Yearly Archives: 2023

When it comes to analysing the performances of a footballer, we instinctively turn to quantitative measures – goals, assists, clean sheets and the like.

But for midfield generals, the analysis is often just as much qualitative – their importance to a team going above and beyond mere numbers.

Liverpool have been lucky to have not one but two of the best English midfielders of the modern era in Steven Gerrard and Jordan Henderson, and in a ‘it takes one to know one’ twist it’s rather ironic that one of Gerrard’s first signings as manager of Saudi outfit Al-Ettifaq looks set to be the Reds’ club captain.

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A new season provides a fresh start in football – a welcome chance to hit the reset button.

For Darwin Nunez, the 2023/24 season will be one in which his performances are heavily scrutinised – is the Uruguayan productive enough to be described as an elite level player?

At least Nunez himself isn’t shirking the challenge – in fact, the 24-year-old is positively owning it after requesting the number nine shirt for the forthcoming season.

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His name isn’t much fun to type out, but rest assured Dominik Szoboszlai is super-entertaining on the pitch.

The Hungarian is Jurgen Klopp’s second signing of the summer transfer window, joining Alexis Mac Allister on the books at Anfield. Fabio Carvalho will head the other way on loan to RB Leipzig.

A fee of £60 million – the release clause in his contract – will be paid to secure the services for Szoboszlai, a 22-year-old who generally plays as a number ten. Whether Klopp will have to tweak his tactics to get the best out of his new man – or whether he can be turned into a number eight in the boss’ traditional 4-3-3 system – remains to be seen.

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Is it an inverted full back, a mezzala or a carrilero?

However you describe Trent Alexander-Arnold’s positional shift at Liverpool towards the end of the 2022/23 season, it’s clear that Jurgen Klopp’s masterstroke came up trumps.

In the Reds’ last eight games of that campaign, TAA played further forward and more central – a sort of inside right, who ensured he funnelled back to defend in wide areas when Liverpool lost possession.

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Liverpool’s longest serving player has left the club….and it might not be who you were expecting.

Leighton Clark is only 21 years old, and yet he’s been with the Reds since the age of just six through the various junior and academy levels.

He will depart Anfield for Aberdeen after a successful loan spell with the Scottish side, bringing the curtain down on the unlikeliest of longest serving spells.

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Although these things are liable to fall through at the last minute, it seems as though Liverpool have now all but got the signing of Brighton’s Alexis Mac Allister.

The enterprising midfielder has been a key figure in the sublime rise of the Seagulls into the Premier League’s top six, although the 24-year-old is perhaps best known for being part of the Argentina team that lifted the World Cup in Qatar at the tailend of 2022.

Rumours abound that the Reds have landed their man for as little as £45 million thanks to a buyout clause in his contract, and that will be music to the ears of the club’s financiers as they look to fund an overhaul of the Liverpool squad.

Mac Allister is not the first World Cup winner to pull on the famous red shirt. Some who have gotten their hands on the Jules Rimet trophy have become Liverpool legends in their own right, whereas others have perhaps been forgotten by all but the most fanatical of Anfield supporters.

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