Liverpool's Expensive Squad: A Study in Imbalance
Liverpool have just thrown another £200m-plus at the squad, outspending last summer’s rebuild. Yet as the window shuts, Andoni Iraola is left staring at a dressing room that looks expensively assembled, wildly talented – and oddly misshapen.
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."
That is the nub of it. Despite the headline £123m move for Bradley Barcola from Paris Saint-Germain, the questions have not gone away. In some areas, they have multiplied.
A left-footed void on the right
The Barcola deal cuts straight to the heart of the imbalance. Liverpool have just lost Mohamed Salah, the most devastating left-footed right-winger the Premier League has seen. In response, they have stockpiled players who prefer to start on the opposite flank.
"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 operate across the front line, but nobody at this price is being signed as a utility option. His best work comes from the left. That is where Cody Gakpo has been used so far. It is also where Florian Wirtz and Hugo Ekitike have featured previously.
Rio Ngumoha broke through on that same flank before being trialled on the right in pre-season. Victor Munoz, another left winger by trade, has arrived on the back of one strong season in the top flight. Everyone wants that same corridor of grass.
On its own, this is not a transfer catastrophe. It is more quirk than crisis. But the pattern feeds a wider concern: Liverpool are overloaded in certain zones and worryingly thin in others.
Full-backs at the heart of the storm
Nowhere is that thinness more glaring than at full-back. When Jeremie Frimpong arrived last summer, the message from inside the club was clear: he was not a like-for-like replacement for Trent Alexander-Arnold at right-back.
Two games into the new Premier League season, that is exactly where he has been stationed.
With Conor Bradley injured, Frimpong is the only natural fit for Iraola’s high-octane demands in that role. Some have floated Dominik Szoboszlai as an emergency option, but that would be a tactical fudge. Shunting a centre-back wide is even less appealing in a system that leans so heavily on its full-backs.
The numbers underline it. Frimpong and Milos Kerkez currently sit among the top three players in the Premier League for sprints. Above them? Adrien Truffert, the left-back at Iraola’s former club Bournemouth. This is not a coincidence. This is the blueprint.
Look at the average positions from Liverpool’s opening two league games and compare them to that title-winning campaign under Arne Slot. The full-backs are flying on, often together, stretching the pitch and flooding attacks. It is exhilarating. It is also dangerous.
Because every time they go, someone has to stay.
Midfield left on an island
That someone is supposed to be in midfield. That is where the doubts grow louder.
Ryan Gravenberch once powered Slot’s side to a title with his ability to surge and recover, but this is a different set-up, a different set of demands. Alexis Mac Allister’s reduced physical edge over the past 18 months only sharpens the question: does Iraola have the profiles to protect the team in transition?
Is he even looking for a classic holding midfielder? At Bournemouth, he did not want a sitter. He wanted hunters. Alex Scott spoke about being "very aggressive" without the ball. Tyler Adams talked about players believing they would win it back high up the pitch.
The warning lights 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."
Within five minutes of the opening Premier League fixture, Liverpool’s rest defence was ripped open. Full-backs high, centre-backs deep, and a gaping void between them. Newcastle surged into that space and scored. The pattern felt alarmingly familiar.
With Alexander-Arnold and Kerkez so aggressive and Virgil van Dijk now more inclined to drop off than step in, the gap between ambition and security looks set to be a recurring theme. Iraola has been handed Liverpool’s most expensive squad in history – and, arguably, its most obviously unbalanced in a decade.
Searching for balance without the market
So where does the fix come from if the window is shut?
Any answer will involve sacrifice. "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 said.
"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."
For now, Liverpool look exactly what the early scorelines suggest: a team built for chaos. High-scoring draws feel like their natural habitat. The attack bristles with talent, the flaws are obvious, and the whole thing teeters on a knife edge.
Imbalanced. Imperfect. And, for better or worse, impossible to ignore.
