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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network. Hi, here it is, Tour Unwrapped. I'm Josh Sexton, joined today by Neil Atkinson, Adam Mealy and Stu Wright to talk through Liverpool's last great team and the next one. But today's Tour Unwrapped, first and foremost, is brought to you by Aura Frames once again. Do you want the perfect gift for any occasion, Neil? Yes.
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Chapter 2: How did Liverpool's last great team come together?
Name the top frame by The Independent, huge news from The Independent there, by using the promo code TOUR at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-FRAMES.CO.U-K, promo code T-A-W. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. So gents, I kind of had this idea yesterday but it was based off a bit of inspiration from my man Adam Melia here.
Me and Adam did a racing show a little while back where we kind of posited whether we were worried about the amount of mercurial lads in the Liverpool team. But then I was thinking about it even more this week because with Salah and Robertson getting off, we're seeing the back end of one great team and wondering what will form part of the next one.
So based on how the last one came together, let's look at how the next one could come together. I sort of see Salah as being the kind of lad you can build the team around, that sort of mercurial talent I mentioned before, whose weaknesses you'd look to nullify so he could focus on what he does best.
And then with Robertson, of course, leaving at the end of season two, he was one of the building blocks that made it easier for those mercurial lads to excel because of the amount of work he got through and how good he was at everything, basically, and still looked like he was quite good at it at the weekend too.
So the new mercurials I'm saying, and feel free to jump in and disagree here at any point, Jenson, we'll sort of go through and maybe add more as we go. The new mercurials I'm saying are Izak, Ekotike and Rewengamoa. The in-betweeners I've got at the moment are Wurz and Soberslai.
And the current building blocks I've got for Liverpool to take forward into the future are Gravenberg, Bradley and Kerkes. So do we think anybody else first and foremost is good enough to add into the building blocks list?
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Chapter 3: What are the new mercurial talents Liverpool should consider?
I've got some unknowns in there as well.
But you say you're not including the defenders?
Not necessarily, but only because of question marks over Canatti's future. I'm saying Virgil is not part of the next great team.
Okay, so I think if you're allowed for Canatti, then you can drop him in. Obviously, at this point in time, Leone and Jack A are complete unknowns.
They're my unknowns. I've got them two, and Leone, and Dans, and maybe even Bajcetic. But Bajcetic is a complete unknown.
I think one of your mercurials, or more accurately, the player that you want to platform the most is Wiertz. So I, in a bit of a weird way, feel as though you want, this is where it is going to be a little bit different. I don't think we've had this under the previous manager, particularly, although often it was a two and a one under the previous manager.
But I think that Viet only really makes sense as part of a two and a one. I think you want them, you know, if we've spent all the money on them, We're almost certainly still spending loads of money on him in terms of his wages.
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Chapter 4: How can Liverpool build their next great team?
We've got him on a six-year deal. I think Liverpool have chosen and committed to playing through Florian Wiertz. So over your categorisation there, I feel as though he becomes one of the mercurial ones, which I think sort of turns everyone else into a bit, has to be a bit more of a building blocker.
So I think Sabozlai for me then becomes, if you're going to move forward with Sabozlai, and I think there's still valid question marks about that, But if you're going to move forward with a Suboz like, I think he has to be a building block. He has to be part of the piano carrying and not the piano playing. And I think that, you know, for me, that's the decision that we've made.
That's not to say Viet himself doesn't get through work. It's not to say that a massive thing that he's about is then facilitating others and bringing them into play. But I think what we've chosen to do by virtue of signing him is we're committing to playing the game for the medium to long term on his terms. So I think he's one of your aces.
He's one of your absolute top of the pile players in there. And I think that then sets up what a lot of other people's role is.
Yeah, I think you can almost be a bit like Firmino.
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Chapter 5: What role does Salah play in Liverpool's future plans?
And when I say that, Adam, it's like it almost feels disrespectful to call Firmino a building block because the minute you took him out of the team, you saw how much harder basically everything was to do because of how much of a cheat code Firmino was to have by himself.
Like he was almost in a sense Mercurial in that he had the talent of the Mercurial players, but he was so much a building block because you could kind of build your whole
attacking like emphasis really off off the back of him and that's the role i can kind of imagine verts getting into i think verts could in theory get through enough work i don't think he has been doing in the past few weeks but i think in theory he could get through enough work but the talent is like so right at the top end that it's hard to see how you can kind of have him only as a building block really
Yeah, I think appearances might have been deceptive with Firmino at times because of how he looked and his Brazilian-ness and all of that sort of thing. The amount of work he did, he worked like a Shire horse or something and was basically added up to having an extra player on the field. We have heard that Wirtz is a very hard worker.
And I think there's still sort of, you know, after our games, we still see stats about how much he's pressing and things like that. But I guess it doesn't look like the sort of hard work that maybe we were hoping for.
And I'm not sure whether that's more on the ball or when Liverpool have got the ball or when Liverpool haven't got the ball, which bit I'm sort of noticing him, noticing his absence a little bit. I mean, everybody would accept that there's work to do, I think, probably there. And certainly everything sort of looks better in a team that's flowing, which it hasn't really been this season.
So I agree with Neil. He has to be the thing that we base things around next season. And, you know... I guess a lot of people talk about Kevin De Bruyne when we sign Virta.
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Chapter 6: Who are the current building blocks for Liverpool's future?
I still have that kind of archetype in mind and you hope at this time next season when teams lose the ball to us, it'll be as frightening as when we used to lose the ball at Man City and Kevin De Bruyne is around. So that's the sort of thing that I'm hoping for. I don't know what you said about, I know you mentioned Bradley, but did you, I guess I just want to think about fullback in general.
So you mentioned Bradley as one of yours. Did you mention Frimpong?
I didn't mention Frimpong basically because the way I'm kind of like categorizing the building blocks, which again is just more like rudimentary in my head really, but is they're good at like,
everything and i'm still not convinced that frimpong is in that category of being like he's good at everything in his position i almost wonder whether he kind of falls in in between but not on the same talent level as verts and soboslai where he's actually just kind of like falling between the two stools rather than being like they could be that good but they are also a bit of a building block
Yeah, we've ended up in a funny position with right-back, haven't we? Because I think Frimpong and Bradley, you sort of end up conflating them because they've both got some really good attributes. They both seem to have become pretty injury-prone. And so we haven't got a firm sense of which one it is that we're going to hang our hats on. And I think full-back's so key to all of this.
If you think about the time before, without knowing it, we were building this unreal team. you know, we kind of had Klein and Moreno, I suppose, was the pre-Alexander Arnold and Robertson. And, you know, so I think we're probably not building from somewhere that low, if you're kind of saying it's going to be Kirkes and Frimpong.
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Chapter 7: What challenges does Liverpool face in their squad depth?
There is a chance, I think, that that becomes a really good full-back pair. I kind of have to part Bradley, I think, because he just has been so injury-prone that I just feel like it's sort of not fair to speculate. And Frimpong hasn't necessarily been the player that we've wanted to see.
But I sort of think that his injuries this season may hopefully be a bit of a one-season, one-off sort of thing, and he will build his fitness up.
Yeah, because his record was really good at Leverkusen.
I think that sounds okay still. I think Kierkegaard and Frimpong, I would be prepared to say that that could be something that you could build a really good team around. I suppose nobody ever really saw how good, the heights that Robertson and Alexander-Arnold would take us to.
But yeah, I think if you're going to say what else are we adding in there, I would say that that's got a chance, that sort of full-back pair.
Yeah, and I guess, Stu, if we're literally looking at it from sort of, you know, black and white of what the last team was, you know, and we're kind of almost wondering there if Virts can sort of slip into a Firmino-ish role in terms of, you know, getting through loads of work but being right at the top in terms of talent.
I think, you know, Sobisai is a way better technical football than Jordan Henderson was, for example, but I could kind of see him ending up in a Henderson role. And if he does, by the way, that means the floor of your team is massive. And I think Henderson was better technically than he maybe gets credit for. But if he can end up with Sobisai,
sort of being your Jordan Henderson then I think you're on to a winner there and I almost wonder then if Frimpong can kind of become Trent where he doesn't necessarily have to be a building block because he gets to just be this really fast like shot out of a cannon lad that we can have from right back that makes teams go oh hang on like what do we do about him because suddenly he's running behind whoever the right winger is when we sort of build this team and he's coming inside but he's coming inside at such pace that no one can tackle him and all these sort of different kinds of things because that's that's where I think like Liverpool were able to excel was by having a mercurial lad like Trent
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Chapter 8: How can Liverpool improve their attacking strategy moving forward?
nullifying his own weaknesses in the same way they did Salah, but that just being a complete unicorn of a position on the pitch for Liverpool.
It's funny, isn't it, that every aspect of the conversation so far has touched on Wiertz. Every aspect, whatever position we're talking about in the team, and however we want to set out to play, it all kind of... leads to the question of, well, where does he fit into this? I agree with Neil in terms of categorising him in a mercurial category.
But actually beyond that, because I think he is your uber mercurial. We need the German for mercurial at this point. But I think he is, and the others are all lesser mercurials because you sign a player like him,
And I think what you do, you've got a level of risk in terms of if you get it wrong in terms of the building blocks around him and how you're setting up your team, then you're going to spend the next five years chasing your tail and he's going to give you as many problems as he has solutions. And I want Liverpool to avoid that and just go all in on the fact that they've signed the fella.
They believe in him. They've invested a huge amount of financial resource in him. then they've got to then answer those problems behind him to give him the platform to go and be the best version of himself. And at the moment, it's no surprise to me, not just in terms of his first season in the Premier League and adapting, but also the team's not set up for him. It's not. And it leads to a...
a more difficult discussion because you mentioned Sabozlai there and you can bring Grafenberg into the equation here as well and McAllister Liverpool reshaped their midfield only a couple of years ago invested heavily and bought an entirely new midfield that midfield goes on and wins the Premier League it's very hard to criticise that midfield but then you go and you go and advert into the mix and people were crying out for it last year because they were saying that Liverpool's midfield and where Sabozlai played in the 10th
And he wasn't really a 10. He was somewhere between an 8 and a 10. But people were demanding that they wanted more technical ability there and a greater skill set. But you're losing something there straight away where you're losing his physical dominance. But you put Viet into that position, then what's behind him doesn't offer the same kind of platform that he needs.
It doesn't give him the building blocks that he needs. You look at Sabozlai, well, he played deeper at the weekend. And there was certainly a lot to be encouraged about in his position there. But, you know, he's been compared to Gerrard at times, hasn't he? One thing he has similar to Gerrard when he plays in that deeper role, he's got a tendency to empty the position. He's everywhere, OK?
And I'm not sure that entirely suits what Viet will need behind him, particularly if his partner, if it is Gravenberg, who I actually think... Gravenberg is a mercurial player who's playing in a position that's quite fixed. I don't think necessarily. Him playing in the six gave us a temporary solution, but I don't think it's a solution to actually the best use of his attributes or his skills.
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