SUNDAY’S bench wasn’t really what you want to see, is it? I’ll be honest, when Alberto Moreno is your oldest and most experienced player, you don’t look at it and get particularly excited. I found it a bit concerning, to be honest.
We’re attempting to consolidate a position in the top four and we’re in a position where our bench consists of a left-back we don’t really want, three youngsters, a raw centre-back with about four games in his natural position for Liverpool, and a Serbian prospect who has been injured pretty much all season.
I’m all for giving good kids an opportunity, but this wasn’t through choice, it was through necessity. They were there because there was literally no-one else.
The reaction to it is something that I feel is a little peculiar, though. Yes, we shouldn’t have to do this, but I really don’t see how we prevent it from happening without exercising a great deal of hindsight. As a club we have what we can call 17 senior outfield players. I’d list them but I’m sure you don’t need that — and if you do, go on Wikipedia. They’re all of a level where there isn’t really an issue in using any of them which I’m pretty sure everyone would definitely agree on, although Moreno divides opinion at best.
Of that 17, Liverpool went into Sunday missing six of them. Adam Lallana, Sadio Mane and Jordan Henderson are without any shadow of a doubt in Liverpool’s strongest 11, while Ragnar Klavan, Danny Ings and Daniel Sturridge would all be on the bench when everyone was available. From this set of 17 we need 10 to play at the same time. Is 17 enough?
Well, both yes and no. If we go into next season with the same 17, possibly any 17 in fact, I would fully expect us to go out of the Champions League in the group stage and be nowhere near top four. I don’t think many would disagree.
Four of the players listed we can’t account for although there’s an argument that Henderson’s injury concerns mean we might have to from this point forward, but this goes back to my point about hindsight. How can you plan for losing three of your starting 11 and three of your bench at the same time? There’s a limit to how many players you can realistically have.
OK, Sturridge could have been accounted for but Klavan? No, sorry. Nor Danny Ings, who I think people forget about. Yes, he was injured last season and he may not have gone on to recover to the required level, but no-one could foresee him getting injured again and, as effectively a fourth choice striker, finding someone to do what he was here for isn’t exactly easy.
January would have been a good time to look into doing something about this but the January window has become a time where desperate teams do desperate things. You can hardly look across Europe and see a multitude of attackers who have moved clubs that you’d want to see wearing a red shirt.
Even throwing money at something doesn’t mean it’s going to happen either, transfer fees don’t fuel teams to the same extent – for us to buy a player of the level we’d want you’re giving a team money that they aren’t desperate for to weaken their side: why would they do that? They wouldn’t which is why teams of our level just tend to ignore the January window unless a Julian Draxler appears.
Maybe it was an area we should have looked at in the summer, but again this is hindsight. People weren’t in uproar about the state of our strike force in August from what I can remember.
So as it was we were left with a core of 17 with the odd need for youngsters to fill in. Ings knocked that down to 16 when he suffered his injury which meant that with just one injury or suspension we were going to have to send for youth to pad the bench out, or to fill in the early stages of the cup.
When there are one or two players missing that’s fine; after all, it saw Ben Woodburn get on the pitch in November against Sunderland for his league debut – is this a bad position for us to be in? Giving young prospects like Woodburn the opportunity to play football and develop into players who we can use properly is one of the reasons for having an academy in the first place. Trent Alexander-Arnold has played the best part of half an hour of a Merseyside derby at the age of 18 and played 90 minutes away at Old Trafford.
Is it really for the benefit of Liverpool Football Club to keep a mediocre 28-year-old who will never be good enough to start for Liverpool knocking around, to occasionally sit on the bench and then rarely do anything more? Who benefits from this? It certainly isn’t Liverpool in that they’re paying a player who logically speaking isn’t good enough for us, and it certainly isn’t for Trent who misses out on minutes that aid his develop.
The key thing here is the lack of European Football. Somewhere in the region of 10 games more will be played next season so we will need a bigger squad and the argument for having that mediocre 28-year-old right-back ‘just in case’ actually becomes a little more sane. It won’t affect Trent’s playing time, it won’t eat into money because we’d have more money from the obvious benefit of being in Europe, but I feel that there’s better ways of doing it.
Liverpool should be working towards making that 17 a 20. But make it a 20 by bringing in five at the top end of it and maybe losing people like Sturridge and Ings. Strengthen at the top and improve the back end of it by effectively relegating your players, people like Gini Wijnaldum don’t become automatic selections for example because you’ve spent £35m on a top-level midfielder.
You then get the opportunity to give people a complete rest when the League Cup rolls around, play Hull at home on a Saturday and tell Philippe Coutinho he’s watching from the stands because we’ve got Barcelona away in three days’ time.
The lack of Europe makes this hard to do. Playing once a week means there’s not really any need to give Coutinho a weekend off, and having a weekend off is effectively what happened to six different players last weekend. All at the same time. I wouldn’t advocate giving six different players a weekend off at the same time if we had the squad for it, but injuries cause you problems you just can’t plan for.
I’d have loved to have seen a much stronger bench that could have influenced the game in a more positive manner on Sunday. That would have been ideal. But how is having in excess of 20 senior professionals without European football really viable? Chelsea and Spurs are currently the only two sides ahead of us so I’ve gone as close to like-for-like in their squads and taken six players similar to who we had missing on Sunday.
Counting players in the same way as I did ours, Chelsea have 16 senior players. I’ve taken Cesc Fabregas, Eden Hazard, John Terry, Pedro, Michy Batshayui and N’Golo Kante away and given them imaginary injuries. That leaves their bench as Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Kenedy, Nathaniel Chalobah, Ola Aina, Charly Musonda and Dominic Solanke. This may not be exactly who they’d pick, but they’re the only outfield players left as listed as being in their squad on Wikipedia. They didn’t plan for six players being out at the same time just like we didn’t. They’d look equally thin if it was a bridge that they had to cross, however.
Spurs have 17 senior players from what I can see and in my hypothetical scenario have lost Christian Eriksen, Harry Kane, Kevin Wimmer, Vincent Janssen, Moussa Sissoko and Mousa Dembele. This would leave them with Heung-Min Son as a lone forward, and they’d have to reach deep, deep into their under-23 squad to fill a bench. They’d manage to produce something like Kevin-Georges N’Koudou, Kieran Trippier, Ben Davies, Cameron Carter-Vickers, and then two kids who I’ve never heard of who have played nothing but a few minutes in the League Cup.
They’re absolutely sound for full-backs but there aren’t many players coming on to influence a game of football there, are there? In hindsight, if they had more players, maybe they wouldn’t have been knocked out of Europe twice? Imagine if we’d been knocked out of Europe twice due to a lack of players. It was bad enough losing a single game.
Yes, the bench looked poor but sometimes, unfortunately, these things will happen. I can’t even say hopefully we’ll work towards ensuring it won’t happen again, because how do you ensure that six of your 17 players aren’t injured at the same time?
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All legitimate reasoning until you take into account each footballers injury history. With previous injury the biggest predictor of future injury, you can make informed decisions about squad sizes.
The top 16 players from each of the top 4 have missed:
Chelsea 7%
City 12%
Spurs 9%
Liverpool 14% of their available career games through injury. We haven’t had an above predictable amount of injuries at all. Particularly given the physical demands Klopp places on them, most km covered, highest av speed, most sprints and most sprint distance in the league.
Maybe I should have written an article…
One or two kids who have come up get selected. Who can make an impact and contribute actively to the seasons goal.
the rest of the squad should be seasoned professionals at their peak. We are one of the biggest clubs on the planet.
“Belief in youth” was just FSG PR for covering up a policy where players are a revenue source. An investment vehicle. Buy cheap, sell high.
exactly. If we have current squad of 17 and maybe 7 are “guaranteed” starters (assuming obviously we aren’t going to strengthen the whole 11), then we need to strengthen squad positions 8-13 (4 starters, 2 1st choice options), with the current 8-17 moving down the order to fill option 14-21 with a couple leaving. That gives us a 21 man squad, with players like Lovren, Milner etc providing decent strength in options.
What we do not want to do (I think) is to have a one in, one out policy when it comes to current 1st teamers. We need to keep as many as we can. If next season doesn’t go well, then we’ve got decent players who can be sold to downgrade the squad if necessary, although why can’t we keep these lads anyway?
I am still trying to understand the logics of team selection, please assist JK , we had a good striker named Harry Wilson who I believed is scoring is for fun for our under 23 squad , and we also had Ojo & Ajaria playing for the first team recently why are they not considered for first team since seen we struggling with injuries
so you think swapping the kids from Sunday for some other kids is the way to go?
Why not, Harry Wilson looks the real deal and scored plenty goals for the under 23 Squad and Ojo & Ajaria recently played for the 1st team, i think Ben Woodburn is lightweight and cannot handle the pressure of EPL , Ojo & Ajaria looks strong and had the taste of EPL already
Because Ajaria and Ojo have been injured for the last couple of months. Wilson Plays more in the Courtinho role while Woodburn is a striker.
Are you really that deluded to think Klopp will be reading your comments?
Great piece by the way Phil. Off course as the majority of our ‘internet’ fans think that the premier league is the same as Football manager i doubt it will get through.
Yes, by not loaning about Markovic and Sakho.
I wonder whether we not in fact be better off in the EL next year. It is hard to see us building a strong enough squad to compete on two fronts and we have a lot of youngsters who would benefit from EL game time. I know CL is supposed to be the big draw but I have also heard that EL is generally rated higher outside the UK than in it. Was it no CL that derailed the Goetze deal or no Europe at all?
Missing CL this year might actually increase our chances of qualifying next year – who knows.
Gotta agree here.
While Sakho and Markovic may not have any long term future at the club, could either or both played their part in the team especially from Jan onwards?
I think so.
Better question from the lede, should Ben Woodburn seek out a Proactiv sponsorship?
Good read, if w/out CL the last few seasons we’ve hurt for big name recruits. Should we qualify this season, the owners need to be prepared to spend far more than the alleged 200M, and more in the neighborhood of 250-300M. Anything less, and I think we end up with benches like this for big league games, and have trouble competing on multiple fronts (i.e. we can kiss strong FA Cup and League Cup runs goodbye). Regarding CL, we depserately need to qualify this season, otherwise I can’t see Coutinho sticking around for more than another season, at best. However, if we do get CL, and serious investment in the squad, while putting up solid fights/potentially winning meaningful silverware (e.g. PL or CL) consistently over the next 2-3 seasons, Coutinho might well see out his 5 years, if not more. I realize this is a bit cynical, but the siren song of Barca and Madrid is so strong for these South American lads, that without tangible successes, Coutinho is bound to leave. I want to make sure he doesn’t, or that if he does they’ll only be able to pry him away for 200+M.
It’d help if the club actually gave some real info regarding injuries too. Is it just me or are the very cloak and dagger. Henderson hasn’t seen since February which at the time were told he has a bruised foot. It’s now almost May. Now that’s either some bruise or this heel issue has kicked off again. I think we all know which.
Sturridge we can just forget about ever seeing again unfortunately, but now you have to start worrying for our captain. Lallana misses a month or so a few times a season too.
Can all this be predicted? Who knows other than Sturridge, but there should be some red flags with other players too. I’d include both Matip and Loren in that category going into next season too.
Amen on Sturridge, a 27 y/o injury prone striker, unless he finds a way to start and score in every remaining game, his Top 8 Club/England Career is over. Let’s hope for the former, but the more likely latter equals us getting 2 £M from Wolves.
Really interesting article Phil. There is no doubt that our injuries this season have disrupted our rhythm from January onwards, and had an effect on some results if you compare us to pre Christmas when we are relatively injury free and flying. My question is have we been really unlucky with injuries or is it the demands of Klopp and his training methods? Or maybe its a bit of both I don’t know.
I thought this (and then thought I sounded like Ray the fitness egg) but the majority of the injuries are just bad luck I think – Ings and Mane – just bad falls which injured their knee. Lallana – injured on England duty, but not sure exactly how it happened. Hendo – obviously still got an issue with his heel which I guess is just the way he is built. Sturridge – well we all know his issues.
Given the number of players we have with a bad injury record we clearly need a bigger squad. Personally I would be happy enough if we sold Markovic, Sakho, Moreno and Studge and brought in upgraded replacements with a good fitness record. It would only add 2 to our current senior player list, but should make a massive difference to the players available most weeks. We have Lucas for another season and Gruic coming through so there is a little time for Hendo. Likewise with Firmino, Origi and a replacement for Studge, Ings is under no pressure.
Phil are you for real !!!
There really seems to be a huge step up required from the U23’s. Very few, if any, have made a positive impact when playing for 1 st team.
Cute passing but without a cutting edge*.
In January we lost a lot of momentum and points playing ‘the kids’. I’m all for introducing them once the game is won but most contests this season have been 90 mins affairs.
*The coaching staff must see this so maybe pre-match training needs to be stepped up a notch or two to get them better prepared.