Quickly on Salah - I think people sometimes are too quick with the āput him up front in a 4-4-1-1ā (deliberately saying 4-4-1-1 instead of 4-2-3-1 because itās what Klopp calls it) idea.
Okay, it did work for a while in a few seasons. Also some games here and there. Sometimes we had to do it (balance, giving him even more freedom, but having more balance behind with the two lines of 4), sometimes we needed his pace and goals more central. But I donāt think itās something Klopp would actually build on as his main formation. Salah is playing in his best position at the moment, which is that of being something between a central striker and a winger. A wide attacker.
So, no I wouldnāt say itās time to change our system. We can still play with it here and there, change that midfield/attacking structure from 3 to 2. In fact, when you look closely (and remember what Klopp told in one of his embargoās a few months ago), Trentās been told this season not to bomb forward as much (or not all the time in all games) and weāve been using the RCM of the midfield 3 to play with more freedom and more towards the right, allowing Salah to still play high, though Klopp praised his defensive game earlier this season.
What is a system anyway, football is a game of movement all the time, it changes every few seconds. Of course itās important, it allows us to have most players as closely as possible to their best zones. But as we speak of 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1, thatās only where the players more or less are in a certain moment, in this case then more when weāre without the ball defending or in a middle pressure. We attack differently.
For me, itās rarely as dramatic as fans like to portray it. Solutions are always to drop half of the team or always the same individual(s) and/or change the system. Klopp might do some of that, we do some of that all the time in fact, but I donāt think he needs to change his main system for most games.
Weāll see what are our changes until May and going into next season. Our CB gamble last summer didnāt work, although we did better until now than a lot of people expected, letās be honest (some were calling that our season was finished). In midfield, it unfortunately took half a season for Thiago to finally step in. Heās a top midfielder and weāve seen good portions of that, but both sides need a bit of time to learn how to play together. Up top Jota finally brought some quality as the ā4th bestā, but then we lost him for a while as well.
Weāre in a result crisis, a lot of our game at the moment is still pretty good, but weāre complicating things in the final third and our defence is suffering in some moments which is not surprising. I think we continue going forward with more or less the same, we work on our game internally, we raise our form again and going into next season we might see a new face or two as regular starters. Hopefully having the injured players back, too, and finally bringing a CB who can have seasons in a row alongside Virgil. Or at least keep up form and being injury-free longer than the likes of Matip and Gomez.
