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.
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.
There is absolutely no reason for it logically, but a number of English football seasons ending in 3-4 – i.e. 2013/14, 1993/94, 1963/64 etc – have been pivotal in the history of Liverpool Football Club.
Will 2023/24 follow suit? Only time will tell, but the pattern since the 1953/54 season – when Liverpool were relegated to the Second Division for the first time in 50 years – has been that the campaign ending in 3-4 has been jam-packed with action and controversy.
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.
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.
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.
As soon as the last ball of the 2022/23 season was kicked, engineers got to work removing the roof of the Anfield Road Stand as construction work got underway.
Around 7,000 seats will be added, bringing the total capacity up to 61,000, in the next wave of renovations, with more to follow over the next few years.
It’s amazing to think that there was a time at the start of his Liverpool career during which Roberto Firmino was vilified for his lack of output. Sure, he looked the part, but did he score enough goals and create enough assists to be considered a quintessential Liverpool striker?
Fast forward to the present day, with the Brazilian having left the club at the end of his contract, and few could argue that Firmino doesn’t deserve his place in the pantheon of contemporary Liverpool greats.
When you play for a club that is challenging for silverware on four fronts, there’s always a chance you will get some game-time.
But to become a first-team regular at a club like Liverpool, you need to show a tremendous amount of ability and a complete commitment to adhering to the tactical side of your playing position.
It looked for a long time as though Curtis Jones would remain in the former camp; a useful squad player that could be used in the domestic cup competitions to give more established stars a rest.
The goals didn’t flow as expected, but Liverpool won’t care as they racked up a sixth straight Premier League victory with a 1-0 win over Brentford on Saturday. There was a double cause for celebration for Mo Salah, who notched his 100th Liverpool goal at Anfield – it wasn’t his most aesthetically-pleasing, but his bundled effort in the 13th minute was enough to see off the gutsy Brentford.