STATE OF TURM
Klopp’s starting to look more and more isolated
It’s not just the Spanish giants that target him at right-back these days. Every opponent does it.
Mitoma is talented but he’s no superstar. At 25, he has just 13 caps for Japan — but Alexander-Arnold was breathing his fumes.
Since making his Liverpool debut in 2016, only Manchester City’s Kevin De Bruyne has created more chances in the Premier League than Alexander-Arnold.
But the attacking side of his game has suffered this season, falling to the same general malaise that has affected so many men in red.
Klopp has talked Alexander-Arnold up as the best right-back around in recent years. Does he really think that now? Turning to Milner suggests otherwise.
Midfield
England manager Gareth Southgate was never convinced by him as a right-back and he played Alexander-Arnold in midfield against Andorra two years ago.
The experiment lasted just 45 minutes before he was moved to right-full again.
Klopp was dismissive of the move, but is there not a strong case for giving it more of a go now?
After all, when he came through the ranks at Liverpool, AlexanderArnold was a central midfielder.
And there are plenty of players who switched from full-back to midfield with great success. Think of Philip Lahm at Bayern Munich.
It’s easy to forget now that plenty of the early games in red of Ronnie Whelan and Steven Gerrard were at right-back.
Alexander-Arnold is a player Liverpool need, but he’s a player they can’t afford to gamble with at right-full. And, in most games now, it is a gamble.
Klopp needs to make radical changes to turn things around at Anfield.
Pushing Alexander-Arnold into midfield should be high on his list.
‘There is a tacit admission that the brilliant financial manoeuvring which built such a dazzling team can no longer work’
EVEN by the standards of modern sport, Liverpool’s implosion is spectacular. The collapsing star of the football universe.
From a team on the verge of greatness at the end of last season – and don’t forget, they were only minutes away from completing the third leg of an historic quadruple – they are now on the point of oblivion, or mid-table obscurity as it is alternatively known.
It is tempting to look for reasons. An ageing midfield, an exhausted squad after last season’s superhuman deeds, a group devastated by the final two games of the season.
Yet there is a wider narrative at Anfield that hints at a deeper malaise, or at least a broader problem.
Is this not just a team in turmoil in need of a transition, but a story that has run its course?
It is already a newlook team, with the system of the last five years, a deep lying centre-forward and an instinctive counter-press, in the process of being replaced by a more traditional forward line. Unsuccessfully so far.
But it is not just the team that has run its course; in fact, it seems as though it is not a problem of the team at all.
The club’s entire structures that have underpinned Liverpool under their American owners seem to have reached a natural end.
Space
The club is up for sale, and not one but two Directors of Football have left in a suspiciously short space of time.
There is a tacit admission that the financial manoeuvring which built such a dazzling team can no longer work in the days of nation state-owned clubs.
How can a financially prudent, debt-adverse football club compete with the endless wealth of an oil-rich empire?
The whole culture at Anfield where analytics-based clever recruitment allowed them to compete at the highest level is now under threat.
Liverpool spent money wisely. They paid under the odds for gems like Mo Salah and Sadio Mane and developed them to a world class level.
They found local talent like Trent Alexander-Arnold, and then spent wisely when they had to on key recruits like Virgil van Dijk and Alisson.
In changing lanes this summer, they didn’t go out and sign a Haaland, a proven world-class performer who was always going to hit the ground running – they simply couldn’t afford his wages.
Instead, it was another young player with vast potential but little track record in Darwin Nunez, signed at roughly a fifth of the wage cost of Haaland.
The results have been as predictable as his struggles to make the transition.
Without a sporting director, without a head of analytics, and without a president who was responsible for liaising with the manager and football department – with Julian Ward and Ian Graham leaving, and FSG’s Mike Gordon stepping back from his board role – Liverpool suddenly appear rudderless.
Close
Club president Gordon, who has a close relationship with Klopp, is stepping away after warning that the Reds can no longer compete financially with the likes of oil state-owned Manchester City, Newcastle and Paris St-Germain.
That is presumably why FSG are selling. But that leaves Klopp suddenly looking isolated.
A rebuild not just of the team, but the whole structure of the club.
It took him five years to create the Liverpool side which wrote its name in Anfield history. Given the unequal financial fight these days in world football, it could take longer to do it again.