What John Aldridge saw from Liverpool in first half on Sunday had him ‘shouting at the television’
John Aldridge has said that he was ‘shouting at the television’ on Sunday over Arne Slot’s decision to start Dominik Szoboszlai out of position at right-back in Liverpool’s win over Nottingham Forest.
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Despite the head coach saying in the lead-up to the game that Joe Gomez was ‘ready to start’, the defender had to be content with a substitute appearance once more as the Hungarian was instead given the nod on the right-hand side of the back four.
That experiment was abandoned shortly after the half-hour mark as the 25-year-old swapped positions with Curtis Jones, and the Reds’ number 8 put in the cross which ultimately led to Alexis Mac Allister’s stoppage-time winner.
Aldridge implores Slot to end Szoboszlai right-back experiment
In his latest column for the Liverpool Echo, Aldridge called for Slot to dispense with the idea of playing Szoboszlai at right-back and instead keep him in his natural midfield position where his influence can be maximised.
The former Reds striker wrote: ‘Dominik Szoboszlai is being wasted at right-back at Liverpool, and the time has come for the experiment of using the Hungarian as an emergency answer to the problem position to be stopped once and for all.
‘Only 15 minutes had gone at Nottingham Forest on Sunday when I was shouting at the television for Arne Slot to move Szoboszlai out of the role and back into the engine room. Liverpool were being overrun in midfield and really needed somebody with his physicality and attributes to get stuck in.
‘In the end, it took another quarter-of-an-hour before Slot made the change and Liverpool were much better for it, particularly in the second half.
‘Szoboszlai has been our best player this season by some distance and it makes sense to play him where he does the most damage to the opposition and best serves the Reds. He offers something different to the other Liverpool midfielders and has the type of dynamism that, for all their qualities, Ryan Gravenberch and Alexis Mac Allister do not.’
Liverpool need Szoboszlai in his best position, and that’s midfield
While we can understand Slot being cautious with the use of Gomez, who’s not long back from injury and has had some serious absences in his time at Liverpool, it seemed strange not to start him on Sunday if he’d been deemed fit enough to do so.
In the first half in particular at the City Ground, the Reds badly missed the energy and dynamism that Szoboszlai would’ve brought to their midfield had he been playing there, and it didn’t seem coincidental that they (albeit gradually) got a foothold in the game after the positional switch with Jones.
We get that the Hungarian has been deployed at right-back through necessity given the injury problems we’ve had in that role this season, but he needs to be playing in his strongest position in order to get the most out of his game-changing qualities.
Slot is hopeful of having Jeremie Frimpong cleared to play against West Ham on Saturday, and while the 25-year-old’s frequent fitness issues could see him being handled with care, Gomez should certainly be primed to start at the weekend.
If Szoboszlai were confined to playing at right-back for the full match against Forest, would he have been in a position to deliver the cross which led to Mac Allister’s winner? Would Liverpool have been completely overrun in midfield to the extent that the game was already lost by that point?
These hypothetical questions will never have a definitive answer, but what we can say with conviction is that Aldridge is quite right to implore the Reds boss to end the experiement of playing our number 8 in a makeshift role and instead deploy him where we can get the best out of his abilities.
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