Liverpool have performed fairly poorly this season, but Micah Richards believes that they’ve made a change which has benefited them massively.
Last season, the Reds were one of the best teams in the world, with the Anfield outfit only getting knocked out of the Champions League due to the sheer quality that Paris Saint-Germain had.
This term, while their focus will still be on retaining the Premier League title, Arne Slot and Mohamed Salah have both said that they’d prefer to win the Champions League this time around.
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However, after they were beaten by Galatasaray last month, it wasn’t clear whether they’d even have the ability to do that.
Mohamed Salah (Liverpool FC) looks on during the Champions League group game between Eintracht Frankfurt and Liverpool FC at the Deutsche Bank Park
Photo by Ulrik Pedersen/NurPhoto via Getty Images
That is, until Slot chose to make a change, which has solved a lot of the Reds’ problems.
Micah Richards says Liverpool look better with Dominik Szoboszlai, Ryan Gravenberch and Alexis Mac Allister in midfield
Last season, Dominik Szoboszlai, Ryan Gravenberch, and Alexis Mac Allister were integral to Liverpool’s form.
The midfield trio helped solidify the spine of the Reds’ starting XI, and since they all worked well with one another, their synergy was second-to-none.
Szoboszlai and Mac Allister do most of the running, but without Gravenberch sitting just above Liverpool’s defence, they’d be far worse off.
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And, although Slot tried to change his midfield trio to shoehorn Florian Wirtz in, it was clear that this was never going to work with Richards now saying that Liverpool look much better with their three original midfielders.
“Well, they’ve gone back to how they were last season and not just in terms of the way they perform, but also the style of their play and their midfield,” he said on The Rest Is Football Podcast.
“Yeah, I mean, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist. It was always going to be difficult to get Wirtz in the team. And we talked about that.
“And me and Alan, we had a bit of a back and forth, but he was alluding to the fact that they weren’t winning their challenges.
“I agreed with that point, but it was just, they were lacking something in the middle of the park.
“And when you’ve got Gravenberch back and when you’ve got Mac Allister back, we know the running power of Szoboszlai, they do look a little bit better balanced in that way, I would say.”
Liverpool need to stick with their starting XI that beat Real Madrid on Tuesday
If Liverpool want to start stringing some results together, they need to stick with the same starting XI.
One of the Anfield outfit’s main problems this season has been the number of players who have been chopped and changed in each game.
The fact that Slot has so many good players is obviously an incredible problem to have, but it also means that none of his first-team squad have the chance to get used to one another’s playstyles.
However, since the Dutchman has chosen a similar team to the one that won the Premier League title for them last season in their last couple of games, things have gone far more smoothly.
Arne Slot clapping the Liverpool fans after their win versus Real Madrid.
Photo by Liverpool FC/Liverpool FC via Getty Images
Reminders of Liverpool from last season have started to shine through, which shows why they need to build upon this and stick with the same starting XI.
Indeed, that does mean that a few big-name players, such as Alexander Isak, will miss out, but if it’s for the betterment of the team, it feels like a worthwhile sacrifice, for now at least.