Will Liverpool face squad depth issues after quiet transfer window?

  • 22 hours ago
A quiet window, will it bite the Reds?
Transcript
00:00And with Liverpool and their squad depth, obviously a really quiet summer window, can they deal with the busy schedule with such a small squad?
00:09Fully love. Liverpool released their squad picture for 24-25 this morning and I counted all the players on there because I did think that looks quite thin there.
00:21And, lo and behold, 24 first-team players are on the photo and that's including three goalkeepers and Tyler Morton, a midfielder who spent the last two campaigns in the Championship on loan at Blackburn Rovers and Hull City respectively.
00:38Is he firmly in Arnaslott's plan? He's only made one sub appearance so far. Maybe that's because of the injuries, because he hasn't been healthy to date.
00:49Only Javi Elliott is the one who has serious injuries. I know he has missed a ball of game with illness. There is competition all over the pitch.
00:58There's probably two players for every position when you assess the squad, especially with Federico Chiesa coming in to maybe bolster that right wing role, give Mo Salah a little bit of respite.
01:14But if injuries bite, Liverpool have the cover then because they're going to pick up injuries. That's a given. It happens every season. Arnaslott has defended his injury records.
01:27He hasn't rotated a lot, but he's brought players off so far in his reign. But it will be difficult when they're playing difficult teams twice a week.
01:42When they're playing, say, a tough game in the Premier League and then they've got Real Madrid or VAR in the Champions League and then maybe go deeper in the other competitions as well, then they will have to balance things because there aren't a lot of youngsters or really highly rated youngsters left at the club.
02:02A lot of them went on loan in the summer. Stefan Bersetic was loaned to Red Bull Salzburg and Bobby Clarke was sold to the same club for £10m. Ben Doak to Middlesbrough, Kate Gordon to Norwich, Lewis Kumas to Stoke City, probably missing a couple more.
02:22But maybe when you look at them at the early rounds of the FA Cup or the next rounds against Brighton in the Carabao Cup where you can bet a few in Liverpool, they haven't really got any training. Ione is the only one, the 17-year-old midfielder, who has been training with the first team quite a lot, but he was left out of the squad for the win against West Ham in the Carabao Cup.
02:45So, Liverpool being a little bit meshed with him, that is the only thing that you do worry about. If the injuries do hit, have Liverpool got enough depth to rotate when they need to?
02:58If some of the attackers pick off injuries, say Giotto, who has had his injury problems in the past, and say Lewis Diaz was out for a bit or Colin Gaffer was a bit, is there enough depth there to make changes consistently? Does Anas look for different solutions in the squad?
03:22I'm sure that these things have been planned, but the squad depth maybe is just a little bit thin because Liverpool took the decision to loan the better youngsters out with a view to that, working in the long term, which I can understand.

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