Alexander Isak made his Liverpool debut against Atletico Madrid.placeholder image
Alexander Isak made his Liverpool debut against Atletico Madrid. | Getty Images
Arne Slot has settled on his strongest Liverpool XI, but will there be a place for Alexander Isak when he returns to fitness?
One of Arne Slot’s biggest strengths for Liverpool last season was consistency, he knew what his best team was and who he could trust.
All this does though, is make his scatter gun approach to team selections this season look all the more bizarre with four different players used at right-back perfectly demonstrating some of the problems that he has faced. Some of the problems have been of his own creation as he attempted to find a way to fit all of his shiny new toys into the team all at the same time.
Alexander Isak v Hugo Ekitike debate settled?
The reality is, it hasn’t worked. The forward line hasn’t clicked, the midfield has been porous, and the defence has been all over the place. A mixture of injuries, players playing out of position, others out of form and new signings struggling to adapt has seen Slot face criticism since the early stages of the season. Against Real Madrid, it looked like Liverpool’s strongest XI, it looked balanced and organised from back to front and only Thibaut Courtois prevented the scoreline from looking even more one-sided.
What the win over Madrid also provided, is an answer to the Hugo Ekitike and Alexander Isak debate with Danny Murphy on the talkSPORT White and Jordan show insistent that the £125m record signing faces a fight on his hands to get back into the team: “He's sat right now, has got no argument to say he should be playing, because A, he's not fit, and B, when he has been fit, he's not played as well as Ekitike. So, when he gets himself fit and he starts playing well, and he comes off the bench and scores, and Ekitike has a bad few games, and all of a sudden he goes in and it flips, then we'll see.
“But Isak's quality is undoubted. So, he'll get himself fit, he'll get himself right, and then there'll be a conundrum. And that's fine to have, especially if you're successful and doing well in both competitions. I just think you don't break that kind of record and smash the transfer record in terms of the fee, and say, ‘there you go, take your place on the bench’.”
Should Isak walk back into the team?
Murphy is right. Isak has shown nothing of the form that saw him in the conversation as one of Europe’s best strikers. Missing pre-season training has had a detrimental effect as has Slot trying to find the best way to fit him into a team alongside players like Mohamed Salah and Florian Wirtz.
Not every player can be the main man and the focal point of the attack. Ekitike has been an upgrade on Darwin Nunez, which might not have been seen as too hard a task, but he has provided more finesse as well as a physicality to the forward line.
Isak is a completely different player and will have to adapt. Slot should have learned by now that adapting his tactics to fit players in is the wrong way to go about his team selections. Wirtz had his best game for Liverpool playing off the left and Salah looked as sharp as he has for some time. There was a balance that has been missing for most of the season.
As with Andy Robertson and Milos Kerkez, it shouldn’t matter when a player was signed or how much was paid for them, Slot has to pick the in form player and the best man for the job. At this moment in time, that man is Ekitike.
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