Liverpool's Midfield Concerns: Carragher's Warning Ahead of New Season
Jamie Carragher has sounded the alarm over Liverpool’s midfield, warning that Andoni Iraola’s new-look side is nowhere near ready to fight for the Premier League title.
With the 2026/27 season just over a week away, Liverpool are trying to reset after a chaotic year that ended with Arne Slot’s dismissal and a scramble to finish fifth. Champions League football was salvaged, but only just. The title-winning aura from 12 months earlier has long since faded.
Now Iraola steps into the storm.
A new era, old problems
The summer has not brought the sweeping overhaul some supporters expected. Liverpool have moved quietly, adding Victor Munoz and Ronald Araujo, while Jeremy Jacquet is on his way after a deal with Rennes was wrapped up back in February. The hunt for a new winger continues after Mohamed Salah’s departure, with Bradley Barcola still a live target.
But Carragher’s eye is fixed somewhere else entirely.
For the former defender, the real fault line runs straight through the middle of the pitch.
“The midfield issue for me is still a huge problem for Liverpool,” he said on the latest episode of The Overlap Fan Debate, brought to you by Sky Bet. He has seen enough in pre-season to deepen his concerns.
Carragher admitted he hasn’t watched every friendly, but he did sit through the last two, against Leeds and Monaco. What he saw looked horribly familiar.
Last season, Liverpool’s midfield often resembled open countryside. Opponents ran through them, found gaps between the lines, and exposed a structure that never truly settled. Carragher’s verdict is blunt: that problem “has not gone away at all.”
Too much talent, not enough balance
The pressure now falls on Iraola’s preferred midfield trio. Dominik Szoboszlai, who many expected to operate as a No.10, is being used deeper, almost as a central midfielder alongside Ryan Gravenberch. On paper, it is a thrilling, box-to-box combination. On grass, Carragher fears it is chaos waiting to happen.
“That’s only going to get bigger with the deployment of Szoboszlai in midfield,” he warned, highlighting how the Hungarian’s role could stretch the team even more. With Szoboszlai and Gravenberch both eager to surge forward, the centre of the pitch risks becoming a highway for counter-attacks.
Carragher is not questioning the quality of the individuals. Far from it.
“When you name six or seven of Liverpool’s players, you can’t say they’re not top players,” he said. “You can’t say Gravenberch is not a really good player, or Florian Wirtz, or Szoboszlai.”
The issue, in his eyes, is the blend. As a unit, that midfield three worries him.
He sees a group loaded with talent but short on discipline, structure and defensive security. “There’s almost too much quality, but they all want to go and play and run,” he said. Even in pre-season, he noted, the same old image keeps reappearing: “the space is coming through the middle.”
Title talk on hold
Liverpool’s recruitment drive has understandably focused on replacing Salah’s goals and threat from the right. But Carragher believes the real ceiling on this team sits behind the forwards, not ahead of them.
Until the midfield is fixed, he does not see a genuine title challenge.
In a league where small details decide everything, Liverpool’s greatest legend of the modern TV era fears the club’s biggest problem is still hiding in plain sight — right at the heart of the team.
