As we come towards the end of the season it’s time to assess how Liverpool’s summer signings have gotten on.
The Reds made four new additions in total last year, with all of them going on to have a good impact throughout the season.
Perhaps the most exciting signing at the time had been Dominik Szoboszlai. Much was anticipated from the Hungarian, who started the season like a house on fire.
But after the Steven Gerrard comparisons started to die down, Szoboszlai has struggled to find his feet again. Injuries haven’t helped, but you can’t help but deduce that the 23-year-old has lost his way a little.
With that in mind, former England goalkeeper Ben Foster thinks he may have found a solution. Foster admits that his opinion may be a ‘little bit controversial’ but maybe it’s worth a try.
Ben Foster suggests Dominik Szoboszlai change
Part of Szoboszlai’s recent drop-off at Liverpool is possibly to do with how he’s being utilised. The former RB Leipzig midfielder could be one of those to benefit from Arne Slot coming in to replace Jurgen Klopp.
As a box-to-box player capable of beating his man with pace and trickery, Szoboszlai hasn’t quite found his place in a Klopp system.
And speaking to the official Premier League YouTube channel, Foster has claimed that Liverpool’s No.8 could actually be perfect as a defensive midfielder.
Picking a dream team of ‘young players’ in the Premier League, the former Man United ‘keeper selected Szoboszlai to anchor his midfield.
“This is where it starts to get a little bit controversial,” Foster says. “I’m going to go for Dominik Szoboszlai at Liverpool. Listen, I know he’s not your traditional CDM, I know this but he is a box-to-box midfielder. He gets forward, he gets back, he works hard.
“All I’m going to do is say to him before the game starts ‘listen, today is not your job to be getting forward so much, stay in that hole, you’ve got the quality, I trust you, you trust me, do what I tell you’. And that’s what he’ll do, he’ll do that for me so I’m going to pick him.”
Could Szoboszlai be Liverpool’s new defensive midfielder
It’s quite obvious that Liverpool need to upgrade their defensive midfielder next season. Of course, Slot could easily move away from Klopp’s 433 system and therefore negate the need for such a specialist.
But in any case, it feels as though the Reds need to bring in someone with a little more quality than Wataru Endo.
That isn’t to denigrate anything Endo has done at Liverpool since coming in last year. The 31-year-old has by and large exceeded all expectations. But like Szoboszlai he has struggled a bit of late.
So, it feels as though it could well be something the Reds are looking at in the transfer market.
Now, if they listen to Foster, Liverpool could plot to simply move Szoboszlai back and ask him to do more defensively. But we think this would be unnecessarily limiting one of their more influential players. We can get more out of Dom, but moving him backwards isn’t the way to do that.