So, first of all, kudos. Coming back from 2-0 down to lead 3-2 is impressive, no mean feat in any game. However, letting BHA get 2 goals ahead and later equalise is yet more evidence of how poorly this season has started. I feel some felt that a short break would have the team all energised and things would go back to how they have been before this season. Perhaps this was due to the manner in which Liverpool have suddenly hit the skids. However, the warning signs have been there for some time. Even in the run in to last year’s pretty incredible season, Liverpool were beginning to tire badly, with players looking their age a lot more.
But even before that, the club had shown a reluctance to renew the squad, preferring instead to strip it back and use sales to generate purchases. Problematically this often involved selling 2 or more players, but only bringing in one. Wages went up with ages and the squad became top heavy with veterans. Youth was deemed the answer, but that is a slow and incremental process of improvement a high-flying team can ill afford to wait for results from.
What adds to these problems is the nature of how Klopp has set up Liverpool to compete on a comparatively small budget top the likes of City, Chelsea and united. Eschewing a team of individuals organised into a cohesive whole, he instead has established a system for the whole club, 433. There are variations on a team, but since Klopp has arrived it’s been clear from the get go how he wants the team to play. Rather than forging mismatched parts into a whole, he selects components for the first team and makes them interchangeable. He favours versatility, so integral components can be used across different areas of the team. It means Liverpool are greater than the sum of their parts, able to compete through smoothly functioning processes, rather than moments of brilliance.
The reason that is importance and why I have mentioned all the above is because that means there are no quick fixes. Once the system begins to break down, you either replace the parts or it breaks down. You can’t just ‘play deeper’, ‘go longer’, ‘knock it down’ etc. because to alter the style of play would have a catastrophic chain reaction across the systemised team. In other words flexibility is the cost of functionality. This is where careful planning comes in, and over the last number of transfer windows conservatism has increased risk, by allowing conservatism and cost savings to undermine the squad vitality.
What it also means is that just bringing in one player in January will be insufficient. The team will just limp on to the summer the way it is already limping furiously toward the January window. Even then, whatever purchases are made can only be the start of the overhaul, not the lick of paint and on we go. In January the midfield problem needs fixing. That means probably 2 pressing, tackling runners. But then the summer will also need to focus on rebuilding the defence. Konate and Gomez may be the future, but one VVD or Matip will need to start being phased out and a higher quality 5th CB (than Nat Philips) will need to be brought in. Then after that the front line will need work over the next two transfer windows, as Firmino and Salah bow out.
And please don’t start saying ‘Gomez will replace VVD’, ‘Elliott will replace Salah’ etc. It’s a given that we expect those players to step up. But if they step up somebody has to replace them. And if they don’t step up, then their understudy has to be good enough to surpass them. The point is, in a squad of 25, a third are over 30. There is no point saying 1/3 of the squad will replace the other 1/3 of the squad. And no, Liverpool won’t get 8 youth players to replace 8 senior players, because the players coming behind those senior players are not yet ready to become senior players themselves. Liverpool needs purchases and trying to rearrange the deckchairs on a leaky ship is not the solution.
