than Spurs or Arsenal though, is that the likes of Swansea, Southampton, Norwich have been spending money and improving.