As is often the case after a big defeat, Liverpool’s 3-1 loss to Leicester City left many of the fans and critics of the side proclaiming that Liverpool’s squad needed a massive overhaul.
Since then, the Reds have turned over Arsenal, also 3-1, to remind everyone of the talents that lie within this squad. So, do the club really need to make lots of signings in the summer, or is that assessment simply an overreaction to what has admittedly been a poor couple of months of form?
The answer is of course, somewhere in the middle. So let's assess the current state of Liverpool’s squad in order to try and put forward a conclusion as to how much recruitment is required for Jürgen Klopp this summer...
Plenty of talent at Klopp’s disposal
Beginning with the positives then, and the idea that this club needs a serious overhaul is certainly a bit of an overreaction. Liverpool have clear and obvious weak areas in the squad, but they nevertheless have an incredible amount of talent at their disposal.
Philippe Coutinho and Sadio Mané have the potential to be world-class talents; Nathaniel Clyne is one of the best right backs in the league; Joël Matip will be rock solid with a decent partner beside him; and Jordan Henderson has been consistently excellent in the defensive midfield role. These are the five players that Klopp needs to build his squad around.
Moreover, the likes of Adam Lallana, Georginio Wijnaldum, Emre Can and Roberto Firmino, who are all currently first-team fixtures under Klopp, are all extremely good players.
Even if some of the current players in Klopp’s starting eleven aren’t quite living up to their full potential, or have been incredibly inconsistent this season, they all deserve to be appraised fairly, based on both their stronger and weaker performances.
Fundamentally, what Klopp has at his disposal is the core and building blocks of an excellent squad. Whilst there are certainly improvements that need to be made, out of Liverpool’s current core of about fourteen or so players, there is at most one player who doesn’t have a future with the club.
There is no question that the players that Klopp has at his disposal are good enough to make the Champions League, and cause problems to big sides when they get there.
At least four or five first team additions needed
However, there are nevertheless serious problems with the squad that desperately need patching up. There are only five players in this squad that are good enough to be guaranteed starters under Klopp if Liverpool want to challenge for the title: Coutinho, Mané, Henderson, Matip and Clyne.
Whilst the likes of Lallana, Wijnaldum, Dejan Lovren and Firmino have been excellent in the big games this season, too often these are the same players who have been very inconsistent.
Lallana and Firmino in particular are players who play exceptionally well under the right circumstances, but they are not players who carry a team playing poorly. Quite often this season, when Liverpool have played badly, only Coutinho and Mané have shown that they are capable of regularly performing well.
Wijnaldum has been excellent in the big games at home this season but has been poor for large periods of the season and rarely takes a game by the scruff of the neck.
Lovren has been excellent at times over the last eighteen months when partnered with either Mamadou Sakho or Matip, but he has also made error-after-error and cannot be fully trusted. Liverpool have a lot of excellent squad players, but very few genuine game-changers, and very few truly world-class players.
Klopp needs to make signings in just about every area of the pitch. Liverpool need a top class centre-back to partner Matip; they need a genuine left-back of substance given that James Milner is nothing more than a stop-gap there; they need a consistent defensive or box-to-box midfielder to partner and cover for Henderson; they need a classy winger as cover and competition for Mané and they need a 25-plus-goal-a-season striker. And all of these signings need to improve the first-team.
Defence is the biggest area Liverpool need to improve, with at least one defender as good as Matip needed, and a left-back is at least twelve months overdue.
Right now Liverpool’s back-four is absolutely embarrassing without Lovren in it and it's not that much better with him. Behind that back-four, the goalkeeper issue needs to be sorted, given that Simon Mignolet remains the club's first-choice goalkeeper and Liverpool will never be able to win trophies without a reliable keeper - which Mignolet isn't.
Deadwood to be shifted
In terms of outgoings, whilst the likes of Firmino, Can, Lallana, Lovren and Milner all should be at least challenged for their places in the first-team, none of them should be even considered surplus to requirements.
Liverpool’s squad depth this season has been a key issue, with too often Ben Woodburn and Ovie Ejaria bench options, with Lucas Leiva used as a centre-back far too regularly, given that playing him there once is one time too many.
That does not however, mean that there isn’t still deadwood at the club. Although Klopp has done brilliantly well to get rid of most of the key individuals holding Liverpool back, either by selling them as he did with Martin Skrtel and Christian Benteke, or by removing them from the first team in Alberto Moreno, there remains a core of individuals who simply aren’t good enough.
Lucas is one of them, sadly. Moreno is another, although keeping him as a back-up full-back option isn’t necessarily a bad idea. And Mignolet in goal simply has to go. Whilst it would be brutally unfair to describe Daniel Sturridge as deadwood, he nevertheless will surely be leaving the club this summer, as he has simply become far too unreliable in Klopp’s mind.
Overall, this summer Liverpool need to buy around five new first-team players, relegating some of this season’s inconsistent (or even consistent) performers to squad options.
This will allow Klopp to build a squad of closer to twenty players he can trust in every game, rather than simply ten or twelve and allow Liverpool space to challenge on multiple fronts without compromising the team, as they did in January, or towards the end of last season when the focus was on the Europa League.
And while there remain a few players in the squad who need to be shifted out, that number is only three or four, rather than the nine or ten it was when Klopp took over this team. Progress is being made.