John Aldridge has said that he was ‘shouting at the television’ on Sunday over Arne Slot’s decision to start Dominik Szoboszlai out of position at right-back in Liverpool’s win over Nottingham Forest.
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Despite the head coach saying in the lead-up to the game that Joe Gomez was ‘ready to start’, the defender had to be content with a substitute appearance once more as the Hungarian was instead given the nod on the right-hand side of the back four.
That experiment was abandoned shortly after the half-hour mark as the 25-year-old swapped positions with Curtis Jones, and the Reds’ number 8 put in the cross which ultimately led to Alexis Mac Allister’s stoppage-time winner.
Aldridge implores Slot to end Szoboszlai right-back experiment
In his latest column for the Liverpool Echo, Aldridge called for Slot to dispense with the idea of playing Szoboszlai at right-back and instead keep him in his natural midfield position where his influence can be maximised.
The former Reds striker wrote: ‘Dominik Szoboszlai is being wasted at right-back at Liverpool, and the time has come for the experiment of using the Hungarian as an emergency answer to the problem position to be stopped once and for all.
‘Only 15 minutes had gone at Nottingham Forest on Sunday when I was shouting at the television for Arne Slot to move Szoboszlai out of the role and back into the engine room. Liverpool were being overrun in midfield and really needed somebody with his physicality and attributes to get stuck in.
‘In the end, it took another quarter-of-an-hour before Slot made the change and Liverpool were much better for it, particularly in the second half.
‘Szoboszlai has been our best player this season by some distance and it makes sense to play him where he does the most damage to the opposition and best serves the Reds. He offers something different to the other Liverpool midfielders and has the type of dynamism that, for all their qualities, Ryan Gravenberch and Alexis Mac Allister do not.’
Liverpool need Szoboszlai in his best position, and that’s midfield
While we can understand Slot being cautious with the use of Gomez, who’s not long back from injury and has had some serious absences in his time at Liverpool, it seemed strange not to start him on Sunday if he’d been deemed fit enough to do so.
In the first half in particular at the City Ground, the Reds badly missed the energy and dynamism that Szoboszlai would’ve brought to their midfield had he been playing there, and it didn’t seem coincidental that they (albeit gradually) got a foothold in the game after the positional switch with Jones.
We get that the Hungarian has been deployed at right-back through necessity given the injury problems we’ve had in that role this season, but he needs to be playing in his strongest position in order to get the most out of his game-changing qualities.
Slot is hopeful of having Jeremie Frimpong cleared to play against West Ham on Saturday, and while the 25-year-old’s frequent fitness issues could see him being handled with care, Gomez should certainly be primed to start at the weekend.
If Szoboszlai were confined to playing at right-back for the full match against Forest, would he have been in a position to deliver the cross which led to Mac Allister’s winner? Would Liverpool have been completely overrun in midfield to the extent that the game was already lost by that point?
These hypothetical questions will never have a definitive answer, but what we can say with conviction is that Aldridge is quite right to implore the Reds boss to end the experiement of playing our number 8 in a makeshift role and instead deploy him where we can get the best out of his abilities.
I think slot must go. He has taken a title winning squad and destroyed it. 400m spent and yet no Diaz replacement, No Salah back up, No defensive midfielder even thought we spent months trying to get Zubermendi in, sell Quansah and keep injury prone Gomez and then destroy squad depth by selling the vast majority of our youngsters who had won the League cup not long before. On top of that then get the fast , high pressing, fast passing remainder of the squad to start playing very slow, boring, predictable football whilst leaving us wide open in midfield. This style of football is crap. Get in Poch after the world cup. First he will sort out the defence to make us stronger and then we can see what happens. I personally would like us to get in Van der ven, Barcola, Diomande, Elliot Anderson and Gibbs-White that would give us pace to burn, strength in depth and flexibility
Poch who’s never won anything aside from with PSG over Slot who’s won the Dutch league with a team who rarely win it and would have won the league with a team even lower than that if Covid hadn’t stopped play. Ps, he didn’t have a title winning squad, he had a squad that finished 3rd and isn’t the decision maker in who the club buys. You have suggested bringing in a new defense, two new wide players and 2 new centre mids – so basically a whole new team – who’s to be left out or sold? Is Anderson and Gibbs White better than Gravenberch, Szob, McAllister or Wirtz? The wide players, fair enough, thats only another €200m minimum investment if we’re lucky to get €80-100m back from Salah and Gakpo sales, while we’ll still need cover for them when gone and we’ll have 8 centre mids in the players mentioned, Jones and Elliott all vying for 3 spots. I think the comment is naive to say the least and its why football is gone crazy – teams that have won – Man city (kept the same manager), Arsenal (Kept the same manager), Liverpool (kept the same manager). I agree Liverpools team is incredibly imbalanced but is that Slots fault? Did anyone think Salah would drop off like he did, that Gakpo would have poor form, that Isak would be slow to integrate and then get injured, that every one who goes into right back since Trent will have brutal injuries one after another? Cut the man some slack – he won the league in his first year, barely lost to the team that spanked everyone else in Europe last year.