Liverpool's Squad Imbalance: A £200m Investment Yet Flawed Structure
Liverpool have just thrown another £200m-plus at the squad, a bigger outlay than last summer, yet Andoni Iraola ends the window staring at a depth chart that does not quite make sense.
Jamie Carragher did not bother dressing it up. "It does not look like a balanced squad," he told Sky Sports. "Liverpool are short in the full-back areas and probably a midfield player as well."
That is the nub of it. Money spent, gaps still showing.
A lopsided attack after Salah
The headline signing is Bradley Barcola, £123m from Paris Saint-Germain. A statement fee, a serious talent, and yet even that move nudges the same awkward question: where is the balance?
Liverpool have lost Mohamed Salah, the most devastating left-footed right-winger the Premier League has seen. In response, they have stacked the left side with players who prefer to come in off that flank. The attack looks like it has been built in a mirror.
"Liverpool have not got a real out-and-out right-sided attacker," Carragher said. "We have not got anybody with a left foot on that right side, like Mo Salah. I am disappointed. I am not quite sure what we are going to do on that right wing right now."
Barcola can play across the front line, but his best work comes from the left. Cody Gakpo has started there. Florian Wirtz has been used there. Hugo Ekitike too. Rio Ngumoha broke through on that side before being tested on the right in pre-season.
Victor Munoz, signed after just one top-flight campaign, also arrived as – of course – a left winger.
On its own, none of that condemns Liverpool’s recruitment. It is more puzzling than disastrous. Yet when you zoom out, the picture is of a squad overloaded in one corridor of the pitch and exposed in others.
Full-backs at the heart of the problem
Nowhere is that more obvious than at full-back. When Jeremie Frimpong arrived last summer, Liverpool were keen to stress he was not a Trent Alexander-Arnold replacement. Two games into this season, he is starting at right-back.
With Conor Bradley injured, Frimpong is the only true fit specialist in the role. Some argue Dominik Szoboszlai could fill in there, but that would be a clear compromise. Shunting a centre-back wide feels even more of a fudge in Iraola’s system, where the full-backs are not just defenders but constant runners and key attacking outlets.
The numbers underline it. Frimpong and Milos Kerkez both sit among the top three players in the Premier League for sprints so far. Above them? Adrien Truffert of Bournemouth, Iraola’s old side. This is how he wants his teams to play: full-backs racing on, relentlessly, often in tandem.
Look at Liverpool’s average positions in these opening fixtures compared to that title-winning season under Arne Slot. The full-backs push high, sometimes simultaneously. The midfield has to plug the gaps they leave behind.
That is where the anxiety starts.
Midfield caught between ideas
Ryan Gravenberch once stepped up to power Slot’s title charge, but this is a different structure and a different demand. Alexis Mac Allister’s physical drop-off over the last 18 months has been clear. In Iraola’s aggressive, front-foot model, can this midfield really keep the back door locked?
Is he even looking for a classic holding midfielder? At Bournemouth, Iraola wanted his players to engage, to swarm. Alex Scott spoke about being "very aggressive" out of possession. Tyler Adams said the squad believed they would win the ball high up the pitch.
That same ambition is visible already at Liverpool, but so is the risk. "I do not believe that midfield can function with the personnel in there," Carragher warned. "For me, it does not work. And it is not just about personnel, it is the structure the manager is asking for."
Within five minutes of the opening Premier League game, the flaw was laid bare. Full-backs high. Centre-backs deep. No midfielder occupying the yawning space in between. Newcastle poured into it and scored.
Given how Alexander-Arnold and Kerkez naturally play, and with Virgil van Dijk increasingly inclined to drop off rather than step up, that vulnerability will not vanish on its own. Liverpool have built the most expensive squad in their history. It might also be their most obviously flawed group in a decade.
Compromises or chaos?
If there is a fix, it probably has to come from within. That means compromise.
"You do not want to lose the offensive side, the fluidity, the arrivals with numbers, but obviously we were punished the other day, especially in the first goal," Carragher said, reflecting on the balance Liverpool are trying to strike.
"We did not do a proper lockdown. But there is a balance. We cannot go from one way where we send a lot of people forward to keeping everyone back so we do not arrive with numbers. I do not want to tell Ryan Gravenberch not to carry the ball or arrive in the box.
"It is a matter of identifying the situation. You cannot be with the joystick every time [controlling] the player. There are players that are very good at smelling the danger. 'I cannot risk going now. I think I have to stay.' Recognising those situations is the job."
For now, Liverpool look exactly what their results suggest: a team built for 3-3s and 4-4s, thrilling and terrifying in equal measure.
Imperfect, unbalanced, but impossible to ignore – and the season will turn on whether those wild edges become a weapon or a weakness that finally breaks them.
