Advertisement

Liverpool paying the price for their lack of foresight

Fabinho of Liverpool at Amex Stadium on January 29, 2023 in Brighton, England - Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images
Fabinho of Liverpool at Amex Stadium on January 29, 2023 in Brighton, England - Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images

Ugly, clumsy, unshapely, and uncharacteristically botched. You would need to embark on a long search for a more appropriate symbol of Liverpool’s desperate season than Fabinho’s tackle on Brighton’s Evan Ferguson.

The Brazilian midfielder’s contorted look as he recognised how awful his challenge inflicted upon the teenager during the FA Cup defeat was a mirror of the facial expressions of those comparing Jurgen Klopp’s side with the quadruple-chasing team of a year ago.

Fabinho’s loss of form has evolved from a moderate concern earlier this season – explained with the usual mitigating factors which have defended his team-mates – to a deeper worry as to whether Klopp’s first-choice midfield still has a pulse.

A year ago, Fabinho was in the conversation as one of the most effective holding midfielders in Europe, let alone the Premier League. Now, while Thomas Partey, Rodri and Casemiro keep their engine room purring at Arsenal, Manchester City and Manchester United, Fabinho looks tanked.

It was November when Klopp was first quizzed on his anchorman’s dramatic dip, the 29-year-old’s ineffectiveness when the back four needed protection so conspicuous.

“No real explanation (for it),” Klopp said at that time.

“In a long career players have kinds of dips or whatever in performances. It is completely normal. Usually you solve it by playing less often, but in our situation Fabinho had to play through everything so you get through it and get through it and at one point you are back to yourself. If we have more options then we use it to give him the chance to recover completely from the last game.”

The answer covered some recurring themes of Liverpool’s campaign, the explanation being Fabinho is suffering from the exertions of previous seasons.

That is understandable but opens the club up to the most pertinent criticism of the last six months. Where was the foresight that this might happen? If there was a calculation Fabinho and skipper Jordan Henderson might need more rest in 2022-23, it makes the failure to sign a midfielder last summer more incomprehensible.

Were Liverpool's midfield issues so unpredictable?

Rewind to the final week of last season and the Champions League final build-up was dominated by injury concerns around Fabinho and Thiago Alcantara because the back-up players – Naby Keita and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain – were not playing at the required level. There was a misplaced anticipation that would be corrected before the start of this season. Instead, Liverpool made it clear as early as June that midfield reinforcement was not on the agenda until the summer of 2023, after losing out on Monaco's Aurélien Tchouaméni to Real Madrid.

Klopp has long since recognised that error, but his last ditch move for Arthur Melo in the August transfer window backfired because no sooner was he signed he was injured.

The fact that Klopp has correctly stuck with the promising teenager Stefan Bajcetic and recalled the unreliable and soon to be out-of-contract Naby Keita for the last three games is an indictment of the loss of form of senior players, lack of options and unusually poor planning.

Skipper Henderson has similarly struggled to provide the energy and drive which once ensured no midfield in Europe was so adept at regaining possession as Liverpool’s, especially when the trio included Georginio Wijnaldum.

Poor as he has been, singling out Fabinho as the chief reason for Liverpool’s midfield decline is a convenient shield for those entrusted with ensuring the long-term and short-term strategy works in tandem.

There is collective responsibility. For all the perpetual whining from the section of the fanbase craving the spend, spend, spend solution of a Middle East takeover, since last summer Liverpool have invested £120 million on two strikers – Darwin Nunez and Cody Gakpo – while the chasm in midfield has grown.

Cody Gakpo of Liverpool is put under pressure by Lewis Dunk of Brighton & Hove Albion during the FA Cup Fourth Round match between Brighton & Hove ALbion and Liverpool at Amex Stadium - Jacques Feeney/Offside/Offside via Getty Images
Cody Gakpo of Liverpool is put under pressure by Lewis Dunk of Brighton & Hove Albion during the FA Cup Fourth Round match between Brighton & Hove ALbion and Liverpool at Amex Stadium - Jacques Feeney/Offside/Offside via Getty Images

Klopp’s disadvantage compared to City, Chelsea and United is he must decide where his priority lies each summer rather than replenish in every area of the pitch. Nevertheless, when it emerged there was a spare £35 million in the January kitty, the external clamour was for a midfielder to arrive first.

Gakpo’s availability changed the plan as Klopp determined pressing from the front would help his midfield and defence. There is justification to the argument that the absence of Luis Diaz, Diogo Jota and Roberto Firmino has had a knock-on impact on those playing behind them, and Gakpo had his best game since signing on Sunday. He is a long-term investment, but his arrival has done nothing to fix the here and now of midfield malaise.

It’s no secret why Klopp has waited, of course. If Borussia Dortmund’s Jude Bellingham and Wolverhampton Wanderers’ Matheus Nunes are forming a new midfield partnership at Anfield next season, patience could be rewarded and the toils of the last six months forgotten.

Where will that leave Fabinho and Henderson? Presumably re-energised and adjusting to a new world in which they can no longer expect to be the first choice.

Given Klopp’s choices over the last month and the calamitousness of cameos such as Fabinho’s at the Amex Stadium that reality might be here already.


Browse our best Liverpool FC books if you're looking to relive the history of the Reds