Liverpool don’t need to search for a midfield star
By Ryan Baldi
Liverpool will spend big again this summer, but the area most consider to be its biggest weakness should remain untouched.
Even after his most successful seasons, Sir Alex Ferguson insisted on refreshing his teams, building from a position of strength to sustain success.
If asked to pinpoint the position in which Liverpool still has the most room for improvement, most observers would likely identify a lack of creativity in midfield. The addition of a top-class conjuror to the middle third, the logic runs, could see 2018/19’s Premier League runner-up close the one-point gap to champion Manchester City.
The three Liverpool midfielders with the most Premier League minutes last season – Georginio Wijnaldum, Jordan Henderson and Fabinho – combined for just five league assists, and together averaged a modest 2.2 chances created per 90 minutes.
City’s most-used trio of Bernardo Silva, David Silva, and Fernandinho provided 18 assists and averaged a total of 5.7 chance created per 90. Even if Bernardo Silva’s time spent further forward the last term distorts matters slightly, swap him for Ilkay Gundogan – City’s midfielder with the next-highest minutes total – and those numbers only fall slightly, to 14 assists and 5.3 chances created.
But Liverpool’s lack of creativity in midfield is not necessarily a weakness; it is essentially by design, with manager Jurgen Klopp placing an altogether different set of demands on his midfield players – Liverpool’s midfielders are not creators, they are facilitators.
Right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold has rightly earned plaudits for equalling the Premier League record for assists in a single season from his position last season with 12, while left-back Andrew Robertson was only one shy of that tally. Two of Liverpool’s front three, Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane, tied for top scorer in the division, with the trio as a whole providing 56 league goals and 15 assists.
It’s the way Liverpool’s three-man midfield operates that allows the full-backs the freedom to push forward into attack. And it’s the indefatigable work and astute coverage of space the midfield provides that means the forward trio can play high and narrow, without having to retreat rapidly when play breaks down.
Klopp, of course, requires his midfielders to be of the highest technical quality, capable of passing quickly and accurately across all ranges, and comfortable receiving the ball under pressure. But just as important is that Liverpool’s midfielders press the opposition in unison, can anticipate, pass and intercept, and are comfortable filling gaps out wide.
The intricacies of Klopp’s midfield system often take time to assimilate to, which explains the slow starts to life at Anfield both Fabinho and Naby Keita experienced last season, and why Klopp prefers not to loan out promising young central midfielders, placing greater value on inculcating them on the training field than racking up minutes elsewhere.
When Liverpool is on offense, the midfield shuffles and shifts from side to side depending on where the ball is positioned. The three players do the work of a four-man midfield, with two stationed centrally at all times and one wide on the same side as the ball; when play shifts to the other flank, the wide midfielder tucks in and his colleague on the others side pushes outward, retaining the shape.
This means the space in behind the advanced full-backs and wide forwards is always protected, preventing the opposition countering if Liverpool loses the ball high up the field.
The way Klopp has constructed his midfield is reminiscent of Manchester United’s 2007/08 team, which also won the Champions League. It, too, possessed a midfield roster which, on paper, was inferior to its offensive and defensive options; with an attack of Cristiano Ronaldo, Carlos Tevez and Wayne Rooney, and a backline that included Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic, a midfield comprised of an aging Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes, and the likes of Ji-Sung Park, Darren Fletcher, and Owen Hargreaves didn’t match up.
But the workmanlike functionality of the midfield allowed the supremely talented forwards to attack with abandon – this is how you end up with a wide player able to score 40-plus goals in a single season, like Ronaldo in 2007/08 and Salah in 2017/18.
Incidentally, Ferguson went big in the transfer market the summer of 2008, after United won the Premier League and Champions League. But he added another striker, Dimitar Berbatov, and left the midfield alone. To throw a free-spirited, attack-minded playmaker into the mix would have been to offset the team’s equilibrium.
The summer transfer window, which opened across most of Europe in mid-May and will run until the eve of the 2019/20 season in August for Premier League clubs, delivers increasing levels of hysteria year on year. Rumors of big-money deals swirl all year round, but they whip into a maelstrom of speculation and anticipation come summer. And for many fans, the summer transfer window has become an extension of the playing season, akin to another competition that can be ‘won’ on the strength of the deals a club makes.
Premier League clubs spent a staggering total of $1.57 billion on transfers during the 2018 summer window, which was actually down around $250 million on 2017. Liverpool was last summer’s biggest spender, with headline deals for Alisson, Fabinho and Keita taking its outlay past the $200 million mark. And, boosted by an estimated $125 million windfall from winning the Champions League, it will spend heavily again this year.
Inevitably, Liverpool has been linked in the press with moves for some of Europe’s most high-profile creative midfielders. Bayern Munich will not take up its option to sign loan star James Rodriguez permanently from Real Madrid; an Anfield switch has been mooted for the Colombian. Another Real Madrid outcast, Isco, is reportedly a target for the Reds. And there have even been suggestions Philippe Coutinho, who 18 months ago was sold to Barcelona for $180 million, could be set for a shock return to Merseyside.
Despite its recent success, there are still areas in which Liverpool can strengthen: it could use extra depth in both full-back positions, a versatile forward would take the pressure off the front three, and a top-class centerback to partner the imperious Virgil van Dijk could elevate the Reds yet further.
Signing a world-class playmaker, though, is not a priority – why mess with a winning formula? Adding a creative midfielder as a squad option, a plan B, is unlikely to upset Liverpool’s carefully crafted balance, but chasing an A-lister who’d command a starting berth could do more harm than good.
Klopp knows better than anyone that his side’s ‘weakness’ is crucial to its biggest strengths.