Old Trafford failure could spark a new-look Liverpool fans will love, ‘star’ should enter first-XI – RTK View

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We might just get a new-look Liverpool after their poor performance against Manchester United on Monday. Jurgen Klopp must do something.

Things must change for Liverpool. The current way of doing things isn’t working – particularly with Thiago out of the picture – and the performance against Manchester United was worrying.

United looked like a dynamic, modern pressing side at Old Trafford. Now, either they’d learned how to be one in the space of a week or Liverpool were utterly unable to play through the lines. We think it was the latter.

And that would make sense. No Thiago, no Naby Keita, and a lot of pressure on Harvey Elliott to be the progressive midfielder. If Elliott couldn’t do it, no one would – which led to Roberto Firmino consistently dropping back into midfield to help out.

Liverpool don’t have a routine fix, though. Thiago isn’t back anytime soon and Jordan Henderson isn’t playing well. Fabinho can’t list it as a strength, James Milner isn’t up to the task, either, and Keita is out, too.

There is another change Klopp could try, however.

New-look Liverpool

Liverpool have played with functional midfielders under Klopp, rather than genuine playmakers. Perhaps that should change in wake of the United debacle, though.

Instead of relying on one player like Elliott, why not two? Bring in Fabio Carvalho to midfielder – someone who impressed at Old Trafford – and ask the two youngsters to both play that progressive role.

They’d each be far more difficult to shut down, while lowering the pressure on each. Liverpool would have two players with real midfield freedom, each capable of beating players and providing the creativity we just didn’t see on Monday.

And in Fabinho, Liverpool have the perfect covering player. He’s a world-class holding midfielder and we’d back him to keep things tight against Bournemouth on Saturday. Then trust the teenagers to bring the magic.

We all know how good Elliott is and Carvalho could be, in Phil Thompson’s words, a ‘star’ one day. We don’t see a better chance to hand them a licence to prove that.

A more attacking, risk-taking Liverpool could be the injection of energy that arrests this slump.