The noise and, from many, joy from Liverpool’s wretched run of form of late is perhaps a marker of just how mighty Anfield has become over the past decade.
It is ten years since Jurgen Klopp took the reins from Brendan Rodgers, the last Reds boss before Arne Slot to succumb to a four-game losing run.
But Liverpool are vastly different to that long-forgotten iteration, and Slot has within his grasp some of the best players in world football. The 5-1 win over Eintracht Frankfurt in the Champions League served as a reminder that this is a team capable of winning all the biggest prizes – again.
However, some individuals are struggling, and the team as a unit has struggled to find fluent form. One of the biggest culprits would be Alexis Mac Allister, whose grace ability and determination in the engine room is crucial for the performance of the Slot machine.
Mac Allister’s form for Liverpool
Mac Allister is undoubtedly one of the best midfielders in the Premier League. Certainly, he is among the most complete, the most spirited, the most inventive.
Arne Slot and Alexis Mac Allister for Liverpool
But he hasn’t been quite right this year, with Sofascore recording he has lost 57% of his ground duels in the league thus far, only making one tackle per match.
Whereas the Argentine has been virtually undroppable across his first two years in a Liverpool shirt, he now looks more vulnerable in the starting line-up, and the midweek win over Frankfurt emphasised this, for he was left on the bench after lasting only an hour against Manchester United.
Mac Allister’s form has been a concern this season, but he is an elite player and crucial to Liverpool’s success. The 26-year-old has, in some ways, given Slot his own version of Thiago Alcantara, whose career was cut short right before the Dutchman’s arrival. But, as with Thiago, Liverpool seem to be finding a way to perform without the star in the mix.
The tempo-setting, line-breaking maestro offered something unique in the Liverpool engine room, and in this, Liverpool evolved in that later Klopp team.
The problem, of course, is that the retired 34-year-old was rarely fit. Across four campaigns on Merseyside, the Spain star managed only 98 appearances across all competitions.
But his technical quality, vision and awareness were faculties unlike anything else Liverpool had. In Mac Allister, the Reds have a midfielder with stylistic similarities, but there’s actually another man in Slot’s first team who could be Liverpool’s new version of their former superstar.
Liverpool’s new version of Thiago
Sometimes in football, the timings just don’t work out. Steven Gerrard missed the Klopp era by a whisker, leaving for LA Galaxy only months before the German’s historic appointment.
Luis Suarez and Steven Gerrard at Liverpool together.
Likewise, Thiago would retire from football prematurely at the end of the 2023/24 campaign, having made only one appearance that year due to non-stop injury setbacks. He was 33 years old.
Thus, he missed the incipient Slot era and the Premier League title that would arrive at Anfield’s doorstep just one year after he hung up the boots.
The greatest travesty of it all is that the stylish Spaniard boasted a playing style which is tailor-made for the calculated, composed build-up Liverpool have developed since Klopp’s departure. Gone (last season, at least) is the frenetic, out-of-control football that Slot’s predecessor employed – emphatically and to silver-laden success.
Thiago is one of the greatest technicians of his generation. He would have been the linchpin for this version of Liverpool. But Slot may have an heir in Curtis Jones.
Yes, you read that right. No, this argument does not centre around the basis that Jones is on the same level as the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich sensation in his prime.
But the Liverpool-born star shares certain qualities with his one-time teammate, with both among the squad’s most reliable players on the ball and bearing combative sides, emphasised through robustness in the challenge and tough-tackling defensive contributions.
Jones graduated from Liverpool’s academy and has been with his boyhood outfit ever since, and though he played a role under Klopp’s wing, Slot’s tactics have given rise to his skillset and seen him become “one of the most underrated players in England“, as said by one Premier League analyst.
Jones is an effortless passer. He’s intelligent with his decision-making, and he is tactically disciplined. As per FBref, the Three Lions star ranks among the top 11% of midfielders across Europe’s top five leagues for assists, the top 8% for goal-creating actions, the top 2% for pass completion, the top 12% for progressive passes and the top 13% for progressive carries per 90.
Goal-creating actions are pieces of play that lead to a goal. These include, but are not limited to, passes, take-ons and fouls being drawn.
He’s also well-seasoned within this Liverpool team, and when the likes of Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk depart, both into their penultimate years on Merseyside, he will be among the leading figures at the club.
Most Apps for Liverpool (active players)
Player
Age
Apps
Mohamed Salah
33
413
Andy Robertson
31
349
Virgil van Dijk
34
331
Alisson
33
307
Joe Gomez
28
245
Curtis Jones
24
190
Data via Transfermarkt
Thiago joined Liverpool from Bayern Munich for £20m in 2020 and would ebb and flow. Never in doubt was his technical quality, nor the fact that he could have been a divisional great with better luck on the injury front.
There’s no question that he would have been a sublime component in Slot’s system, but in Jones, the Netherlands native has found a like-styled player who could now take the next step in his development and play a crucial deep-lying role to promote Liverpool’s ball-playing abilities.
At Frankfurt, Jones took a staggering 139 touches of the ball, linking play together and completing 122 of 127 attempted passes. This is his strength, and Slot must give him free rein from the outset to rise to the next level and take Liverpool with him.
