After hundreds of millions spent on players, what was Liverpool’s plan? | Premier League

Wwhat was it supposed to look like? Among all the conversations around Liverpool and their disappointing form at the start of this season is perhaps the hardest question of all to answer. What were they trying to do? If it worked, how would this team play?

The champions spent £424 million (about $550 million) on new players in the summer, but if all had gone well they would have spent a further £40 million ($53 million) to sign Crystal Palace centre-back Marc Guei. The England international would at least provide additional defensive options (Giovanni Leoni's injury had further reduced their defensive options), allowing Arne Slote to rest Ibrahima Konate, whose poor form continued into the match.he defeated Manchester City with a score of 3:0. on Sunday. City's early penalty was a direct result of Konate stepping into the path of Conor Bradley as Jérémie Docou burst in from the left.

But Konate's partnership with Virgil van Dijk is proven. Things were much better in previous seasons. While neither centre-back is playing well, Liverpool's stunning openness this season has less to do with individual form and more to do with structure – this despite having reverted to last season's midfield in recent weeks.

Against Aston Villa last weekend, Slot selected a squad consisting of 10 players who had featured for the club last season, plus Hugo Ekiteke. There was another change against Real Madrid on Tuesday, with Florian Wirtz replacing Cody Gakpo. Liverpool won both of these games, but neither Villa nor Madrid tested their obvious vulnerability to direct balls played behind defenders. Going back to basics, trying to move on to something new and more gradual, may not have been exactly an acknowledgment of the hundreds of millions wasted over the summer, but it was probably an acknowledgment that there was an attempt to change too much, too quickly.

Football teams are fragile organisms. Even on a purely tactical level, without taking into account the endless complexities of psychology, changing one element of the composition affects not just the other 10 elements, but also the coalitions between them. Take away Trent Alexander-Arnold, for example, and Liverpool no longer have a player at right back who naturally develops into an auxiliary defensive midfielder alongside Ryan Gravenberch, covering the center of defense and freeing up central midfielders Alexis McAllister and Dominik Szoboszlai, as well as being able to simultaneously make long passes to switch play and precise, quick passes forward to free up Mohamed Salah.

By the end of last season, Slot had become convinced that Liverpool had been worked through by rivals, due in part to the club's limited transfer activity the previous summer. In any case, there always came a point when that side became clearly his and not Jurgen Klopp's. In this sense, significant changes were inevitable and necessary. But what was the intention? If everything went well, what would this side look like?

Liverpool signed two center forwards for £210 million ($276 million). Perhaps the plan was always to play just one of Alexander Isak and Ekitike to keep them fresh, with one always ready to come off the bench, as West Brom once did with Romelu Lukaku and Shane Long. But given their cost, this is an extremely privileged position, even if either of them could theoretically operate wide in extreme situations and thus provide additional depth to the lineup.

But where could Wirtz find the position, which cost £100 million ($131 million) plus extras? He appears to have been promised that he would play in the centre, which helped convince him to move from Bayer Leverkusen to Anfield rather than Bayern. At the start of the season, Slot favored Wirtz as a central creator in a 4-2-3-1 formation. But it appeared to leave Liverpool hopelessly exposed at the back – something that was evident even after they had won their first five games of the season.

Wirtz can adapt, but at the moment he is struggling with the physical aspect Premier League. It is very difficult to imagine how he and Salah, whose lack of natural defensive ability Liverpool have always had to compensate for, can play in the same team without risking overloading the midfield – at least not in the Premier League; Madrid simply did not present the same physical challenge.

In fact, it may turn out that no more than two of Isak, Ekitike, Wirtz and Salah can play together. Even if the summer was part of a transition to a post-Salah future, it is very difficult to see what the plan was, unless Liverpool always had some kind of 4-3-1-2 formation in mind, with Wirtz playing behind Alexander Isak and Ekiteike, with the width provided at full-back, which would at least help explain why they signed Milos Kerkez and Jeremie Frimpong. In a world of direct play and long throws, perhaps the two strikers will be the next part of English football's 1980s revival.

But for now, Liverpool are a cautionary tale of how you can take a very good team, throw money at them and make things much worse.

• This is an extract from Football with Jonathan Wilson, Guardian US's weekly look at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? E-mail [email protected]and he'll answer the best questions in a future episode.