Last season was not the first troublesome campaign endured during Jurgen Klopp’s seven-and-a-half year reign at Anfield. Similarly, in 2020/21 the Reds generally looked off the pace and on occasion a shadow of their usual selves.
Between January and March, one of the most feared creations in world football lost six home games on the bounce and for a side that had previously lost on Merseyside way back in 2017 that obviously prompted much consternation and all manner of headlines.
Ultimately they finished trophyless, exiting every competition relatively early. It was an undeniable drop-off that was widely attributed to Liverpool’s recent title triumph, their first in the Premier League era.
It was a hangover, so they said, and perhaps in hindsight this excuse has legs given how emphatically they responded the season after, losing only twice across ten largely successful months that saw them win both domestic cups.
So what of last season then? What can a failure to secure a top four spot and a plethora of underwhelming performances be attributed to when this time out there were no mitigating circumstances?
And, just as intriguingly, can we again expect a strong reaction, one that will propel Liverpool back into the title mix, after being out of the reckoning last year throughout?
Do the Merseysiders even deserve to be so prominent in the Premier League top four odds?
In order to quantify this, it is of course necessary to revisit last season’s struggles, and to better make sense of it all, separate the team into three components.
These components can be found in every team yet, for whatever reason, with Liverpool they can sometimes feel more pronounced.
They are a back-four, midfield three, and a front three that in recent years have regularly deconstructed – at times destroyed – the great and the good via relentless pressing, lethal intent, and prolific finishing.
Starting with the latter we find the current health of Liverpool’s forward line to be in fairly decent shape, for all that much was made of Darwin Nunez’s warm and cold introduction to English fare, while clearly the Reds missed the remorseless endeavours of Sadio Mane.
Even factoring in these significant gremlins, Mo Salah and two others at a time scored 57 of Liverpool’s 75 league goals last term, a percentage and outright figure that compare very favourably to prior campaigns.
No, the Reds’ front three were largely blameless for Klopp’s men missing out on Champions League football.
Indeed, with Nunez expected to be on surer ground in 2023/24, and Luis Diaz back to full fitness, and Cody Gakpo better acclimatised to new surroundings, it is reasonable to expect an even greater threat to opposition rearguards going forward.
Can we be so lenient on their defensive colleagues, a back-line that for the most part of Klopp’s tenure have bolstered league and European successes, at times appearing to be impenetrable?
Regrettably not, not after being breached almost twice as often last season to twelve months prior.
Conceding 1.2 goals-per-90 from August to May amounted to the most porous campaign since the German arrived in 2015, and with Virgil Van Dijk out-of-sorts and Trent Alexander-Arnold considered a weak link out of possession, an ailing defence unquestionably contributed to the team’s overall poor return.
Yet it could be argued that once Van Dijk’s form returned, and once Alexander-Arnold was impactfully reimagined as a hybrid right-back/number 6, these issues resolved themselves before the season’s conclusion.
Three clean sheets in their last five outings suggests that, as too does an unbeaten run from early April onwards.
This late improvement incidentally very likely explains why Klopp hasn’t ventured into the transfer market in search of a new centre-back. The system needed tweaking while for a sustained spell individual form was a concern. Personnel was never an issue.
In midfield however it was, as evidenced by entirely forgettable offerings from Fabinho, Thiago and Jordan Henderson.
Elsewhere, Curtis Jones failed to build on his youthful promise, Naby Keita was once again anonymous and mainly injured, and age finally began to wither James Milner, and when it’s acknowledged how fundamental a powerful engine room is to Klopp’s blueprint, it made Liverpool’s average season inevitable.
Too often they were easily by-passed in central areas. They were out-ran and out-hustled. It was an unnerving, unusual sight.
The purchases therefore of Alexis Mac Allister and Dominik Szoboszlai, for a combined sum of £100m – not to mention the off-loading of Henderson, Milner, Keita and Oxlade-Chamberlain – is the biggest indication of them all that Liverpool might be an altogether stronger proposition in the months to come.
Brilliant for Brighton in recent years, Mac Allister averaged 6.6 recoveries and 2.15 progressive carries last season, chipping in also with a double tally of goals.
The stylish and always creative Szoboszlai meanwhile has taken his next step to superstardom, having hugely impressed in the Bundesliga.
Together this pair can reinstall a dynamism that was woefully missing behind a strike-force that had to conjure it up for themselves in 2022/23 and their recruitment above all else points to Liverpool being a good shout again in the Premier League betting.
Or, to put it in more simper terms, things may very well return to normal.
