This article is part of Football FanCast’s Pundit View series, which provides opinion and analysis on recent quotes from journalists, pundits, players and managers…
Danny Mills has questioned Liverpool’s midfield, raising concerns over their lack of creativity and goal threat.
What’s he said?
Speaking to Sky Sports (October 2, 11:26am), the former Leeds United and Manchester City man questioned the lack of attacking prowess in Jurgen Klopp’s favoured midfield trio.
“That three as it stands at the moment, with Henderson, Fabinho, and Wijnaldum, is there enough creativity in that?
“Is there enough goals in that? Wijnaldum might get a few, we’ve seen that. Henderson I don’t think is going to score too many. Fabinho is not going to score too many, and also they’re not going to create.”
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Thanks Sherlock
It’s hard to disagree with Mills purely from a factual perspective – Jordan Henderson, Georginio Wijnaldum and Fabinho combined for just five goals and five assists last season in the Premier League, or ten direct goal contributions.
To put that into perspective, Manchester City’s Kevin De Bruyne already has two league goals and eight assists this campaign from a position on the right side of the Citizens’ midfield three, matching the Reds trio’s output from all of last year.
However, Liverpool are not designed to get goals and assists from midfield. Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson produce most of the chances with 23 league assists between them last term, while the front three do all the goalscoring.
Combining the last two seasons with the beginning of this campaign, Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mane have scored a truly ridiculous 124 top-flight goals. That’s the equivalent of having two 30-goal strikers each year who have then grabbed two each at the beginning of this season.
So, while Mills is correct, Klopp’s workhorse midfield is poor at creating and scoring goals, that simply isn’t what they are in the team to do, nor do they need to do it to be successful.
Maybe it’s because he’s a former Man City player or maybe he simply hasn’t watched Liverpool enough, but this seems a really pointless and somewhat bizarre observation from Detective Sherlock Mills.