When Liverpool icon Roberto Firmino left the club at the end of last season after reaching the end of his contract, the club elected not to replace him.
It was a perfectly reasonable decision given that, between the resumption of the campaign following the World Cup and the end of proceedings in May, Firmino only started two Premier League games. In terms of minutes alone, he wasn’t going to be leaving an especially big hole.
Granted, his lack of game time in the first half of 2023 was partly down to injury — he was only available from mid-February onwards — but the arrival of Cody Gakpo from PSV Eindhoven was an even bigger factor.
Gakpo emerged as his heir apparent, taking on the false nine role that once belonged unequivocally to the Brazilian and looking increasingly at home.
Liverpool was losing an attacker but it had pre-emptively replaced his profile, and after moves in 2022 for Darwin Núñez and Luis Díaz, it still had five elite options to choose from.
The Reds could wish Firmino well without worrying all that much about missing him, confident that there wouldn’t be a repeat of the questionable claims that it was suffering without Sadio Mané following his exit 12 months earlier.
Sure enough, Firmino’s name has barely been mentioned in the first two months of 2023/24, but the game against Brighton was the first time you could really say that Liverpool felt his absence.
With Gakpo out injured and Diogo Jota serving a one-game suspension (erroneously, as it turned out, after a Premier League panel voted that he shouldn’t have received a second yellow card against Spurs, via ESPN), Liverpool had no senior attackers on the bench.
Indeed, the only forward option that was available in reserve for Jürgen Klopp was Ben Doak, the 17-year-old who’s only played 37 minutes of top-flight football to date.
And this was probably the reason Klopp made a season-low three substitutes, with two of the players he introduced (Ibrahima Konaté and Joe Gomez) defenders. The manager had made all five of the possible changes in five of the first seven league games, and four in the other two.
He’s seen his attacking substitutes make a significant impact so far, most notably when Núñez scored twice to secure a remarkable victory for 10 men at Newcastle, but also when Jota struck to seal the win against West Ham, and Núñez and Díaz helped engineer a turnaround at Wolves.
Klopp, though, didn’t enjoy his usual luxury here, one he might have utilized at 2-1 as Liverpool tried to kill the game or at 2-2 when it searched for a winner. His side beat the Brighton press with far greater regularity in the second period to fashion promising situations, but often the final piece was missing. The Reds looked like they needed some new ideas in and around the penalty area.
During last season’s run-in, Klopp could have looked to Firmino as a substitute even if Gakpo and Jota weren’t available, and this could have been exactly the refresh that was required at the Amex.
The reality is that this was an unfortunate combination of circumstances, and, in all likelihood, Klopp will have at least four senior attackers available in the vast majority of matches.
But in this particular instance, one of Liverpool’s greatest strengths — its peerless offensive depth — became a temporary weakness.
