Speaking of three years ago... And to clarify what I meant when I said "surreal" earlier on.. I was looking over the conversations when I first joined these boards. Time flies. Lots has changed. But we haven't fully transitioned yet from that old style. Not fully. Very nearly, but not quite.
The transition from that Liverpool to this one has gone in stages. But the first stage we went back to the best of it by getting Salah on board, who, in that first season was as good as Luis Suarez at his best, which I never thought I'd see again for a long time.
But we still largely bypassed the midfield.
People are talking about getting to two champions league finals with Henderson and Milner in midfield, as if it proves their quality. the basic line goes; Champions league is the pinnacle of European football, they were the midfield when we got there, therefore X plus Y = ...
The truth is, as hard working a midfield as that was, and despite being led by a much more intelligent tactician in Jurgen Klopp, the reason for our success was that we largely bypassed it, or at least paid it a fleeting visit on our way to the front line. Plus our ability as an attacking unit was much greater with chamberlain attacking from deep.
The best example of it was against Roma.
There was a point in that game where I paused the match to show who I was watching it with, that we just couldn't go near their midfield. I mean literally, there was like a no go zone in the middle of the pitch. We just did not have the ability to break that at all.
And then we hit a long pass over them, and it worked, and Klopp gestured from the sidelines to just go long, and the rest is history.
His comments afterwards were telling, too. "that must be the perfect performance" or something along those line was the leading question from the interviewer after the game.
His answer was "if we could control the game better after that, we'd be a lot closer to City in the league"
This is something he obviously values highly. It's something every top manager in the game values. In fact it's something every mediocre manager values too, but only the best coaches will be able to achieve it.
What we lack in control when Henderson and Milner are played together, puts a lot of strain on other parts of the team. The fact is, the other parts of the team have just been incredibly consistent.
We've got two players sharing the golden boot and BOTH fullbacks at record numbers for assists in premier league history. If you don't factor those two things in when analysing whether the midfield has been strong enough this season, and instead just point to the points total, that's fair enough.
Can we go into next season expecting Chamberlain and Keita to give us a full season?
We simply can't afford to. We need someone who brings what they bring to the midfield in terms of mobility and creativity. It'd be absolutely stupid to get this close, and risk going into the next season with the same limitations in midfield that we've had this season. In my opinion it really won't happen. I wouldn't even be surprised if we sign two attacking players who can play deeper.
