The sight of Thiago Alcantara pitch-side at Anfield on Wednesday was a brief reminder of what Liverpool will miss between now and the end of the season.
As his team-mates went through their pre-match warm-ups for the visit of Fulham, Thiago was instead permitted to stand on the sidelines where the only passes he could be seen playing were to his young son with goalkeeper coach Claudio Taffarel.
Thiago's campaign is over and he will play no part in the final four games against Brentford, Leicester, Aston Villa and Southampton after suffering a recurrence of a hip flexor issue that has troubled him for the last few months. A minor operation is now required to correct the issue meaning Jurgen Klopp will be unable to count upon one of his most experienced and pedigreed midfielders as the outside battle for a place in the top four goes on.
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Having already missed over three months of action for other injuries across the course of the campaign, the setback is a bitter one for both Thiago and his manager. Fitness troubles have never been too far away where the Spain international's career on Merseyside has been concerned but the latest issue comes at a time when the club and their recruitment team are weighing up exactly what is needed this coming summer with regards to a significant restructuring of their midfield department.
By the time the end of the season comes, Thiago will have featured in just 30 of Liverpool's 52 games and his total after three seasons at Anfield will stand at 97. During his three years on Merseyside, Klopp's men have played 167 times, meaning the former Bayern Munich man has been absent for 70 fixtures. A handful of domestic cup games aside, - when Thiago would have been a big contender to have been rested anyway - it paints the picture of a fragile performer unable to stay fit. Perhaps that was never more obvious than before the finals of both the Carabao Cup and Champions League last season.
For the domestic cup win over Chelsea, Thiago was cruelly left in tears after failing the latest of fitness tests while he was forced to undertake a pain-killing injection in his toes to ensure he was cleared to play in Paris 12 months ago.
Those figures, however, pale in comparison to Naby Keita, who, after five years as a Liverpool player, has turned out 129 times for a team who have played 277 games during that period. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain's numbers have seen him feature 146 times from 333 matches during his own tenure, while Arthur Melo's disastrous loan spell has seen him play for just 13 minutes of the 4-1 loss to Napoli in September.
Arthur aside, those figures are of course skewed by the fact that none of that trio would have been played in every game by Klopp had they been available ever-presents, but the lack of durability and dependability has, at times, overburdened the likes of Fabinho, who has played 86 times more than Keita, despite arriving in the same transfer window in 2018.
That is the knock-on effect of having so many players unable to be called upon at certain junctures. While Klopp has always tried to rest and rotate where possible, the absence of players like Thiago, Keita and Oxlade-Chamberlain has likely led, indirectly, to the twanging of muscles for others in the squad across the last few years.
Influential website Transfermarkt states that Keita has been absent for 83 Liverpool games through injury, while Thiago has sat out 60 and Oxlade-Chamberlain has missed 88, nearly half of that is owed to a serious knee injury sustained in a Champions League semi-final against Roma five years ago.
The departure of James Milner, who is set to join Brighton on a free transfer, means Liverpool are going to lose as many as four players who are currently housed in the 'midfielders' section of the squad list on the club's official website. Stefan Bajcetic's rapid rise and Trent Alexander-Arnold's new-found status as a roving full-back-midfielder will help balance out the surplus to an extent but the need for quality, durable additions is an absolute must this summer.
It's why interest in the likes of Florentino Luis at Benfica and Sporting Lisbon's Manuel Ugarte makes sense, even if it remains to be seen if Liverpool will act decisively over either. No player has featured more for Benfica than defensive midfielder Luis this term with the 23-year-old having made 50 appearances in total. Ugarte is another defensive-minded operator who sources in Portugal have described as a "combat vehicle" in the centre of the park. It is these sorts of metrics that might be needed as much as quality on the ball.
For Thiago, speculation linking him with a shock return to Barcelona is likely to be given the short shrift inside the AXA Centre. He will be entering the final year of his deal when the new term gets underway and his undoubted class will be more valuable for the following 12 months than any cut-price sale for a player who will be 33 before the end of his deal.
But rather than lamenting the absence of a rare breed of midfielder, is there a school of thought that suggests his status within the squad is instead altered? Should the 2020 signing now be viewed through the lens of being a luxury player who does not need to be over-exposed next term? Used sparingly, he could be a potent weapon for Klopp going forward.
For that to be the case, though, Liverpool's recruitment department will need to ensure battle-hardened, elite-level midfielders are brought in to cover the almost mass exodus in the engine room department.
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