Liverpool Set For the Brightest Future With "Mega Squad"
Out of the chaos of last season comes the huge developments of this
Despite losing the best Liverpool manager of my adult lifetime (I’m 52), and someone possibly on the same level as Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley but in different ways, the greatest gift Jürgen Klopp gave Liverpool was to stay one more year, when it seems that, just over a year ago, he was beaten down and almost defeated.
Had he gone then, it would be hard to know where we’d be right now. It probably wouldn’t be anywhere near this good, albeit counterfactuals can be made to suit whatever you believe.
Liverpool might still have the ageing Jordan Henderson and slowing Fabinho. There may not be the thriving and energising Alexis Mac Allister, Dominik Szoboszlai and Wataru Endo.
It’s unlikely, however you look at it, that Caoimhín Kelleher, after a rusty start, could have played any better, had he played 23 games (and counting) under a different manager. Two more games, and Kelleher will overtake Alisson for appearances this season. (And yet still some pundits don’t talk about Liverpool’s absentees, but note when a Man City or Arsenal player misses a match or two.)
It’s implausible to think of 26 games for Jarell Quansah and 19 for Conor Bradley amongst an injury list hovering between 8-12 for ages now. Or 12 games for Bobby Clark; two goals for Jayden Danns. Or Harvey Elliott, on 42 appearances, only one behind the top appearance makers.
Not only have these players all flourished, it means Klopp leaves a squad that is much larger than expected, even though last summer I tipped most of these (plus the unfortunately injured Stefan Bajcetic and Ben Doak) to make the squad bigger this season. I talked up Quansah, but didn’t expect him to play half the games, as one example.
The main downside of PSR as a concept is that clubs like Chelsea are buying mercenaries and now looking to sell key homegrown talents. To me, that’s a false economy, and a route to (further) soullessness. They shouldn’t have overspent in the first place, mind.
But equally, Liverpool – who always insist on buyback clauses – will, in the next year or two, have to sell at least some of Kelleher (albeit with his buyback written in capitals), Quansah, Danns, Doak, Clark, Bradley, Lewis Koumas, Calvin Ramsay, Fabio Carvalho, Sepp van den Berg, Stefan Bajcetic, Kaide Gordon, Luke Chambers, Owen Beck, Tyler Morton, James McConnell, Calum Scanlon, Trey Nyoni and various others breaking through, as they will all want more football at some point soon.
There’s just not room for them all when the senior pros are fit again, even if three or four senior pros leave.
The good news is, there’s no rush to sell any of them.
They can be loaned. That list of youngsters must have added a combined £100m to their values this season, but offer an incredible assortment for Klopp’s successor to go through like a pick-and-mix in a sweet shop.
A new manager can look at someone like Bradley and, if he wants an overlapping full-back or a wing-back ahead of a back three, see a ready-made solution; then Trent Alexander-Arnold (whose new contract can now be sorted) can fit in somewhere else.
Not including players out on loan who could have a future at Liverpool (Morton, van den Berg, Carvalho, Ramsay - if he gets fully fit), the Reds have used 35 players this season.
That’s 11 more than the standard squad size.
Incredibly, 28 of those are aged 27 and under; 24 are aged 25 or under; 16 are aged 21 and under. Again, that’s not including new England U21 star Morton and several others out on loan.
So when people talk about a new manager having a different style of play, there’s everything there, across the whole age range.
But there’s a weird change in the transfer market that makes this absolutely ideal for Liverpool to gain an advantage.
The second half of this article is for pay Zen Den subscribers only.
*Note: the ZenDen is additional content separate from the TTT Main Hub. Rather than seek to write freelance work for other outlets, to supplement my income and keep TTT running (as everything gets more expensive), I write paywalled, zen-like material on the ZenDen. The ZenDen is a quiet space with no commenting – just articles to read. The community remains on the Main Hub, and its where I interact with subscribers, write different articles, and provide post-match analysis.*
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Zen Den (Tomkins Times) to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.