Dion Dublin has been speaking on Liverpool’s reserve midfield options and how he doesn’t believe they are up to scratch with the rest of the squad but need more game time to be fairly judged.
There’s no doubt that we have several squad players for the midfield who are trying to nail down the hole left by Gini Wijnaldum, alongside Jordan Henderson and Fabinho.
The likes of Thiago Alcantara, Naby Kieta, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Curtis Jones and Harvey Elliott are all trying to prove to Jurgen Klopp that they should be the one to have the starting position.
Speaking on Premier League Productions, the former Aston Villa forward had his say on the drop in quality from starting to reserve midfielders and how they all need game time to be fairly judged.
The Homes Under the Hammer presenter said: “If there was a weakness [in the Liverpool squad] it would be the reserve players for those [midfield] positions, their midfield players that start are more than good enough.
“I just think when one drops out, whether it’s Fabinho or Henderson, they are a little bit light in there.
“I will always protect a player if he’s not getting games, Wijnaldum got game after game after game and therefore we always saw the best of him.
“We’ve still not seen Keita game after game and we’ve definitely not seen Thiago so, I think it’s games that are needed in order to get up to standard”.
It’s a fair argument to make as we do clearly have two midfielders that are above the rest, had it not been for the injury against Leeds then maybe our 18-year-old starlet would still be in there but no one else has laid claim to the position since.
They are all handed the opportunities by the gaffer but haven’t done enough to convince him to stick by them.
It’s a positive that we have so many options but we just need one of them to go out and grab it now.
You can watch Dion Dublin’s pre-match comments courtesy of Premier League Productions (via Match Analysis on YouTube):