Why wingers are Liverpool's top summer priority
The Reds are looking to make changes out wide when the summer arrives after being caught out by a league-wide shift.
While Arne Slot clearly deserves his share of the blame for Liverpool’s woeful season, you feel for the Dutchman in that he cannot always be honest about its causes.
And never was that more evident than after the Reds’ painful last-gasp defeat to Wolverhampton Wanderers on Tuesday evening.
Asked if he agreed with a withering Virgil van Dijk assessment of the performance at Molineux, the club’s head coach replied: “‘Slow’ or ‘predictable’ are words that I can understand [Van Dijk] uses, but if you want to go faster, you have to be able to dominate situations on the sides because then something can happen. We struggled to dominate on the sides today.”
Given it would be unwise in the extreme to criticise players he needs to show their best form in the coming months, that is about as close as Slot is ever going to get to highlighting one of Liverpool’s biggest issues this term.
Yet even in that excruciatingly diplomatic answer it was clear that he, like every watching fan, had identified the worrying role played by his starting wingers in a woeful evening.
Mohamed Salah may have scored the equaliser, but this was a performance that brought zero chances created and two shots from 70 touches of the ball.
Heated debate continues to rage on social media over whether Slot is adequately platforming the Egyptian, but his looseness of touch and inability to find a teammate - most notably during a late counter - despite such heavy involvement suggests this is simply a player inevitably losing his battle with the passing of time.
And even his most ardent defenders can surely acknowledge there is a contradiction to believing Slot is not using his No.11 correctly this term while simultaneously giving him zero credit for last season’s unprecedented numbers.
On the other wing, Cody Gakpo also continued a disappointing campaign in, like Salah, shooting twice and failing to create a chance.
That it did not have to be that way was underlined by Hugo Ekitike briefly taking on wing responsibilities for a moment in the second half, beating his man in the box and pulling the ball back dangerously to highlight exactly what his attacking colleagues should have been doing all along.
That moment was also a useful indicator of what is needed on the wings in this new version of the Premier League, which features some of the most disciplined and athletic low blocks the division has ever seen from top to bottom.
It is not just Salah and Gakpo who have struggled with this change, with their 10 and nine goal contributions respectively this season putting them ahead of big names like Bukayo Saka, Anthony Gordon and Pedro Neto.
Ultimately, a significant jump in defensive organisation, physicality and quality has made it even harder for wingers to find space to run into in behind, making those darting runs to finish off moves less useful than ever.
Instead, the importance of dribbling has been significantly boosted, and it is no coincidence that Liverpool look better when they have one-v-one specialists Jeremie Frimpong and Rio Ngumoha on the pitch, even if fitness issues and age have meant they have not been able to do so as often as would be liked.
In that context, Liverpool’s interest in RB Leipzig winger Yan Diomande, who has been watched extensively ahead of a summer in which they are expected to bolster their options out wide, makes a lot of sense.
