Liverpool's Midfield Solution: Vitaly Janelt for Klopp

Ask any Liverpool supporter where the squad needs help and the reply comes back instantly: midfield. Not another forward, not a full-back. Someone to sort out the chaos in the centre of the pitch.

Right now, that area is badly out of tune with what Andoni Iraola demands. His football lives off the press. It needs a unit that can hunt in packs, then put a foot on the ball and dictate. At the moment, Liverpool have plenty of individual quality, but not a combination that truly knits together.

That’s the crux of it: together. On paper, you can just about piece this midfield into something functional. On the grass, it looks unbalanced.

A Midfield of Pieces, Not a Puzzle

Iraola’s problem is profile, not talent. Too many players want to do similar things, in similar spaces.

Dominik Szoboszlai is built for the chaos: he wants to chase, harry, and suffocate opponents. In a high-energy system, he’s gold – but only if there’s someone behind him anchoring the structure, dropping deep, taking the first pass and starting attacks from the base.

Ryan Gravenberch is not that player. He prefers to carry the ball, glide past challenges, and join attacks rather than sit and screen.

Alexis Mac Allister comes closer. He can play deeper, he can organise, he can pass through the lines. But it’s not his most natural role and it shows at times. You sense Liverpool are asking him to be something slightly different to what he truly is.

The ideal long-term answer might be Trey Nyoni. The talent is obvious, the profile looks right. The question is timing. Is he ready to be thrown into a Premier League title push and a demanding, pressing system week after week? That’s a big call for any manager.

Which is why a short-term, specialist solution starts to make a lot of sense.

Enter Vitaly Janelt – Klopp’s Kind of Midfielder

Jurgen Klopp has just named his first Germany senior squad. Among the eye-catching inclusions was a name that will have raised a few eyebrows outside west London: Vitaly Janelt.

The Brentford midfielder has been quietly outstanding. His first international call-up is no gift. He has earned it.

The numbers back that up. Janelt has covered the third-most distance in the Premier League this season – 58.8 kilometres – a running total that screams work-rate and tactical discipline. On top of that, he sits fifth for interceptions, with 3.20 per 90 minutes. He doesn’t just run; he reads the game, steps in, and breaks things up.

That is exactly the profile Iraola’s midfield is crying out for.

Klopp clearly sees a player made for high-intensity football. Someone who thrives when the game speeds up instead of shrinking from it. That same trait makes Janelt an obvious candidate to stabilise Liverpool’s engine room.

Drop him in behind Szoboszlai and alongside Mac Allister, and the structure changes instantly. He can sit, screen, and recycle. He can do the ugly yards without complaint. He can allow the more expressive midfielders to press and create without constantly glancing over their shoulders.

The Bridge to Nyoni

There’s another key detail: Janelt is 28. He’s in his prime, but not a decade-long block on the pathway for Nyoni or any other emerging talent.

He would buy Liverpool time. Time for Nyoni to develop physically. Time for him to learn the demands of Iraola’s pressing game without being hurled in as a saviour. Time for the club to shape a long-term midfield without sacrificing the present.

Janelt doesn’t arrive as a superstar. He arrives as a solution. A player who fits the system, matches the intensity, and fills the one role Liverpool don’t currently have a natural answer for.

Right now, that makes him just about the perfect option for the Reds.