The clock is ticking down. In just nine days, Liverpool will not be able to make any more signings until January and Jürgen Klopp’s squad will be set until at least the mid-point in the season.
While four points from opening fixtures against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge and then Bournemouth at Anfield is a respectable start, the matches are yet to come thick and fast. As the Europa League kicks in and December gets closer, the calendar will get more congested and the demands on the team will increase.
Liverpool is fine for depth at center-back with one game per week, for example, but there might soon be some question marks emerging once that increases in the near future. Nat Phillips is not the answer and he needs a move away.
Without Moisés Caicedo and Roméo Lavia, there is also a glaring lack of a world-class option at the base of Liverpool’s midfield, with Alexis Mac Allister having been filling in for the time being. That, though, is not a permanent solution, and it remains to be seen what level Wataru Endo can reach.
For that reason, in an ideal world, more players would be added in each of those positions. Left-sided center-back is the biggest need, with back-up and an eventual successor to Virgil van Dijk required there, but after Levi Colwill signed a new contract with Chelsea, it is unclear who else could be targeted with a high enough ceiling to one day be a mainstay
A shorter-term stop-gap might be needed in the meantime to ensure that Liverpool does not run out of options at the back, with Van Dijk’s longevity set to be harmed if he is overplayed and over-relied on.
In midfield, that short-term option might already have been signed in Endo. The former Stuttgart captain, who is also the skipper of his national team, Japan, is not a typical Liverpool transfer addition at the age of 30, but, in the absence of any obvious world-class solutions being available on the market, he might do for now until something better comes up.
By signing an expensive player to fill the role, Liverpool might be using up the budget (and also the place in the squad) that could be used on someone they really want in the future. At the same time, Endo’s arrival means that last summer’s error of relying on Arthur Melo has been avoided.
There might be deals to be done in either of those areas before September 1 — and ideally, something would be done in both — but The Athletic reports that Ryan Gravenberch is also on the agenda as a ‘multifunctional midfielder
While that is not an obvious priority for the Reds to address, if Gravenberch decides to leave Bayern Munich in search of more game time, as a player Liverpool has admired for some time, it would be silly to miss out and let him go elsewhere.
Like with Cody Gakpo in January, it might not be an obvious priority for right now, but with Manchester United sniffing around, it might be now or never.
Gravenberch is definitely one to watch over the next week and a bit. In an ideal scenario, he would be arriving at Anfield alongside an elite holding midfielder and a young left-sided center-back with world-class potential.
