Slot has new Thiago in ‘underrated’ Liverpool star

The noise and, for many, joy at Liverpool’s poor form of late is perhaps a marker of just how much of a powerhouse Anfield has become over the past decade.

It’s been ten years since Jurgen Klopp took over from Brendan Rodgers, the last Reds boss before Arne Slot to succumb to a run of four defeats.

But Liverpool are very different from that long-forgotten iteration, and Slot has some of the best players in world football at his disposal. The 5-1 victory over Eintracht Frankfurt in the Champions League was a reminder that this is a team capable of winning all the biggest prizes – again.

However, some individuals are struggling and the team as a unit is struggling to find a fluid form. One of the biggest culprits would be Alexis Mac Allister, whose grace and determination in the engine room are crucial to slot performance.

Mac Allister’s form for Liverpool

Mac Allister is undoubtedly one of the best midfielders in the Premier League. Certainly, he is among the most complete, the most fiery, the most inventive.

But he’s not entirely right this year, as according to Sofascore he’s lost 57% of his ground duels in the league so far, making just one tackle per game.

While the Argentine has been virtually unbeatable in his first two years in a Liverpool shirt, he now looks more vulnerable in the starting XI, and the midweek win over Frankfurt underlined that, as he was left on the bench after just an hour against Manchester United.

Mac Allister’s form has been a concern this season, but he is an elite player and crucial to Liverpool’s success. The 26-year-old has, in a way, given Slot his own version of Thiago Alcantara, whose career was cut short just before the Dutchman’s arrival. But, as with Thiago, Liverpool appear to be finding a way to play without the star in the mix.

The tempo-setting, line-breaking maestro offered something unique in the Liverpool engine room, and in that, Liverpool evolved into this latest Klopp team.

The problem, of course, is that the 34-year-old retiree was rarely in good shape. Over the course of four campaigns on Merseyside, the Spanish star managed just 98 appearances in all competitions.

But his technical quality, his vision and his awareness were faculties unlike anything else from Liverpool. In Mac Allister, the Reds have a midfielder with stylistic similarities, but there is actually another man in Slot’s first team who could be Liverpool’s new version of their former superstar.

The new version of Thiago at Liverpool

Sometimes in football, timings just don’t work. Steven Gerrard narrowly missed out on the Klopp era, leaving for the LA Galaxy just months before the German’s historic appointment.

Similarly, Thiago would retire prematurely from football at the end of the 2023/24 campaign, having made just one appearance that year due to incessant injury setbacks. He was 33 years old.

So he missed out on the burgeoning slot era and the Premier League title that would arrive at Anfield’s gates just a year after hanging up his boots.

The biggest travesty of it all is that the elegant Spaniard boasted a style of play tailor-made for the calculated and composed build that Liverpool have developed since Klopp’s departure. Gone (at least last season) was the frenetic, out-of-control football that Slot’s predecessor used – insistently and with money-laden success.

Thiago is one of the greatest technicians of his generation. He would have been the lynchpin of this version of Liverpool. But Slot could have an heir in the person of Curtis Jones.

Yes, you read that right. No, this argument is not based on Jones being on the same level as the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich sensation in his prime.

But the Liverpool-born star shares some qualities with his former teammate, both among the team’s most reliable players on the ball and with combative teams, underlined by the robustness of the challenge and tough defensive contributions.

Jones graduated from Liverpool’s academy and has been a part of his boyhood team ever since, and although he played a role under Klopp’s wing, Slot’s tactics gave birth to his skills and saw him become “one of the most underrated players in England”, as one Premier League analyst put it.

Jones is an effortless passer. He is intelligent in his decision-making and tactically disciplined. According to FBref, the Three Lions star ranks in the top 11% of midfielders in Europe’s top five leagues for assists, 8% for goal-creating actions, 2% for successful passes, 12% for progressive passes and 13% for progressive runs per 90.

He is also well experienced within this Liverpool team, and when Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk leave, both in their penultimate year on Merseyside, he will be among the club’s leading figures.

Thiago joined Liverpool from Bayern Munich for £20million in 2020 and was in and out. His technical quality, nor the fact that he could have been a great in the division with more luck on the injury front, was never in doubt.

There is no doubt that he would have been a sublime piece in Slot’s system, but in Jones, the Netherlands native has found a player of similar style who could now take the next step in his development and play a crucial role in depth to promote Liverpool’s ball-playing abilities.

In Frankfurt, Jones had a staggering 139 touches of the ball, running the play and completing 122 of 127 pass attempts. This is his strength, and Slot must give him carte blanche from the start to move to the next level and take Liverpool with him.