Liverpool's Imbalanced Squad: A £200m Gamble
Liverpool have spent big again. Bigger, in fact, than last summer. Another £200m-plus poured into this squad, another statement window on paper. Yet Andoni Iraola walks away from deadline day with a team that looks anything but complete.
Jamie Carragher did not bother dressing it up on Sky Sports. "It does not look like a balanced squad," he said. "Liverpool are short in the full-back areas and probably a midfield player as well." One line, straight to the heart of the unease around Anfield.
The £123m arrival of Bradley Barcola from Paris Saint-Germain was supposed to be the headline act. Instead, it has become part of the same question. Where is the balance?
Salah out, left-footers in – but on the wrong side
Liverpool have just lost Mohamed Salah, the most devastating left-footed right-winger the Premier League has seen. Their response? Load up on left-sided forwards and hope the pieces fit.
"Liverpool have not got a real out-and-out right-sided attacker," Carragher warned. "We have not got anybody with a left foot on that right side, like Mo Salah. I am disappointed. I am not quite sure what we are going to do on that right wing right now."
Barcola can play across the front line, yes. But Liverpool have not paid that fee to turn him into a makeshift right-winger. His best work comes from the left. That is also where Cody Gakpo has operated so far this season, and where Florian Wirtz and Hugo Ekitike have featured previously.
Rio Ngumoha’s breakthrough came on the left too, even if pre-season saw him pushed to the opposite flank. Victor Munoz? Another left winger by trade, signed after one standout campaign in the top flight.
One or two of those you can explain away as flexibility. Taken together, they paint a stranger picture. A squad stacked with players who want the same spaces, the same angles, while the right side of the attack – the old Salah zone – looks curiously understocked.
This is not a disaster. Not yet. It is more puzzling than damning. But when other areas of the pitch are clearly thin, curiosity quickly turns into concern.
Full-back gamble in a full-back system
That concern sharpens the moment you look at the back line.
When Jeremie Frimpong arrived last summer, the message from inside the club was clear: he was not a Trent Alexander-Arnold replacement at right-back. Two games into this season, that is exactly what he has been.
With Conor Bradley injured, Frimpong is the only natural fit for Iraola’s high-octane full-back role. Some have floated Dominik Szoboszlai as an emergency option out there, but that would be a compromise and a costly one. Shunting a centre-back wide is even less appealing in a system that leans so heavily on full-backs to drive the game.
The numbers tell you how vital those positions are. Frimpong and Milos Kerkez both sit among the top three players in the Premier League for sprints so far. Above them? Adrien Truffert, who thrived under Iraola at Bournemouth. This is not a quirk. It is the blueprint.
Look at Liverpool’s average positions in the opening two league matches and compare them to that title-winning season under Arne Slot. The full-backs go. Together. Repeatedly. They live high, almost as wingers, and that drags a heavy responsibility onto the midfield.
Can this midfield cope?
This is where the doubts grow loudest.
Ryan Gravenberch rose to the task under Slot, powering through games and covering ground. But Alexis Mac Allister’s physical drop-off over the past 18 months has been hard to ignore. Iraola wants energy, aggression, repeated sprints. Does he have the right blend to shut down counters when both full-backs fly?
At Bournemouth, Iraola did not lean on a classic holding midfielder who simply sat and screened. He demanded front-foot aggression. Alex Scott spoke about being "very aggressive" without the ball. Tyler Adams talked about players believing they would win it back high.
That belief comes with risk. The warning signs have already flashed.
"I do not believe that midfield can function with the personnel in there," Carragher said. "For me, it does not work. And it is not just about personnel, it is the structure the manager is asking for."
Inside five minutes of Liverpool’s first Premier League game of the season, the rest defence cracked. Full-backs high. Centre-backs deep. No midfielder in the gap between them. Newcastle poured through that space and scored.
With Alexander-Arnold and Kerkez wired to attack, and Virgil van Dijk increasingly inclined to drop rather than step in, that vulnerability feels baked into the current set-up. It is hard to see it vanishing without a significant tweak.
Compromise or chaos
So where does Iraola turn? The market is shut. The solutions now must come from within.
"You do not want to lose the offensive side, the fluidity, the arrivals with numbers, but obviously we were punished the other day, especially in the first goal," Carragher admitted.
"We did not do a proper lockdown. But there is a balance. We cannot go from one way where we send a lot of people forward to keeping everyone back so we do not arrive with numbers. I do not want to tell Ryan Gravenberch not to carry the ball or arrive in the box.
"It is a matter of identifying the situation. You cannot be with the joystick every time [controlling] the player. There are players that are very good at smelling the danger. 'I cannot risk going now. I think I have to stay.' Recognising those situations is the job."
That is the tightrope Liverpool must walk. Keep the attacking waves that Iraola craves, without leaving a chasm for opponents to sprint into every time possession is lost.
For now, the results feel fitting: high-scoring draws, chaos at both ends, games that swing wildly. This is Liverpool as an unfinished project – expensively assembled, glaringly imperfect, and impossible to ignore.
The money has been spent. The flaws are obvious. The question now is simple: will this imbalance fuel a title charge built on sheer attacking force, or drag Iraola’s Liverpool into a season of thrilling, maddening underachievement?
