Liverpool legend Graeme Souness has destroyed the Reds’ midfielders for their performances against Manchester United on Sunday.
As usual, Jordan Henderson, Georginio Wijnaldum and Fabinho got the nod for a big game, but it wasn’t until Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Adam Lallana entered the fray that Jurgen Klopp’s men sparked into life in the 1-1 draw.
Souness wasn’t impressed: “Liverpool have a midfield that will outwork anyone, but they got outworked in the first half which is very unusual,” he told Sky Sports.
“When they get to the last third, they haven’t really got any cuteness in the midfield but what they do have is workaholics, with Fabinho, Henderson and Wijnaldum. That’s why they huffed and puffed for large periods today as United sat so deep. It’s very harsh to be too critical on the Liverpool midfield.”
OPINION
There’s no doubt that this is an area of concern for Liverpool. This has long been the knock on the Reds, that they don’t have a top class playmaker who can unlock a packed defence. That was the case on Sunday, certainly, where Klopp’s team huffed and puffed, as Souness says, without making much progress for the majority of the second half. As Souness underlines, their current first choice midfield is function over fashion, missing that little bit of guile they used to have with Philippe Coutinho. The statistics show that that is the case. As per WhoScored.com, it was Fabinho, surprisingly, who produced the most key passes of the duo at Old Trafford. He managed two, whereas Wijnaldum and Henderson didn’t make any. Wijnaldum was the only one who had a shot, while none of them had a pass success rate over 86%. They couldn’t really do much in an attacking sense, something which was made even more evident by how well Lallana did when he came on.
