Jurgen Klopp has had to deal with a heck of a lot thrown his way at Liverpool this season.
Not only has the manager had to contend with gelling together a brand-new midfield, he’s had to do it while dealing with injury crisis after injury crisis.
It has felt as though we haven’t even really seen Liverpool’s best team together for any time at all in 2023/24. There’s always been a clutch of key men missing.
As a result of that, Klopp has had to be creative. A lot of this has been by blooding young players like Jarell Quansah and Conor Bradley, both of whom have been brilliant.
But another part has been by shoehorning players into roles they perhaps wouldn’t normally play. Joe Gomez is a good example of this having spent much of the campaign at left-back. But he isn’t the only one, and today Klopp highlighted the ‘problems’ this approach can have.
Jurgen Klopp highlights Cody Gakpo issue
The issue for Klopp came in his midfield. Although the manager brought in four excellent new signings in the summer, Liverpool have still been piecing things together at times.
A good example was on the opening day of the season. With Wataru Endo and Ryan Gravenberch still yet to be signed, the manager played Cody Gakpo in midfield.
It wasn’t the only time Gakpo played there either. His athleticism and ball-carrying actually generally came in handy and he didn’t look too out of place.
But speaking in his pre-Atalanta press conference, Klopp admitted that the player himself had not been confident changing roles.
“I caused a little bit of [a] problem,” the manager said of Gakpo. “In a phase where we didn’t have a lot of midfielders, I put him in midfield. It didn’t work out well.
“I thought it was alright but he couldn’t gain the confidence each player needs. Since he’s back up front, [he] can play in between the lines [and] can be himself. It’s all going in the right direction again.”
Where is Cody Gakpo’s best position
We’re with Jurgen on this one. Although Liverpool obviously have better options, we actually quite liked Gakpo in the midfield.
In truth, some of his better displays this season came from a deeper role. The £44m man hasn’t always convinced while playing up front for Liverpool. This has led to criticism from the likes of Reds legend Jamie Carragher.
Gakpo himself seems to want to play off the left, but he doesn’t necessarily have the pace to do this effectively for Liverpool.
For now, Klopp’s best bet seems to be to deploy Cody through the middle as a Darwin Nunez alternative. We might see him used either on the right or the left of the forward line, too. But it sounds like his midfield days are over.