Underrated Liverpool star will be FSG's saviour

Liverpool's owners Fenway Sports Group (FSG) are known for their frugality in the transfer market.

It is an approach that has delivered a Premier League title and a sixth European Cup over the last 15 years.

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Transfer decisions are rarely rash and in recent years, Liverpool have hardly put a foot wrong in their recruitment efforts.

Low-budget players like Andy Robertson have surpassed expectations, mid-range forwards such as Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah have become all-time club legends and the club's £75m outlay on Virgil Van Dijk quickly proved to be a well-made investment.

Much to the frustration of fans and pundits, Liverpool often appear to enter a season under-cooked, but time and time again, the team delivers success - although the argument stands that more could've been achieved with more investment.

By and large, Jurgen Klopp did remarkably well with the team he had at his disposal, helping the players reach performance levels that so few teams ever manage to be capable of - 97 and 99 point Premier League seasons in successive years, for example.

And now Arne Slot has taken on the mantle, helping the Reds lead the way in the league and the Champions League while reaching an EFL Cup semi-final along the way, all with £12.5m of investment in the summer.

The players in their respective positions are firing on all cylinders, but no team ever manages to go through an entire campaign without facing some adversity and Liverpool's defence has fallen into that trap already this season.

Slot's defensive injury crisis

Liverpool started the season with four centre-back options - Ibrahima Konate, Virgil Van Dijk, Jarrell Quansah and Joe Gomez - alongside Conor Bradley and Trent Alexander-Arnold at right-back, Andy Robertson and Kostas Tsimikas at left-back and Alisson Becker and Coaimhin Kelleher in goal.

Fortunately, when both Robertson and Tsimikas have been unavailable at left-back, Gomez has been able to step in, and Alexander-Arnold and Bradley have been able to dovetail their injuries almost seamlessly.

However, there have been a couple of occasions where both Quansah and Gomez have been fielded at centre-back in order to facilitate a rest for Van Dijk, leaving the team without a spare centre-back as Konate was injured, and so the team has been vulnerable.

In addition, yesterday, when Liverpool decided to rest both Konate and Van Dijk, while Gomez was out with injury, Wataru Endo was charged with filling in alongside Quansah, a high-stakes move which fortunately resulted in a clean sheet performance.

Now, of course, these circumstances are rare and you would be hard-pressed to have envisioned a scenario like this happening at times this season, but Arne Slot has had to get inventive and in reality, he shouldn't have needed to.

Last season, Liverpool had five centre-back options - Van Dijk, Konate, Gomez, the breakthrough of Quansah from the academy, and Joel Matip, who unfortunately spent November 2023 onwards sidelined with an ACL tear.

Nonetheless, the team had a player who spent 1061 minutes on the pitch across all competitions last season, almost 12 full games.

At the end of last season, the club decided against renewing Matip's deal so he left as a free agent, subsequently retiring from the sport. But he wasn't replaced.

In turn, as a result of FSG's negligence, Liverpool have found themselves in a position whereby a defensive midfielder is playing centre-back from time to time, a lucky happenstance that Endo is perfectly capable of stepping in when he's required to.

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The linchpins of Liverpool's success

When Arne Slot took over the club in the summer, Liverpool were without a defensive midfielder that he trusted. Endo was looked at and deemed unfit to be the team's full-time asset in the position.

Martin Zubimendi was chased down over the course of a number of weeks, only for the Spanish native to decline Liverpool's approach to meet his release clause in favour of prolonging his career at Real Sociedad.

In the end, following a number of training sessions, Slot picked his fellow Dutchman Ryan Gravenberch to take the reigns of defensive midfield.

At £16.2m, it was always likely that Endo was to be more of a stop-gap signing rather than the perfect long-term option as a No6, but it was one of Liverpool's own who took over from the Japanese international captain, instead of an outside recruit.

Now, playing as more of a fringe asset in Slot's squad, Endo occasionally gets to play in his preferred position, but his recent appearances have been in defence as a centre-back, covering as the non-existent Matip replacement that the club brought in.

In the not-too-distant past, James Milner wore the Reds shirt and beyond playing as a midfielder, he too was utilised in several different ways, playing as a left-back for most of the 2016/17 season.

As such, it seems clear that these circumstances are not by fluke, but rather by design.

FSG, through a general lack of investment, has been setting the team up for failure, only to be rescued through their manager's tactical nous and the player's commitment to do 'what's best for the team'.

Speaking to the press after Liverpool's win yesterday, Endo said: "He [Slot] thinks putting me as a defender is a good option to play his tactics so I hope I'm going to get a lot more minutes than before.

"Actually, I used to play as a defender when I was 18 to 25 years old so for me I don't mind if I play centre-back or number six. I just do what I can do."

In not replacing Matip, the last centre-back Liverpool bought was Konate in the summer transfer window following the 2020/21 season, almost seven transfer windows ago. Endo's ability to problem solve as a temporary centre-back has enabled FSG to get away without investing in a key area of the squad.

Alongside this, there were rumours this summer that Gomez could have been out the door, with some fans considering how feasible it would have been to just have Quansah, Van Dijk and Konate available for the campaign. Imagine that.

For the time being, Liverpool are in the running for success in all four competitions this season, so long as they can overturn the 1-0 deficit they face against Tottenham in the EFL Cup, and the players will eventually return to full fitness.

But over the last few weeks, the team has been on the brink of a potentially season-ending crisis, and it has taken some unnecessary inventive thinking from Slot to get the team out of a hole. In neglecting Liverpool's squad as they have done, the team is being pushed to its limit, and while they won't get the credit they deserve, there are a number of malleable linchpins in the squad that are keeping the Reds afloat.

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