Liverpool's Squad Imbalance: A £200m Investment with Missing Pieces
Liverpool have just thrown another £200m-plus at the squad. More than last summer. More than most of Europe. And yet Andoni Iraola walks away from the window with a team that looks anything but complete.
The numbers scream ambition. The questions scream louder.
A lopsided attack without Salah
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, and he hit every nerve among the fanbase.
The headline signing is Bradley Barcola, £123m from Paris Saint-Germain. A huge fee, a huge talent. But even that move drags Liverpool back to the same word: balance.
They have just lost Mohamed Salah, the best left-footed right-winger the Premier League has seen. In response, Liverpool have gone heavy on left-sided attackers and left-footers who prefer the opposite flank. It looks clever on paper. On the pitch, it risks becoming a jigsaw with one crucial piece missing.
"Liverpool have not got a real out-and-out right-sided attacker," Carragher said. "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 there. He can play almost anywhere across the front. But you do not spend that money to park him in a role that does not maximise his strengths. His best work has come from the left. That is also where Cody Gakpo has started this season, and where Florian Wirtz and Hugo Ekitike have both operated.
Rio Ngumoha broke through on the left too, only to be trialled on the opposite flank in pre-season. Victor Munoz? Signed after one standout season in the top flight. As a left winger.
Individually, none of these decisions is disastrous. Together, they form a pattern. Liverpool are stacked with players who like similar zones, similar angles, similar runs. The fear is not that the recruitment is a failure. It is that the puzzle is skewed, overstocked in some areas and glaringly thin in others.
Full-backs at the heart of the storm
Nowhere is that thinness more obvious than at full-back. When Jeremie Frimpong arrived last summer, Liverpool stressed he was not a Trent Alexander-Arnold replacement. That was the line. The reality? In Iraola’s first two league games, Frimpong has started at right-back.
With Conor Bradley injured, he is the only specialist fit for the role. Some argue Dominik Szoboszlai could be shoehorned in, but that feels like what it is: a compromise. Shifting a centre-back wide would be worse, especially in Iraola’s set-up, where full-backs are not just defenders – they are the launchpad.
The data underlines it. Frimpong and Milos Kerkez sit among the top three players in the Premier League this season for sprints. The only player ahead of them? Adrien Truffert, the left-back Iraola worked with at Bournemouth. This is not a quirk. This is the blueprint.
Look at Liverpool’s average positions in their opening two matches and compare them to that title-winning season under Arne Slot. The full-backs fly. Often at the same time. That leaves a yawning responsibility on the midfield to plug gaps, read danger, and shut down counters before they start.
Can this midfield do it?
Ryan Gravenberch once rose to that challenge for Slot, driving Liverpool to a title with his energy and timing. But Alexis Mac Allister’s physical drop-off over the last 18 months is hard to ignore. Iraola wants intensity, aggression, constant engagement. Does he have the legs, the instincts, the profile to protect a team that attacks with this much abandon?
Midfield structure under strain
The bigger question: is Iraola even looking for a true holding midfielder?
At Bournemouth, his midfielders hunted. Alex Scott described being "very aggressive" out of possession. Tyler Adams talked about a group that "really believe that we are going to win the ball high up the field." That is the mindset. Win it early, win it often, and you do not have to worry about what is behind you.
There are already warning signs that this Liverpool side cannot live that way without consequences.
"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 first Premier League game of the season, the rest defence was laid bare. Full-backs high. Centre-backs deep. No midfielder in the space between. Newcastle saw the gap, drove straight through it, and scored.
With Alexander-Arnold and Kerkez encouraged to bomb on, and Virgil van Dijk increasingly inclined to drop rather than step up, that gap will not close on its own. It is baked into the way this team currently plays.
Compromises and instincts
Is there a fix without dipping back into the market? Possibly. But it will mean compromise.
"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, reflecting on the balance issue.
"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 crux. Iraola can drill structure and shape on the training ground, but in the chaos of a Premier League game, he needs players who sense the danger without being told. Someone who holds when everyone else goes. Someone who thinks like a defender while playing in midfield.
Right now, Liverpool look like a team built to score and be scored against. A couple of high-scoring draws feels about right. They are thrilling, volatile, and impossible to take your eyes off.
Whether this side ends up overpowering opponents or unravelling under its own imbalance will define Iraola’s first season. For all the money spent, Liverpool have built a team that might just be too wild to ignore – and too flawed to trust.
