Liverpool may have some serious concerns to address in future windows with the club’s squad possessing 11 players statistically past their peak.
This follows from extensive research carried out by The Athletic, with Caoimhe O’Neill and Mark Carey noting that there are examples that may stand as exceptions to the rule – rightly pointing out that many would be willing to overlook Virgil van Dijk’s age given the quality on offer.
Beyond the talismanic Dutch centre-half, Joel Matip, Andy Robertson, James Milner, Jordan Henderson, Thiago Alcantara, Fabinho, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Mo Salah, Sadio Mane and Bobby Firmino complete the list.
The writers in question have identified our midfield as an area that should warrant some concern with five of the 11 players identified plying their trade in the middle of the park.
Though we’ve got some pretty exciting talents coming up in the form of Curtis Jones and Harvey Elliott, Liverpool could realistically do with a further injection of youth to balance against the wealth of experience in central midfield.
We’d strongly argue in favour of some of our supposedly declining first-teamers, including the likes of Van Dijk, Robertson, Fabinho and Salah, who look to be improving on the whole.
However, it’s clear that more than one signing will be needed in the next major window in order to steer us back onto the right track as far as our future is concerned.
There was hope when the Athletic were formed that they would produce a higher quality of sports journalism and they then come out with this sort of drivel. Have they heard of Gary McAllister, Jamie Vardy or Ian Wright? Klopp has already directly called them out for writing fake news.
Ho hum, another outlet to unfollow.