With Liverpool’s squad depth looking very thin, this transfer strategy would restore control and enable flexible, long-term rotation…
WHICHEVER way you carve it up, Liverpool need more players. But it doesn’t take some unlikely miracle to feel they can be genuinely competitive.
It’s important not to cast situations which can prove to be opportunities as nightmarish inconveniences.
The manager’s press conference was very clear-eyed. Liverpool didn’t have enough. He said: “I think there is a chance to use more players also because it’s impossible to deal with this kind of season with 13, 14, 15 players, you need all the squad. And there are positives on this, but also we have to get ready because in this kind of hard season, a lot of games, injuries will happen, situations will happen. So, we have to get ready in terms of squad depth so we can deal with the demands of the competition.”
In our marvellous league winning season of 2024/25 we actually managed it with 15 outfield players whom we left exhausted. Jarell Quansah, Joe Gomez and Wataru Endo all played a solid part but only 15 managed more than 900 PL/CL minutes. 900 minutes is a low benchmark – a modest 10 ‘90s’.
Last season Arsenal and PSG both used 19 outfield players for more than 900 league/CL minutes. We had only 16 last season and that wasn’t simply about fewer games. It was how we were built.
And he was clear Liverpool have three major injury headaches. He said: “You know about Conor, about Giovanni, about Hugo, but there is going to be, especially in Hugo’s case, a period where we will be without them and we have to try to find solutions also.”
But it wasn’t downbeat. The manager was full of positives and a sense there are opportunities here. I agree with him. Liverpool can take this summer to actually rethink the shape of this squad not just for this season but to set up seasons to come. This has always felt like the plan – this summer being the second of a two summer shift to move from the side that was able to break 90 points and make Champions League finals to a new side hopefully also able to do both of those things if 90 points is indeed possible with the Premier League as it currently is. Regardless, we still need to build the springboard for that.
While things seem fraught at the moment, that opportunity remains. There’s no one way to do this. Our side of 21/22 which wins the domestic cup double, breaks 90 points and makes the Champions League final uses 18 outfield players for more than 900 minutes. They break down as 1 RB, 3 CBs, 2 LBs, 7 CMs, 5 FWs. Arsenal last season breakdown as 2 RBs, 3 LBs, 3 CBs, 4 CMs and 7 FWs. PSG breakdown as 1 RB, 2 LBs, 4 CBs, 5 CMs and 7 FWs.
To be clear, all these sides have a lot of versatility – James Milner and Mikel Merino move around the pitch and almost every player we’d describe as a full back for Arsenal is also a central defender. And all have a couple of other players still chipping in who don’t make the 900 minute level. Liverpool in 21/22 still had a relentless Mo Salah and Sadio Mane, gobbling up the forward minutes either side of AFCON.
Things are different now. Arsenal and PSG were both able to protect and cover their better players through the season. It is easier for PSG, different for PSG, but the best way to get the best out of your best is to be able to control when they play. This is the same for young players too. The pathway to developing youth and sustaining excellence is the same – have strength in depth, pick the games cleverly. Arsenal and PSG last season, Liverpool in 21/22 show they don’t all need to be worldbeaters. They just have to be able to contribute and support those who are worldbeaters.
As it stands I have us at a slightly generous 15 you can hope to be able rely on between piano carriers and piano players hitting that rate with reasonable expectation of them:
- a) Being able to take part in earnest before Christmas.
- b) Being of the level for next season given what we know currently.
They are: Frimpong, Van Dijk, Jacquet, Kerkez, Tsimikas (does it in both 21/22 and 24/25); Jones, Gravenberch, Szoboszlai, Mac Allister, Elliott, Wirtz; Munoz, Gakpo, Isak, Ngumoha.
This list in and of itself throws open questions. Ideally we would be able to protect and pick games in the first half of the season especially for Ngumoha and Jacquet who haven’t made 50 top flight appearances. Not starts. Appearances. The only Arsenal player in their 19 that was true of was Myles Lewis Skelly. Not the current likely starting centre-back.
Whether you see it as 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 or an asymmetrical shape, what Liverpool have enough of there – and I am not necessarily saying it is the right blend of profiles – is central midfielders and left-backs. Everything else they could do with adding at least one to. It is looking at the holes here where you can see how to get into a position of having the confidence that we can have 18 or 19 players who can hit the level we need – again, not all world beaters – and contribute across the season.
If Liverpool can add a right-back who can ideally play both sides, a centre-back with some Premier League experience, a top quality winger and an experienced centre-forward then they get themselves to 19 who can contribute that magic 900 minutes without having to overplay any specific players and without rushing back the injured.
But this is best seen as an opportunity to put Liverpool in a position of strength on and off the pitch, rather than be seen as a crisis point to be gotten through somehow. Take centre-back – both Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez are out of contract next summer. Liverpool have planned for the future with Jacquet and Leoni but need to both have the now and have the numbers come next season. Acting now with a physically reliable centre-back with Premier League experience puts them in a better position to make a controlled choice around:
- a) The games Jacquet and the returning Leoni play.
- b) When Gomez is called upon.
- c) Those two expiring contracts and what they want to happen next.
At one end of the scale a player like Dean Huijsen could be worth exploring, given Jose Mourinho’s attitude to young centre-backs. At the slightly more agricultural end, a player who very rarely gets injured and knows the league like Nathan Collins could be worth consideration. There are a ton of options in between and I am being somewhat cruel to the occasionally silky Collins there. I admired Pascal Strijuk, not to play the piano even in terms of centre-backs but to absolutely carry it, and he has gone to Brighton for less than 20m. Liverpool can operate here and get themselves into a better position with just one move. But any player they sign doesn’t need and shouldn’t be viewed as a stop gap. He can be part of this season’s, next season’s and the season after’s 19.
Look at the fullback positions. Question marks abound on Jeremie Frimpong, Conor Bradley, Kostas Tsimikas and Luke Chambers. As it stands, left-back can be allowed to have the season but if Liverpool could add a player who has shown a propensity to play both sides – such as Djed Spence or Neco Williams – then when Tsimikas’s contract expires next season and if Bradley has been able to reassert himself post-injury, then Liverpool don’t have to make a signing at left-back next summer if there isn’t a player who appeals.
Josh Williams keeps coming on Anfield Wrap shows and making the point that the best recruitment is the players that you don’t buy and I couldn’t agree more with that sentiment. But to pull that trick you have to have enough players. Liverpool have lost a semblance of control of their squad after years of having it in hand and they need to wrestle that back.
The club clearly needs another winger and if there is one area where they could do with an absolute worldbeater it is indeed here. This sort of player would lift everything around them. You can see why they want Bradley Barcola but they will have to pay a hefty sum to secure him. Alternatives do exist but none feels as immediate as Barcola.
Regardless though the club paid for not having enough pace in wide areas last season and that has to be addressed. Signing one more there means Liverpool can box clever with both Rio Ngumoha and Cody Gakpo. As it stands the club can’t plausibly entertain any offers for Gakpo. But should they get to the point of having four wingers they would be back to one in, one out. They would be back in control.
In the manager’s press conference I was pleased he said “Especially in Hugo’s case”. There can be no certainty around Hugo Ekitike: when he will be back available, how long it will take for him to get match fit when he does, what sort of player he will be when he gets back. I have full faith he will be giving it everything and will have the best possible advice and support but these things are complicated and take time.
But what is also important here is that Liverpool have also committed wholeheartedly to playing with a ‘9’ and ‘10’ last summer and there will not be clear weeks next season to work on much else. The manager himself has played his three seasons in England with a ‘9’ & ‘10’. Two different types of ‘9’ – Evanilson and Dominic Solanke. Two different types of ‘10’ – Justin Kluivert and Eli Junior Kroupi. But in almost every game this has been how his sides have been structured. In Florian Wirtz, Harvey Elliott, Dominik Szoboszlai and, to an extent, Alexis Mac Allister and Curtis Jones, Liverpool have options at ‘10’. Not all perfect, far from it, but they have ways of making it work.
They do not have 900 minute pre-Christmas options at centre-forward other than Alexander Isak.
The way to get the best Alexander Isak is not to constantly need the best Alexander Isak. The way to get the best Hugo Ekitike back is to not need to rely on him at the earliest possible moment. Therefore there has to be an alternative number 9 signed, along with Jayden Danns and Will Wright, to share this particular load. Such a signing though, again, doesn’t need to be either a worldbeater but nor does it need to be for one season only.
Ekitike was a marvellous player last season but at times a flawed striker, more of a centre-forward, maybe even a Junior Kroupi style second striker or perhaps a player who could pull from the left to devastating effect. Buying a good alternative ‘9’ helps now, helps Isak but could create a situation where in future seasons Liverpool can look at ‘9’ & ‘10’ as being the remit of Wirtz, Ekititke, Isak and this new player and share the minutes between the four. Being able to make changes both in game and between games for seasons to come mean that Liverpool can keep freshness and keep the focus of their attack consistent.
Signing these four profiles, before anyone in the fifteen outfield players list above leaves, means that Liverpool would have the ability to be flexible in the market. Were they able to have a couple of these players be homegrown, that sense of control only increases.
But Liverpool would also be likelier to win now too, ready for a tough season. Liverpool’s core is still a win now core as Sean Rogers pointed out on an excellent Gutter show on Tuesday. There is no escaping that. This doesn’t need to be just problem solving in the short term. It can be setting up three seasons and positioning for every subsequent signing to be supposed to be an improvement rather than an immediate need. An issue Liverpool currently have in a couple of areas is being able to ask “an improvement on what? On who?” Or if we are properly stocked it could mean choosing not to need to get involved because the world class option, the usual Liverpool option, isn’t there.
We need to be in a position to turn our nose up. But the only thing that gets us there is getting our hands dirty. We might end up with imperfect footballers but you know what? We love cheering on imperfect footballers who are giving their all. The job is filling the gaps and then coaching the life out of them and loving the bones of them and getting them playing with gusto and having the numbers so that every time we take to the field we can, as the manager said, “be a team that works hard, [is] intense, aggressive, vertical so everyone can be identified, everyone can feel comfortable supporting this team.”
Neil
