Jurgen Klopp may be forgiven for a sense of deja vu when he woke up on Sunday morning.
As he surveyed the fallout from Saturday's frustrating 2-2 draw with Fulham, the Reds boss may just feel as though he has been here before with regards to his particular set of circumstances. As recently as the start of 2021, in fact.
Back then, Klopp was besieged by injuries in his centre-back department and will have heard the clamour for Liverpool to rectify it in the transfer market. With Virgil van Dijk, Joel Matip and Joe Gomez all out for the season, the demands for fresh blood were as loud as they have ever been during his time at Anfield at the turn of last year.
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Fast forward around 18 months and the Reds boss is once again hearing similar noises, this time with regards to his midfield. Just one game into the new campaign and Klopp is already counting the cost of mounting issues in his engine room.
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain's last kick of a ball in a Liverpool shirt came on July 15 when he pulled up injured after a tame shot at goal against Crystal Palace in Singapore. It's unclear when the former Arsenal man will be able to return but having not had any real pre-season schedule as a result of the setback, it may be some time before he is fully up to speed.
Curtis Jones was pictured in a protective boot at last week's 3-0 defeat to Strasbourg with Klopp referring to the calf issue as a "stress reaction" after his brief cameo in the Community Shield win over Manchester City.
Naby Keita's unavailability for the draw in west London was down to an illness that kept him out of training all week. It's the least of Klopp's injury concerns, admittedly, but the Guinea international's durability has always had question marks around it throughout an Anfield career that is into the final 12 months of a five-year contract.
And now to the latest problem in the centre of midfield. It is without doubt the most concerning in Thiago Alcantara. The former Barcelona and Bayern Munich did not enjoy his best performance at Craven Cottage on Saturday but the majestic Spain star is integral to hopes this term.
Such were his displays across 25 Premier League games last term that he was included in the PFA Team of the Season, but Thiago, for all his gifts, is unable to count robustness among them. A suspected hamstring issue early in the second half cast a long shadow over the match itself on Saturday lunchtime and leaves Klopp sweating on the results of a Sunday scan.
"We actually have enough [midfielders],” said Klopp after the game. "The problem is we are now punished for something that isn’t our responsibility. Things like this can happen.
"Nobody could imagine that Curtis gets the thing he gets. It’s nothing serious but he’s a young boy and he’s had a stress reaction and bodies are like this. Naby is only ill and will definitely be back next week again. Oxlade (injury) happened early, and now Thiago. That’s not good."
Klopp has a point when he talks up the numbers within his midfield department. If Harvey Elliott and Fabio Carvalho, two who came off the bench on Saturday, are to be included then Liverpool have as many as nine vying for a place in the three-man engine room.
Critics, however, will point to it being no surprise whatsoever that Oxlade-Chamberlain, Keita and Thiago are already on the injured list. Which leads to the question of whether or not a midfielder can or will be sourced before the close of the transfer window at the end of the month.
Klopp, as ever, is taking a long-term and pragmatic view. For now, at least. “We will see," he said after the game on Saturday. "A transfer must make sense now and in the long-term. We have eight midfielders. We still have enough midfielders. It’s not that we lack midfielders, it’s just that some of them are injured. This isn’t a good situation, I don’t like it at all. We have to see how we react on that, but for sure not panic."
Speaking to the ECHO, former midfielder Didi Hamann labelled the engine room as Liverpool's "Achilles heel" and believes there is one particular quality that it is missing from it under Klopp.
"I think the midfield is the Achilles heel," Hamann says. "If you look at the goals from midfield, I think Fabinho was the top scorer [last season] with seven. And he is the one who does all the dirty work there too. So there are about six or seven there who I don't think scored more than a couple for a team who scored about 150 goals last season in all competitions.
"I am not sure if Keita has signed a new deal, but he's done OK so far. I am not sure if it's enough to extend his contract but I think it is an area where they need to get seven or eight goals from and they haven't got that at the moment.
"Thiago is another player who creates but doesn't score, Keita is similar, Oxlade-Chamberlain has been disappointing and obviously Milner and Henderson are not getting any younger. They are great team players but I think if they had someone there in midfield who could get them six, seven or eight goals this season in open, I think it'd make them much better."
Jude Bellingham, of course, is a player who has been perpetually linked all summer, despite the Borussia Dortmund starlet indicating his intention to stay in Germany for this season at the very least. Aurelien Tchouameni is another who the Reds' recruitment team admired but it was quickly made apparent that the France international only had eyes for Real Madrid earlier this year.
Is there, however, something to be learned from recent history when it comes to Liverpool's midfield? By now, it's generally been accepted that the addition of Thiago in September 2020 was to cover for the expected departure of Gini Wijnaldum.
Wijnaldum was wanted by Barcelona that same summer but eventually left Anfield the following year as a free agent with no replacement sourced due to Thiago's capture. With Oxlade-Chamberlain and Keita into the final 12 months of their own respective deals, could there be a scenario where Liverpool accelerate plans for a midfield signing before the close of play on September 1?
That is a question only Klopp and sporting director Julian Ward can answer right now, but the Liverpool manager will certainly feel he has been here before.
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