Stats are from FBRef unless stated otherwise
Let’s start with a quick question for you all:
When everyone is fit, what’s Liverpool’s strongest starting lineup?
Some names are obvious. Alisson has been the Premier League’s best goalkeeper over the last several years. Ibrahima Konaté and Virgil van Dijk are the two starting centre backs. Ryan Gravenberch and Alexis Mac Allister formed a superb midfield partnership last season. Mohamed Salah doesn’t need explaining.
So we’ve got six players. The rest?
Jeremie Frimpong was the new right back signed in the summer, but currently seems behind Dominik Szoboszlai and Conor Bradley in the role. Miloš Kerkez has played quite a bit at left back, but he hasn’t convinced enough to say he should definitely be ahead of Andy Robertson. Florian Wirtz has been playing the number ten role without yet thrilling anyone. Hugo Ekitike has been starting upfront, but Alexander Isak obviously cost a lot of money and would be a bit miffed if he spends most of this season on the bench. Liverpool could play Isak and Ekitike together, which would mean either dropping Wirtz entirely or moving him out to the left and dropping Cody Gakpo. Or Ekitike could play on the left with Wirtz or Szoboszlai as the ten. Or one of the two strikers could sit on the bench. I have no idea what the right answer is here.
Does Arne Slot?
I think the Liverpool manager’s best moves since getting the job have been about finding unexpected solutions. Slot and sporting director Richard Hughes clearly wanted to sign Martín Zubimendi to play in central midfield in summer 2024, presumably as the deeper-lying midfielder next to Alexis Mac Allister. When that didn’t happen, he just moved Ryan Gravenberch into that role, and it worked perfectly. We went into the 24/25 season thinking Liverpool looked short in central midfield, only for the Gravenberch/Mac Allister partnership to prove the best in the league.
Liverpool clearly didn’t have a striker Slot totally trusted last season. He had no interest in indulging Darwin Núñez’s… peculiarities the way Klopp did, while the late Diogo Jota was doing a solid enough job until getting injured in late October. Slot decided to try Luis Díaz upfront, and that actually improved Liverpool’s fluidity in attack. It wasn’t the team he started the season expecting to have, but Slot was able to stumble onto a title-winning side. Being flexible enough to do that is a skill many managers lack.
After losing three games on the bounce, he needs to show those skills all over again.
We should probably have some sympathy with Liverpool’s transfer window. No one expected they’d have to replace Diogo Jota this summer. They were suddenly scrambling to replace a player they received no transfer fee for, and had no list of alternate targets, without any time to plan. A lot of meetings that might have been focused on, say, a new centre back, suddenly became about Diogo Jota. Let’s just imagine, for a second, a better world where that tragedy never happened. What was the window Slot and Hughes wanted?
Everyone knew Trent Alexander-Arnold was going to Real Madrid, so a new right back would’ve been pencilled in for a while. Buying Jeremie Frimpong had obviously been in the works for a little while. Kerkez would be in the same boat, with Robertson looking past his best. Let’s assume they got a senior centre back through the door, be it Marc “I love Jesus” Guéhi or someone else. That’s half the equation.
Slot clearly wanted rid of Núñez, while Díaz had two years left on his contract and didn’t look like renewing. Wirtz was coming in anyway, surely in the knowledge of these two moves. That means, I think, the big difference would’ve been signing just one of Isak or Ekitike. It’s a last-minute fudge in the aftermath of tragedy that has them both wearing red.
I still don’t think that would’ve solved the issues. We have, after all, seen Liverpool play one or the other in every game this season. So let’s try to break down the major issues and what seems to be driving the change from last year, starting with the Egyptian elephant in the room.
Slot maximised Salah last season. Intentionally or not, so much of the team was constructed around that. Alexander-Arnold and Salah had been combining on the right flank for many years, with increasing emphasis on Alexander-Arnold moving inside to join the central midfielders. That gave Salah a lot of space on the right. At the same time, both the number ten and striker would be very fluid and willing to drift out of central positions to make space for the main man. I don’t know if it was highly structured and pre-planned in the way that Klopp’s sides did the same thing, but the team was very good in giving Salah the room to go where he wanted.
Is it different now? “Last season”, Ryan O’Hanlon wrote at ESPN, “[Salah] averaged 9.49 touches inside the penalty area. This year, it’s down to 4.71. Through seven games last year, Salah touched the ball 75 times inside the box. This season, he is only at 38.” O’Hanlon points out that Liverpool are generally touching the ball less often in advanced areas, as well as Alexander-Arnold’s absence. I do think there are some specific factors at play here. When Salah is getting fewer expected goals and assists than Cody Gakpo, something isn’t right.
Salah is receiving slightly fewer progressive passes from his teammates (11 per 90 this season vs 13 last year), but this is still the most of any Liverpool player, and within his normal range across his time at Anfield. When someone in a red shirt looks at what’s in front of him to pick out a dangerous pass, his first choice is still Salah. My hunch is it’s about what happens once the ball gets into the final third. Ekitike and Isak each have plenty of strengths, but they’re more static targets. You are not going to see them drop into space to make room for Salah too often. I think that’s forcing him wider than he would like, and away from the penalty area.
That seems to be, in an ideal world, Slot’s preferred structure. He had a little bit of a reputation at Feyenoord for relying heavily on progressing the ball in wide areas through the wingers. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t exactly watching his Feyenoord side every week, but I think it’s pretty different to what Klopp wanted out of his wide players. We’ve seen that in the way someone like Gakpo, a player I might have described as “crap” once or twice under Klopp, came alive last season.
I think Slot would like his wide players to receive the ball wide, to feet, before passing or dribbling the ball into dangerous areas. What he wants really does look like a 4-2-4 at times, and that shape is not built to maximise someone of Salah’s profile who wants to cut inside from the right and score goals. This would cause squad harmony issues by limiting others’ minutes, but I wonder if Slot could move Salah into the number ten role, playing almost as a striker at times. It would be an adaptation, but it’d let him get closer to dangerous positions while doing less running as he loses some of his explosiveness with age.
Obviously the squad was not constructed for this. But that runs into deeper failures for Liverpool’s project. As of right now, I think I’d like to see Salah as the ten behind one of Isak or Ekitike. Wirtz, meanwhile, looked comfortable drifting out to the right at Leverkusen and I wonder if he’d find more space starting on that flank right now. He can be much more of a playmaker than we’ve ever seen from the right winger role since Salah arrived, which in turn could give Frimpong a better tactical fit. Over on the left, Gakpo has been playing well and deserves to keep his place at the moment.
This kind of structure could also help with the full back issues. Liverpool spent a lot of money on Frimpong and Kerkez who, as yet, haven’t done much of anything to impress between them. Frimpong hasn’t played much, but I was never totally sure how Liverpool would adjust with him in the team. He is not Alexander-Arnold. Y2K fashion is all the rage right now and Frimpong feels an on-trend 2000s revival full back, the kind of player who will get up and down the byline, “more of a winger than a full back”. If Liverpool use him effectively, he should be bursting forward down the right as the widest player, rather than becoming an extra midfielder in possession or some other post-Guardiola role. He’s the low-rise jeans of right backs.
What that means is that when Frimpong pushes forward, the right winger needs to move inside in a coordinated way. Salah largely got to go where he wanted last year, and I can imagine him bumping into Frimpong at times. Wirtz, meanwhile, would naturally drift inside as a playmaker. It makes sense to me.
The attacking issues obviously aren’t the whole story here. Liverpool have looked a little shaky at the back, but 7.9 xG conceded over seven games is hardly a crisis, and it seems like more of a fitness story than anything. Mac Allister has looked short of full fitness recently, and if he can get back there with Gravenberch playing next to him, I suspect Liverpool start controlling games better by default. It seems a little risky not to have signed a reliable depth option here, with Curtis Jones and Szoboszlai being forward thinkers more likely to change the balance of the side. Liverpool lack depth here, but it is what it is unless Slot wants to dramatically change the team’s shape. The same is true at centre back. As for Kerkez’ defensive issues, I think you just have to trust he’ll improve as he gets to know his teammates better. There aren’t really “tactical” solutions here.
The macro here is that Liverpool signed some very good players in the summer transfer window but without a clear idea of how to fit them together. Slot, more than other managers at top clubs, seems happy to figure things out and let players find their natural connections on the pitch. That kind of improvisation is useful in this spot if they’re to make this slightly misshapen squad work properly.
When we look back in five years, my gut says the majority of Liverpool’s signings from summer 2025 will have been successes. It just doesn’t seem tailored to the squad of right now. Maybe that’s fine, if you take the view that this is a rebuilding year anyway. But it does make Slot’s life harder, and it definitely makes it less clear what this team will even look like for most of the campaign. I guess we’ll find out.
My view on Liverpools problems is a lot to do with their buildup. The passing doesn't "flow" like it does when you have the best passer in the world at right back to advance the play. Salah might recieve a similar amount of passes, or just a small reduction, but he doesn't recieve them from Trent. Trent passes in to space, and usually to a player who has space to run in to. Compare that to what more basic passers like Bradley and Konate does which is finding the nearest team-mate and giving it to feet, and the whole buildup becomes less fluid, and more stakato.
It is also obvious that teams funnel their press to make sure Konate is the one who has to play the progressive pass. That's a problem, because he can do a lot of things well, but his timing and vision is nowhere near Van Dijk or Trent. So he will usually find a Liverpool-player, but it will again be a player either facing the wrong way, or on his way back. The easiest pass, not the pass that opens anything up.
When Liverpool had Trent, the opposition could press to funnel Liverpools build-up to the left, where Virgil could find a progressive pass. Or if they shut him down and funneled it to the right, Konate could give it to Trent who could find anyone on the field with space to run in to. Now, it's not that, and the attack suffers, because the build up doesn't flow, and the ball arrives slowly and after way to many passes.
I just wish they had spent the Isak money on a cheaper attacker and a first XI ready centreback (just not you-know-who). I know the money for a defender was there anyway, but that's not the point!