We need a leader in the midfield. When we get stuck, there's nobody taking charge and making sure the players take care of the press and move off the ball.
Yesterday was the first time that I felt like we missed Henderson. Not as a player, but as a leader on the pitch.
It's not that we lack hard working CMs, but players like Mac and Endo arent leading the team. They're more like Gini in that regard.
Sorry but don't agree with this. We have had a lot of similar or worse games with Hendo as a captain and been on worse runs where we just couldn't win or look like scoring. We are primarily missing 2 key elements in this team in comparison to the 2019/2020 team - 1) an elite DM (peak Fabinho) - Endo has been a lot better than most people expected but he's some way off peak Fab 2) Elite forwards - mainly the movement and finishing of peak Mane & Salah.
In terms of the back 5, yes, some of our defennders have aged a bit but I don't think the drop-off is massive. In midfield, we have improved 1 position through Mac, but the other 2 are downgrades, but we have young players who could potentially go up a level or 2. And in attack, we are massively behind the 2019/20 team and I really think we need to get 1 elite forward (Mo's replacement).
In terms of our template, we need to get a lot better at keeping the ball under pressure. We have never been great at it but in the past, we used to transition well and Bobby, Trent and Robbbo used to help massively with this. But I also think teams have gotten much better at pressing now compared to 4-5 years back and we seem to struggle when any team presses us. This is one of the reasons why we start so many games on the back foot and concede early. We are really missing a Bobby lite, who can play in between the lines, turn and have that great close control to take out a couple of players when pressed. The only player in the squad who can do this to a lesser degree is Mac but unfortunately he plays a but deeper very often and it's him and Trent who plays those vertical passes in between the lines.