This is Neil Atkinson’s mailing from yesterday, and I think it’s worth reading regarding our transfer policy.
The European fixtures are in now. And while the draw was kind to Liverpool, you can see the rhythm of the weeks, the demands and you can look at Liverpool’s squad and conclude - it isn’t, currently, up to this. And if Cody Gakpo goes it is up to it even less.
Over six weeks ago I wrote at length - here if you want to read it (https://mailchi.mp/theanfieldwrap/taw-daily-run-down-smfjjjc1sc-7235531) - that Liverpool needed to buy four players (a RB, a CB, a winger and a central forward) to reach a state of equilibrium for this summer and moving forward. The argument wasn’t then the profiles would be right, but that it would be the right number of players given injuries and so on for the season to come and offer a base.
Since then Liverpool have bought a winger, the best one they could get, sold a midfielder and signed a centre back. It would be easy to say that means they need four still but also since then Trey Nyoni has offered enough in pre-season and even against Nottingham Forest to suggest he could take Curtis Jones’s centre midfield minutes. Not his right back minutes, but his centre midfield contribution.
But since then Liverpool have also played two competitive game of football when it was clear:
a) how hard Rio Ngumoha is going to find both away starts and starts on the right of the attack.
b) that Jeremie Frimpong is a cover right back, not a starting one
c) that the midfield balance will be harder to find with the existing senior professionals than the manager may have thought
In the piece from six weeks ago we established that last season Arsenal only had one play who had fewer than 50 top flight starts who got over 900 minutes - Myles Lewis-Skelly. Between the hugely talented Nyoni, Ngumoha and Jeremy Jacquet Liverpool would be planning to work with three. Everyone’s temptation is to always say “if you are good enough you are old enough” but Newcastle showed how hard it can be especially on the road.
Especially in wide areas. It was a slog out there last season for almost every one. Of players who played the majority of their football from wide (so not including Bryan Mbuemo etc) Cody Gakpo was sixth highest scorer.
And now Gakpo looks likely to make a move to Manchester City. Liverpool - having achieved equilibrium in wide areas at least, if not in centre forward positions, have looked at that and gone “well, let’s give ourselves another problem to solve as the clock ticks down”. It only makes sense if they have a plan and right now, do you feel Liverpool have shown a plan to build a squad which gives the manager the best possible chance for next season?
For this piece of writing you have a choice. About six paragraphs down will be me dealing with the here and now. The looking at what has to happen in the next couple of days and the options in front of The Reds. That will be about opportunities that remain. I think that being upbeat and enjoying the game is the only way to engage with football in a healthy way. But there will be about five paragraphs first getting stuck into Liverpool. Your choice.
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This was not a transfer window Liverpool needed to over complicate and it was not one where perfect needed to be the enemy of good. What’s striking is that in the round the signings of Victor Muniz and Ronald Araujo have, in the fullness of time, been accepted as reasonable ones under the circumstances and something to be able to get behind. There was initial scepticism on both but sense has prevailed - Liverpool have shortcomings in the squad and they could do with being addressed and they need to get back to a position of strength.
Liverpool have a ton of very good players. Those players need a structure they can work within and supporting players around them. We have also appointed a manager who has a very clear way of playing and a clear track record of improving players in wide areas has been brought in. He plays with what is to all intents and purposes a front two for about 70% of the time and has flying wingers and likes to have options in wide areas.
For Liverpool to find themselves priced out of Yankuba Minteh when they were happy to pay in excess of 60m by all reasonable accounts is a failure of planning. Liverpool could and should have been pursuing a good enough right sided player from the minute Mo Salah’s termination was agreed. My point here is that with the really good work on Bradley Barcola, which has clearly been going on for months if not more than a year, Liverpool didn’t need another world beater. They needed to get a deal done. Because they needed equilibrium. They needed the position of strength.
And if Minteh is good enough on August 24th (while injured) he was good enough to have been a compromise signing on 1st June. Back then Brighton hadn’t finalised the van Hecke/Vuksovic diddle. They hadn’t moved on Carlos Baleba - a player the manager didn’t think was reliable last season - for 60m. The market hadn’t exploded. There was agency to move with more freedom. To put this in context, Brentford nearly agreed a deal for Said El-Mala for 50m Euro on June 4th, falling through supposedly for non-financial reasons. Liverpool could have matched that deal and had El-Mala to be a wide and central forward option as well as have him around in pre-season. (https://bulinews.com/said-mala-verge-record-50m-move-brentford)
Liverpool were making choices. Not getting involved is a choice.
Liverpool needed to make a couple of compromise signings. Doing such a thing wouldn’t mean success was impossible. Noni Madueke is a compromise signing. Victor Gyokeres is a compromise signing. And, trust me, I can go on.
Instead Liverpool got tangled up in Yan Diomande, the transfer market exploded underneath them (including, by the way, for Yan Diomande) and now they find themselves thrashing about and still being priced out on Yankuba Minteh. The argument was never that the window for Liverpool was easy. But it was straightforward. And the argument isn’t that Liverpool have failed to buy three piano players; the argument is that they haven’t identified and acted swiftly on piano carriers.
Liverpool have let perfect be the enemy of good. And you can reasonably argue that underpins last summer’s window as well, albeit in a different way, when they wouldn’t draw to a conclusion their pursuit of Alexander Isak and Marc Guehi, instead taking one to the wire and getting a result but making the first third of the season really hard, and failing to sign the other. Last summer Liverpool may well have secured the best two centre forwards on the market in theory. This year they wanted the best two wingers. It is, though, right now, perfectly valid to say about both windows - yes, but at what cost? And we are not just talking pounds and pence here.
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To options in an upbeat way. Even an exciting way. Because while it is reasonable to wonder if Liverpool are thrashing around a bit, that sort of thing can be exciting. And if the argument is that Liverpool - with the addition of Barcola - have enough top quality talent, maybe the scattergun approach can get results. The long term plan certainly hasn’t.
If Gakpo goes, Liverpool need forwards plural. They need cover for the centre and a solid right sided option. The right sided option should be the best player they can get at this stage of the window. Ideally it wouldn’t be someone injured but Minteh’s pacy, grafting profile makes a ton of sense.
It’s clear how the manager wants to play and it’s clear Hugo Ekitike could, at his best, alternate with either of the front two. But that only makes three options for four positions, one of whom it is optimistic to believe he will be at his best before you are singing Auld Lang Syne, and so he needs another. Harvey Elliott hasn’t found it. Federico Chiesa can’t do it. There isn’t a young player who can be relied upon, while I’d give a kidney for that to be Jayden Danns.
On the now oft linked Ismaila Sarr, he has spent two seasons playing very centrally for Crystal Palace. In 24/25 he was 17th percentile for successful dribbles. In 25/26 he was 2nd percentile. SECOND PERCENTILE. This is no longer a right winger but he has showed last couple of seasons he is a perfectly adequate central option who responds well to good coaching. We could play with either Wirtz and Isak and probably with Ekitike too.
The right back market is poor. It’s become a funny position and for Liverpool it is made trickier because of Conor Bradley. My view is the best way, for the next five years, to get the best Conor Bradley is not to rush Conor Bradley back.
Indeed, across the board, the way for Liverpool to get the most out of their best footballers is not to have to play them all the time, to not rush them back from injury, to be able to be patient. To have the piano carriers. In 2024/25 Dominik Szoboszlai was a magnificent piano carrier and that is what he should always be for Liverpool, in exactly the same way Bernardo Silva was that for Pep Guardiola. Wherever there is a problem, Silva would solve it.
Right now Liverpool have a problem at right back and a problem in midfield. Recruiting a top quality midfielder, given that Alexis Mac Allister almost certainly won’t start the 27/28 season a Liverpool player, means that Szoboszlai can be moved to right back for the foreseeable future and strengthens Liverpool for the short, medium and long term.
All this means we can get to Christmas with two good right back options in Szoboszlai and Frimpong; three good centre back options and one question mark with Araujo, Jacquet, Virgil Van Dijk and Joe Gomez; two left back options (NOT TODAY) with Milos Kerkez and Kostas Tsimikas at the back.
Four central midfielders in a new signing, Mac Allister, Ryan Gravenberch and Nyoni.
Four wide attacking options in a new signing should Gakpo go, Bradley Barcola, Victor Munoz and Rio Ngumoha; three good central attacking options with a new signing, Isak and Wirtz.
Would this be perfect? Nope. But players come back from injury and we could move again in January.
All of this is straightforward. That isn’t to say it is easy. And the issue is that it doesn’t feel likely. That Liverpool will instead gamble and in doing so put a manager in a difficult position when he already has enough on his plate.
Liverpool haven’t been good enough this summer so far. A bit of singlemindedness now and much can be forgiven but the current look is that the men who never speak and who cannot be questioned for a second in public but who are happy to be on the coach when we win have been inept and asleep; have got both strategy and tactics wrong. The great thing about sport is you always have a chance to put things right - they still have that chance. But they have to sort their heads out, roll their sleeves up and get their hands dirty. This is it. Now.
You can buy all the nine figure lads you like, you can change manager to get the best out of them, but if you can’t supplement those lads with players who can make a structure work and offer chances for rest while still picking up wins then you are kidding yourself it will be all be alright in the end.
Neil
