Gary Neville says Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool front three of Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mané and Roberto Firmino is the best he’s ever seen. It’s high praise from the Manchester United legend.
Gary Neville sat down with the Liverpool Echo this week to discuss the Reds. He talked about Liverpool’s decline this season – and what a difficult job Jurgen Klopp has had.
After all, how should he have improved this squad? Neville points to a selection of players as the best around, noting that Klopp really couldn’t have improved on them.
“How can Liverpool get better players than what they had?” he asked. “The front three was as good as I’ve ever seen.
“The best front three over the last 10 years, forget [Manchester] City, it was [Sadio] Mané, [Mohamed] Salah and [Roberto] Firmino. They were the best since United had [Wayne] Rooney, [Cristiano] Ronaldo and [Carlos] Tevez – they were unbelievable.
“That Liverpool front three has set the standard over the last 10 years, so too the back four with [Virgil] Van Dijk, [Andy] Robertson, [Trent] Alexander-Arnold and Alisson, and you are going to struggle to find better players in those positions.”
Liverpool front three
The front three was sensational and will go down in Liverpool legend. They delivered every trophy while playing a style of football that everybody loved.
It was with a heavy heart that Mané left last summer – but it’s a move he wanted to make. The trio was never going to last forever and we may never see such a perfect unit again. We couldn’t be happier that Liverpool managed to form it, though.
Neville on Liverpool spending
It’s a fair point that Neville makes – there were limited ways to improve this team beyond depth. It’s one of the reasons Liverpool stuck so rigidly to their transfer strategy of finding a perfect target or signing no one.
Midfield, however, could always have used something new. Not necessarily something better, even, but something new. They eventually delivered that with Thiago but he’s the only midfield signing since Naby Keita in 2018.
A signing should have come last summer, though. The fact we’re now seeing the winter window pass without a new player feels ridiculous, in truth.
It all comes down to Jude Bellingham. Liverpool want him above all and will wait for him – even if it means virtually writing off this season. If they get him, maybe it will have been worth it. Failing at this juncture would be a disaster, though.
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