Latest Liverpool injury setback must be Jürgen Klopp lesson before non-negotiable FSG transfer task
Whenever Jurgen Klopp has been asked about his midfield in the past – be it last summer or the summer before that – he has always said he was happy with the opportunities he had.
In theory, that added up. In sheer numbers, having nine players in the middle of the pitch was enough (Thiago Alcântara, Jordan Henderson, Fabinho, Naby Keïta, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, James Milner, Curtis Jones, Harvey Elliott and maybe Fábio Carvalho ).
And yet it was the first admission Liverpool had miscalculated as Arthur Melo brought in an emergency loan deal late in the window.
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Since then, Stefan Bajčetić has of course resurfaced, but now the Spain youth international will miss the rest of the season with the injury that kept him from the Champions League defeat by Real Madrid.
And that is certainly no coincidence: everything is connected and goes back to the decision not to buy an alternative to Aurélien Tchouaméni in the summer.
Many of the nine midfielders who started the season with Liverpool already had patchy injury records. Even someone like Henderson, who hasn’t had a lot of breaks, is a lot better when he doesn’t crouch.
Unfortunately for Liverpool, he and Fabinho, who likely fall into the same category, have seen their level drop with so many minutes in their legs.
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Bajčetić’s rise was unpredictable at the time, but it is questionable whether his season-ending injury was due to him being overdone at a crucial stage in his development. With no other obvious players to take his place, Bajčetić has played plenty for any player since the turn of the year, let alone one unaccustomed to the demands of senior football.
With so many injuries, Klopp fielded a midfield with two James Milner and Fabinho against Real Madrid. While the plan earlier in the season would have been to use Thiago and Henderson in a game like this, it can’t have come as a huge surprise that that wasn’t possible.
Despite the number of games Liverpool played last season, Klopp’s side mainly avoided injury thanks to their ability to rotate and rest players. The squad was big enough to handle that.
This season those who were fit were played until they inevitably got injured, with so many examples of one player’s return coinciding with a setback for another.
Elliott, for example, has played a role in every game in the campaign – something that just can’t have been the intention for a 19-year-old still in development.
In the summer, when two unreliable options in Keïta and Oxlade-Chamberlain move on and Milner, now 37 and unable to play 90 minutes twice a week even if he is fit, could also leave, this trio need not necessarily be replaced become of numbers.
Arthur will return to Juventus and Carvalho could be seen as a striker rather than someone likely to play farther back often, not least with the departure of Roberto Firmino who has also become injury-prone over the past 18 months.
That should leave Thiago, Henderson, Fabinho, Elliott, Jones and Bajčetić as existing midfield options, requiring two players in the center of the pitch to make this group strong enough.
With enough numbers that are real options, Liverpool should be able to weather an injury or two while still having enough depth to rotate.
That must be the lesson of a wasted season based on a miscalculation: sometimes injuries are unfortunate, but sometimes it’s because they don’t have enough reliable players.
In the summer, FSG has no choice but to correct this on the transfer market, otherwise Liverpool will face well-known problems again.