It’s about always having balance and adding quality to it, yeah. Having enough of all ingredients. We shouldn’t forget our principles of course, we’re not changing the whole nature of the team.
We really needed a “Thiago” all these years, but we shouldn’t replace Gini with one more “Thiago”. You can’t have too much of the same type of player. But all of them need to provide some bottom line hard work for a Klopp team. That is clear.
I have a balance in mind like; “3 working midfielders” (Henderson, Fabinho and a new one) and “3 creative midfielders” (Thiago, Keita and Jones). Plus Millie (who is more of a working one), but he’s a versatile backup player anyway, someone who covers about 4 positions and will most probably be in his final season with us.
Hendo and especially Millie are not getting younger, while that new CB proves himself (both in terms of quality and availability), Fabinho might still be needed at CB at times.
So I’d say Klopp would probably want to replace Gini with another physical, dynamic and reliable central midfielder. Clean enough in possession to keep it ticking, doesn’t have to do wonders on the ball (if he can go box-to-box and has a good shot from outside it would be nice, but nothing too technically complex). Humble, good endurance, can stay fit, etc.
But what is interesting is the way our right sided 8 (we’ll call it RCM to simplify) a lot of the time plays differently to our left sided 8 (LCM).
It’s like we mostly gave more freedom to our RCM. Gini had the LCM spot pretty much cemented, especially in the last 3 seasons (including this one), since he went on a new level of importance as a working midfielder. At RCM, we had a bit of everything. A bit of Lallana, a bit of Ox, a bit of Hendo (who is now first choice let’s say if all were fit and we’d play a final tomorrow), a bit of the newer likes of Jones, even Keita played some games at RCM since last season. I expect Thiago to takeover that LCM role next season, but then we’ll see how that evolves. You get injuries, changes of form, we also have to rotate as that’s a demanding area of the team, etc.
I don’t think Klopp will look purely at numbers and say we need xy goals from xy position. It will be more about the skills and blend it with what we have. Then it’s up to the players and those 6-7 midfielders to fight for minutes.
Sometimes we need to add a bit of what we already have, sometimes we need to add something a bit new. Balance and inside that balance, variety. I don’t expect us to change our principal philosophy, but you only have to look at Klopp’s 5 years here and see that we gradually added some new pieces to our puzzle. Trent is not what Clyne was, Robertson is not what Moreno was, our midfield played in a different structure in Klopp’s first season, Firmino is not what Sturridge was, etc. Many examples.