Liverpool have missed Luis Diaz but his comeback was scarcely the game to illustrate that. Their campaign might have been very different had the early-season rival to Alisson for their player-of-the-year award not spent six months on the sidelines. But by the time he returned, three of their forwards had already scored five goals at Elland Road. Within a few minutes of his introduction, another substitute, Darwin Nunez, made it six.
Diaz’s return was lost in a sea of goals. Liverpool had required him in many a match, but not a 6-1 demolition of Leeds. He may have witnessed the peculiar psychology of a team who can score in spurts and hatfuls or not at all, who can inflict thrashings or suffer beatings, who can be sporadically brilliant and yet far too inconsistent. If Jurgen Klopp is supposed to be the motivator supreme, the sight of Diaz may have galvanised Liverpool’s other attackers.
Cody Gakpo scored once, Mohamed Salah twice and there was a double for Diogo Jota: without a goal in a year, occupying the position that belonged to Diaz, he was suddenly potent again. Nunez, too, has taken his turns on the left in Diaz’s extended absence and found the net. Factor in Roberto Firmino, albeit only for his final few weeks as a Liverpool player, and Klopp has not had six forward options of such calibre at any stage in his reign.
It highlighted the way the rebuild has begun at the front, the £170 million committed to Diaz, Nunez and Gakpo standing out still more when nothing was invested in the midfield in the same period, when Liverpool now cannot afford Jude Bellingham. Klopp felt Jordan Henderson and Curtis Jones, who each left Elland Road with an assist, set the tone with their pressing in Leeds. But if he has too many compelling choices in the front three, he still has too few in the middle three.
It raises a question that was never necessary for much of Klopp’s reign: what is his best front three? Diaz, when sharp enough to feature more, is entitled to feel he had the status of a starter and star when he was last available. Nunez is the most expensive of them all but the human wrecking ball and the £85m man has been demoted. Gakpo is scarcely a doppelganger for Firmino but it is notable that he is shaping up as the Brazilian’s successor: a left winger for PSV Eindhoven, the has the positional intelligence to be part midfielder, part forward and a Klopp false nine, the Firmino-esque selflessness to pass for Salah’s second goal. Maybe the most telling element was not that Jota scored after 32 games without a goal: it was that he began the game.
He has retained Klopp’s trust throughout a drought. He conceded possession 15 times in the first half-hour, went on to register two goals and an assist but his efforts off the ball may have kept him in the side. In an injury-hit campaign, he had started twice each against Arsenal and Manchester City, once apiece against Real Madrid, Ajax and Chelsea. Come the major occasions, Klopp has tended to send for Jota. The bigger, faster Nunez has more obvious physicality but represents a wild card. Jota and Gakpo are better at determining where and how and who to press.
“We could have had a completely different front three but the front three played tonight because of the way we defended,” Klopp rationalised. “They can all play football but we need to understand it starts there.”
He attributed three goals to pressing, including the second, set up by Jota for Salah. The fourth stemmed from Jota’s tackle on the edge of his own box. “Counter-pressing wise, the best game for a long time,” Klopp said. Pressing, in one of his more famous comments, was the best playmaker. Trent Alexander-Arnold, who had two assists of his own, has a claim to that title. Any hopes Bellingham would be that playmaker have disappeared; but then the classic Klopp midfields never needed one. Nor have they had many goals: it was typical that as they scored six, just as when they got seven against Manchester United, they all came from forwards.
The success of the front three that was set in stone came from chemistry. As the faces change, the formula stays the same. One of the most dramatic and deceptive quotes about Liverpool’s season came in the depths of despair and the bowels of the Diego Maradona Stadium when Klopp said they needed to “reinvent ourselves”. Actually, he meant they had to replace and repeat. Their highlights this season have come when their identity has been intensity. Most have come when they have reverted to 4-3-3, even if the twist on it was giving Alexander-Arnold a role as a quasi-midfielder. A night when Gakpo looked the successor to Firmino and Jota the closest thing to Sadio Mane in the current squad showed the force of the old blueprint, but invited questions where the different talents of Diaz and Nunez fit into it.
