A recurring theme during Liverpool’s thirty-year league title drought was the frustrating spectacle of a big-money striker arriving at Anfield only to be shoved out onto the wing when things weren’t working out.
The repurposing of Mohamed Salah as a right-sided forward following his £36m arrival from AS Roma as a winger in 2017 reversed and broke that chain to some degree but before then, the likes of Stan Collymore, Emile Heskey, El Hadji Diouf and Djibril Cisse had all found themselves playing wide after initial hopes they might be the answer through the middle had floundered.
There was one example during this era however where a shift to the flanks actually worked out well for all concerned.
