Klopp proved right on Liverpool's 'problem position' but Man City threat emerges

30 October 2023 , 07:30

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Klopp proved right on Liverpool's 'problem position' but Man City threat emerges

On an Anfield afternoon when football was put into perspective it can feel a little trite to focus on the specific positions of those playing the game, but Alexis Mac Allister has had to get used to that this season.

The Argentinean has, from pretty much the moment he arrived on Merseyside, been viewed as a very good addition for the Reds, albeit one who would be better off playing elsewhere on the pitch by conventional wisdom and by the eye test we all conducted on him while he was in Brighton and Hove Albion blue and white.

As a player who is not built as a traditional holding midfielder, Mac Allister has been subject to a different eye test this season, and given that he is now wearing Liverpool red that test is one that has been scrutinised and pored over much more than at any point of the 24-year-old's career so far.

And sure enough things have often looked a little off, as the little man wearing No.10 is surrounded and hounded in midfield by opponents often seeking to break on Liverpool, sometimes creating a feeling of exposing Mac Allister's deficiencies - of which a lack of pace is the clearest - in a bid to get at a side who increasingly appear to only have a handful of flaws.

'What would Jurgen Klopp do to correct this glaring problem?' we all asked, with thoughts turning to the useful but clearly squad-bulking Wataru Endo, or perhaps playing Trent Alexander-Arnold in midfield from the off, or maybe even Ryan Gravenberch further back. Well, Klopp would double down and back his man, of course.

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“It is obviously not really a discussion we have, otherwise we wouldn’t play him there, obviously,” Klopp said after Mac Allister turned in what was his best display in a Liverpool shirt in the 3-0 win over Nottingham Forest. “I think today everybody could see the benefit of a player who comes rather from the offensive side of the game than from the other side. In a game where you have to create things, where you have to pass, where you have to switch sides. That’s how it is then."

Mac Allister has often come up against more physcial opponents in midfield (PA)

And it is that offensive approach which has got Liverpool back on the track they had been so used to traversing before falling off the rails shattered last season, with so much of Klopp's rebuild centred on making them more athletic and creative in midfield and designed on helping them overwhelm sides who set out to do nothing but sit deep and frustrate. With players like Gravenberch and Dominik Szoboszlai in front of him - 'pressing monsters' as Klopp has almost certainly called them in the past - then Mac Allister can play in the deeper role with a minimum of fuss, safe in the knowledge that so much of the defending is going on in front of him.

Liverpool didn't have to defend much against Forest, but what they did have to do they did with ease, with the visitors' only breaks in the first half seeing them fall into Virgil van Dijk's offside trap. Forest were compact and that made for a narrow game, but when a player like Mac Allister is on the ball with so much of the game in front of him that creates opportunities, and Diogo Jota's opening goal came from the deepest of Liverpool's midfielders winning the ball and starting the attack.

He appears to be enjoying his deeper role (AP)

Mac Allister's role is likely to go on being influential then, although there is an issue he needs to address. The Argentinean picked up his fourth yellow card of the season in the second half on Sunday, meaning he's now one away from a one game suspension. In truth that suspension should now already be here as he should have been booked against Bournemouth in August and not given a straight red card that was later rescinded.

Liverpool play Luton away and Brentford at home before the trip to Manchester City in late November, and with that suspension hovering over Mac Allister - who has developed a tendency to pull players down when they run past him, perhaps aware of that lack of pace - Klopp will be wary of losing the man he is training to be his very modern No.6 for that trip to the Etihad, a real test of this revamped side.

So does he hope he picks up a booking against Luton? Or maybe leave him out for Brentford? That would be an option, but he is far more likely to trust that a player playing in a new position can take on another new responsibility and keep on evolving.

Because that is exactly what he has been doing so far.

Mark Jones