Upgrades on paper don’t always work at Liverpool

It’s easy to label new faces as upgrades, but football doesn’t work off reputation alone. If the fit is wrong, you can end up weaker in the roles that actually matter.

There’s a habit that creeps into summer chat every year: looking at names, looking at highlight reels, and declaring Liverpool have “upgraded” before anyone’s even settled into the shirt. But the truth is the system matters. Fit matters. And if you replace traits rather than roles, you can end up with a squad that looks better on paper and plays worse on the grass.

Replacing a player isn’t the same as signing a good one

The big one for me is the Diaz point. If you’re talking like he’s been “replaced” by a different type of attacker, you’re missing what Diaz actually brought. He gave us pace, power, a bit of chaos, and that relentless work rate off the ball. You felt him in the game even when the final ball didn’t land.

If Wirtz is being discussed in that bracket, it just doesn’t stack up as a like-for-like idea. Different profile entirely. More of a central creator. If you lose a left-sided runner and try to patch it with a player who wants to be a number 10, you haven’t replaced anything. You’ve changed the picture. That can be fine, but only if the rest of the team is clearly built to make it sing.

“Upgrade” talk comes with some pretty big ifs

Same story up top. Yes, you can look at Isak and Ekitike and say they’re an improvement on Jota and Nunez. On paper. But even your own sentence has the warning lights: provided one isn’t permanently affected, provided the other stays fit. That’s not nitpicking, that’s reality.

And on Nunez, people have short memories. You mention 33 goal involvements in 23/24, and that’s exactly the point. He’s already hit a level that others are being credited for without doing it here. Then the following year he barely starts in the league. Whether you think that was fair or not, it’s hard to talk about “potential” when the minutes disappear.

Balance, reliability, and doing your job

At the back, it’s the same theme. If Leoni can’t play, he can’t be an upgrade, and injuries change careers. Kerkez might have the tools, but if he’s hot and cold, you’re swapping steadiness for a gamble. Tsimikas wasn’t glamorous, but he knew his role and, most weeks, did it without turning left-back into an emergency.

Goalkeeper is another one where “not Alisson” doesn’t mean “not good enough”. Kelleher proved he can hold the fort. If you’re watching a new keeper and thinking he’s letting in ones Kelleher stops, you’re allowed to be uneasy. That’s not sentimentality, it’s standards.

Overall, it comes back to one thing: if you’re not doing like-for-like, you need to show an obvious shift in how Liverpool want to play. If the football still looks slow and flat, blaming it all on “out of form” players feels like a cop-out.

Written by chewysuarez7: 15 January 2026