In an ideal world, Liverpool would have beaten Brighton and then been able to sit back and watch Arsenal’s win over Manchester City. Its own game did not unfold in quite the way that it would have liked, but there is no doubt that Pep Guardiola’s side dropping more points can only be viewed as a positive.
“They could [challenge for the title],” Gary Neville said of Liverpool on his Sky Sports podcast over the weekend. “They’re more likely to than Spurs, no doubt about that. I think Liverpool have got something about them.
“Today they were playing against a really good Brighton side. They’ve got an outstanding goalkeeper, Liverpool, that I always think will keep them in a lot of football matches. And they’ve got strikers who can score goals, and lots of them. They’ve got a good forward line.”
That assessment is fair. Only a VAR howler has prevented Liverpool from being in an even stronger position in the Premier League table — possibly even leading the standings had it beaten Spurs — and it has already got some difficult fixtures out of the way.
But as Alexis Mac Allister proved over the weekend, there is one question for the Reds: whether its midfield is strong enough defensively to be able to cope in the big head-to-heads, which could prove decisive.
“The midfield, it’s attacking,” Neville continued. “Has it got the defensive stability of what we’ve seen here today, when Rodri comes back in and when you see Rice and Partey and Jorginho? Have they got that defensive stability, Liverpool? If you put Declan Rice in Liverpool’s holding midfield position, or you put Rodri in there, I’d be saying Liverpool will definitely be on for the title.”
That is a fair assessment of where Liverpool is at right now, but that is nothing that Jürgen Klopp does not already know. There is a reason, after all, that he attempted to sign Moisés Caicedo for what would have been a British record $135m (£111m/€128m) during the summer.
Liverpool has never got close to paying a fee like that before and the money is there to be spent on a player who would be considered a game-changer for Klopp’s side, but the deal did not come off. Whether Caicedo still thinks moving to Chelsea was the right call is not really relevant, though would be a fair question.
But what is clear is that Liverpool knew this was an area of weakness that needed to be addressed. Given he is already 30 and his limitations are obvious, Wataru Endō cannot be a long-term solution, though a shorter-term fix in the meantime was a must.
Should Liverpool have moved for Rice? It would have been a bold move to decide that the former West Ham man was worth paying north of $125m for. The only reason Caicedo was priced so highly by Brighton is because the marker for a player in that position had been set by Mikel Arteta.
Liverpool also, of course, was not expecting to lose Jordan Henderson and Fabinho in the same window. The Reds, unlike Arsenal, had not been planning for a big signing in that position as a result, which Caicedo’s agent claims counted against them in that chase.
Even if Liverpool had known about Fabinho and Henderson in time, it would probably have been too late to dissuade Rice on the Gunners after so much groundwork had already been done.
Neville is right, then, that Rodri or Rice would have been a game-changer for Liverpool. But there is no way that Liverpool does not know that — its bid for Caicedo is proof.
The question is whether Mac Allister can reach the level that Liverpool requires as a number six for the big games, or whether there is another solution — Endō or someone else — who can offer an alternative. None of this, though, will have come as a surprise.
