A forgotten Liverpool star during January should be given another chance by Jürgen Klopp in order to fix a key defensive flaw in the attack at the moment.
Liverpool is struggling on all fronts this season. January in particular has been a really difficult month for Jürgen Klopp and his team. Having been knocked out of the FA Cup and suffered heavy defeats to Brighton and Brentford, there are plenty of problems to fix at the club.
Defensively, Liverpool has essentially malfunctioned. Teams like Brighton and Brentford have been able to run past through opens gaps undeterred, and a porous shape like that is always going to cause issues that are going to be hard to fix.
One of the key problems at hand is the fact that Liverpool is no longer defending from the front. The likes of Darwin Núñez, Mohamed Salah and Cody Gakpo, who have all featured in the front three this month, are all players who average less than three successful defensive actions per 90.
Comparatively, Liverpool’s other options who are injured, or who have since departed like Sadio Mané, average more than four in the Premier League.
That’s a big chasm for Klopp to fill, and it’s why his decision to shun Fábio Carvalho from the team, for the most part of the month has been particularly surprising. Carvalho has averaged an impressive 0.37 goals per 90 in a limited number of minutes for Liverpool this season, starting just eight games in total.
During the World Cup break, he impressed in mid-season friendly games, and started even better against Manchester City in the League Cup, scoring a goal.
Yet despite this he has played just three minutes in the Premier League since October, and has only featured in one game since the start of the year.
What makes his omission even stranger is the fact that he is exactly the type of high-intensity defensive player Liverpool could use in Klopp’s system.
In all competitions this season, Carvalho has averaged 8.74 successful defensive actions per 90. That’s by far the most productive output of any attacker or midfielder in the side.
Of course, it’s skewed by his low sample having played only 719 minutes in total, but it’s still an impressive figure and highlights the kind of quality Carvalho can provide not just offensively but defensively as well.
Fabio Carvalho has gone under the radar at Liverpool. (Image: Malcolm Couzens/Getty Images)
It’s also important to note that in the 18 games he has featured in, Liverpool has only lost three games, winning 11 games and drawing four. That’s not a bad record to have.
Carvalho deserves more minutes, especially amid a lack of options in attack, and he could definitely feature anywhere across the front three, even dropping centrally to the false nine position, where Cody Gakpo has been used more recently.
One thing is clear: the 20-year-old is still very young, and there’s plenty more to come from him in the future. Klopp just needs to trust him a little bit more and he could find himself a handy new attacking solution.
