Jamie Carragher has explained what his ‘biggest worry’ is regarding Liverpool and believes whoever replaces Jurgen Klopp as manager in the summer should ‘build this team around’ one player in particular.
It was revealed on Friday that the 56-year-old would be vacating his role at the end of the season after just shy of nine years on Merseyside.
The club, therefore, have a lot of work to do in finding his replacement while also needing to make decisions on the future of Trent Alexander-Arnold, Virgil van Dijk and Mo Salah who all enter the final year of their current deals in the summer.
Ex-Red Carragher believes Liverpool’s new boss, when he’s appointed, should focus his plans around our No. 66 while explaining there may be some huge decisions to make regarding other members of the squad.
“Virgil van Dijk is not the biggest worry and neither is Mo Salah. It’s Trent Alexander-Arnold,” said the 46-year-old said on The Overlap (via Rousing The Kop). “Those three players have 18 months to go. In 18 months Salah and Van Dijk will be 34 or 35. So this thing about we could lose Van Dijk, well it might actually be the right decision in 18 months.
“Trent Alexander-Arnold is the one you have almost got to build this team around for a new manager. I think Van Dijk and Salah in 12 months’ time, the club will probably look at that and go you have six months to go, how are you feeling as a player. You would want to keep them if they are playing as they are right now, but 18 months is a long time in football.”
All three players are performing exceptionally this season and we’d love to see them remain at the club for the foreseeable future.
Carragher is right, however, to point out at that 18 months is a long time and with both van Dijk and Salah now the wrong side of 30 difficult decisions may need to be made.
It’s a no-brainer to offer Alexander-Arnold a new deal. The Scouser is our vice-captain and still has his best years ahead of him despite already being a world-class talent.
Whoever comes in to replace Klopp in the summer will see our No. 66 as an integral part of the club’s future but we’ll just have to wait and see what happens to other members of the squad.
Our skipper insisted he’s ‘fully committed to the club’ recently and is looking back to his best this term.
Salah, meanwhile, is our top goalscorer this term and keeps himself in brilliant shape which increases his chances of being able to perform at the highest level for as long as possible.
That’s really not a very smart way to approach building a team. You should never, ever build a team around a single player unless he is Messi or Maradona. In case you didn’t spot it, Liverpool have been doing perfectly fine without having Salah, Robbo and even the aforementioned TAA available. The reason? Because Klopp and Ljinders have built an approach to football, not built a team around one player
Well said, building a team of committed players is much better and rewarding.