There’s a difference between having a talented squad and having one that’s built to dominate everything in front of it. Liverpool have quality, no doubt. But the talk that we should be rolling the league and Europe just because the names look good on paper feels a bit detached from reality.

Truth is, we’re still a couple of players short of that level. Not because the squad’s bad, but because football isn’t played on a spreadsheet. It’s played on tired legs, in messy moments, through dips in confidence and those spells where momentum disappears for a few weeks. That’s before you even get into the injuries and the stop-start rhythm they bring.

Paper squads don’t play the matches

When fans say “look at the options we’ve got”, I get it. It’s a strong group. But “strong” isn’t the same as “perfectly balanced”, and it definitely isn’t the same as “untouchable”. You can carry gaps for a while when everything clicks, but once the schedule bites and the sharpness drops off, those gaps become loud.

Even the best teams need the right profiles for the way they want to play. If you want to control games, move sides around, and play through pressure, you need certain skill sets in key areas. If those aren’t there, you end up relying on form and confidence staying sky-high all season. And that’s rarely how it goes.

Progressing the ball still matters

One of the biggest tells, for me, is the ball progression point. If you lose your number one progressor and don’t properly replace that role, you’re asking others to cover it by committee. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it leaves you a bit blunt, or a bit forced, especially against sides set up to clog the middle and nick transitions.

Then there’s Robbo. He’s been an absolute monster for this club, but nobody beats time forever. If he’s “number two” for driving you up the pitch, and he’s getting on a bit, you can see the need to think ahead rather than waiting until it’s a problem you can’t ignore.

Depth isn’t luxury, it’s the season

The other one is centre-back depth. If you’ve got a key defender like Konate and there’s no real rotation behind him, you’re basically crossing your fingers for nine months. That’s not squad building, that’s hope.

And this is where the “but we spent money” line can do your head in. Spending in itself doesn’t complete a squad. Spending on the right roles does. Pointing at a total outlay and acting like that ends the conversation misses what supporters are actually talking about.

To be fair, even with all that, we’re still sitting above Chelsea in the wider pecking order, despite them chucking far more at it. So it’s not doom. It’s just realism. If Liverpool want to be the side that controls the biggest games again, the squad probably needs those last couple of pieces, not a lecture from pundits about net spend.

Written by PatrikBurgher: 5 January 2026

Tags: efl injury tactics squad