Jamie Carragher has expressed concern over the state of the midfield options available to Andoni Iraola ahead of the new Premier League season.
“The midfield for me is still a huge problem for Liverpool,” he told The Overlap Fan Debate. “I haven’t watched all the pre-season games, but I watched the last two against decent opposition – it was Leeds and then Monaco.
“And the problem Liverpool had last season was there was space everywhere in midfield. That has not gone away at all. That’s only going to get bigger with the deployment of [Dominik] Szoboszlai in midfield.
“It looks like they’re going to play him, rather than as a number 10, almost as a central midfield player alongside [Ryan] Gravenberch and that is just pure box-to-box.
“I look at that midfield three and I worry. When you name six or seven of Liverpool’s players, you can’t say they’re not top players.
“You can’t say Gravenberch is not a really good player, or [Florian] Wirtz, or [Dominik] Szoboszlai.
“But as a midfield three, I look at that and think, oh no, there’s almost too much quality, but they all want to go and play and run. And even in pre-season, the space is coming through the middle.”
Jurgen Klopp already laid the blueprint for what a dominant midfield looks like in a high-pressing unit
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When you look at the midfield Jurgen Klopp had when Liverpool won the Premier League in 2020, it was Fabinho, Jordan Henderson and Georginio Wijnaldum or James Milner in the middle of the park.
All three midfield spots were occupied by hard-working ball winners.
Now, Liverpool don’t have nearly enough midfielders obsessed with winning the ball back.
Part of the issue in Liverpool’s midfield last season was that the likes of Szoboszlai want everything to look nice, instead of being concerned with winning the ball back.
With Iraola brining hich octane, high pressing football back to Anfield, the concern now is that there isn’t enough ‘grit’ in the engine room to platform the incredible attack Liverpool are assembling.
