Liverpool's Recruitment Dilemma: A Squad in Disarray

Liverpool have spent big again. More than £200m sunk into this window, a larger net outlay than last summer, a squad rebuilt at huge cost. And yet Andoni Iraola reaches the end of it staring at a team that still does not quite make sense.

"It does not look like a balanced squad," Jamie Carragher told Sky Sports. "Liverpool are short in the full-back areas and probably a midfield player as well."

One line, straight to the heart of the unease, even after the headline £123m arrival of Bradley Barcola from Paris Saint-Germain.

Barcola’s signing is supposed to be the statement. Instead, it shines a light on the bigger question. Liverpool have just lost Mohamed Salah, the most devastating left-footed right-winger the Premier League has seen, and responded by stockpiling the opposite profile on the other flank. It looks less like a rebuild, more like a lopsided experiment.

Carragher did not hide his concern. "Liverpool have not got a real out-and-out right-sided attacker," he said. "We have not got anybody with a left foot on that right side, like Mo Salah. I am disappointed. I am not quite sure what we are going to do on that right wing right now."

Barcola can play across the line, yes. He has that modern versatility coaches crave. But at £123m, you are not paying for a utility man. You are paying for him in his best role, and it is a stretch to argue that role is on the right. Cody Gakpo has already been used off the left. Florian Wirtz and Hugo Ekitike have both operated there too. It is crowded.

Look wider and the pattern repeats. Rio Ngumoha broke through on the left and has been trialled on the opposite flank in pre-season. Victor Munoz, perhaps the most natural option to patrol that right side, arrives off the back of a single top-flight campaign – as a left winger.

None of that, on its own, condemns Liverpool’s recruitment. It is intrigue, not outright incompetence. But it feeds into a broader fear among supporters: the squad looks bloated in some zones and worryingly thin in others.

Full-back is the clearest example. When Jeremie Frimpong joined last summer, the message from inside the club was that he was not a Trent Alexander-Arnold replacement at right-back. Two games into this season, that is exactly where the Netherlands international has been stationed.

With Conor Bradley injured, Frimpong is the only true specialist in the role. Some have floated Dominik Szoboszlai as a makeshift option, but that feels like a workaround, not a plan. Shunting a centre-back wide is even less appealing given how pivotal the full-backs are in Iraola’s system.

The numbers underline it. Frimpong and Milos Kerkez sit among the top three players in the Premier League for sprints so far. Above them? Adrien Truffert, flying up and down the flank for Iraola’s former club Bournemouth. This is not a quirk. It is the foundation of how he wants his teams to play.

Look at Liverpool’s average positions in their opening two league matches and compare them to that title-winning season under Arne Slot. The full-backs are high, often at the same time, and that aggressive shape heaps responsibility on the midfield to plug the gaps and kill transitions.

That is where the doubts deepen. Ryan Gravenberch grew into that role under Slot, driving the team forward and still offering legs behind the ball. Alexis Mac Allister, though, has seen his physical edge erode over the past 18 months. Can Iraola really rely on this midfield to smother counter-attacks when the full-backs are already halfway up the pitch?

There is a tactical fork in the road here. Is Iraola even looking for a classic holding midfielder? At Bournemouth, he wanted his midfielders to engage, not sit. Alex Scott described being "very aggressive" without the ball. Tyler Adams talked about the players believing "that we are going to win the ball high up the field."

That front-foot mindset is exhilarating when it works. It is brutal when it does not. Liverpool have already felt the downside. "I do not believe that midfield can function with the personnel in there," Carragher said. "For me, it does not work. And it is not just about personnel, it is the structure the manager is asking for."

The warning signs flashed within five minutes of their first Premier League game. Full-backs pushed high, centre-backs holding deep, and a yawning hole between the lines where a screening midfielder should have been. Newcastle poured straight through that gap and scored.

Given how Alexander-Arnold and Kerkez are wired to attack, and with Virgil van Dijk increasingly inclined to drop rather than step in, this is not a problem that simply evaporates with time on the training ground. Iraola has been handed the most expensive squad in Liverpool’s history – and yet it feels like the most obviously flawed group the club has fielded in a decade.

So where does he turn if the market can no longer bail him out? The answer probably lies in compromise.

"You do not want to lose the offensive side, the fluidity, the arrivals with numbers, but obviously we were punished the other day, especially in the first goal,"

Carragher said, reflecting on the balance Iraola must find. "We did not do a proper lockdown. But there is a balance. We cannot go from one way where we send a lot of people forward to keeping everyone back so we do not arrive with numbers. I do not want to tell Ryan Gravenberch not to carry the ball or arrive in the box.

"It is a matter of identifying the situation. You cannot be with the joystick every time [controlling] the player. There are players that are very good at smelling the danger. 'I cannot risk going now. I think I have to stay.' Recognising those situations is the job."

For now, the scorelines tell the story. High-scoring draws, chaos at both ends, a team that thrills and terrifies in equal measure. Liverpool look imbalanced and imperfect, patched together in places and overloaded in others – but they are never dull.

The question is not whether this side will entertain. It is whether Iraola can turn this wild, expensive construction into a team capable of sustaining a title challenge, or whether those same flaws will drag Liverpool back into the pack when the season hardens.